Roxana Saberi, a 32 year American journalist who had been convicted of ‘espionage’ has reportedly been released from jail by Iranian authorities. Ms. Saberi had lived and worked in Iran for more than six years before she was and charged with “cooperating with a hostile state” in January.
From the Telegraph:
Lawyers for the 32-year old said the court had reduced the eight-year jail sentence to a suspended two-year term and she would soon be freed.
The Iranian-American television reporter had lived in Iran for six years before she was charged with “cooperating with a hostile state” after her arrest in January. The harsh sentence provoked an international backlash that prompted Iran’s hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to express concern that she had received due process. After his intervention the head of the Iranian judicary asked for the appeal court review.
Saberi’s father Reza said he and his wife Akiko were on their way to Tehran’s Evin jail, where their daughter has been held, “to bring our daughter back home”. Mr Saberi said his daughter would be allowed to leave Iran
The former US beauty queen launched a hunger strike on April 21 in protest at her 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 was handed down just weeks after new US President Barack Obama proposed better ties with Tehran after three decades of severed ties.
If Ms. Saberi’s case doesn’t highlight the perverted nature of Iranian justice nothing will… Her “trial” on espionage charges lasted roughly an hour, her appeal lasted roughly 5 hours.
Regardless this case wasn’t about espionage, this was about Iran using an innocent young woman as a diplomatic pawn:
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Tehran immediately release the journalist during a news conference on Thursday at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.
She earlier said the United States planned to invite Tehran to a conference on Afghanistan, in a first overture to Iran.
The United States is reviewing its isolation policy on the Islamic Republic, including whether to open up a low-level diplomatic office there.
Quid pro quo.