Roxana Saberi | |||||||||||||||||||||
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 Saberi in 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | Roxana Saberi (1977-04-26)April 26, 1977 (age 48) Belleville, New Jersey, United States | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Education | Concordia College (B.A.) Northwestern University (M.A.) Hughes Hall, Cambridge (M.A.) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, translator, author | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Notable credit(s) | Miss North Dakota, 1997 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Parent(s) | Mr. Reza Saberi(Iran) Ms. Akiko Saberi(Japan) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Roxana Saberi (born April 26, 1977) is an Americanjournalist who works as a correspondent forCBS News.[2] In 2009, she was held prisoner inIran'sEvin Prison for 101 days under accusations of espionage.[3] She subsequently wrote a book about the experience.
On April 8, 2009, the Iranian government charged Saberi with espionage, which she denied.[4] She was subsequently convicted and sentenced to an eight-year prison term.[5][6][7][8] An appeals court reduced the charge against her from espionage to possessing classified information,[9] a charge which she also denied,[3] and reduced her eight-year prison term to a two-year suspended sentence.[10][11] She was released on May 11, 2009.
Saberi was born inBelleville, New Jersey, the daughter of Reza Saberi, who was born in Iran, and Akiko Saberi, who emigrated from Japan. When she was six months old, her family moved toFargo, North Dakota.[12][13] Graduating with honors fromFargo North High School in 1994, Saberi played piano and soccer, and took part inKey Club anddanceline.[14] Saberi was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2007.[14]
She graduated in 1997 fromConcordia College inMoorhead, Minnesota, with degrees inCommunication and French. Saberi also played for the Cobbers soccer team from 1994 to 1996.[1]
Chosen asMiss North Dakota in 1997,[1] she was among the top ten finalists inMiss America 1998, winning theScholar Award.[14] Saberi holds a master's degree inbroadcast journalism fromNorthwestern University and a second master's degree ininternational relations from theUniversity of Cambridge,[15] where she played for the university soccer team and theKing's College soccer team.[16] She was working on another master's degree inIranian studies at the time of her arrest.[17][18]
Saberi moved to Iran in 2003.[13] US-based Feature Story News (FSN) distributed her reports to a wide range of broadcasters around the world, and Saberi's work soon became circulated to the viewers and listeners ofChannel News Asia,South African Broadcasting,DW Radio,Vatican Radio,Radio New Zealand, Australian Independent Radio News, and others. She also made occasional contributions toPBS,NPR, andFox News.[13]
In 2006, the Iranian authorities revoked Saberi's press accreditation and closed the FSN bureau in Iran.[19] She maintained a second press accreditation, permitting her to freelance in Iran for theBBC. In late 2006, it was also revoked. Following the revocation of her second press accreditation, Saberi cut ties with the BBC but continued to file occasional reports from the country for NPR, IPS andABC Radio.
Saberi was arrested on January 31, 2009. On March 3, 2009, an Iranian judiciary spokesman confirmed that Roxana Saberi had been arrested on the orders of theIslamic Revolutionary Court. Although Saberi holds both Iranian and Americancitizenship, Iran does not recognisedual citizenship.[20]
On March 10, a number of international news organisations wrote an open letter to the Iranian government, calling on Iran to allow independent access to Saberi. Signatories included President ofNPRVivian Schiller, President ofABC NewsDavid Westin,Wall Street Journal Editor-in-ChiefRobert Thomson,John Stack ofFox News, and Jon Williams (world editor at theBBC). The open letter expressed deep concern about Saberi's well-being and "the deprivation of her rights":[21][22]
We now ask that one or more international organizations with responsibilities and rights under the Geneva Conventions be permitted access to Roxana immediately to ascertain her health and well-being and determine the conditions under which she is held. If no charges are filed, we now urge her immediate release and ask that she be given permission to return to her home country, the United States.
