Iran's case against US-born journalist Roxana Saberi was based on her acquiring a confidential government report on the US invasion of Iraq, one of her defence lawyers said on Wednesday. Saleh Nikbakht gave details about the charges against Saberi two days after an appeal court cut her eight-year jail sentence for spying to a two-year suspended term and she walked free after more than three months in Tehran's Evin jail.
He said the 32-year-old freelance reporter had copied the report, which was prepared by a strategic research body at the Iranian president's office ahead of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. But she never used the information, he said. Saberi's release removed a snag in US President Barack Obama's attempts to improve US-Iranian relations after three decades of mutual mistrust. On Monday, Obama welcomed Iran's move to free Saberi as a "humanitarian gesture".
"She had obtained a report that, at that time, the Centre for Strategic Research had prepared on the future attack of America on Iraq (in 2003)," Nikbakht told Reuters, without saying how or when Saberi got hold of the document. The eight-year jail sentence handed down by a lower court on April 18 was also based on the argument that she had co-operated with a hostile country, the United States, Nikbakht said.
This was later changed by the appeal court but she was still found guilty of obtaining and keeping a classified report. Her other lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, earlier said that Saberi in an appeal hearing on Sunday had "accepted she had made a mistake and got access to documents she should not have. But there was no transfer of any classified information."
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. Iranian judiciary officials later said she was charged with espionage.