The parents of US journalist Roxana Saberi arrived in Tehran on Sunday to visit their daughter who has been held in custody since late January despite Washington’s calls for her release.
“They arrived in Tehran early this morning to see their daughter,” her lawyer Abdolsamad Khoramshahi told AFP.
US-born Saberi, who also holds an Iranian passport, was arrested for allegedly buying alcohol, which is prohibited in the Islamic republic.
Last month her parents Reza and Akiko Saberi appealed to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for her release, saying the 31-year-old reporter was in a “dangerous” state of mental health.
Khoramshahi said he and Saberi’s parents were planning to meet the journalist in the next few days.
Hassan Haddad, Tehran’s deputy prosecutor for security matters, had said on March 9 that Saberi would be freed “within a few days.”
But she is still being detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, and no formal charges have been laid against her by the Iranian authorities.
The Iranian foreign ministry has said Saberi had been working “illegally” in the country after her press card was revoked in 2006.
“The case of Roxana Saberi has been sent to the revolutionary court following completion of a preliminary investigation and interrogation,” Khoramshahi said.
Tehran’s revolutionary court tries prisoners accused of acting against national security. The presiding judge will decide whether to put Saberi on trial.
Khoramshahi said he was “unaware of the charges” laid against the journalist but that he had visited her three times since her arrest.
Saberi, who has reported for the BBC and the US-based National Public Radio, has been living in Iran for six years, working as a journalist and also pursuing a master’s degree in Iranian studies and international relations.
She was also writing a book about Iran, according to her father, and was planning to move back to the United States later this year.
Iran, which does not recognise dual nationality and has had no ties with the United States for three decades, has detained several Iranian-Americans, including academics, in recent years.
Washington has repeatedly called for Saberi to be freed.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a letter to the Iranian delegation on the sidelines of an international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague on March 31, seeking the release of Saberi and two other US nationals.
Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, vanished on the Gulf island of Kish two years ago while student Esha Momeni has been prevented from leaving Iran despite her release from an Iranian jail last year.
Momeni -- a graduate student at California State University -- was detained in Tehran in October 15 and released on bail in November but authorities have prevented her from leaving Iran.
She had travelled to Iran for a research on women’s rights but was detained on charges of acting against Iran’s national security.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi has, however, denied receving any letter from US officials asking about the three US nationals.
