Iran court hears appeal by jailed US reporter

Tehran: A lawyer for a jailed American journalist in Iran says he's optimistic there will be a change in her verdict after her brief appeals hearing.

Roxana Saberi's lawyer says he was allowed to defend his client at her hearing yesterday and expects the court will make its decision in a few days.

Abdul Samad Khorramshahi also says the court atmosphere was "favourable." The court heard an appeal by the US-Iranian reporter who was sentenced by a revolutionary court in Tehran to an eight-year jail term for spying for Iran's arch-foe the United States, causing deep consternation in Washington and among human rights groups.

Saberi's lawyer had asked the court to release Saberi on bail, but said that "the court has not decided." US-born Saberi, 32, was initially arrested in January reportedly for buying alcohol, an act prohibited in the republic, and has since been detained in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

A pale and gaunt-looking Saberi, wearing a dark blue chador and white slippers, was brought to the Tehran courthouse by three guards for the hearing, which lasted about four hours. Saberi, a former US beauty queen, had 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 against Saberi was the harshest ever meted out to a dual national on security charges in Iran.