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An Iranian-Canadian academic recently released from more than three months of detention in Iran said on Thursday that "it's wonderful to be home".

Shortly after landing in Montreal on Thursday morning, and tightly clutching her niece's hand, Homa Hoodfar spoke briefly with the media and thanked Canadian and Omani officials, civil society groups, and academics who pushed for her release.

"It's been a bitter seven months and the detention has made me weak and tired," she said.

Last week’s decision by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to charge British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with plotting to overthrow the regime when she had been told she was about to be released seems particularly cruel and arbitrary. It is also an alarming development for another woman of dual nationality currently held incommunicado in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

Watch this interview on CTV Montreal with Marc Lafrance, a friend and colleague of Homa Hoodfar, on the #FreeHoma campaign, the conditions of the Evin prison, and Homa's academic background. He also gives simple instructions on what you can do TODAY to contribute to the campaign, by visiting www.homahoodfar.org.

A Turkish journalist has been sentenced to 20 months in jail and stripped of legal rights over her children for breaching the confidentiality of a court case, her lawyer said on Wednesday, raising further concern about deteriorating press freedoms.

Arzu Yildiz was sued by the state after publishing footage in May 2015 from a court hearing at which four prosecutors were on trial for ordering a search of trucks belonging to Turkey's MIT intelligence agency as they traveled to Syria in 2014.