Journalist Roxana Saberi Reportedly Ends Prison Hunger Strike

 

TEHRAN, IRAN (May 6, 2009) – American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi has stopped her two-week hunger strike in Evin prison, her father says, and the appeal of her April conviction on spying charges will be heard by an Iranian court on May 12, her lawyer told the BBC today.

Reza Saberi, the father of the 32-year-old journalist, said his daughter began eating again on Monday night. Earlier this week it was reported that prison officials had briefly hospitalized her to feed her intravenously when her hunger strike made her "weak and frail." Her father said their daughter ended her hunger strike after they visited her in prison Monday and "pleaded with her" to stop.

Yesterday an Iranian judiciary official denied the Saberi family claim that the journalist was on a hunger strike. "She is in complete health and not on a hunger strike," Al Reza Jamshidi told a news conference in Tehran.

She was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Iranian Revolutionary Court after a one-day, closed-door trial that found Saberi had used her cover as a journalist to spy on Iranian government institutions and provide information to the U.S. government, according to the charges. Saberi's family have denied the accusations. The Iranian court said that in the trial Saberi had "confessed to espionage charges" her role when she presented her defense. In Iran the charge of spying is a treasonous one and could have carried with it a death sentence.

A native of Fargo, ND, Saberi has been living in Iran for six years and was reporting for the BBC and National Public Radio and writing a book about Iranian culture. In 2006 the Iranian government cancelled her journalist credentials and when Saberi was detained in January, allegedly for illegally buying a bottle of wine, the Iranians said her continued reporting without credentials was an "illegal activity." After several week when many thought the Iranian officials were on the verge of releasing her, it was with great surprise that she was charged with spying.

Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, Saberi's Iranian lawyer, said her appeal will be heard on May 12. Iranian judicial officials who were criticized for the journalist's secret trial have said that the appeal will be "open to experts from the country's bar association" but not the public or the media. It's not known whether Saberi will be present at her appeal or whether it will just be her lawyer presenting their appeal.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said the charges against Saberi were "baseless" and has been calling for the journalist's immediate release. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply disappointed" by Saberi's conviction and he has also called for her release.

Iran's Evin prison is where the government houses many of the nation's political prisoners and dissidents. The charge of spying can carry with it a death sentence in Iran. In November 2008 an Iranian businessman convicted of spying on Iran for the Israeli military was executed. Ali Ashtari was hanged after his "confession" was broadcast by Iranian state television.

Saberi's parents traveled to Iran from North Dakota in late March to press for their daughter's release, and her father has vowed to stay in Iran until she is free.

Unsuccessful efforts to secure Saberi's release have been made through Swiss and Dutch diplomatic channels. America hasn't had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1980 after militant Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days during the last year of President Jimmy Carter's administration.

In 2004 Saberi was a keynote speaker at NPPA's Women In Photojournalism Conference, and she was also a participant in NPPA's NewsVideo Workshop in Norman, OK, four years ago where workshop director Sharon Levy Freed remembers Saberi as "a real go-getter" and an exceptional video storyteller. At the Women In Photojournalism Conference Saberi spoke about her one-woman coverage of news in Iran. She 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.

The journalist 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.

Saberi first worked in television in Fargo, ND, at KVLY-TV, and she worked as a videojournalist for Belo-Time Warner News 24 in Houston, TX, and Anglia Television in Norwich, England. She 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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