North Korea should follow Iran and release American Journalists

IPI: North Korea Should Take the Lead from Iran and Free American Journalists
14 May 2009

North Korea’s leader should take the lead from Iran, which released an Iranian-American reporter this week, and immediately drop their case against two American journalists who are set to go to trial on 4 June for allegedly entering the country illegally, the International Press Institute said today.

North Korea’s state-run news agency reported that two American journalists who were seized in March would be tried on 4 June for illegal entry and "hostile acts". Euna Lee and Laura Ling of US-based Current TV could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

"Iran’s trial of Roxana Saberi was a farce, but at least the appellate court did the right thing in setting her free", IPI Director David Dadge said. "North Korea should avoid more political theatre and do the same with Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who are innocent victims of North Korea's desire to gain political leverage in its ongoing negotiations with the United States".

The 14 May announcement that the women would be tried came three days after an appeals court in Iran freed Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who was arrested in January and later charged with espionage. Her case attracted concerted pressure from IPI and other press freedom groups, and in an apparent concession to international outcry over the case, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote a letter to the appeals court urging it to be fair in its review.

Both Iran and North Korea have been locked in running disputes with the United States over their long-range missile systems and efforts to develop nuclear capabilities. Washington has been at the forefront of international efforts to isolate both nations, although the Obama administration has opened the door to negotiations.

Lee and Ling were arrested on 17 March. At the time of their capture, they were preparing a report on the growing number of North Koreans who are fleeing their repressive and economically devastated homeland.

One of the world’s most isolated nations, North Korea is intolerant of both domestic and foreign reporting. According to IPI’s World Press Freedom Review 2008, the country has the worst press freedom record in the world, with the repressive dictatorship of Kim Jong-il retaining complete control of the media while maintaining a blanket ban on foreign journalists.
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UPDATE: Roxana Saberi Out of Iranian Prison & Preparing To Return Home

I've posted two articles here. One is a commentary from Pajamas Media and the other is the news article of Roxana's release from Yahoo.
Rees

Iran: odd timing of Saberi’s release

from Pajamas Media
by Roger L. Simon
May 11th, 2009

No one can but rejoice at the release of Japanese-American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi from Tehran’s Evin Prison today. I have met personally with students once incarcerated in Evin and let me assure you a stay in Iran’s most famous jail makes Gitmo or Abu Ghraib, however you conceive them, seem like the Four Seasons. The former prisoners I interviewed had faces that looked like early cubist Picasso’s from their beatings. One had had his brother murdered in a nearby cell.

Nevertheless, it’s worth speculating on the timing of the release of Ms. Saberi, who originally had a one-day (closed) trial and then suddenly had a five-hour (closed, of course) appeal that turned an eight-year sentence into a two-year suspended sentence. I’m no expert on the internal workings of the mullocracy, but it strikes me they are not in as great a position as it would seem at this moment. The Arab states are getting fed up with them and are more than a little bit concerned about Iranian nuclear ambitions. Israeli PM Netanyahu is about to arrive in Washington. Conventional wisdom goes that the Israeli PM is on the hot seat with an increasingly unfriendly US administration. That is certainly true to a serious extent. But oddly enough, the Iranians, paranoiacs par excellence, may not be perceiving it that way. They may see themselves as suddenly boxed in by a burgeoning alliance between (largely Sunni) Arabs and Israel with US backing. Hence - they have sent a signal. You see, we’re not such crazies. Of course, as we all know, the subtext is - leave us alone to build our bomb. Let’s hope the Obama Administration pays close attention to this behavior. [Are you optimistic?-ed. Are you?]

UPDATE: For those of you who thought Maoism was dead, it may be finished in China but it’s alive and well on Salon with Glenn Greenwald, who writes of reactions to Saberi’s release: “It simply would not be possible for his brain [Eli Lake in the New Republic] to process the fact that what he’s describing as the hallmark of an uncivilized country is that which the U.S. does repeatedly and in far more oppressive ways than what Iran did in the Saberi case. In that regard, he is a typical American journalist.”
[How do you think Greenwald would react if he were incarcerated in Evin Prison?-ed. I hope it's not is Section 209.]
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Roxana Saberi: Out of Iranian Prison, Into a Soap Opera
from Yahoo News.com
By Nahid Siamdoust / Tehran
Time.com Magazine Writer
May 11, 2009

In an unexpectedly swift move, a Tehran court reduced the sentence of Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi and released her from prison on Monday, only a day after she appealed her case in court.

Last month, Saberi had been sentenced to eight years imprisonment on charges of spying for the United States, causing tension between the two countries at a time when President Barack Obama had declared his Administration's intention to improve relations with Iran.

Just before the official announcement came, Saberi's parents and lawyers, as well as dozens of reporters, had gathered in front of Tehran's Evin prison in anticipation of her release. Reza Saberi, the reporter's father, was visibly expectant, and said that finally "things were moving on a rational track." The reporter's mother paced in front of the entrance impatiently, at times stopping to stand with her arms akimbo and dropping her head, at others squatting down to sob into a napkin. When the journalist was finally released, she was taken through a back door, out of reporters' view. Later, in front of her home in the north of Tehran, her father said she was in good health and had been taken to a relative's house to rest. He had come to collect a few things for her, he said, and the next days would be spent "preparing her departure from Iran." (See pictures of the contemporary face of Iran.)

