The National Public Radio reported, in its “All Things Considered” program on 13 May, that “A lawyer for Roxana Saberi, the American journalist who was convicted of espionage last month in Iran, disclosed new details about her case Wednesday, telling NPR that the Iranian prosecutor in the case had claimed Saberi was actively recruited by a CIA agent. Saberi, who has worked as a freelance reporter for NPR and other news organizations, was released from Evin prison in Tehran on Monday after an appeals court reduced the eight-year sentence she received on charges of espionage to a two-year suspended sentence … Before Wednesday, what was known about the evidence Iranian authorities used to level charges against Saberi was this: She had copied a confidential document belonging to the Expediency Council, an agency of the Iranian government connected to the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, that concerned the U.S. war in Iraq. And she had traveled to Israel, which the authorities claimed was suspicious and illegal. She acknowledged traveling to Israel to seek work as a journalist. One of her attorneys, Saleh Nikbakht, said Wednesday that the prosecution’s case also included the allegation that Saberi had met with a person identified only as Mr. Peterson, who told her he worked for the CIA and tried to recruit her into the agency. ‘She said that yes, she had met a Mr. Peterson’, Nikbakht told NPR, ‘and that Mr. Peterson asked her to work for the CIA. But she took it as a joke, and didn’t take him seriously’. It appears that in an earlier interrogation, Saberi had been questioned about this Mr. Peterson and had given answers that she then recanted during the appeals procedure. She told the appeals court, according to Nikbakht, that ‘what she said about Peterson earlier had been a lie’. It is not known where and when she met Peterson. As for the trips to Israel, during the appeals procedure, Saberi said she had traveled to Israel “for fun as a tourist’, Nikbakht said. The authorities also said Saberi was in possession of a report from the Center for Strategic Studies, which is connected to the office of Iran’s president. But that report was determined to be unclassified. In the end, the appeals court dismissed all the charges and claims against her, with the sole exception of the document from the Expediency Council that she kept”. This NPR report can be read in full here.
That report refers to more than one trip to Israeli.
A day earlier, NPR reported that “A lawyer for Roxana Saberi said Tuesday that the American journalist had obtained a confidential Iranian document on the U.S. war in Iraq that became a key piece of evidence for prosecutors at her espionage trial. Attorney Saleh Nikbakht said Saberi’s conviction for spying came in part because she had copied and kept a ‘confidential bulletin’ issued by the Expediency Council, an Islamic clerical body that enjoys close links to the Iranian government. Nikbakht said Saberi told an appeals court Sunday that she obtained the document two years ago while working as a freelance translator for the council. He noted that while Saberi apologized and admitted to copying the report, she said she did not pass it to the Americans. Nikbakht gave no details on what was in the document because it remains confidential. He said prosecutors also cited a trip to Israel that Saberi made in 2006, he said. Iran bars its citizens from visiting Israel … Saberi, who has worked as a freelance reporter for NPR, the British Broadcasting Corp., ABC News, Fox and other news organizations, looked thinner after a recent two-week prison hunger strike … A native of Fargo, Roxana Saberi had been living in Iran for six years. She had allowed her press credentials to expire but continued to file occasional reports for U.S. and British broadcasters while she pursued a university degree and researched a book, according to her parents”. This NPR report can be read in full here .
Before that, Time Magazine reported that “Iranian intelligence officials had been particularly suspicious of a trip Saberi had made to Israel, as well as her relationship with U.S. government officials. ‘From an intelligence perspective, there were issues that were sensitive, but Saberi was able to convince the judges that there was no intention of espionage whatsoever,” said one of her lawyers, Saleh Nikbakht. Nikbakht and her other lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told TIME that the turning point in the five-hour appeals court session on Sunday was their argument that Iran and the United States were not at war. Saberi had initially been charged with spying for an enemy country. Nikbakht explained that in 2003, when another journalist and political analyst, Abbas Abdi, was charged with the same crime for publishing a poll that showed 74% of Iranians favored dialogue with the United States, he proved in court that this charge was legally unsound because Iran was not at war with the U.S., a point emphasized by citing a ruling by the Iranian parliament’s National Security Commission, which was, most importantly, approved by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This same argument, Nikbakht said, persuaded the judges that, ‘from a purely legal point of view, Saberi’s actions were free of that crime. There is no basis at all for espionage in her file’. In the end, the court found Saberi guilty based on Article 505 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, which states, in loose terms, that any person who collects classified information and puts it at the service of ‘others’ with the goal of destabilizing national security is committing a crime. Previously, Saberi had been charged with putting that information at the service of an ‘enemy country that Iran is at war with’, according to Nikbakht. That wording was dropped, reducing her crime”.
Time Magazine reported in that article that Saberi had studied journalism at Northwestern University — and that her reporting credentials had been “withdrawn” in Iran in 2006. The Los Angeles Times reported from Tehran on Friday [see below] that her “official press credentials were revoked in 2006, though she continued to discreetly work as a journalist while researching a book about Iran”.
