A top Iranian official said on Tuesday that an appeal will begin in the week starting Saturday for a US-Iranian reporter who has been sentenced to eight years in jail on spying charges.
"There is going to be an appeal trial next week for Roxana Saberi," judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters, without giving an exact date. The Iranian week begins on a Saturday.
He said the bar association, the intelligence ministry and the prosecutor's representative had been informed to participate in the appeal hearing, which would be held behind closed doors.
Saberi, 32, was sentenced last month by a Tehran revolutionary court to an eight-year jail term on charges of spying for Iran's arch-foe, the United States.
She was initially arrested in January reportedly for buying alcohol, an illegal act in the Islamic republic.