Parents of captive U.S. journalist heading to Tehran

The parents of an Iranian American journalist being detained in an Iranian prison were scheduled to arrive in Tehran this weekend to help secure the release of their daughter, who has been locked up for more than two months.

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old onetime beauty queen and Northwestern University graduate, is being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison on unspecified charges. Her Iranian American father and Japanese American mother left their Fargo, N.D., home for Tehran after their attempts to gain her freedom from afar failed.

Saberi has been in regular telephone contact with her parents, said her lawyer, Abdul-Samad Khorramshahi, who last met with her on March 18.

“I found her in low spirits, as I had promised her she would have been bailed out before beginning of the [March 20] Persian New Year,” he said in a phone interview.

An Iranian judiciary official told reporters a month ago that Saberi would be released in days. U.S. officials said they handed Iranians a letter on the sidelines of a conference Tuesday in the Netherlands requesting the release of Saberi, Iranian American student Esha Momeni and former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared during a trip to Iran two years ago. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denied the receipt of such a letter.

Iranian officials said Saberi was arrested after continuing to work as a journalist even though her official credentials had been revoked. She told her father she was detained after buying a bottle of wine, illegal but generally tolerated in the Islamic Republic.

But the length and nature of her detention suggests she may be facing more serious security charges. A judiciary official said last month that she was arrested because of unspecified “illegal activities” on a warrant issued by Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which frequently tries cases of espionage and national security.

Other detainees in similar circumstances have faced grueling interrogations -- aimed at ferreting out their connections to Iranians and the motives for their actions -- but were not subjected to physical abuse.

Khorramshahi, the attorney, said he and Saberi’s parents would go to court again today to try to get permission to visit her in Evin. “But I am not sure that there will be any success,” he said.

Human rights groups have condemned Iran for holding Saberi without formal charges, as required by Iranian law.

“The constitution of Iran guarantees free speech, yet the government continues to detain journalists without charge for doing their jobs,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “In fact, Iran continues to be one of the biggest jailers of journalists worldwide.”

Iranian authorities dismiss such accusations, saying the West has launched an ideological war against Iran by using allegations of human rights violations to pressure it on other disputes, such as the fight over its nuclear program and its support for militant Arab groups fighting Israel.

National Public Radio, the BBC and Fox News issued a statement last month calling for Iran to release Saberi. More than 10,000 people worldwide signed a petition, organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York advocacy group, calling for her release.

“We are very deeply concerned by the circumstances of Roxana Saberi’s detention,” Mohammed Abdel Dayem, the group’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said in a March 25 statement. “She continues to be held without charge, while officials have offered shifting reasons for her detention.”

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daragahi@latimes.com

Mostaghim is a special correspondent.