Reporting from Vienna and Beirut -- Iranian American journalist Roxana Saberi arrived in Vienna this morning days after she was released from prison in Iran following an appellate court suspension of her sentence on an espionage charge.
Saberi and her parents departed Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport sometime in the early morning hours for the Austrian capital. She and her father, Reza Saberi, told reporters that they will stay at the home of a friend for several days before departing for the United States.
“I came to Vienna because I heard it was a calm and relaxing place,” said Saberi, smiling and at ease after arriving at the airport, in comments broadcast by Austria’s ORF television. “I know you have many questions, but I need some more time to think about what happened to me.”
She said she was not yet prepared to disclose details about her months-long ordeal. “I will talk about it more in the future, I hope, but I am not prepared at this time,” she said.
Saberi was initially sentenced last month to eight years in prison on a charge of possessing a classified document. But following intense international and domestic pressure, an appellate court reduced her sentence to a suspended two-year term and a five-year ban on practicing journalism in Iran.
Her lead attorney Abdul-Samad Khorramshahi said he spoke to Saberi shortly before she boarded the plane. “I told her she can come back and leave Iran again, but if she comes back to do journalism over the next five years she will have to serve two years in prison,” he said in a telephone interview
Saberi’s official press credentials were revoked in 2006, though she continued to discreetly work as a journalist while researching a book about Iran.
Authorities arrived at her house with a warrant on Jan. 30 and took her away. Khorramshahi dismissed the widely disseminated report that she was initially arrested for purchasing a bottle of wine, an explanation she gave her father during a hurried prison phone call 10 days or so after her arrest.
He also said neither Saberi’s unauthorized journalism work nor the content of her reports on NPR, BBC or Fox were the cause of her arrest.
“There was no charge like that in her file,” he said. “We don’t have anything like that in Iranian law.”
Rather, from the start, the charges stemmed from her possession of a classified document about U.S. involvement in Iraq that she had copied while working as a translator for Iran’s Expediency Council, a powerful board that mediates disputes between government bodies, her lawyers said.
She was held without access to counsel for weeks inside Tehran’s Evin prison, until authorities allowed Khorramshahi to sign on as her lawyer, a key turning point in the case, he said.
“For two or three weeks she had no information and was very upset,” he said. “When I got the case and approval to represent her, her outlook completely changed. She became very happy that she saw she had a lawyer by her side.”
Intelligence ministry officials alleged she was a spy collecting information to pass on to the Americans, or even Israel, where she had visited. But Saberi claimed she intended to use the document for her book and had no intention of handing it to another government, Khorramshahi said.
“Roxana accepted that she shouldn’t have had the document but that she didn’t make use of it,” he said. “It was for her book.”
In Vienna, Saberi thanked Austria’s ambassador to Iran Michael Postl and his family for helping in her release.
An Austrian official said its embassy provided the family “logistical support” after her release.
“One of the foreign policy priorities of Austria is human rights,” Austrian foreign ministry spokesman Peter Launsky said in a phone interview today. “We have held a human rights dialogue with Iran for many, many years.”
Launsky said the Swiss embassy -- which represents U.S. interests in Iran -- also played a key role in pushing for Saberi’s release.
Saberi’s father delivered a speech praising Islam and Persian poetry at a Tehran cultural center operated by the Austrian embassy hours after his daughter’s release on Monday. Launsky said the appearance was “long planned” and happened to coincide with his daughter’s release.
He said Austria also helped in the release of Iranian American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, imprisoned in Iran following a visit two years ago.
Vienna wields some leverage over Tehran. Austrian energy giant OMV conducts billions of dollars in business with the Islamic Republic. Austria’s Steyr Mannlicher also sells Iran light weaponry, including high-powered rifles.
daragahi@latimes.com Damianova is a special correspondent.
