A website has been launched to help push for the release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been sentenced in Iran to eight years in prison on charges for spying for the United States. I don’t think I can add anything to the many articles that have already been written about the case. I met Saberi accidentally and very briefly a few years ago in Washington, DC. The things that I remember were that she was unbelievably beautiful and seemed quiet. I only later realized that she was the same person whose NPR reports I’ve been listening to. Her fiancée, the filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, wrote a very moving open letter in her defense. Like him, I am optimistic that she will be released quite soon. But I am disappointed that Saberi’s arrest has not prompted greater media attention to the fate of other imprisoned journalists in Iran, including the Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan. Perhaps Saberi will be able to help change that upon her return.
