It shouldn't surprise anyone that a kangaroo court in Iran has finally handed down an eight-year jail sentence to Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist, for spying for the United States. The harsh sentence was practically preordained, given Iran's awful record of suppressing freedom of the press. It's probably just what the ruthless and autocratic mullahs in Tehran had in mind when they first accused Saberi of buying a bottle of wine.

As a journalist, and one who has received death threats for my writing, I find her cause particularly compelling. If indeed Iran had irrefutable evidence that Saberi was a spy, why did they try her behind closed doors? An open trial would have been a golden opportunity for Iran to lay bare the spying charges for the whole world to see, to unveil this American conspiracy against it.

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