Roxana Saberi

Early life and education Saberi was born in Belleville, New Jersey, the daughter of Iranian-born scholar Reza Saberi, and Akiko Saberi, who had emigrated from Japan. When she was six months old, her family moved to Fargo, North Dakota. Graduating with honors from Fargo North High School in 1994, Saberi played piano and soccer, and took part in Key Club and danceline. Saberi was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2007.

Chosen as Miss North Dakota in 1997, where she played for the university soccer team and the King's College soccer team. She was working on another master's degree in Iranian studies at the time of her arrest.

Career

Saberi moved to Iran in 2003. She maintained a second press accreditation, permitting her to freelance in Iran for the BBC. 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 and ABC Radio.

Iranian imprisonment

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 the Islamic Revolutionary Court. Although Saberi holds both Iranian and American citizenship, Iran does not recognise dual citizenship.

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 of NPR Vivian Schiller, President of ABC News David Westin, Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson, John Stack of Fox News, and Jon Williams (world editor at the BBC). The open letter expressed deep concern about Saberi's well-being and "the deprivation of her rights":

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, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene during the run-up to the Persian Nowruz holiday. The US administration expressed its concern at Saberi's detention, dismissing allegations against her as "baseless". US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded her release. On April 6, her parents were allowed a 30-minute visit to Saberi in Evin Prison, where she was being held.

On April 8, the Iranian government charged Saberi with espionage, while the Iranian 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. 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." The court sentenced her to eight years in prison, which her lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi promised to appeal.

Switzerland represents United States interests in Iran, as Iran and the United States do not presently have diplomatic relations. US State Department spokesman Robert Wood questioned the transparency of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court judicial system, commenting that a Swiss representative was not allowed in the courtroom during Saberi's trial.

On April 19, 2009, President Mahmoud 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". It was reported on April 21 that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi's organization, Human Rights Defenders, would defend Saberi during her appeal. 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.

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 a hunger strike for the past five days. At the end of two weeks, she told him she had discontinued the hunger strike.

During this time, her situation was followed closely by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Asian American Journalists Association, Committee to Protect Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists, and UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. Amnesty International later named her a prisoner of conscience.

Release 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. An appeals court reduced the charge against her from espionage to possessing classified information, a charge Saberi denied,

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." 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. She has also been speaking out for Iran's "prisoners of conscience" as well as the Iranians who have been detained in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

In 2013 Saberi was hired by Al Jazeera America as a correspondent and senior producer.

Saberi joined CBS News in January 2018 and is based in London.

Awards and honors Saberi's awards include the 2008 Medill Medal of Courage, the 2009 Ilaria Alpi Freedom of the Press Award, the 2009 NCAA Award of Valor, and a 2010 Project on Middle East Democracy Award.

Published works Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran. Harper 2010,