Roxana Saberi, an American journalist convicted in Iran on spying charges, is to be freed after an appeals court downgraded her sentence.
In January, Saberi was arrested in Iran for allegedly buying wine.
The Daily Telegraph reports:
Lawyers for the 32-year old said the court had reduced the eight-year jail sentence to a suspended two-year term and she would soon be freed.
The Iranian-American television reporter had lived in Iran for six years before she was charged with "cooperating with a hostile state" after her arrest in January. The harsh sentence provoked an international backlash that prompted Iran's hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to express concern that she had received due process. After his intervention the head of the Iranian judicary asked for the appeal court review.
"The verdict of the previous court has been quashed," lawyer Saleh Nikbakht said. "Her punishment has been changed to a suspended two-year sentence and she will be out of prison."
Saberi's father Reza said he and his wife Akiko were on their way to Tehran's Evin jail, where their daughter has been held, "to bring our daughter back home". Mr Saberi said his daughter would be allowed to leave Iran
The former US beauty queen launched a hunger strike on April 21 in protest at her sentence, taking in only water or sugared water, but she ended it after about two weeks after being briefly hospitalised in the prison clinic.
The sentence was handed down just weeks after new US President Barack Obama proposed better ties with Tehran after three decades of severed ties.
Iran, which does not recognise dual nationality, has said Saberi had continued working "illegally" after her press card was revoked in 2006.
Saberi, who is also of Japanese origin, has reported for US National Public Radio, the BBC and Fox News,
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