Time Magazine also reported that as Saberi was released last week, “there was additional drama in front of the prison. Also waiting there was internationally acclaimed filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, who had published an open letter last month declaring that Saberi was his fiancee. He told TIME that he believed it was in great part because of his endeavors that Saberi was being released so quickly. He said he had a meeting with government and judiciary officials a few days ago, in which he explained to them the importance of Saberi appearing at the opening of his new film on Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival, ‘because she was going to talk about the Persian Gulf. I told them it would be good for Iran’. Ghobadi has cited Saberi as a co-writer on his latest film.
There was clear friction between Ghobadi and Saberi’s parents, who kept themselves several feet apart from the director. At one point, Ghobadi approached Saberi’s visibly shaken mother, but she pushed him away, motioning him away with her hands. After Ghobadi’s letter, Reza Saberi announced that he could not confirm Ghobadi as his daughter’s fiancee. One source close to the family said they perceive him as taking advantage of her recent newsworthiness to publicize his film, and wonder why he was not speaking out for her before her case attracted such international attention. Ghobadi said he had been ordered to keep silent by sources he could not reveal, and finally broke his silence when he ‘could no longer hold it’.” This report can be read in full here.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that “Her lead attorney Abdul-Samad Khorramshahi said he spoke to Saberi shortly before she boarded the plane. ‘I told her she can come back and leave Iran again, but if she comes back to do journalism over the next five years she will have to serve two years in prison’, he said in a telephone interview … Authorities arrived at her house with a warrant on Jan. 30 and took her away. Khorramshahi dismissed the widely disseminated report that she was initially arrested for purchasing a bottle of wine, an explanation she gave her father during a hurried prison phone call 10 days or so after her arrest. He also said neither Saberi’s unauthorized journalism work nor the content of her reports on NPR, BBC or Fox were the cause of her arrest. ‘There was no charge like that in her file’, he said. ‘We don’t have anything like that in Iranian law’. Rather, from the start, the charges stemmed from her possession of a classified document about U.S. involvement in Iraq that she had copied while working as a translator for Iran’s Expediency Council, a powerful board that mediates disputes between government bodies, her lawyers said … Intelligence ministry officials alleged she was a spy collecting information to pass on to the Americans, or even Israel, where she had visited. But Saberi claimed she intended to use the document for her book and had no intention of handing it to another government, Khorramshahi said. ‘Roxana accepted that she shouldn’t have had the document but that she didn’t make use of it’, he said. ‘It was for her book’.” This LATimes report can be read in full here.
Bahman Ghobadi (centre) in Cannes this week along with the stars of the film Negar Shaghaghi (l) and Hamed Behdad (r). According to an entertainment report on the BBC, “Ghobadi has been in the news recently following the imprisonment and subsequent release of his partner, journalist Roxana Saberi, in Iran earlier this week. The film-maker acknowledged that Saberi – who was only released on Monday and who co-wrote the film – was unable to join him in Cannes because she wanted to stay close to her family in the US. [Ghobadi’s film] No One Knows About Persian Cats is essentially a showcase for the extraordinary movement of underground music that exists in Tehran, where young people are largely banned from performing Western-style music. It features real bands and real musicians – and I was struck by the diversity and quality of the music – from indie to rap to heavy metal – and by Ghobadi’s raw portrayal of city of Tehran. It’s also very funny, and ultimately very sad. Ghobadi, who shot the film in just three weeks without permission from the authorities, introduced the film – revealing how he first came across the underground music scene when he was looking to music as a means of escaping a period of depression – prompted by obstructive measures being taken against his film-making”. This BBC report on Ghobadi in Cannes this week is posted here
We have previously reported on this story — including about Ghobadi’s letter — here.
Saberi, who celebrated her 32nd birthday during her four-month stay in Evin Prison, has left Iran and is presently in Vienna — where the Iranian Ambassador “and his family” was very helpful to her, according to one report (or was it the Austrian Ambassador to Iran, as the LATimes reported?)– on her way back to her parents home in Fargo, North Dakota. Saberi is at least a dual national — U.S. and Iranian. Her father is of Iranian origin, and her mother is Japanese. Saberi herself was once a Miss North Dakota (1997), and competed in the Miss America beauty pagent, reportedly coming in 19th. The Free Roxana website, however, says here that she was among the ten finalists in the 1998 Miss American pagent.
Looking quite the celebrity after her release (earlier, she looked quite the kittenish seductress in most of her headscarf-covered photos taken during her days in Iran), Saberi told reporters at Vienna airport that while various statements have been made about her case over the past few days, she said: “I think that if somebody is supposed to speak about my case from now on, nobody knows about it as well as I do, and I will talk about it more in the future, I hope, but I am not prepared at this time”.