Saberi is free to leave Iran, even though her two-year prison term for spying has only been suspended. The only stipulation was that she not commit a criminal act within the next five years. If that requirement is met, the sentence will expire and she will be cleared.
Iranian intelligence officials had been particularly suspicious of a trip Saberi had made to Israel, as well as her relationship with U.S. government officials. "From an intelligence perspective, there were issues that were sensitive, but Saberi was able to convince the judges that there was no intention of espionage whatsoever," said one of her lawyers, Saleh Nikbakht. (See pictures of daily life in Iran.)

Nikbakht and her other lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told TIME that the turning point in the five-hour appeals court session on Sunday was their argument that Iran and the United States were not at war. Saberi had initially been charged with spying for an enemy country. Nikbakht explained that in 2003, when another journalist and political analyst, Abbas Abdi, was charged with the same crime for publishing a poll that showed 74% of Iranians favored dialogue with the United States, he proved in court that this charge was legally unsound because Iran was not at war with the U.S., a point emphasized by citing a ruling by the Iranian parliament's National Security Commission, which was, most importantly, approved by the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This same argument, Nikbakht said, persuaded the judges that, "from a purely legal point of view, Saberi's actions were free of that crime. There is no basis at all for espionage in her file."

In the end, the court found Saberi guilty based on Article 505 of Iran's Islamic Penal Code, which states, in loose terms, that any person who collects classified information and puts it at the service of "others" with the goal of destabilizing national security is committing a crime. Previously, Saberi had been charged with putting that information at the service of an "enemy country that Iran is at war with," according to Nikbakht. That wording was dropped, reducing her crime.

Due to the national security nature of the case, no one except Saberi herself and her two lawyers were allowed in the closed court on Sunday. One reporter who caught a glimpse of her as she left the court building said Saberi was wearing a black chador, "pale and emaciated." (Saberi had been on a hunger strike last week.) Both her lawyers told TIME the court session was extremely fair, and Nikbakht said, "What has happened is a victory for justice in Iran." (See pictures of the fashion styles of Muslim women from iran to Oman.)

The U.S.-born reporter of Iranian and Japanese descent had become a cause celebre back home in America because of her incarceration and sentencing. A former Miss North Dakota, she studied journalism at Northwestern University before moving to Iran six years ago. Before her press credentials were withdrawn in 2006, Saberi had been a freelance reporter for various media outlets, including the BBC World Service, NPR, and Fox News.

Abdi, the analyst whose case was cited in winning Saberi's release, was surprised by the ruling. (He spent two years in prison before being acquitted.)

Said he: "These are all just political games." Without the international pressure, as well as appeals by both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, many suspect, Saberi could still be sitting in prison, like others charged with similar crimes, whose cases have not received similar international attention. Among them is Silva Harotonian, an Iranian-Armenian humanitarian aide worker charged with "plotting a soft revolution."

Even as Saberi's parents rejoiced at her release there was additional drama in front of the prison. Also waiting there was internationally acclaimed filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, who had published an open letter last month declaring that Saberi was his fiancee. He told TIME that he believed it was in great part because of his endeavors that Saberi was being released so quickly. He said he had a meeting with government and judiciary officials a few days ago, in which he explained to them the importance of Saberi appearing at the opening of his new film on Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival, "because she was going to talk about the Persian Gulf. I told them it would be good for Iran." Ghobadi has cited Saberi as a co-writer on his latest film.

There was clear friction between Ghobadi and Saberi's parents, who kept themselves several feet apart from the director. At one point, Ghobadi approached Saberi's visibly shaken mother, but she pushed him away, motioning him away with her hands. After Ghobadi's letter, Reza Saberi announced that he could not confirm Ghobadi as his daughter's fiancee. One source close to the family said they perceive him as taking advantage of her recent newsworthiness to publicize his film, and wonder why he was not speaking out for her before her case attracted such international attention. Ghobadi said he had been ordered to keep silent by sources he could not reveal, and finally broke his silence when he "could no longer hold it."

The most plausible explanation for Saberi's immediate release came from a source close to the case, who asked for anonymity. "The government simply did not want to have this hugely sensationalized and publicized case hovering over it right before the elections. [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad asked [Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Hashemi] Shahroudi to put an end to this," the source said. (Read why Ahmadinejad was intervening in the Saberi case.)

With only about a month left until Iran's presidential elections, as well as a generally positive mood among Iranians for better relations with the administration of President Obama, it appears that Saberi's case had become too much of a liability for Iran. Certainly, her release is an immense relief for her family and friends, but ironically, it also appears to be a relief for the Islamic Republic.
View this article on Time.com
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Roxana Saberi to be freed today!!!

from Yahoo News
May 11, 2009
By Fredrik Dahl and Hashem Kalantari

TEHRAN (Reuters) – U.S.-born journalist Roxana Saberi is to be freed soon after an Iranian appeals court cut her eight-year jail sentence for spying to a suspended two-year term.
A judiciary source said Saberi, whose jailing on April 18 on charges of spying for the United States became a new source of tension between Tehran and Washington, had already been released and would be allowed to leave Iran.

