Free From Iran, Roxana Saberi Opens Up About Ordeal
In an interview with NPR, Saberi opened up on her arrest, captivity and eventual release.
Here are some highlights:
On the rumored charges of being arrested for buying alcohol:
"I was allowed to call my parents about 11 days [after the arrest], after I told my interrogators, 'Please let me call my father, at least, to let him know that I'm alive.' And they forced me to tell him a lie — to tell him that I didn't know where I was and that I had been arrested for alcohol, but these were not true."
On initially making a false confession:
"I thought, well, if something happens to me, my family doesn't know where I am, maybe they would never find out. And so I made a false confession and I said, 'Yes, I'm a U.S. spy.'"
On why she actually liked her eight-year sentence:
"Actually, I thanked God, because I knew that if I had been handed only one to two years, that there wouldn't be such an international outcry. But the eight years seemed so ridiculous."
On why she ended her hunger strike:
"The main thing was that my mother told me that if I didn't stop, she would start. … I was very worried about her. And I knew she's as stubborn as me and she would do it."
On the charges that she was carrying a classified document:
"The Iranian government claimed that I had a classified document, but I don't think it was classified. The document did not have a classified stamp on it, which I've heard such documents are supposed to have, and it was not clearly identifiable as classified. It was an old document from 2002 and it didn't contain any information that had not been stated publicly several times before."