Journalist Roxana Saberi Convicted On Spy Charges; Sentenced To 8 Years

 

TEHRAN, IRAN (April 18, 2009) – Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi has been convicted of spying charges by the Iranian Revolutionary Court and sentenced to eight years in prison, her lawyer said this morning.

Saberi, 31, was arrested in late January and told her parents she was being detained for buying a bottle of wine (which is illegal in Iran but not an uncommon practice). When the Iranian government continued to hold her, they said it was for her "illegal activities" that included continuing to report for the BBC and NPR for three years after the Iranians had cancelled her media credentials. Then two weeks ago, they charged her with spying for the United States.

“I’ll definitely appeal the verdict,” Saberi's lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told the Associated Press.

Saberi's one-day trail was held Monday behind closed doors. It is the first time Iran has found an American journalist guilty of spying. It is not known when the court reached the verdict.

Judiciary official Ali-Reza Jamshidi said Wednesday that Saberi's defense statement to the court on Monday was "completed" and that she had "confessed to espionage charges," allegedly admitting that her work for media organizations was a cover for spying, according to Iranian government officials.

In news that came out after the verdict, Iran's state news agency reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had sent a letter to Tehran's chief prosecutor instructing him to ensure that Saberi was given the chance to "present a full defense."

At a time when the American government is trying to improve 30 years of poor relations with Iran, including recent invitations from the U.S. for Iran to join U.N. nuclear discussions, the White House said that President Barack Obama was "deeply disappointed" by Saberi's conviction.

The U.S. State Department said the charges against the journalist were "baseless" and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had been demanding Saberi's immediate release.

Many who know the journalist, however, are breathing a sigh of relief because the charge of spying is a treasonous act in Iran that is punishable by death. In November an Iranian businessman convicted of spying on Iran for the Israeli military was executed. Ali Ashtari was hanged after his "confession" was broadcast by Iranian state television.

The Iranians said that Saberi used her "cover as a journalist" to visit government buildings, contact government employees, gather classified information, and send it to U.S. intelligence services.

The State Department has been reaching out to Iranian officials for the past few weeks through the Swiss Embassy. America 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.

The journalist's parents, Reza and Akiko Saberi, traveled to Iran in late March to press for the release of their daughter. They were able to visit their daughter in jail and have told the Associated Press that their daughter is innocent of the charges.

In Tehran, the convicted journalist's father said his daughter has lost weight in prison and looks weak and frail, but has told him that she is not being treated harshly, CNN reports. He said she's sharing a cell in Iran's notorious Evin prison with two other prisoners, and that her lawyer had 20 days to file an appeal to Saturday's verdict.

In 2004 Saberi was a keynote speaker at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference, and she was also a participant in NPPA's NewsVideo Workshop in Norman, OK, four years ago where workshop director Sharon Levy Freed remembers Saberi as "a real go-getter" and an exceptional video storyteller. At the Women In Photojournalism Conference Saberi spoke about her one-woman coverage of news in Iran. She 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.

The journalist 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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