Helmut Hofer \nUnited Arab Emirates - The late rock singer/poet Jim Morrison often equated sex and death in some of his more vivid lyrics. But in Iran sex could have been the death of a German businessman - until he paid a fine to close his case.
No one knows just when Helmut Hofer will be released, with a run of other charges still against him, including espionage and insulting a prison officer. But the sex case was closed legally as soon as Hofer paid the $23,000 fine.
Hofer's story began when he was arrested at an airport in Tehran two years ago for an illicit relationship with an Iranian medical student. Iranian law punishes sex outside marriage by flogging but if the man is not a Muslim, he faces death. A retrial was ordered, the Associated Press says, after Hofer insisted he had converted to Islam before having sex with the woman.
But he was re-convicted and sentenced to death.
Iran's Supreme Court threw the death sentence out in February and ordered another re-trial, where this time Hofer was acquitted for lack of evidence, the AP says. But the day after, Hofer was accused of having "contact with suspicious elements," a term Iranian law enforcement normally uses for spying - but authorities did not say who his alleged spymaster was.
The German government had pushed Iran to drop the sex case, saying executing Hofer would have harmed German-Iranian relations severely, the AP says. Germany is one of Iran's most important European trading partners.
