Parents visit jailed journalist daughter

TEHRAN – The parents of an American journalist imprisoned in Iran for allegedly spying for the US visited their daughter yesterday for the first time since she was sentenced to eight years in prison and said she was in good condition.

The country’s judiciary chief ordered a full investigation into 31-year-old Roxana Saberi’s case, a day after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked the chief Tehran prosecutor to ensure she is allowed to offer a full defence in the appeal.
‘She seems to be OK,’ Saberi’s Iranian-born father, Reza, told The Associated Press after he and his wife visited their daughter in Evin prison north of Tehran. Roxana Saberi, who was born in the US and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, was convicted last week after a one-day trial behind closed doors.
The developments appear to be the latest signs that some senior Iranian officials want to ensure tensions over the case do not derail moves toward a dialogue with the Obama administration to break a 30-year diplomatic deadlock between the two countries.
However, Iran’s Foreign Ministry took a swipe yesterday at President Barack Obama, saying ‘those who studied law’ should not comment on the case without seeing the context. It was a clear reference to Obama, who has a law degree from Harvard University and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago before becoming president.
Obama said on Sunday he was ‘gravely concerned’ about Saberi’s safety and well-being and was confident she was not involved in espionage.
The visit by Saberi’s parents, who live in Fargo but travelled to Iran to seek her release, may help ease some of those concerns.
He said he hoped officials will heed Ahmadinejad’s letter to the prosecutor on Saberi’s defence at appeal. Saberi, who was 1997 Miss North Dakota, had been living in Iran for six years and worked as a freelance reporter for news organisations including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Because Saberi’s father was born in Iran, she received Iranian citizenship.
Iran has released few details about the charges Saberi, who was arrested in January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But earlier this month, an Iranian judge levelled a more serious allegation that she was passing classified information to US intelligence services.
She told her father in a phone conversation that she was arrested after buying a bottle of wine.
– Nampa-AP