Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on Sunday urged the judiciary to let Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of espionage, to freely defend herself.

A letter sent by the president’s office urged Tehran’s prosecutor general, Saeed Mortazavi who is known as a hardline judge and responsible for most political cases in the judiciary, to make sure the defendant ”enjoys all the freedoms and legal rights to defend the charges”.