{"id":2059,"date":"2009-04-19T06:30:57","date_gmt":"2009-04-19T13:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=2059"},"modified":"2009-04-19T06:30:57","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T13:30:57","slug":"afp-ahmadinejad-urges-justice-for-jailed-us-reporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/19\/afp-ahmadinejad-urges-justice-for-jailed-us-reporter\/","title":{"rendered":"AFP: Ahmadinejad urges ‘justice’ for jailed US reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Agence France Presse<\/a> (April 19 2009):<\/p>\n

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Sunday for fair treatment of US reporter Roxana Saberi<\/a>, who was sentenced to eight years in jail as a US spy, the state news agency IRNA<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

In a rare intervention in judicial proceedings, Ahmadinejad said the Tehran prosecutor should examine the case against both Saberi and Hossein Derakhshan<\/a>, an Iranian-Canadian blogger who has been behind bars since November, IRNA said.<\/p>\n

“At the president’s insistence, you must do what is needed to secure justice … in examining these people’s charges,” said a letter from Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff Abdolreza Sheikholeslami to Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.<\/p>\n

“Take care that the defendants have all the legal freedoms and rights to defend themselves against the charges,” the letter said.<\/p>\n

Saberi, 31, a former US beauty queen, was convicted of spying for the United States during a closed-door trial and sentenced to eight years in jail, in a verdict unveiled on Saturday.<\/p>\n

US President Barack Obama, who has called for dialogue with Iran since he took office in January, was “deeply disappointed” at the sentence, according to his spokesman.<\/p>\n

The State Department branded the espionage charges as “baseless,” while Saberi’s father has said his daughter was “tricked” into confessing by being told she would be released.<\/p>\n

Saberi’s lawyer has said he would appeal the verdict, which is the harshest sentence ever to a dual national on security charges in Iran.<\/p>\n

She has been held since late January, when she was initially reported to have been arrested for buying alcohol, an illegal act in the Islamic republic.<\/p>\n

Derakhshan, a prominent blogger, has been detained since his arrival in Iran in November 2008 and is being investigated on charges of insulting Shiite imams.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2009 AFP<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[via Antony Loewenstein<\/a> and Hamid Tehrani<\/a>] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agence France Presse (April 19 2009): Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Sunday for fair treatment of US reporter Roxana Saberi, who was sentenced to eight years in jail as a US spy, the state news agency IRNA reported. In a rare intervention in judicial proceedings, Ahmadinejad said the Tehran prosecutor should examine the case against both Saberi and Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger who has been behind bars since November, IRNA said. “At the president’s insistence, you must do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[96,103,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-iran","category-journalism","category-roxana-saberi","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-xd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}