Roxana Saberi, age 31, is an American journalist of Iranian and Japanese descent who was arrested in February 2009, and is being held in Iran on charges of espionage, which her lawyer and the U.S. Dept. of State call baseless.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that in 2008, Iran was the sixth-leading jailer of journalists.
An American freelance journalist detained in Iran for three months has been charged with spying.
Roxana Saberi, who was filing stories for National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States, was arrested in January in Tehran after buying a bottle of wine.
Ms Saberi, a dual Iranian-American national, had her press credentials revoked in 2006 after three years in Iran but continued to live there researching a book and a master’s degree. Tehran's deputy prosecutor, Hassan Haddad, said that her case had been forwarded to the revolutionary court and that she had accepted all the charges against her.