National flags in Bandar Abbas, Iran
National flags in Bandar Abbas, IraniStock

A Russian journalist has been arrested in the Iranian capital and kept in custody since earlier this week, the Russian embassy to Tehran said on Friday, according to The Associated Press.

The embassy's press attaché told the Russian Tass news agency that the journalist, Yulia Yuzik, flew into Tehran last Sunday and that Iranian officials seized her passport at the airport for unknown reasons. She was arrested in her hotel room on Wednesday.

The attaché could not immediately say why the journalist was under arrest but Yuzik's former husband, Boris Voitsekhovsky, said on Facebook on Friday that she called him from detention saying that she faces charges of espionage for Israel, according to AP.

Later on Friday, just hours after Russia’s foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador in Moscow, Iran agreed to release Yuzik.

Iran's foreign ministry told Russian news agencies late on Friday that Yuzik had been detained for questioning and would be released "shortly", but did not give further details.

Iran regularly says it captured spies, and sometimes those are sentenced to death.

In August, Iran jailed two people, including a British dual national, for 10 years for spying for Israel.

In June, a former Iranian Department of Defense contractor was executed by Iran for spying for the US government.

In 2016, the Islamic Republic arrested a member of the negotiating team that reached a nuclear deal with world powers on suspicion of spying.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)