Iraq Working for Release of Americans Held in Iran

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi official says Baghdad has contacted Tehran in a bid to secure the release of three Americans detained in Iran, but has received no reply.

Foreign undersecretary Labid Abawi said Saturday that Iraq has sent messages and made "several efforts" to ensure the release of the Americans.

He said Tehran has not responded and there were no plans to hand them over to Iraq at the current time.

The Americans were detained by Iranian authorities after having crossed an unmarked border into Iran while hiking in northern Iraq in July.

The U.S. says the three were innocent tourists on an adventure hike and accidentally crossed into Iran.

Tehran says the Americans crossed the border illegally and has accused them of espionage.

FoxNews

Obama won't close Guantanamo prison by January

President Barack Obama said he won't set a new deadline for closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison, but does expect the facility to shut down sometime next year.

The administration no longer feels it can meet the January 2010 deadline Obama set for its closure soon after taking office. Obama says he isn't disappointed about missing the deadline, but has realized that things move slower in Washington than he expected.

Obama said the timeline for closing Guantanamo will depend on cooperation from Congress.

About 220 detainees remain at the prison, and the administration must decide how to prosecute some in US courts and turn others over to other countries.

Obama spoke in an interview with Fox News Channel.

Also on Wednesday, A British judge ruled that British spies can keep some evidence secret from former Guantanamo prisoners who are suing the government for alleged complicity in their detention, the first volley in a legal battle to expose what role Britain played in the men's imprisonment.

Seven ex-Guantanamo inmates allege they were tortured or abused at the US prison camp and elsewhere - and that the British government contributed to their torment.

Their civil suit seeking damages from the spy agencies MI5 and MI6 and other government bodies has yet to come to trial, but the government won a preliminary victory by securing the right to keep selected pieces of information from the men and their lawyers.

Justice Stephen Silber warned that his ruling was a "stark question of law, not related to the facts of the case." He said lawyers would still have to work with any future trial judge to decide which evidence, if any, could be kept under wraps.

More at JPost

Iran accuses 3 detained Americans of espionage

A senior Iranian prosecutor accused three Americans detained on the border with Iraq of espionage on Monday, the first signal that Tehran intends to put them on trial.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for the release of the three. The announcement came as Washington and Tehran are maneuvering over a deadlock in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

"We believe strongly that there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever," Clinton told reporters in Berlin. "And we would renew our request on behalf of these three young people and their families that the Iranian government exercise compassion and release them, so they can return home."

Clinton said the US would continue to make that case through the Swiss channels who represent US interests in Tehran.

Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal, all graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, were arrested July 31 after straying over the Iranian border from northern Iraq. The US government and their families say there were on a hiking vacation and crossed accidentally.

Tehran chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi says the three "have been accused of espionage" and that investigations were continuing, according to the state news agency IRNA. He said an "opinion (on their case) will be given in the not distant future."

It is not clear from his comments whether formal charges had been made, but such announcements are often a sign that charges are imminent if not already filed. In Iran's opaque judicial system, the process of indictment and trial often takes place behind closed doors.

The timing of the announcement raised the possibility that Iran was using the case to pressure the United States amid the negotiations over its nuclear program.

Iran is also holding another American, academic Kian Tajbakhsh, who was arrested amid Iran's postelection turmoil and was sentenced last month to 12 years in prison for an alleged role in opposition protests.

In January, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi was arrested in Tehran, was convicted of espionage, then released on appeal in May. Two months later, US forces in Iraq freed five Iranians who they had been holding for months.

Source: YNet

U.S. Journalist Jailed in Iran Released

Akiko Saberi, the Japanese mother of imprisoned Iranian-American
journalist Roxana Saberi, holds her daughter's photo in Tehran, Iran.

May 11

An American reporter jailed in Iran on espionage charges was freed Monday and can leave the country immediately, her lawyer said after an appeals court suspended her eight-year prison sentence.

Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, one of Roxana Saberi's attorney, said she is "now out of jail."

