Internationally acclaimed Kurdish Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi published a letter today on the Web site of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran about his fiancee, jailed Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.
Titled “To Roxana Saberi, Iranian with an American passport” Ghobadi describes the day Roxana was picked up: “It was the 31st of January. The day of my birthday. That morning, she called to say she would pick me up so we would go out together. She never came. I called on her mobile, but it was off.”
Saberi was detained in January and has been held since at Tehran’s Evin Prison. She was first accused of working as a journalist without credentials, but on April 18, a
Ghobadi expresses his incomprehension of the Iranian authorities’ charges against Saberi: “How come someone who would spend days without going out of her apartment, except to see me; someone who… would carefully spend her money, and had sometimes trouble making a living; someone who was looking for a sponsor to get in contact with a local publisher so her book would be printed here (in Iran); could now be charged with a spying accusation?!”
On Sunday, the Iranian president and the country’s chief justice ordered a review of Saberi’s case, reviving hope that she might be released.
“I am optimistic about her release,” Ghobadi writes, “and I firmly hope the verdict will be cancelled in the next stage of the trial.”
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