Jailed American Gets Support From Iran’s President

Jailed American Gets Support From Iran’s President
By ROBERT MACKEY
Copyright by The New York Times
April 19, 2009, 9:49 AM
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/jailed-american-gets-support-from-irans-president/?ref=global-home


Updated | 11:19 a.m. One day after Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist, was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage, following a one-day trial behind closed doors in Tehran, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to Tehran’s chief prosecutor instructing him to ensure that Ms. Saberi is given the opportunity to present a full defense.

What exactly this statement means in the context of a trial before Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which deals with security issues and conducted a closed hearing last week, barring even Ms. Saberi’s parents from observing, is not clear. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Ahmedinejad’s letter is merely an attempt to make it seem as if Ms. Saberi is getting a fair trial or is, in fact, some sort of intervention on her behalf. Observers have speculated that Ms. Saberi’s case is now part of a struggle taking place inside the opaque world of Iran’s complex government over how to respond to recent overtures from the United States to repair relations.

As Nazila Fathi reported in The Times on Saturday, Ms. Saberi’s lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, “told the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he had been told he could appeal the case, and said he would.”

Reuters’s Parisa Hafezi reports from Tehran:

IRNA said the letter from Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, to prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi dealt with Saberi’s case as well as that of detained Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan.

“Based on the president’s insistence, please make sure that all the legal stages about the mentioned people be based on justice,” the letter said. ” … and you personally make sure that the accused people will enjoy all freedoms and legal rights to defend themselves and their rights will not be violated,” it added.
Ms. Saberi’s lawyer, Mr. Khorramshahi, told Reuters on Sunday: “We also want what the president wants, especially regarding making meeting my client easier, and also we want them (the judiciary) to be more accurate at the appeals stage.” Mr. Khorramshahi added that Iran’s most famous human-rights lawyer, Shirin Ebadi, is joining the legal team defending Ms. Saberi. In 2003, Ms. Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize but, as we’ve reported here on The Lede, more recently her ability to work has been restricted by the Iranian authorities.

Ms. Saberi’s Iranian-born father, Reza Saberi, spoke to Britain’s Channel 4 News on Saturday about his daughter’s case, saying that she might go on a hunger strike. This video report from Channel 4 News includes that interview and footage of Ms. Saberi working as a television news reporter in the United States before she went to Iran to study and work as a freelance reporter for Western broadcasters, including National Public Radio and the BBC.

Ms. Saberi’s father told ABC News in a telephone interview on Sunday’s “Good Morning America” that his daughter “denied all the charges” of espionage in court, but “under pressure” made some sort of statement of guilt earlier during her detention in Tehran. He also said that she appears to have been swept up in some sort of larger political or diplomatic game:

“I don’t know what kind of game they’re playing, or what kind of politics they’re using,” said Reza Saberi in the phone interview. “There certainly must be something more than Roxana’s working without a permit or buying a bottle of wine or spying. These charges that have varied these last two months. There must be a bigger story than what appears to be.”
Ms. Fathi has filed several reports on Ms. Saberi’s case from Iran, and we have described her background and followed developments in the legal proceedings against her in several previous blog posts here on The Lede.