Roxana Saberi

Roxana Saberi (born April 26, 1977) is an American journalist who currently works for CBS News as a correspondent and former Miss North Dakota pageant winner.

Graduating with honors from Fargo North High School in 1994, Saberi played piano and soccer, and took part in Key Club and danceline.

Saberi also played for the Cobbers soccer team from 1994 to 1996.

She graduated in 1997 from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, with degrees in Communication and French.

Chosen as Miss North Dakota in 1997, she was among the top ten finalists in Miss America 1998, winning the Scholar Award.

Saberi holds a master's degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University and a second master's degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge, where she played for the university soccer team and the King's College ( Cambridge) soccer team.

She was working on another master's degree in Iranian studies at the time of her arrest.

Saberi moved to Iran in 2003.

US-based Feature Story News (FSN) distributed her reports to a wide range of broadcasters around the world, and Saberi's work soon became circulated to the viewers and listeners of Channel News Asia, South African Broadcasting, DW Radio, Vatican Radio, Radio New Zealand, Australian Independent Radio News, and others.

She also made occasional contributions to PBS, NPR, and Fox News.

In 2006, the Iranian authorities revoked Saberi's press accreditation and closed the FSN bureau in Iran.

She maintained a second press accreditation, permitting her to freelance in Iran for the BBC.

In late 2006, it was also revoked.

Following the revocation of her second press accreditation, Saberi cut ties with the BBC but continued to file occasional reports from the country for NPR, IPS and ABC Radio.

Saberi was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2007.

In 2009, she was held prisoner in Iran's Evin Prison for 101 days under accusations of espionage.

She subsequently wrote a book about the experience.

On April 8, 2009, the Iranian government charged Saberi with espionage, which she denied.

She was subsequently convicted and sentenced to an eight-year prison term.

An appeals court reduced the charge against her from espionage to possessing classified information, a charge which she also denied, and reduced her eight-year prison term to a two-year suspended sentence.

She was released on May 11, 2009.

Saberi was born in Belleville, New Jersey, the daughter of Reza Saberi, who was born in Iran, and Akiko Saberi, who emigrated from Japan.

When she was six months old, her family moved to Fargo, North Dakota.

Saberi was arrested on January 31, 2009.

On March 3, 2009, an Iranian judiciary spokesman confirmed that Roxana Saberi had been arrested on the orders of the Islamic Revolutionary Court.

Although Saberi holds both Iranian and American citizenship, Iran does not recognise dual citizenship.

On March 10, a number of international news organisations wrote an open letter to the Iranian government, calling on Iran to allow independent access to Saberi.

Signatories included President of NPR Vivian Schiller, President of ABC News David Westin, Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson, John Stack of Fox News, and Jon Williams (world editor at the BBC).

The open letter expressed deep concern about Saberi's well-being and "the deprivation of her rights":

"We now ask that one or more international organizations with responsibilities and rights under the Geneva Conventions be permitted access to Roxana immediately to ascertain her health and well-being and determine the conditions under which she is held. If no charges are filed, we now urge her immediate release and ask that she be given permission to return to her home country, the United States."

After more than five weeks of captivity, on March 8, Saberi was allowed to see an attorney for the first time.

On March 18, marking 47 days of detention, the Saberi family called on Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene during the run-up to the Persian Nowruz holiday.

The US administration expressed its concern at Saberi's detention, dismissing allegations against her as "baseless".

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded her release.

On April 6, her parents were allowed a 30-minute visit to Saberi in Evin Prison, where she was being held.

On April 8, the Iranian government charged Saberi with espionage, while the Iranian Students News Agency, quoting a hard-line judge who is the deputy head of Iran's prosecutor's office, said Saberi had "accepted" the accusation of espionage.

Saberi's father, who was in Iran at the time but was not allowed into the courtroom, told NPR his daughter was coerced into making incriminating statements.

"They told her if she made the statements, they would free her," he said.

"It was a trick."

The court sentenced her to eight years in prison, which her lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi promised to appeal.