Rechercher

/ languages

Choisir langue
 

Iran - Saberi released

Iranian-American journalist freed

Article published on the 2009-05-11 Latest update 2009-05-11 14:17 TU

Roxana Saberi, US-Iranian journalist, in Bam, South -East of Teheran, 31 march 2004.(Archive Photo: Reuters)

Roxana Saberi, US-Iranian journalist, in Bam, South -East of Teheran, 31 march 2004.
(Archive Photo: Reuters)

Roxana Saberi was set free on Monday from jail in the Iranian capital Teheran where she'd been sent to serve an eight-year prison term. An Iranian court reduced her sentence to two-years suspended.

Print the article

Send the article

Comments on article


US-born reporter Roxana Saberi walked free from a Tehran jail on Monday after an Iranian court reduced her prison term for spying to a two-year suspended sentence. Her lawyer Saleh Nikbakht said, "the verdict of the previous court has been quashed."

Saberi barely made a comment as she left Evin prison, and was driven away by her Iranian father who has been in Iran since March to obtain her release. He said he would take his daughter back to the United States and to her Japanese mother.

For five months, efforts have been underway to have Saberi released. The 32-year-old journalist's release comes just a day after a Tehran court heard a closed-door appeal by Saberi, who was initially detained in January reportedly for buying alcohol, an illegal act in the Islamic republic.  She was later accused of spying for the US, for cooperating with a hostile state. After the appeal, the charge was changed to "gathering secret documents."

The former US beauty queen launched a hunger strike on April 21 in protest at the eight-year sentence, taking in only water or sugared water, but she ended it after about two weeks after being briefly hospitalised in the prison clinic.

The sentence against Saberi was the harshest ever meted out to a dual national on security charges in Iran and came just weeks after new US President Barack Obama proposed dialogue with Tehran after three decades of severed ties.

Saberi has reported for US National Public Radio, the BBC and Fox News, and has lived in Iran for the past six years.

Iran has detained several US-Iranians, including academics, on suspicions of harming national security in recent years but they were all released within months.