INTERNATIONAL INTRIGUE, a hunger strike and the motives of a teary-eyed boyfriend conspire in the tale of jailed American journalist Roxana Saberi.
Saberi is in Tehran’s Evin Prison, sentenced to eight years on charges of spying for US intelligence services – an accusation she denies.
Her father, Reza Saberi, says the 32-year-old freelance journalist, who worked for the BBC and US National Public Radio, has refused food since last week. He says his daughter is “very weak” and drinking only sweetened liquids.
The judge in Saberi’s case, Hassan Haddad, says the hunger strike is a propaganda ruse to evoke worldwide sympathy, and complicate legal issues with political ones. Judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying: “She is in good physical condition and not on a hunger strike.”
The truth in Iran is so finely parsed that it’s difficult to discern. In the Saberi case characters have slipped into larger roles – the trial of a reporter has become the latest pirouette in the unsettling diplomatic dance between Washington and Tehran.
The Obama administration has been making efforts at reconciliation with Iran. This overture, while appealing to Iranian moderates, has threatened hardliners, who probably feel that rapprochement with Iran’s great enemy may undermine their power. Take away America, and Iranians would be more likely to focus on their own leaders’ foibles, inflation, unemployment and corruption.
Saberi is caught in the battle between hardliners and reformers – a struggle that may chart how much, if at all, the Islamic republic opens to the West and defuses concerns about its nuclear programme and strategic gambits in the Middle East. What’s not predictable, though, is who will win.
Will it be Iran’s populist, incendiary President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week infuriated Jews and rallied Muslims in scathing remarks against Israel? Reform candidates who are challenging him in elections next month? Or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – some have suggested that Saberi ask him for a pardon – and the ruling clerics who are the real power?
Meanwhile, what about America’s new president, who seeks detente with Iran while insisting on Saberi’s innocence?
Her case has become a tempest where even the love of a weeping boyfriend, a gifted auteur and very public letter writer, is suspect. Director Bahman Ghobadi, whose films such as Turtles Can Fly have been widely acclaimed, has angered Saberi’s parents with his public pleas for their daughter.
In an open letter posted on the internet, and in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ghobadi blamed himself for Saberi’s arrest. He said she had wanted to leave Iran but he convinced her to stay while he worked on his latest film, Nobody Knows the Persian Cat, on which she is credited as a co-writer. The movie will be shown at the Cannes festival this month – and Saberi’s parents sense a hint of insincerity.
“We think that he is using this opportunity to promote his films and gain global recognition,” said Reza Saberi, who has travelled to Tehran from North Dakota. “Our focus is on our daughter’s freedom from prison. . . . We will not allow anyone to take advantage of our daughter’s in order to promote their own agenda.”
Saberi was writing a book on Iran when she was detained in January. It was on culture, art and politics. One might imagine new chapters will be added – the verdict on her appeal awaits. – (LA Times-Washington Post)