Iran gives American journalist 8 years

TEHRAN, IRAN - Iran has sentenced Roxana Saberi, a Iranian-American journalist from Fargo, N.D., to eight years in prison after convicting her of spying for the United States, her lawyer said Saturday.

The White House said President Obama was "deeply disappointed" by the conviction, while the journalist's father said his daughter was tricked into making incriminating statements.

It was the first time Iran has found an American journalist guilty of espionage -- a crime that can carry the death penalty. In the past, Iranian officials have arrested others with dual nationality, accusing them of being U.S. agents. Saberi's sentence, however, is the harshest meted out by an Iranian court to a dual national on security charges.

"This is an injustice, plain and simple," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who, with North Dakota's two senators, has been urging the Obama administration to pressure Iran to release Saberi.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., called it "a shocking miscarriage of justice."

Saberi, 31, was arrested in late January and initially was accused of working without press credentials. But this month, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation, charging her with spying for the United States.

She had been living in Iran for six years and had worked as a freelance reporter for several news organizations, including National Public Radio (NPR) and the British Broadcasting Corp.

On Saturday, the journalist's Iranian-born father, Reza Saberi, told NPR that his daughter was convicted Wednesday, two days after she appeared before an Iranian court in an unusually swift one-day closed-door trial. The court waited until Saturday to announce its decision to the lawyers, he said.

Reza Saberi, who lives in Fargo, is in Iran but was not allowed into the courtroom to see his daughter, whom he described as "quite depressed."

He said that his daughter was coerced into making statements that she later retracted. "She was deceived. Roxana said in court that her earlier confessions were not true, and she told me she had been tricked into believing that she would be released if she cooperated," he told Agence France-Presse.

He also said that his daughter wanted to go on a hunger strike, but he added that she was weak and that he feared it would be dangerous to her health.

Saberi's lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said he would appeal the verdict.

Her brother, Jasper Saberi, wrote the Star Tribune on Saturday in a Facebook message: "I wish I knew what we could do to help her cause, but I think the best approach is to let our government work on the issue while her lawyer continues to appeal for her."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States was working with Swiss diplomats in Iran to get details about the court's decision and to ensure Saberi's well-being. She said the United States will "vigorously raise our concerns" with the Iranian government.

The United States has called the charges against Saberi baseless, but an Iranian official defended the verdict.

"The U.S. says it's extending a hand of friendship while at the same time it sends spies such as Ms. Saberi to Iran," said Ali Reza Javanfekr, press adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "The U.S. government must change its contradictory behavior and take a truthful and clear and defined position."

Friends taken by surprise

News of Saberi's sentence took her Minnesota friends by surprise.

"I think it's absurd," said Kristi Rendahl, who attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., with Saberi in the late 1990s. "I expected some sentence, but I didn't expect it to be so severe."

She added: "Everyone seems a little bit powerless in this situation. Right now, instead of just demanding her release, we should demand transparency and compassion. That seems like a reasonable thing."

Concordia College President Pamela Jolicoeur said in a statement: "The news of Roxana's conviction is devastating. The Concordia community wants to support her, as well as her family. We are willing to do everything in our power to assist with the situation, but realize that the delicacy of the matter demands that it be handled at the highest diplomatic level."

She added: "What we will continue to do, as we have over the past months, is to pray for Roxana and her family. And we will remain optimistic that a better resolution can be attained soon."

Concordia communications studies Prof. Hank Tkachuk said he fears for his former student's health. "She's normally a pretty strong person," he said. "But there are physical and psychological issues for a person who's quite engaged with people on a regular basis. Being away from people can be psychologically devastating."

Tkachuk said he doesn't think Saberi's situation will improve until after Iran's presidential election in June, which pits hard-liner Ahmadinejad against reformists who support better relations with the United States. He accused the hard-liners of staging the arrest and conviction to display toughness toward the West before the election.

A tangle of politics

Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, agrees that hard-liners may be trying to poison any chance of better relations with the new U.S. administration.

"The radical wing, opposed to the idea of rapprochement with the U.S., and influential in the judiciary, is using the case to make such a change in U.S.-Iran relations more difficult," Milani said. "It is part of a pattern. Every time the two countries come close to the moment of truth, radicals manufacture a crisis that renders negotiations more difficult."

The other possibility, he said, is that Tehran is trying to increase its leverage heading into any eventual negotiations with Washington.

Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst in Iran, suggested that Iran would not keep her for long because it would tarnish its human rights record.

Saberi's sentencing sets the case apart from other recent detentions of people with dual citizenship. Two Iranian-American scholars, Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, were arrested in 2007 and accused of trying to overthrow the government, but they were released on bail before their trials.

Some conservative Iranian lawmakers played down Saberi's conviction. "Although there is a wall of mistrust between Iran and the United States, the judicial verdict won't affect possible future talks between the two countries. The verdict is based on evidence," said lawmaker Hosseini Sobhaninia.

Saberi's father disagreed, telling NPR, "I don't think they have any evidence and I haven't heard any evidence that they have made public."

Meanwhile, NPR said it was "deeply distressed by this harsh and unwarranted sentence."

Staff writer Thomas Lee, the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press contributed to this report.