U.S. State Department believes espionage related charges in Iran are “baseless”

Missoula, May 13 (Al-Masakin)–State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters at today’s daily press briefing that charges made against an American who stole a confidential document related to U.S. involvement in Iraq from Iran’s Expediency Council was a “baseless” charge.

Iran charged former freelance reporter Roxana Saberi who worked as a website translator at Iran’s Expediency Council with copying a classified report and removing it from the building.  Saberi was charged with espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison after she confessed at a closed trial.  She later apologized to the Iranian government and her sentence was reduced to two years suspended sentence, expelled from the country, and forbidden to work as a reporter in Iran for five years in a move the Iranian government called “Islamic mercy.”

In response to a reporter’s question this morning, Mr. Kelly acknowledged that Saberi had taken the document and then went on to say in response to a follow-up question that charges related to such activity were nevertheless “baseless.”
QUESTION: The lawyer – one of the lawyers for Roxana Saberi says that she – that the Iranian case against her was based on her having acquired a confidential Iranian Government report.
MR. KELLY: Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: That she acquired such a report, I am not suggesting in any way applies that she was guilty of espionage, but it may indeed have violated Iranian laws about – you know, covering the confidentiality of such reports. The Department was very consistent in saying that the charges against her were baseless. Do you stick with that, or does this change your view of the charges?
MR. KELLY: No, we haven’t changed our views. We continue to maintain that the charges against her are baseless. And our concern throughout, of course, has been Ms. Saberi’s well-being and her safe return to the United States.

Although Saberi was employed as an office worker at the Expediency Council, not as a journalist, she later sought to exploit earlier employment as a freelance journalist for NPR, Fox News, and the BBC to suggest that she had been imprisoned on charges related to journalism.  Saberi’s lawyer told the Associated Press May 12 that Saberi had in fact been arrested for stealing a document from the government office.

The Expediency Discernment Council is an administrative assembly appointed by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution and was created upon the revision to the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran in 1988.

EHC / EHC

United States seeks change in tenor and reshaping of upcoming World Conference Against Racism, the Durban Review Conference

Missoula, Feb. 21 (Al-Masakin)–The U.S. State Department sent a delegation to Geneva Feb. 16-19 for consultations about America’s possible involvement in the World Conference Against Racism, the Durban Review Conference.

 The delegation was led by Mark Storella, Chargé d’Affaires for the US Mission in Geneva. The delegation included as private delegates, Betty King, the distinguished former Ambassador to ECOSOC and Felice Gaer, a leader in the human rights community who currently serves as Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“We sent this delegation to work with countries that want to achieve a successful review conference that focuses on combating racism, racial discrimination and other forms of intolerance and to explore whether it is going to be possible to focus the Durban Review Conference on these serious issues. The United States had not previously participated in preparations for the Durban Review Conference because of our strong reservations about the direction of the conference, as the draft document singles out Israel for criticism, places unacceptable restrictions on freedom of expression under the guise of defaming religion, and calls for payment of reparations for slavery,” U.S. State Department Acting Deputy Department Spokesman Gordon Duguid said in a press release Friday Feb. 20.

In Geneva the U.S. delegation met with the delegations of thirty other nations.  The United States is seeking “to explore whether there exists the possibility for progress in re-shaping the document and tenor of the discussions,” Mr. Duguid’s statement to the press said.  The American delegation also met with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay. 

The United States remains ambivalent about whether or not it will participate in the conference scheduled to take place in Geneva from April 20-24, 2009.

EHC / EHC