Reporter still on hunger strike in Iran jail after 12 days: father

“She told us in a very short phone conversation yesterday that her hunger strike is still on,” Reza Saberi told AFP.

Saberi, 32, who was jailed last month after being convicted of spying for Iran's archfoe the United States, went on hunger strike on April 21 in protest at the sentence.

Her father said at the time that Saberi — whose case has raised deep concern in Washington and among human rights groups — was taking only water or sugared-water.

But the Iranian judiciary has denied that she was refusing to eat or that her health had been affected.

“She was very upset when she heard the judiciary had denied that. So she even stopped drinking water, which led her to a brief hospitalisation on Friday in the prison's clinic,” Reza Saberi said.

He said he and his wife are trying to persuade her to end the hunger strike.

Saberi has been held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since late January, when she was initially reported to have been arrested for buying alcohol, an illegal act in the Islamic republic.

The verdict against the former US beauty queen is the harshest sentence ever meted out to a dual national on security charges in Iran, and comes just weeks after US President Barack Obama proposed better ties with Tehran.

Obama on Friday reiterated that he was “especially concerned” about Saberi, who was jailed on charges Washington insists are unfounded, and two other US women journalists detained in North Korea.

US-born Saberi, who is also of Japanese descent, has reported for US National Public Radio, the BBC and Fox News, and has lived in Iran for the past six years.

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