Maryam Hosseinkhah and Jelveh Javaheri, two women rights activists in the campaign to ‎end discriminatory laws in Iran who were imprisoned about 7 weeks ago were released ‎earlier this week after meeting the bail conditions of the judiciary.‎

The defense attorney for both women who announced the release of the prisoners also ‎said that the bail amount for both of his clients was reduced, making the payment ‎possible by the family members of the victims. “Initially the bail amount had been set at ‎‎100 million Toman (about $120,000) by Tehran’s judiciary, but reduced to 5 million ‎Toman (about $30,000) when the families of both women displayed their inability to ‎provide the amounts,” he said. He reiterated that the charges against the two activists had ‎not yet been formally communicated to him. Maryam Hosseinkhah is a journalist and ‎web blogger who had been summoned to the judiciary on two occasions prior to her ‎arrest in relation to her work at the Zanestan women’s web site, which had also been ‎filtered out by the government. Jelveh Javaheri was a graduate student of sociology and ‎also a writer for the internet site “Change for Equality” who was detained and sent to ‎Evin prison a month ago, following her summons and interrogation by Tehran’s office of ‎the prosecutor. Both women were active members of the Campaign to End ‎Discriminatory Laws in Iran for over a year. ‎

While they were in detention, pro-government media, including the government Islamic ‎Republic News Agency (IRNA), portrayed them to have been imprisoned because of ‎their anti-state security activities. The charges were not communicated to the prisoners ‎during their detention.‎

Following the protests of women rights activists in Iran over the charges raised by IRNA, ‎the news agency changed its tune and made the same accusations against two other ‎women’s rights activists, Ronak Saffarzadeh and Hanna Abdi, both of whom had been ‎arrested a few months earlier in the province of Kurdistan. Iran’s minister of intelligence, ‎Mohseni Ejei had publicly said that women’s rights activists were part of the “soft ‎revolution” striving to overthrow the Iranian regime. ‎

In related news, the offices of two organizations working closely with women activists, ‎one managed by Shadi Sadr and the other by Mahbubeh Abbasgholizadeh, that had been ‎sealed off and shut by law enforcement officials, were also officially reopened. ‎