Journalist recounts imprisonment in Iran

Journalist recounts imprisonment in Iran

• By Jody Callahan

Roxana Saberi

Roxana Saberi spent 100 days in an Iranian prison, detained on charges of espionage.

The journalist, who had spent six years reporting on and living in Iran, was never physically tortured during her 2009 imprisonment, she said. But that hardly made her stay an easy one.

"One day, my life changed dramatically," she said Thursday night. "I'd heard stories of torture. I'd heard stories of executions and hangings. So when I was taken (to prison) by those four men, I was terrified."

Saberi, speaking at The Hutchison School, was in Memphis as part of a program by the group Facing History and Ourselves, a national nonprofit organization that focuses on issues of bigotry and racism through the use of history and literature. She spent about an hour before the group of 100 or so, detailing her time in Iran and her imprisonment. Afterward, she signed copies of her book, "Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran."

Saberi, whose father is Iranian and mother is Japanese, grew up in Fargo, N.D. She wound up entering and winning the Miss North Dakota pageant in 1997, then placed in the top 10 of the Miss America pageant.

But, she said Thursday, she was mostly oblivious about her father's native land.

That led her to travel to Iran, where she did stories on various aspects of the land and its culture. She noted that many Iranians, despite official propaganda, do not hate the United States or its people. She also noted that women are treated poorly in the country, condemned to second-class citizen status.

Still, she said, she enjoyed her time there until the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the country began cracking down on its people, including journalists.

Then came Jan. 31, 2009, when four members of the secret police knocked on the door of her apartment in Tehran. That began the odyssey that led to her sentence of eight years on espionage charges, which she said Thursday stemmed from the work she was doing on a book about Iran.

She remained in jail for more than three months. In part because of her American citizenship and Japanese ancestry, as well as an extensive public campaign, she was finally released.

"I do have a darker view of the authorities in Iran. Many continue to violate basic human rights," she said. "

And while she still has obvious affection for that land, her zeal is dimmed for the moment.

"I do hope to go back some day," she said, "but probably not right now."