Mexico City ? Three Americans accused of invading and looting property in a controversial land-rights case in Oaxaca, Mexico, have been released from a monthlong jail stay after a local judge decided the charges against them had no merit.

U.S. Embassy officials in Mexico had called the charges “a miscarriage of justice,” and residents in San Pablo Etla, the village where the three were living, have protested the arrests and testified in court for the Americans’ release.

“Obviously we’ve been concentrating and working on this case, and we’re very glad they’re free,” said Diana Page, assistant press attache for U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza.

Mary Ellen Sanger, John Barbato and Joseph Simpson were released Saturday.

The case arose from a property dispute between an aging American writer and the University of the Americas in Mexico City. The dispute took on political significance because the university is run by Mexico’s minister of public security, Alejandro Gertz Manero.

The three had been taking care of Russell Abbot Ames, 91, whom the university is trying to evict because it says it owns the mountainside house where he’s lived for 50 years. Ames and his wife, who died three years ago, donated the property to the university in 1988, with the proviso that they could live there until they died. But because the property was in his wife’s name, university officials argued in a lawsuit that the property was theirs.

Supporters of Ames said the Oct. 6 arrest of the three was a pressure tactic to get Ames to leave, while the university maintained that they were there illegally. A judge sided with the three, however, saying there was no reason for them not to be allowed to live in Ames’ house.

University officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The three caretakers were back at Ames’ house Wednesday, though two are planning to return to the United States to recuperate.

“I’m not abandoning Mexico, but I need to rest and repair,” said Sanger, who said she slept on the concrete floor of a women’s cell for the month she was in jail.