Saturday, April 18, 2009
An arrested journalist, a secret trial, and a long prison sentence. Roger Cohen take note: Iran sentences U.S. journalist to 8 years
A U.S. journalist in Iran was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage, her father, lawyer and news reports said Saturday -- a sentence that prompted denunciation from the United States.
Reports in Iranian media, including an Iranian judiciary source quoted Saturday by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency, confirmed the sentence of Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old Iranian-American from North Dakota.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "deeply disappointed" by the news. "We are working closely with the Swiss Protecting Presence to obtain details about the court's decision, and to ensure her well-being," Clinton said in a statement...
...The case has unfolded as the Obama administration has signaled an inclination to engage diplomatically with Iran, America's long-term adversary. The countries have been at odds for years over Iran's nuclear program and Iranian actions and stances in the Middle East, such as the regime's links to Hamas and Hezbollah and its alleged support of insurgents in Iraq...
She's not the only American being held there:
... Earlier this month, at a conference on Afghanistan in Netherlands, Clinton sent a letter to the Iranian delegation asking for information on and the safe release of Saberi Esha Momeni, an Iranian-American student arrested in Iran last October.
Clinton also inquired about Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in March 2007.
One U.S. senator suggested earlier this year that Iran may be holding Levinson in a bid to exchange him for Iranian officials seized by U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007.
"On several diplomatic occasions when Bob Levinson's name has been brought up to Iranian officials, the standard answer is, 'We don't know anything about that.' But the next thing out of the Iranian officials' mouths are to discuss the matter of the Iranians held by the Americans in Irbil, Iraq," Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, told reporters in February.
,p>"You can draw your own conclusions," he said.
Also, AP: US 'deeply disappointed' as Iran convicts reporter
[h/t: Sophia]
Cuban-American returning to Cuba, Chinese-American returning to Mainland China and Iranian-American returning to Iran, for whatever purpose, in the present tense relations of the US with the respective countries, should, in fact, be suspected of harboring latent, self-destructive and even suicidal tendencies! You or your parent(s) came to the US not for realizing the "American dream" but because you detested the present system of government in the country of your origin and wanted to escape from the repressive regime. Why then, for heaven's sake, do you wish to return until the situation over there changes for the better?
Here is a footnote from recent Middle East history relevant to Roxana Saberi's present plight in Iran.
Farzad Bazoft, a freelance journalist of Iranian origin domiciled in London was arrested, while on an assignment in Iraq from the Observer newspaper (of Britain) for allegedly gathering covert information on the so-called "Project Babylon" for the super-gun project, run by the Canadian ballistics expert, Dr Gerald Bull. Bazoft was alleged to have also confessed to being a spy for the Israeli intelligence, Mossad. Saddam Hussein got Bazoft summarily executed, by hanging, in March, 1990 in the notorious Abu Greib prison. Bazoft’s companion, Daphne Parish, a British nurse was also convicted as an accomplice and sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, she was subsequently freed by Saddam Hussein in response to a plea made on her behalf by the President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda. Incidentally, Dr Gerald Bull was also assassinated by unknown assailants in March 1990 outside his apartment in Brussels, Belgium
Against this background, it is the height of stupidity or even a clear case of criminal negligence to depute an Iranian-American, man or woman, on any journalistic jaunt or even for mere news-gathering to a country like Iran being ruled by a bunch of paranoid politicians and religious fanatics, especially in the present state of adverse US-Iranian relations. The morons who sent Roxana to Iran on her fateful mission, whatever might have been its real purpose, are equally culpable and responsible for what has happened to her.
Roxana must consider herself to be very lucky, indeed, for being a woman!