U.S. journalist freed from Iran prison expresses joy

Every morning for the past week and a half, Cindy Larson-Casselton pinned a yellow ribbon that says "Free Roxana" to her shirt.On Monday, it wasn't necessary."Hallelujah!" Larson-Casselton said when she heard that American journalist Roxana Saberi, a former babysitter to her two daughters, had been released from jail in Iran.Saberi underscored that jubilation on Tuesday during a brief appearance before the media outside her home in Tehran. "I am very happy that I have been released and reunited with my father and mother," said Saberi, 32, a freelance reporter for National Public Radio, British Broadcasting Corp. and other news outlets. "I am very grateful to all the people who knew me or didn't know me and helped for my release, "she said in brief remarks outside her home in north Tehran. "I don't have any specific plans for the time being. I want to stay with my parents. "Saberi's father, Iranian-born Reza Saberi, joined her outside the building and said the family was making plans to return to the United States, but that it would not happen on Tuesday or Wednesday. Saberi had been held in Tehran's Evin prison since Jan. 31. She was sentenced after a closed trial to eight years for spying for the United States.In the face of pressure from world leaders and high-level Iranian officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an Iranian appeals court reduced her punishment to a two-year suspended sentence. She is free to leave the country."I'm very happy that she is free. Roxana is in good condition," Reza Saberi, told the Associated Press on Monday. "We had expected her release, but not so soon. She will be preparing to leave (Iran) tomorrow or the day after tomorrow."Saberi was born in the USA and grew up in Fargo, N.D., where her father taught English and her mother is a pathologist. She has Iranian citizenship through her father, who is from Iran.A former MissNorth Dakota, Saberi moved to Iran to work six years ago. The Iranian government revoked her press credentials in 2006, but she continued to work.President Obama considers her release "a welcome humanitarian gesture" and "is relieved," spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "We want to continue to stress she was wrongly accused," he said.Reza Saberi has said his daughter was working on a book on Iranian culture, society and history and had been planning to return to the USA.Kurdish Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, who said he worked with Saberi and fell in love with her, said in an interview from Tehran that he spoke with her by phone after her release. She told him she was on her way to the doctor for a checkup, and they made plans to see each other today, he said.Ghobadi said Saberi helped write his new film, Nobody Knows about the Persian Cats. "I want to make films with her forever," he said.Larson-Casselton, 51, teaches at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., where she also lives. Saberi was one of her late husband's students at Concordia.Saberi was supposed to be the commencement speaker at Concordia last week, she said. Instead, students and faculty pinned yellow ribbons to their robes.Larson-Casselton and her daughters, now 16 and 17, planned to toast Saberi's release Monday night. "I'm delighted beyond words and relieved," she said. "I can't wait to give her a hug."