IRAN: Mom and dad visit imprisoned journalist Roxana Saberi
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The parents of American journalist Roxana Saberi met with their imprisoned daughter today in Tehran’s Evin Prison and found her in relatively good health, the family’s lawyer told The Times.
The lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, said freelance journalist Saberi met her Iranian-born father, Reza, and Japanese-born mother, Akiko, for 30 minutes this morning after arriving in Tehran this weekend.
‘She is in good shape,’ he said.
Khoramshahi said that Saberi has been moved out of the prison’s solitary confinement wing and into a general-population ward where she shared space with other prisoners.
‘She was happy to see her parents,’ he said.
The parents, longtime residents of Saberi’s hometown of Fargo, N.D., will stay in town until their daughter’s fate is established.
Saberi was arrested in late January on as-yet-undefined charges. She told her dad she was detained after buying a bottle of wine, illegal but largely tolerated in the Islamic Republic. Judiciary and foreign ministry officials have said she was practicing journalism without proper authorization.
But no formal charges have been filed, and many wonder why she has been held for so long on relatively minor alleged infractions.
Khoramshahi predicted that he will know soon what charges had been lodged against Saberi and whether she would be tried in one of Iran’s Revolutionary Courts, which handle alleged national security violations.
Saberi’s case has garnered world attention. More than 10,000 people have signed a Facebook petition calling for her release.
‘I think she showed a lot of courage and strength in the lonely and difficult business of laying aside her Japanese and American facets and pursuing her Iranian roots for a prolonged period,’ said one former Tehran correspondent who knows Saberi. ‘It’s sad that she is now paying a heavy price for doing that.’
-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Borzou Daragahi in Beirut
Photo: An October 2004 photograph of journalist Roxana Saberi during better times in Tehran.
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