Back home, Saberi still nervous

If Roxana Saberi glances over her shoulder or nervously studies the faces of the people attending her speech Thursday in St. Paul, it's a reflexive action that comes from having spent five months in an Iranian prison.

Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota, had been in Iran working as a freelance reporter for six years when intelligence officers barged into her apartment one morning in January 2009 and accused her of espionage. The experience, which she describes in her book "Between Two Worlds," left her nerves permanently on edge.

"You never really get over it," she said. "They told me that they had agents all over the world and that they would be watching me. I don't know how much of that is true, but when I walk down a street, I look over my shoulder. I can't forget what happened."

International pressure led to her release in May 2009, but not until after she had been coerced into making a confession. If she didn't confess, she was told, she faced execution.

"Eventually, even my captors told me that they knew I wasn't spying," she said. "They dropped those charges, but then they fabricated something about me having a classified document. That's ridiculous; I never had anything like that. But they can do that with political prisoners. That's how they control them."

Saberi has been following with great interest the story of Sarah Shourd, the American hiker who recently was released from an Iranian prison. Asked what advice she'd give her, Saberi said, "It's going to take time [to get over the trauma]. A long time. She was in prison for a year. I was just there for 100 days. Plus, she had to leave behind her fiancé, Shane [Bauer], and their friend Josh [Fattal]. That's a tough situation."

No secrets

"I told everyone that I was writing a book about Iran that would be published in the United States," she said. "I wasn't keeping it secret."

Nonetheless, the police confiscated her notebooks, computer and computer flash drives. She eventually got most of it back.

"I think they realized that I had sent [e-mail] copies of everything in my computer to my mother in Fargo," she said.

Saberi still wants to write the book, for which she interviewed a cross-section of Iranians. But now that she's had a firsthand look at how the government can silence people it doesn't like, she's concerned about how the book might affect the people she interviewed.

"I certainly don't want to cause trouble for any of them," she said. "Before [writing the book], I need to get in touch with the people I interviewed and ask if it's OK if I use their names."

"I met some amazing people, especially the women who dared to challenge the system," she said. "I want to do more to draw attention to the need for universal human rights."