After more than five weeks of captivity, on March 8, Saberi was allowed to see an attorney for the first time. On March 18, marking 47 days of detention, the Saberi family called on Iran's supreme leader,AyatollahAli Khamenei, to intervene during the run-up to the PersianNowruz holiday.[23] The US administration expressed its concern at Saberi's detention, dismissing allegations against her as "baseless". US Secretary of StateHillary Clinton demanded her release.[24] On April 6, her parents were allowed a 30-minute visit to Saberi inEvin Prison, where she was being held.[25]
On April 8, the Iranian government charged Saberi with espionage,[5][6] while theIranian Students News Agency, quoting a hard-line judge who is the deputy head of Iran's prosecutor's office, said Saberi had "accepted" the accusation of espionage.[26] Saberi's father, who was in Iran at the time but was not allowed into the courtroom, told NPR his daughter was coerced into making incriminating statements. "They told her if she made the statements, they would free her," he said. "It was a trick."[27] The court sentenced her to eight years in prison, which her lawyerAbdolsamad Khorramshahi promised to appeal.[7][8][28]
Switzerland represents United States interests in Iran, as Iran and the United States do not presently havediplomatic relations. US State Department spokesman Robert Wood questioned the transparency of Iran'sIslamic Revolutionary Court judicial system, commenting that a Swiss representative was not allowed in the courtroom during Saberi's trial.[29]
On April 19, 2009, PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Saberi must have her legal right to defend herself. He wrote to the prosecutors: "Please, personally observe the process to ensure that the defendants are allowed all legal rights and freedom in defending themselves and that their rights are not violated even by one iota".[30] It was reported on April 21 that Nobel Peace Prize laureateShirin Ebadi's organization, Human Rights Defenders, would defend Saberi during her appeal.[31] This appointment was never completed amid reports of objections by Iranian authorities. On April 21, 2009,Bahman Ghobadi, an Iranian film director, published a letter declaring Saberi's innocence and urging those who knew her to step in and defend her.[32]
On April 25, 2009, the BBC reported that Saberi's father, Reza Saberi, said he had received word from his daughter that she had been on ahunger strike for the past five days.[33] At the end of two weeks, she told him she had discontinued the hunger strike.[34]
During this time, her situation was followed closely byAmnesty International,[35]Human Rights Watch,[36] theAsian American Journalists Association,[37]Committee to Protect Journalists,[38]Society of Professional Journalists, andUNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.[39] Amnesty International later named her aprisoner of conscience.[40]
On May 10, 2009, Saberi's appeal was heard by an Iranian appeals court. The court dismissed the charges against her because the US is not hostile. After all, it is not at war with Iran. Her original conviction was on the charges that she was working with a "hostile country" – the United States.
On May 11, 2009, Saberi was freed from prison after the appeals court suspended her eight-year jail sentence.[41] An appeals court reduced the charge against her from espionage to possessing classified information,[42][43] a charge Saberi denied,[3] and reduced her eight-year prison term to a two-yearsuspended sentence.[10][11]
After her release, Saberi said that although she was not physically tortured during her captivity, she was placed under "severe psychological and mental pressure". She said her captors blindfolded her during days of interrogation, held her in solitary confinement, and would not allow her to inform anyone of her whereabouts. According to Saberi, her interrogators threatened her with many years in prison and even execution if she did not confess to being a spy. She said that under these pressures, she had made afalse confession, which she later recanted while still in custody.[4]
After Saberi was released from prison, one of her lawyers declared that she had obtained a classified document while working as a translator for a powerful clerical lobby. He claimed that this had been used as evidence to convict her on espionage charges.[43] He said the document was a classified Iranian report on the US-led war in Iraq.[44]
Saberi later said, "I didn't have any classified documents. I had a research article that was public information, but my captors lied and claimed I had a classified document, evidently to pretend that my case was legitimate."[45] Saberi has suggested that the lawyer may have been under pressure from the Iranian government to say after her release that the document was classified, even though in court he had argued that it was not.[45]
Since her release, Saberi wrote a book about her experiences in Iran,Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran, which was released byHarperCollins on March 30, 2010.[46][47] She has also been speaking out for Iran's "prisoners of conscience"[48] as well as the Iranians who have been detained in the aftermath of the2009 Iranian presidential election.[49]
In 2013 Saberi was hired byAl Jazeera America as a correspondent and senior producer.[50]
Saberi joined CBS News in January 2018 and is based in London.[2]
Saberi's awards include the 2008Medill Medal of Courage,[51] the 2009Ilaria Alpi Freedom of the Press Award,[52] the 2009NCAA Award of Valor,[53] and a 2010Project on Middle East Democracy Award.[54]
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