Monday, May 11, 2009

Roxana Saberi freed

The government of Iran has freed jailed reporter Roxana Saberi. BBC NEWS has the details. Saberi was not acquitted on appeal. Her sentence was reduced and suspended. She was banned from working as a journalist in Iran for five years. This seems to me to be a tacit admission on the part of the Iranian government that the spying charges against her were baseless. If she has really been spying on them, would they allow her to come back in five years and do the same thing?

According to the BBC, "her partner, film director Bahman Ghobadi - whose work has won prizes in Cannes and Berlin - said Ms Saberi was a victim of Iran's `political games'." That sounds about right.

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