Journalist group: US reporter hospitalized in Iran after hunger strike

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The American journalist on a hunger strike for two weeks to protest her imprisonment in Iran was briefly hospitalized after she intensified her fast by refusing to drink water, Reporters Without Borders said Monday. The press freedom group said 32-year-old Roxana Saberi was taken Friday to a clinic at Teheran's Evin prison, where she has been held since her arrest in January. She was released from the clinic within a day after again drinking water, the group said. Saberi's Iranian-born father, who traveled to Iran to seek his daughter's release, said last month that she was drinking only sweetened water while refusing food to protest her eight-year jail sentence for allegedly spying for the US. Reporters Without Borders said her father, Reza Saberi, told the group over the weekend that she stopped drinking water after Iranian authorities denied she was on a hunger strike.