Journalist freed from Tehran prison

TEHRAN, May 11 (UPI) -- U.S. free-lance journalist Roxana Saberi was released from a Tehran prison Monday, her attorney said.

Abdolsamad Khorramshahi said a prison official told him Saberi, originally sentenced to eight years for espionage, left the prison at an entrance other than the main gate, where reporters and others waited, CNN reported.

Her father Reza Saberi told CNN he had signed paperwork for her release. He said he was waiting outside of Tehran's Evin prison for his daughter.

U.S. President Barack Obama was "relieved to see that Roxana Saberi has been released," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said during a news briefing. "We know this has been a trying time for her family and friends. ... We want to continue to stress that she was wrongly accused, but we welcome this humanitarian gesture."

Saberi was convicted in April on spying charges in a one-day, closed-door trial and received an eight-year prison sentence.

A panel of appeals judges changed her sentence to a two-year jail term suspended for five years, IRNA reported.

"So, practically, she is free as of today," her father said.

The judges agreed with Saberi's lawyers' argument that Iran and the United States aren't at war, so Saberi can't be punished for aiding agents of a nation at war with Iran, Khorramshahi said.

Saberi engaged in a two-week hunger strike to protest her detention, ending it last Monday after her parents pleaded with her to resume eating.

The Iranian-American journalist was detained in January for buying a bottle of wine, then Iranian officials said she was working as a journalist without proper credentials. Saberi has lived in Iran since 2003 and reported for National Public Radio, the BBC and ABC News. Her press credentials were revoked in 2006, but she continued reporting.