Parents Of Imprisoned Journalist Traveling To Iran
FARGO, ND (March 30, 2009) – The parents of imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi today said they are leaving for Iran to see their daughter and to try to speed up her release.
Reza and Akiko Saberi told The Forum newspaper in Fargo that they will leave this afternoon and hope to be in Tehran by Wednesday.
Saberi, who for the past six years has been reporting for NPR and the BBC from Iran, grew up in Fargo. She's been imprisoned in Iran's notorious Evin prison for about eight weeks now. Initially Iranian officials said she was being held for buying a bottle of wine (which is illegal but not uncommon and most Iranians are not arrested for the act).
Revolutionary court officials later said she was being held for "illegal activities" that included continuing to report news from the country for two years after Iran revoke her journalist's credentials.
Saberi's release has been delayed by the two-week Iranian new years holiday of Norouz, which began ten days ago and during which all government offices are close, and by earlier confusion. In early March there was hope she was about to be released when Iranian Revolutionary Court official Hassan Haddad told the Iranian Students News Agency that their investigation of the journalist was complete and her release was forthcoming.
An Iranian lawyer hired by her parents visited Saberi in prison soon thereafter, but she was not released as planned. The lawyer told Saberi's parents on March 9 that he saw no sign of physical torture on their daughter, but that she was depressed over being held in jail.
Family and friends are concerned about Saberi's well-being at Evin prison because Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in custody there in July 2003 after she was arrested for photographing the relatives of detainees outside the jail. Kazemi died of head injuries sustained while in police custody, a cause of death determined by Iranian authorities, and yet no one has been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with her death.
U.S. State Department has been reaching out to Iranian officials through the Swiss Embassy. American hasn't had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980 after militant Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days during the last year of President Jimmy Carter's administration.
In 2004 Saberi was a keynote speaker at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference and spoke about her one-woman coverage of news in Iran. Saberi once worked at a television station in Fargo before going on to Iran where she's been working as a journalist while also taking graduate studies.
Saberi is a former Miss Dakota and she was also named "Miss Scholar" in the Miss America pageant in 1997. She is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, IL, and Cambridge University in Britain.
Saberi first worked in television in Fargo, ND, at KVLY-TV, and she worked as a videojournalist for Belo-Time Warner News 24 in Houston, TX, and Anglia Television in Norwich, England. She was a business intern the Springfield News Leader in Missouri in 1999, a staff writer at the National Journal in Washington, DC, in 1999, and the Washington correspondent for WDAY-TV and WHO-AM radio as well. In 1998 she was a reporter for the Illinois Times and the Illinois Southtown and Daily Herald.
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