free haleh esfandiari

from laila lalami's excellent blog:

As you may have heard, Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has been detained in Iran. She had traveled to the country of her birth to visit her 93-year-old mother. She was on her way to Tehran's international airport on December 30, when masked gunmen stopped her taxi and stole her belongings, including her Iranian and U.S. passports. She was then effectively under house arrest for four months, and then on May 8 she was taken to the notorious Evin Prison, where political prisoners are held and sometimes tortured. There have been no news of her since she was taken there. Please sign the petition for her release. More info about her here.

juan cole weighs on this important issue too.