Iran holds US-based academic for "security" crimes

TEHRAN, May 15 (Reuters) A Washington-based academic arrested in Tehran last week is being investigated for ''crimes against security'', an Iranian judiciary spokesman said today.

Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the US Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Middle East program, was arrested on May 8 and taken to Tehran's Evin prison, the center and her family said in a statement last week.

''She is right now under the authority of the Intelligence Ministry,'' Iranian judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters. ''Her crime is security issues, investigations over crimes against security are still going on.'' The US State Department last week condemned the arrest of Esfandiari, who has dual U.S. and Iranian citizenship, and said she was among a number of US-Iranians being detained by Tehran.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran have increased in recent months over Iran's disputed nuclear programme, which the West suspects is aimed at building atom bombs, and the conflict in Iraq.

REUTERS RJ KN1501