In mid-April, Iran convicted Roxana Saberi, a 32-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen and journalist of espionage, and sentenced her to 8 years in prison. However, on Monday, her lawyer said that an appeals court has reduced her sentence to two years, suspended, and she will be freed today and can leave the country immediately.
Saberi moved to Iran six years ago and had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations including NPR and the BBC, and has been jailed at Evin Prison in Iran since Jan. 31. Shortly after her conviction, Saberi initiated a hunger strike which ended early this month, after her parents pleaded with her to stop.
Reports of Roxana Saberi's impending release come from both her father, Reza Saberi, and one of her lawyers, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi. Reza Saberi told CNN:
"We are very happy with the news. We were hoping for it."
While Iranian authorities said that Saberi had confessed to spying, many said she was merely a pawn of Iran's in its ongoing tensions with the U.S., and that she had been forced into confessing.
Reporters Without Borders, a group that fights for journalists' rights worldwide, made the following statement after hearing about the decision regarding Roxana Saberi:
Reporters Without Borders welcomes a Tehran appeal court’s decision to reduce Roxana Saberi’s eight-year jail term to a suspended two-year sentence. Her lawyer, Saleh Nikbakhat, confirmed to Reporters Without Borders that she could be freed later today. In a closed hearing yesterday, the court’s judges noted that Iran and the United States “are not at war.”
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