by Zachary Halaschak
| June 04, 2020 11:09 AM
Michael White traveled to Iran in July 2018 to visit his Iranian girlfriend and was detained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sometime later. The IRGC acknowledged his arrest in Mashhad in January of last year.
He was detained and sentenced to at least a decade in prison on charges of insulting Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and posting a private photograph on social media, according to CBS News.
White’s release comes right after the U.S. returned imprisoned Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari to the Islamic Republic. Iran’s foreign ministry denied Asgari’s release was related to a prison swap.