Smiling Saberi 'Happy' to Be Free

Journalist Roxana Saberi says she’s “very happy” to be free and reunited with her parents and today thanked those who helped win her freedom from an Iranian prison, the AP reports. One of her lawyers said her conviction was partially because she had visited Israel, illegal for Iranian citizens, and because she had a copy of a confidential Iranian government document about the Iraq war.

She obtained the document while working as a freelance Web translator for a powerful body connected to Iran's ruling clerics. She copied it out of “curiosity,” she told the appeal court Sunday, noting that she didn’t share it with US officials; the court reduced her charge from espionage to possessing confidential documents. Her father, meanwhile, told NPR she’d faced “no physical abuse” in prison but had battled with “psychological pressure” from confinement. (More Roxana Saberi stories.)