Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, whose jailing on what most believed were trumped up espionage charges in Iran had become an international story and personal cause for President Barack Obama, has reportedly been released from her jail cell in Tehran — one day after an Iranian appeals court reduced her eight-year jail sentence to a suspended two-year term.
Speculation after her arrest centered on whether she had been arrested as part of a move on the part of hardliners to scuttle Obama’s overtures to Tehran or whether it had been staged so that she would be released after her use as a bargaining chip with the United States. Here’s the report from PressTV:
Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been convicted of involvement in acts of espionage, has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison.
The release came just one day after a Tehran court of appeals reduced her eight-year jail sentence to a two-year suspended term, Press TV’s correspondent reported on Monday.
Saberi, 32, is a freelance journalist who was initially detained in late January for working in Iran after her press credentials had expired.
She was later sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the government of the United States.
However, earlier on Sunday Saberi’s lawyer expressed optimism about the verdict after her case was heard in a Tehran court of appeals.
“I am optimistic that fundamental changes would be made to the sentence,” Roxana’s lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, was quoted by IRNA as saying on Sunday. “The verdict is to be issued this coming week.”
Saleh Nikbakht, another one of Saberi’s lawyers, on Monday said, “The verdict of the previous court has been cancelled. Her punishment has been changed to a suspended two-year sentence and she will be out of prison today.”
Saberi had been in Tehran for six years, and basically was what you would call a “stringer” — a nonstaff reporter paid for her work by organization such as the BBC, National Public radio and other outlets. This is usually either done by a contract or piece per piece. (On a personal note: I worked on the exact same basis during the 70s for the Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Daily News, NPR and a host of other newspapers and news magazines writing from New Delhi, Dacca and Madrid. Such writers are credentialed but far more vulnerable to press-angry governments since they are really out there on their own and not protected by being actual employees of news organizations.).
Times Oneline has some more background, including the two scenarios mentioned here and in our previous post:
Her father, Reza Saberi, described the court proceedings last month as a mock trial and said that the entire hearing lasted only a few minutes.
Western diplomats in Tehran and Iranian reformers were sceptical about the case, suggesting that it was politically motivated.
There were suspicions that hardliners in the regime wanted to use the prosecution to end a peace initiative announced by President Obama. Another interpretation was that Iran wanted a bargaining chip to use with the Americans.
President Obama personally intervened on her behalf at the time damaging hopes for a reconciliation bid with the Islamic regime.
He said: “I have complete confidence that she was not engaging in any sort of espionage. She is an Iranian-American who was interested in the country which her family came from, and it is appropriate for her to be treated as such and to be released.”
The New York Times gives some additional background on this case:
Ms. Saberi, 32, has lived in Iran since 2003 and worked as a freelance journalist for National Public Radio and the BBC. She was arrested in late January for buying a bottle of wine, which is illegal in Iran. But the charges against her escalated to working without a press card and then spying for Washington. Her press card had been revoked in 2006.
The sentencing had threatened to complicate political maneuvering between Iranian and American leaders over Iran’s nuclear program, an issue that kept relations icy during much of the Bush administration. Mr. Obama recently made overtures to Tehran about starting a dialogue over the nuclear program, and Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had responded positively.
Ms. Saberi was found guilty in April in a trial her father said lasted less than an hour. The State Department called the charges against Ms. Saberi baseless and asked for her release.
Soon after her sentencing, Mr. Ahmadinejad urged the chief prosecutor to re-examine the case.
In the appeal, Mr. Nikbakht argued that the espionage charge should be lifted because the foreign ministry and the judiciary had previously said that there was “no hostility between Iran and the United States.” The judges accepted the defense, he said.The Paris-based press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, welcomed the appeal court’s decision in a statement on their Web site.
If you look at cases of governments acting against foreign writers, this case remains strange. It most likely is due to one of the scenarios noted above — not due to the “facts” of this case on hand. There was some other motive in her arrest.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.