[12][13] Graduating with honors from Fargo North High School in 1994, Saberi played piano and soccer, and took part in Key Club and danceline.

Following the revocation of her second press accreditation, Saberi cut ties with the BBC but continued to file occasional reports from the country for NPR, IPS and ABC Radio.

On March 3, 2009, an Iranian judiciary spokesman confirmed that Roxana Saberi had been arrested on the orders of the Islamic Revolutionary Court.

[20] On March 10, a number of international news organisations wrote an open letter to the Iranian government, calling on Iran to allow independent access to Saberi.

Signatories included President of NPR Vivian Schiller, President of ABC News David Westin, Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson, John Stack of Fox News, and Jon Williams (world editor at the BBC).

The open letter expressed deep concern about Saberi's well-being and "the deprivation of her rights":[21][22] We now ask that one or more international organizations with responsibilities and rights under the Geneva Conventions be permitted access to Roxana immediately to ascertain her health and well-being and determine the conditions under which she is held.

If no charges are filed, we now urge her immediate release and ask that she be given permission to return to her home country, the United States.After more than five weeks of captivity, on March 8, Saberi was allowed to see an attorney for the first time.

On March 18, marking 47 days of detention, the Saberi family called on Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to intervene during the run-up to the Persian Nowruz holiday.

[26] Saberi's father, who was in Iran at the time but was not allowed into the courtroom, told NPR his daughter was coerced into making incriminating statements.

US State Department spokesman Robert Wood questioned the transparency of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court judicial system, commenting that a Swiss representative was not allowed in the courtroom during Saberi's trial.

On April 21, 2009, Bahman Ghobadi, an Iranian film director, published a letter declaring Saberi's innocence and urging those who knew her to step in and defend her.

[4] After Saberi was released from prison, one of her lawyers declared that she had obtained a classified document while working as a translator for a powerful clerical lobby.

I had a research article that was public information, but my captors lied and claimed I had a classified document, evidently to pretend that my case was legitimate.

"[45] Saberi has suggested that the lawyer may have been under pressure from the Iranian government to say after her release that the document was classified, even though in court he had argued that it was not.