Roxana Saberi and Iran

24:23

April 30, 2009

Akiko Saberi, the Japanese mother of imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, holds her daughter's photo next to a family picture in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday April, 25, 2009. — Akiko Saberi, mother of imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, holds her daughter's photo next to a family picture in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday, April, 25, 2009. The 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen was convicted of spying for the United States in Iran and sentenced to eight years in prison after a swift, closed door trial earlier this month. She has gone on a hunger strike to protest her imprisonment, her father said. (AP)

Iranian-American through her immigrant father, she wanted to be a foreign correspondent. And then she was — for NPR, for the BBC, in Iran.

Now Roxana Saberi sits in a Tehran prison, convicted in a one-day trial to an eight-year sentence for espionage. She celebrated her 32nd birthday on Sunday with her parents. They say she’s on a hunger strike and looking frail — and looking for all the world like a very vulnerable pawn in a huge game of global politics.

This hour, On Point: The case of Roxana Saberi.

You can join the conversation. Have you been following her story? Do you buy the charges of espionage? Do you think she’s just a pawn in a bigger U.S.-Iran game? Are you tying a yellow ribbon for Roxana Saberi?

Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.Guests:

Joining us from Culver City, California, is Mike Shuster, diplomatic correspondent and foreign correspondent-at-large for National Public Radio. He was in Iran in February, and has worked closely with Roxana Saberi over the years.
Joining us from Washington is Karim Sadjadpour, a scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He first met Roxana Saberi in Tehran in 2004.
From Fargo, North Dakota, we're joined by Charley Johnson, general manager at NBC affiliate KVLY in Fargo. A former teacher, boss, and mentor to Roxana, he taught her broadcast journalism for two semesters at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and later hired her to work at KVLY.

This program aired on April 30, 2009.