But her father Reza said she had not yet walked free after more than three months in detention, saying he was waiting in front of Evin prison in northern Tehran.

"She will be freed today, hopefully. The papers are ready ... it is just a matter of time, a couple of hours," he told Reuters by telephone. "We are very happy."

Reza Saberi said he and his Japanese wife Akiko would "bring our daughter back home," apparently referring to the United States, where he moved in the early 1970s. "We will go back as soon as possible," he said.

The development came a day after an appeals court held a hearing on the case of Saberi, a 32-year-old journalist who has worked for the BBC and U.S. National Public Radio.

"The appeals court ... has reduced her jail sentence from eight years to two years of suspended sentence ... and she will soon be free," her defense lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi said.

"In consideration of this ruling, naturally she will be freed," judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi told the official IRNA news agency, without giving a date.

The lawyer said Saberi would be banned from doing any reporting work in Iran for five years.

"There are no obstacles for her leaving the country and she can leave Iran freely," said her other lawyer, Saleh Nikbakht.

Saberi looked thin and tired at Sunday's court session. Last week, her father said she had ended a two-week hunger strike and was "very weak." The judiciary denied she had refused food and said she was in good health.

MISS NORTH DAKOTA

Saberi, a citizen of both the United States and Iran, was arrested in late January for working in the Islamic Republic after her press credentials had expired. She was later charged with espionage, a charge that can carry the death sentence.

Her case created a new problem for Tehran and Washington at a time when the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to reach out to the Islamic state after three decades of mutual mistrust.

The United States said the espionage charges against Saberi, a former Miss Dakota who moved to Iran six years ago, were baseless and demanded her immediate release.

Tehran, which does not recognize dual nationality, said Washington should respect the independence of Iran's judiciary.

The two countries are locked in a dispute over nuclear work that the West fears is aimed at making weapons, an allegation that Iran denies.

Obama has offered a new beginning of engagement with Tehran if it "unclenches his fist." Iran says the United States must show real change in police toward it.

Paris-based watchdog Reporters Without Borders last month said Saberi's conviction was a warning to foreign journalists working in Iran ahead of its presidential election in June.

It said seven journalists were imprisoned in Iran, which it said was ranked 166th out of 173 countries in its latest press freedom index.

Iran denies Western allegations it is seeking to stifle dissenting voices. The government says it welcomes constructive criticism and upholds the principle of free speech.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Hossein Jaseb; Editing by Peter Millership)
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Roxana Saberi - Let's not forget about her!

Editorial
from The New York Times
April 17, 2009

There is nothing resembling justice in Iran’s prosecution of Roxana Saberi. The government’s accusations against Ms. Saberi, a journalist with dual American-Iranian citizenship, have fluctuated wildly — culminating only last week with charges that she spied for the United States government. Her one-day trial this week was held in secret, and state officials have not revealed any evidence against her.

Iran’s government needs to release Ms. Saberi and end this dangerous farce.

Ms. Saberi, whose father was born in Iran, grew up in North Dakota. She moved to Iran six years ago and worked as a freelance reporter, including for National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corporation, while also pursuing a master’s degree in Iranian studies.

When she was arrested in January, Ms. Saberi was first accused of buying wine (illegal in Iran but hardly meriting imprisonment) and then of working without press credentials. While the government revoked those credentials three years ago, it tolerated her filing of news stories for months afterward, according to NPR.

On March 6, in comments that seemed to suggest the case had been resolved, an Iranian prosecutor told the Iranian Student News Agency that Ms. Saberi would be released from custody “in the next few days.”

Then last week, the government suddenly charged Ms. Saberi with espionage.

Iran has played this absurd game before. In recent years, other Americans, including two scholars, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent and an American democracy activist, were unjustly detained. Thankfully all were eventually released but only after enduring months of deprivation under house arrest or in prison. In 2003, Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born Canadian photojournalist charged with espionage, suffered an even worse fate: According to the Iranian doctor who treated her, she died after being beaten and tortured while in Evin prison, the notorious facility where Ms. Saberi is being held. A former F.B.I. agent who went missing in 2007 while on a business trip, Robert Levinson, is also believed to be imprisoned.

We do not know why the government decided to go after Ms. Saberi. One theory is that Tehran may want to try to “trade” her for three Iranian diplomats arrested in Iraq by United States troops in 2007 and charged in connection with attacks on Iraqi and American forces. Another is that government hard-liners may be trying to sabotage President Obama’s effort to engage Tehran after 30 years of mutual isolation.

The two countries have a lot they need to talk about, including their shared interest in controlling Afghanistan’s narcotics industry and ensuring that Iraq’s civil war does not again spin out of control as American troops begin to withdraw.

They also have many difficult areas of disagreement, starting with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Tehran has often demanded that Washington not interfere in its internal affairs. By using Ms. Saberi and many of its own citizens as political pawns, Iran is ensuring that its shockingly poor human rights record will remain a contentious issue between the two countries and make finding rapprochement even harder.
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