Iran's judiciary announced that the appeals court, which heard her case on Sunday, had reduced her jail term to a suspended two-year sentence, Khorramshahi said.

Saberi, a 32-year-old dual American-Iranian national who grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, was convicted last month of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison. An appeals court heard her case on Sunday.

Her case caused tension between the United States and Iran at a time when President Obama had said he wanted to engage Washington's longtime adversary in a dialogue. The U.S. has called the charges against her "baseless" and demanded she be freed.

Reuters earlier reported that Saberi had been released, but later changed their report to say she would be freed sometime on Monday.

Saberi's father, who lives in Fargo, North Dakota, said he was waiting for his daughter outside Evin prison, where she has been held since January.

"In the next few days, we will make travel plans to return home," Reza Saberi told the AP.

Roxana Saberi, who grew up in Fargo, moved to Iran six years ago and had worked as a freelance journalist for several organizations including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp. She had gone on a hunger strike in prison to protest her jailing but ended it earlier this month after two weeks for health reasons.

U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan said her release would be "wonderful" but also stressed that her jailing was a "miscarriage of justice" that "could not stand the test of public opinion."

"They [Iranian officials] surely must have felt the weight of international pressure," the North Dakota Democrat told the AP.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders also welcomed the decision to suspend Saberi's sentence and looked forward to her imminent release.

The former 1997 Miss North Dakota was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But an Iranian judge later leveled the far more serious charge of espionage.

Iran has not released many details about her case. Iran's intelligence minister has said that the initial investigation was done by an expert on security and counterespionage at the Intelligence Ministry before her case was referred to court.

Her Iranian-born father has said his daughter had been working on a book about the culture and people of Iran, and hoped to finish it and return to the United States this year.

The United States broke off ties with Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by hard-line students.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Foxnews

Iran busts Israeli 'spy network'

November 25, 2008

TEHRAN: Iran's Revolutionary Guards have claimed to have arrested the members of a spy network linked to Israeli intelligence who tried to gather information on Iranian nuclear and military programs.

Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said on state radio last night that its intelligence bureau had recently discovered the spy network, linked with Israel's Mossad.

"This network sought to gather important information from the Guards' military section, the country's nuclear centres and some security officials," Mr Jafari said.

"Very good information as well as equipment that this network were supplied with have been discovered and people will be informed of the evidence in the near future."

Mr Jafari did not specify how many people were detained or where and when the group was arrested.

He said the detainees had confessed to being trained in bombing and assassination in Israel and had bought vehicles and lots of equipment with Mossad support, the state broadcaster's website reported.

Iran said on Saturday it had hanged an Iranian telecommunications salesman convicted of spying for Israel. It warned that a "more serious intelligence war" had begun with the Jewish state.

Judicial spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said Ali Ashtari was hanged on November 17 after being sentenced to death on June30 by a revolutionary court in Tehran.

Ashtari, who was in his mid-40s, was a tradesman in electronic merchandise who supplied military, security and defence centres across the country with electronic devices.

Iranian authorities also recently arrested Hossein Derakhshan, a blogger who visited Israel last year, on his arrival in Tehran from Canada. Mr Derakhshan, who also holds Canadian citizenship, had admitted to being involved in espionage for Israel, the Iranian news website Jahan News reported.

It said Mr Derakhshan had admitted spying for Israel during initial questioning.

If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Tehran does not recognise Israel and tensions have flared since the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly said the Jewish state is doomed to vanish and has branded the Holocaust amyth.

Israel, which along with the US accuses the Islamic republic of seeking atomic weapons, has never ruled out a military action to halt Tehran's nuclear drive.

Tehran, which insists its nuclear program is aimed only at producing electricity, angrily points to Israel's widely believed status as the sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power in the Middle East.

Iran has always warned of a dire response in the event that it comes under attack by the US or Israel.

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran's powerful ideological army, control the country's sensitive missile program, including the long-range Shahab-3 missile, which Tehran says can reach Israel and US bases in the Gulf.

Source: The Australian