Iran Says Journalist Roxana Saberi Will Be Released
WASHINGTON, DC (March 6, 2009) – Press reports in Iran are quoting an Iranian judicial official who says that American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi will be released "in the next few days."
Hassan Haddad, the Tehran deputy prosecutor for security matters, told the Iranian Students News Agency the news of Saberi's upcoming release. He said the government has completed their investigation of the journalist, but would not give a date for her release.
Yesterday in Brussels at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked the Iranian government to release Saberi as soon as possible. The only acceptable outcome, Clinton said, was her immediate release from custody.
At that same meeting Clinton made news by saying that Iran was expected to be invited to a high-level conference on Afghanistan that is likely to be held by the end of this month. Her statement follows up on President Barack Obama's comments not long after his inauguration that America has an interest in once again extending a diplomatic hand toward Iran.
The U.S. State Department does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, and have been working with Iranian officials regarding Saberi by communicating through Swiss diplomats. The U.S. broke off relations with Iran in 1980 after militant Iranian students occupied the U.S. Embassy in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Saberi's father, Reza, in North Dakota said that he first heard today's news when NPR called him and told him about the Web news report from Iran. He said then he read it for himself in Farsi on the Iranian Student News Agency's Web site. His daughter has been reporting for NPR and the BBC during the last six years she's been in Iran.
In 2004 Saberi was a keynote speaker at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference and spoke about her one-woman coverage of news in Iran. Saberi 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.
Earlier in the week Iranian officials said that Saberi has been "engaging in illegal activities" because she has continued to work as a journalist in the country after Iran revoked her press credentials in 2006. They said she was being held on a warrant that was issued by Iran's Revolutionary Court, the nation's judicial body charged with handling state security. Saberi has dual citizenship in Iran and America, and was born in the U.S., and human rights groups say Evin prison is where political prisoners are usually taken.
The notorious Evin prison north of Tehran is where Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in custody after she was arrested while photographing the relatives of detainees outside the jail. Kazemi died of head injuries sustained while in police custody, a cause of death confirmed by Iranian authorities and yet no one has been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with her death.
When Saberi was a keynote speaker at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference in 2004 her topic was "Photojournalist, Reporter, One Woman Covering It All In Iran."
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.
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