French teaching assistant Clotilde Reiss won a small victory over the weekend in her espionage trial in Iran. Reiss, who celebrated her 24th birthday in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, was released on bail after being charged with spying.

She can’t yet go home, however. She will have to await her trial’s verdict at the French embassy. Reiss spent six weeks in Evin Prison after Iranian officials charged her with participating in a Western plot against the re-election of hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her supposed crime? Attending demonstrations, e-mailing friends and sending a report to a French institute for Iranian studies during the protests. The regime has so far tried about 140 protesters from the June elections. France has demanded that Reiss’s case and the case against a Franco-Iranian embassy worker, Nazak Afshar, already released, be thrown out. Iranian media says Reiss admitted to the alleged crimes in court Saturday, but CNN notes that human rights groups and leaders opposing Iran’s regime say the government is forcing people to make such confessions.

Another female prisoner in Iran has also received some good news. California graduate student Esha Momeni, 29, who was in Tehran researching that country’s women’s rights movement when she was arrested October 15, has returned to Los Angeles. She was originally stopped by police for speeding but later had her home searched and research notes confiscated; Iran said they posed a national security risk. She was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison for a month, then not allowed to leave the country for nine more. 

Meanwhile, despite this seemingly harsh treatment of women — and men, for that matter — who are believed to oppose the regime, Ahmadinejad says he’s going to propose three female ministers to his cabinet, a first in the Islamic state. We’ll have to wait and see whether they are confirmed. 

Here’s one part of Momeni’s interview with her university’s TV station, below. You can watch Momeni talk about her ordeal more in depth here.