By Dan Bammes
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kuer/local-kuer-895665.mp3
Salt Lake City, UT – Haleh Esfandiari is an academic -- an intellectual -- and that was apparently enough of a threat to the regime in her home country of Iran for them to detain her for more than a hundred days in 2007. Professor Esfandiari had taught at Princeton University and she was director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC when she went to Iran to, among other things, visit her mother.
After worldwide protest -- and a pledge of more than 300-thousand dollars in bail -- she was released and came back to the United States. She's published a new book, My Prison, My Home about her detention and about her hopes for the future of Iran. Haleh Esfandiari was in Salt Lake City last week to talk about her experience. She spoke with KUER's Dan Bammes.