The reason the reporter got 8 years in Iran - for being a spy

[240 is Back]

Iran thought she was a spy because... she decided to lie and tell them she was a spy.   


FROM cbs.com and msnbc.com and NPR

Saberi stated that she lied to the Iranian government that she was a US spy because she because--at least her family would be notified. She was threatened by the Iranian officials to confess or she would die without her family where she was.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/28/world/worldwatc...

There is an a link to the NPR interview as well with this cbsnews link.

**On the rumored charges of being arrested for buying alcohol:

"I was allowed to call my parents about 11 days , after I told my interrogators, 'Please let me call my father, at least, to let him know that I'm alive.' And they forced me to tell him a lie — to tell him that I didn't know where I was and that I had been arrested for alcohol, but these were not true."

On initially making a false confession:

"I thought, well, if something happens to me, my family doesn't know where I am, maybe they would never find out. And so I made a false confession and I said, 'Yes, I'm a U.S. spy.'"

On why she actually liked her eight-year sentence:

"Actually, I thanked God, because I knew that if I had been handed only one to two years, that there wouldn't be such an international outcry. But the eight years seemed so ridiculous."

[240 is Back]

Also - very odd - she was in possession of some iranian classified documents.

maybe this is the sort of thing a reporter has access to - but her own lawyer admitted she had a document she had no business having, and he admitted it after her release.

A weird story.


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 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. But she never used the information, he said.

Saberi's release removed a snag in U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to improve U.S.-Iranian relations after three decades of mutual mistrust. On Monday, Obama welcomed Iran's move to free Saberi as a "humanitarian gesture."

....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."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090513/us_nm/us_iran_usa_j...

[Dos Equis]

She was threatened by the Iranian officials to confess or she would die without her family where she was.

So they convicted her because she "confessed" (likely without any representation) after being threatened with death if she didn't confess.   

[24KT]

So they convicted her because she "confessed" (likely without any representation) after being threatened with death if she didn't confess.   

At least she wasn't waterboarded. Can you imagine the uproar had she been waterboarded?   

[Dos Equis]

At least she wasn't waterboarded. Can you imagine the uproar had she been waterboarded?   

If she was in an American legal system she would have three (big specially prepared) meals a day, her own room, a lawyer, a library, free health care, and not have to worry about losing any body parts.