Ahmadinejad urges Iranian judiciary to protect Roxana Saberi's legal rights

[Aloha Spirit]

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls on Iran's judiciary to ensure justice is administered in the case of a detained US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi.

Head of the Presidential Office Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, in a letter to Tehran's prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi, called for fair investigation into the cases of Roxana Saberi and blogger Hossein Derakhshan, IRNA reported Sunday.

“As per the president's request, please see to it that the legal proceedings are not diverted away from the path of justice,” the letter read. “Personally see to it that the defendants are able to assert their legal rights in defending themselves.”

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=91912§ionid=351020101

[cali]

1. a more detailed piece

By Robert Mackey

Behrouz Mehri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Roxana Saberi working as a reporter in Iran in 2004.One day after Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist, was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage, following a one-day trial behind closed doors in Tehran, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to Tehran’s chief prosecutor instructing him to ensure that Ms. Saberi is given the opportunity to present a full defense.

What exactly this statement means in the context of a trial before Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which deals with security issues and conducted a closed hearing last week, barring even Ms. Saberi’s parents from observing, is not clear. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Ahmedinejad’s letter is merely an attempt to make it seem as if Ms. Saberi is getting a fair trial or is, in fact, some sort of intervention on her behalf. Observers have speculated that Ms. Saberi’s case is now part of a struggle taking place inside the opaque world of Iran’s complex government over how to respond to recent overtures from the United States to repair relations.

As Nazila Fathi reported in The Times on Saturday, Ms. Saberi’s lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, “told the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he had been told he could appeal the case, and said he would.”

Reuters’s Parisa Hafezi reports from Tehran:

IRNA said the letter from Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff, Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, to prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi dealt with Saberi’s case as well as that of detained Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan.

“Based on the president’s insistence, please make sure that all the legal stages about the mentioned people be based on justice,” the letter said. ” … and you personally make sure that the accused people will enjoy all freedoms and legal rights to defend themselves and their rights will not be violated,” it added.

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Read more: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/jailed-amer...