Iran Admits U.S. Photojournalist Roxana Saberi Is In Prison

 

WASHINGTON, DC (March 3, 2009) – Photojournalist and reporter Roxana Saberi, who was a keynote speaker at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference in 2004 and who spoke about her one-woman coverage of news in Iran, had been missing since she was detained by the Iranian government about a month ago.

But today Iran's judiciary admitted that they have her, and that she's in prison.

The U.S. State Department has been flooded with calls seeking information about Saberi's whereabouts according to the journalist's father, Reza, who lives in Fargo, ND. Saberi once worked at a television station in Fargo before going on to Iran where for the past six years she's reported on that country for the BBC and for National Public Radio.

Today a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said Saberi, 31, is being held in a prison north of Tehran, the capital. He said she is being held on a court order but refused to provide additional details. Yesterday Hasan Qashqavi, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, said that Saberi was "engaged in illegal activities" because she had continued to work as a journalist in Iran after the country revoked her press credentials in 2006.

Saberi's father told The Forum, a newspaper in Fargo, that his daughter called him on February 10 and said that she had been detained after buying a bottle of wine (which is illegal in Iran, but not uncommon), and that he had not heard from her since.

North Dakota's two Senators, Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), have been calling for Iran to release the journalist. The U.S. State Department has reportedly been making inquiries about Saberi through the Swiss, since the U.S. and Iran do not have diplomatic relations. America's diplomacy with Iran was suspended in 1980 after militant Iranian students occupied the U.S. Embassy in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

When Saberi spoke at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference in 2004 her topic was "Photojournalist, Reporter, One Woman Covering It All In Iran."

Three years ago Saberi was an attendee at NPPA's annual NewsVideo Workshop in Norman, OK, where workshop chair Sharon Levy Freed remembers the photojournalist as being "a real go-getter."

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.

When Saberi worked in television in North Dakota, NPPA's Mel Stone, retired from KVLY-TV, was her mentor. She also worked as a videojournalist for Belo-Time Warner News 24 in Houston, TX, and Anglia Television in Norwich, England. Saberi 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.

The photojournalist has dual citizenship in Iran and America, her family said. Her father told The Forum that his daughter was in the process of writing a "quite harmless" book about Iran and its culture, but that she had also written extensively about the Iranian government and its international relations. Saberi's 67-year-old father said that her last NPR reports were about the Iranian government's "morality crackdown" on Western clothing and hairstyles and banning women from attending soccer matches.

In 2003, Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in custody in Tehran after she was arrested while photographing the relatives of detainees outside Iran's Evin prison. Kazemi died of head injuries, and while Iranian authorities confirmed the cause of her death while in their custody no one has been charged with any wrongdoing.

Saberi's imprisonment comes at a time when the U.S. has just reached out to Russia, albeit through secret channels, seeking Russia's help to dissuade Iran from continuing with a plan to develop nuclear weapons.

According to a report in this weekend's New York Times, President Barack Obama sent a hand-carried secret letter to Russia's President saying that the U.S. might not proceed with a missile defense system in eastern Europe if Iran stop development of nuclear weapons.

A Facebook page has been established to show support for Saberi and to call for her release.

 

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