Adelkhah, who was first arrested in June 2019 and had been serving a five-year sentence, was released from prison on Friday night, the lawyer Hojjat Kermani told AFP.

She is now in her family’s home and “she is happy” to have left Evin prison in north Tehran, he added.

The lawyer said she had been released following a decision by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to pardon or reduce the prison terms of a “significant number” of convicts ahead of the 44th anniversary of the Islamic republic, which falls today.

“The case is closed so there is no legal obstacle for her to leave the country,” he said, while adding “we have to wait and see if there is political decision against her departure from the country.”

A specialist in Shiite Islam and a research director at Sciences Po university in Paris, Adelkhah was arrested in June 2019 along with her French colleague and partner Roland Marchal.

Marchal was released in March 2020 in an apparent prisoner swap after France released Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, who had faced extradition to the US over accusations he had violated US sanctions against Iran.

Adelkhah’s case, however, is different as Iran does not recognise dual nationality for its citizens.

She was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for conspiring against national security but was allowed home in Tehran in October 2020 with an electronic bracelet before being returned to jail in January 2022.

Up until Adelkhah’s release, seven French citizens were being held by Iran, according to the French government.

They are among two dozen foreign nationals described by their families and supporters as innocent people.

Iran recently freed prisoners including journalists and rights activists, many of whom were arrested during protests triggered by the Sept 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old ethnic Kurd, who had been arrested for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s dress rules for women.