An Iranian court began hearing an appeal on Sunday by jailed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi who has been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the United States.
Saberi, looking pale and gaunt and wearing a dark blue chador and white slippers, was brought to the Tehran courthouse by three guards.
”It is possible that they give a verdict today. I reckon that there will generally be a reduction [in her sentence],” her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi said.
The hearing is being held behind closed doors.
Iran’s official Irna news agency quoted judiciary spokesperson Ali Reza Jamshidi as saying he believed the ruling by the appeal court’s three-judge panel ”will be fair and lawful”.
”I cannot predict whether Saberi will be acquitted or the same verdict will be upheld,” he said, adding that he was unsure whether the court would deliver the verdict on Sunday.
US-born Saberi (32) was first arrested in January reportedly for buying alcohol, an act prohibited in the Islamic republic, and detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
But last month a revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced her to an eight-year jail term for spying for Iran’s arch-foe the United States, causing deep consternation in Washington and among human rights groups.
Her father Reza Saberi said on Saturday that he believed ”the case will be handled more moderately this time” by the appeal court.
He was present at the courthouse on Sunday but not inside the courtroom.
Khoramshahi said on Saturday that he hoped the court would hear the defence case ”carefully” this time.
”I do hope and I am optimistic she will be acquitted,” he said.
Saberi, a former US beauty queen, launched a hunger strike on April 21 in protest at her jail sentence, taking in only water or sugared water, but she ended it after about two weeks.
Her father said last week that she was briefly hospitalised during the hunger strike.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said that Saberi’s appeal would be looked at ”with justice and compassion”.
The verdict against Saberi is the harshest sentence ever meted out to a dual national on security charges in Iran, and comes just weeks after US President Barack Obama proposed better ties with Tehran.
The United States has dismissed the charges against Saberi as baseless and called for her release. Obama has said that he was ”especially concerned” about Saberi as well as two other US women journalists being detained in North Korea.
Judiciary sokesperson Jamshidi brushed off concerns raised by Washington, saying Saberi’s case had ”been treated according to law in the preliminary stage” too.
”If you want to look at what America says and what other countries want and listen to other governments … we have to then put down pen and paper and sit back,” he said.
Iran, which does not recognise dual nationality, said Saberi had continued working ”illegally” after her press card was revoked in 2006.
Saberi has reported for US National Public Radio, the BBC and Fox News, and has lived in Iran for the past six years. – AFP
