Press TV – May 13, 2009
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Vali Reza Nasr, a senior Obama administration advisor on Iran, has come to the Iranian capital of Tehran.
New reports claim that Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel may be behind the visit.
"President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was informed well after Nasr entered the country," Tabnak reported on Wednesday.
Nasr, who was appointed as a senior advisor to Richard Holbrooke – the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan – is the son of renowned Islamic philosopher and historian of science, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Tabnak and
Fararu claimed the alleged unannounced trip by the US official to be linked to the recent release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.
According to the reports, Saberi's appeals court had been postponed due to the fact that the visit by Nasr had not yet been confirmed.
There has been no official confirmation of whether Nasr is, in fact, in Tehran.
Saberi, 32, is a freelance journalist who was initially detained in late January after she continued her work in Iran after her press credentials had expired.
She was later sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the government of the United States.
After a Tehran court of appeals reviewed her case, her jail sentence was reduced to a two-year suspended term and she was released from Iran's Evin house of detention.
Press TV contacted officials close to the case and learned that the suspended sentence will be automatically abolished if Saberi shows no unlawful conduct in the next five years.
MT/AA
www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=94554&ionid=351020101
Last updated 15/05/2009
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