TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian-American scholar released after months of imprisonment in Iran has no passport and cannot leave the country where she still faces charges of endangering national security, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Haleh Esfandiari, 67, was released on bail Tuesday from Iran's notorious Evin prison where she was held since May. Her 93-year-old mother used the deed to her Tehran apartment to post bail.

Her family said their greatest worry is her frail health and mental well-being after months behind bars and they hope she will be able to leave Iran soon.

Esfandiari's lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said her client has the legal right to leave the country but authorities seized her passport in January and have not returned it or issued a new one. Iranian authorities have not indicated when, or whether, they intend to return her passport.

"The next stage is that a date will be set for the trial," Ebadi told The Associated Press, explaining that despite Esfandiari's release, charges against her remain.

Esfandiari is the head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry had accused her and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a "soft revolution" in Iran. Her husband and the Wilson Center deny the allegations.

"I'm certain that my client is innocent and she must be acquitted of the charges," Ebadi said. She vowed to prove her client's innocence in court. But Iranian authorities have not yet said whether Esfandiari will stand trial.

Esfandiari was one of a handful of Iranian-Americans detained or facing security-related charges here, adding to tensions between the United States and Iran. Washington accuses Iran of arming Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq and seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies those claims, and blames the U.S. for Iraq's instability.

Esfandiari was detained Dec. 30 after three masked men holding knives threatened to kill her on her way to Tehran's airport to fly back to the U.S. from a visit to her mother, the Wilson Center has said.

For weeks, she was interrogated by authorities for up to eight hours a day about the activities of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, the Washington-based foundation said.

She was charged in May. Since then, her only contact with her family before Tuesday were brief telephone calls to her mother in which she said she was under stress.

During her four months in the prison, north of Tehran, Esfandiari was in solitary confinement with no access to lawyers, Ebadi said.

The lawyer said she already has filed a complaint with the U.N. Human Rights Council against what she called the "arbitrary" arrest of Esfandiari.

After her sudden release late Tuesday, Esfandiari was shown on Iranian state television walking out of the prison and meeting family members in a car on a nearby street.

"I thank all those who made efforts to make it possible for me to go home," she said on Iranian TV. She added that her jailers were polite and she had recently been allowed to read newspapers and watch television.

Esfandiari's husband, Shaul Bakhash, spoke with her by phone Tuesday and said the release was a complete surprise to his wife. She was in disbelief when Iranian officials told her that she could leave, even asking if they were joking, he said.

Esfandiari told her family she was treated well in prison, but was kept in solitary confinement in a cell with one window and was on a strict regimen, pacing the room for exercise. She was able to buy fruit from her jailers, Bakhash said Wednesday.

Esfandiari revealed little about her interrogations, but told her husband that much of it focused on her work.

"She said, 'The problem was not so much me as their misapprehension about the Wilson Center,"' according to Bakhash.

He said his wife wants to return to the U.S. and is optimistic she will get her passport back.

Esfandiari's daughter, Haleh Bakhash, said Tuesday her mother's health has been a concern. Esfandiari suffered from arthritis as well as pain in her eyes but the family was not allowed to deliver medicine to her, the daughter said in phone interviews from the United States.

Esfandiari, who only weighed 105 pounds to begin with, appeared to have lost weight.

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Iran has charged three other Iranian-Americans with security-related offenses: Parnaz Azima, a journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Farda; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine.

Shakeri and Tajbakhsh are in prison; Azima is free but barred from leaving Iran.

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Associated Press Writer Stephen Manning from Washington contributed to this report.

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