US reporter in Iran ‘held secret report on Iraq war’

AFP: A lawyer for US-born reporter Roxana Saberi, freed this week from a Tehran jail, said on Wednesday the spy charges she had faced arose after she obtained a classified report on the US war on Iraq.

TEHRAN (AFP) — A lawyer for US-born reporter Roxana Saberi, freed this week from a Tehran jail, said on Wednesday the spy charges she had faced arose after she obtained a classified report on the US war on Iraq.

"She had a report about the US attack on Iraq prepared by the strategic research centre at the (Iranian) presidency," Saleh Nikbakht told AFP.

"The research centre deemed the report as classified. But she had not used it at all."

Nikbakht did not say how Saberi had managed to gain access to the confidential report.

Saberi's other lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, said Saberi received a suspended two-year jail term from the appeal court as that is the stipulated punishment for such a crime.

"She was accused of accessing secret documents. If these are used, there is a 10-year jail term, if not, then two years," he said.

Saberi was released on Monday after her original eight-year jail term was reduced to a suspended two-year term by the appeal court.

She walked free from Tehran's Evin prison where she was held following her arrest in January initially on charges of buying alcohol, an act prohibited in the Islamic republic.