Journalist Roxana Saberi talks about her imprisonment in Iran. Saberi was detained in Evin
Prison from Jan. 31, 2009 until May 11, 2009.      Post-Exchange/BRAD LASH

Journalist tells personal story of imprisonment

Roxana Saberi talks about experience in Iran’s Evin Prison.

By Jamie Loo, First Amendment reporter

April 13, 2010

CHICAGO—Roxana Saberi was willing to die for the truth.

Although she had already given a false confession and changing her story could be dangerous, Saberi said she chose to recant while still in prison because her conscience couldn’t handle the lies.

“The interesting thing is my chief interrogator said, when I recanted, he told me, ‘We knew from the very beginning that this was false,’” she said.

That was just one of many confusing messages and lies Saberi heard from her captors during her time in Evin Prison in Iran.

Saberi, an Iranian-American freelance journalist, was working on a book about the Iranian people when she was arrested on Jan. 31, 2009. She was taken to Evin Prison where she faced interrogations and was accused of being a spy. Coerced into a false video-taped confession, she later recanted and was sentenced to eight years in prison. After heavy international pressure, including appeals from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Saberi was release on May 11, 2009.

Saberi has written a book on her imprisonment, “Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran” and was in Chicago on Monday on her book tour.

While in prison, Saberi said she learned a lot from her cellmates who were imprisoned for basic human rights such as freedom of speech, religion, and association. Saberi said it gave her a glimpse of the struggle Iranians go through for freedom and experienced what it’s like to truly have your rights violated and taken away.

“The freedom to have a lawyer; the freedom to tell my family where I am; the freedom to have pen and paper and books that I want to read; the freedom to interview people for a book without being accused of being a spy and using my book as a cover for espionage,” she said. “Freedom of speech. Freedom of expression. And I saw that I had really taken these things for granted before.”

The current situation for journalists in Iran is dire, Saberi said, and there have been increasing restrictions on the press since the elections last year. Several publications were shut down, she said, and many journalists have been arrested.

“For a time after the election Iran was the largest jail for journalists in the world according to Reporters Without Borders,” she said.

Interrogators questioned her about a book she was writing about the Iranian people, claiming that it was a cover for spy work she was doing for U.S. intelligence agencies. Other journalists who have been imprisoned in Iran have also been accused of similar spy activity. Saberi said it’s hard to say whether her interrogators truly believed this or if they were pretending.

“One of the foreign journalists in Iran once told me ‘The Iranian authorities think that foreign journalists are spies because the Iranian authorities themselves use Iranian journalists as spies so they think everybody else does’,” she said.

Saberi said it also depends on your definition of espionage. If the Iranian government views it as the act of sharing information or analysis that they don’t want reflected to the public, “then any journalist can be considered a spy,” she said. Saberi said it seems the reason the government falsely accuses and imprisons people is to silence their critics to try to keep a tighter control on society.

During her time in prison, Saberi was placed in both solitary confinement and with other women prisoners. Saberi said two of her cellmates were Baha’i, which is thought to be the largest non-Muslim minority religion in Iran. Many hardliners in the Iranian regime consider them heretics. Saberi said the Iranian constitution officially recognizes Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion, as the country’s three minority religions. These groups are allowed to have members of Parliament and are free to worship with some limitations, she said. Generally members of minority religious groups in Iran feel discriminated against, she said, for example, only a Shiite Muslim is allowed to become president. Saberi said she feels the Baha’i women she shared her cell with were being persecuted for their religious beliefs.

The U.S. is convening a two-day nuclear security summit this week with 47 other countries and one of their top priorities is discussing Iran’s nuclear program. Among the options the group is considering are tighter sanctions on the country. When asked her opinion of these sanctions and whether they would have any effect, Saberi said whenever sanctions are considered their effects on residents of the country must be taken into account. Saberi said one of her cellmates told her that when she was released that she should tell others to think about the Iranian people and not just the nuclear issue.

“I think the most important thing though, when you’re considering these different steps to take, yes the international community must think about the nuclear issue but they must not forget about human rights issues which I believe should be a first tier issue and not just a second or third tier issue,” she said.

Saberi said she hopes to revisit the book she was working on when she was arrested someday. For now she is finishing her book tour and assisting with promotions for No One Knows About Persian Cats, a movie about underground music in Iran that she helped make.

“I hope that whatever I do in the future it will have something to do with human rights,” Saberi said.

Saberi’s talk was sponsored by Amnesty International, Roosevelt Adjunct Faculty Organization, Northeastern Illinois University’s Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh Leadership Fund and the McCormick Freedom Project. The Post-Exchange is owned by the McCormick Freedom Project.