Roxana Saberi
Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota and a graduate of Concordia College, is currently being held by the Iranian authorities in Tehran’s Evin Prison. She’s been in jail since January 31st. The last time she managed to talk to her father, she said that she’d been detained after buying a bottle of wine.
A reporter from the Star Tribune in Minneapolis called the Iranian Permanent Mission at the UN in New York about Miss Saberi, but there was no suggestion by the Iranians that fancying a drop of red was enough to land you in the clink in their corner of shariahland. Instead, showing a good grasp of Islamic logic, that is to say, circular reasoning, the Iranian official on the end of the phone asked the reporter why on earth they were bothering to enquire about “a young woman who has done something wrong.” Just what she’s supposed to have done remains a mystery. Ali Reza Janshidi, who appears to be the Iranian spokesperson on all things legal, has no idea why Miss Saberi is being held.
Saberi, described as a “cautious and careful” journalist, has reported for the BBC, NPR, Fox News, Radio New Zealand and ChannelNewsAsia. In 2006, the Iranian authorities revoked her press credentials, and as you would expect, they gave no reason for doing so. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, who has fought for press freedom in Iran for many years, says there is no law that requires journalists in Iran to have official accreditation, and in his view Saberi has been detained to intimidate other journalists. Shamsolvaezin knows what he’s talking about. As part of a coordinated campaign against freedom of speech by the Iranian authorities, Shamsolvaezin himself was accused of “insulting Islamic principles” and sentenced to 30 months in Evin Prison.
Miss Saberi stayed in Iran after 2006, despite her lack of official status as a journalist, and began working on a book. She also filed occasional reports for, amongst others, NPR. Someone who knows how little it takes to offend the Iranian authorities is the human rights activist Merhangiz Kar, who was jailed for 54 days after giving a speech which the authorities disapproved of. Kar says that as a political prisoner, one isn’t allowed to see a lawyer, and without any witnesses, anything can happen. Ali Afshari says he was tortured both physically and psychologically when he was held in Evin Prison. Afshari mentiones one cruelty in particular which he was forced to endure, the abuse that leaves no marks: sleep deprivation. (Or as the Romans called it, tormentum vigilae, the waking torture.)
Luckily, this case has become well known, and some powerful people have tried to help Saberi. US senators Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan and Amy Klobuchar pressured the US State Department and the UN to release Saberi. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton also asked Iran, via the Swiss, about Saberi’s well-being, and about the nature of any charges against her. At a news conference Clinton said the “only acceptable outcome” would be Saberi being allowed to return to her family in America.
Update: Despite initial hopes that Miss Saberi might be released swiftly, she was tried, found guilty of espionage, and sentenced to eight years imprisonment. Saberi is not the first dual citizen to come to grief in Iran. Mehrnoushe Solouki, a French-Iranian citizen based in Quebec, was arrested in 2007 when whe was making a documentary. Solouki was held in solitary and had to sleep on the floor with a light permanently on in her cell. She said that entering her cell was like “stepping into a grave.” Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian who lived in Montreal, was arrested in Iran in 2003 and beaten to death. After a protest in Tehran which led to approximately four thousand people being lifted by the authorities, the families of the missing gathered around Evin Prison to try and find out what had happened to their relatives. Apparently this kind of gathering was “customary.” Kazemi began taking pictures of the crowd and was promptly snatched. Less than three weeks later, she was dead. The Iranians admitted that Kazemi had died after being struck in the head. Further allegations of torture were made by Shahram Azam, a former physician in Iran’s Defence Ministry, but Kazemi’s body was buried in Iran, along with any evidence that could have been gleaned from a proper post-mortem examination, and those allegations could not be substantiated.
Playing devil’s advocate, one could take the BBC’s Frances Harrison’s trip to Evin Prison in 2006, which was arranged by the Iranian authorities, at face value, and say that the prison is no better or worse than the likes of Peterhead. But as Harrison herself said, although the parts of the prison she was allowed to see looked pretty respectable, there was no way to know whether prisoners were being mistreated. Eye on The World has a story about four people being hanged in Evin Prison. Another six were going to be hanged as well, but they put that off for a while. If they”re scheduling ten hangings at a time, then I can’t help thinking that Evin Prison is going to be pretty grim for anyone unfortunate enough to end up there.
Almost a year after she was arrested, Mehrnoushe Solouki was allowed to leave Iran and fly back to Canada. I only hope that Roxana Saberi will come home too.
Update: See new post here.
It’s being reported that the Iranian authorities have reduced Roxana Saberi’s eight year sentence to a two year suspended sentence, which means that she is effectively free to return to America. Her father has said that she is in “good condition” and that they will be leaving Iran “pretty soon.”
