Iran says U,S,-Iranian reporter appeals jail term

By Fredrik Dahl and Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian-American journalist jailed by Tehran for spying has appealed against her eight-year sentence, the judiciary said on Tuesday as her father warned she would starve herself to death if the verdict was upheld.

Judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said he hoped the verdict against U.S.-born Roxana Saberi would be changed, the official IRNA news agency reported, without elaborating.

Her father Reza said he could not confirm the appeal had been lodged but that he saw "positive steps toward justice" in the case and hoped she would be freed by a higher court.

Saberi, 31, was sentenced on Saturday on charges of spying for the United States, in a verdict that could complicate Washington's efforts toward reconciliation with the Islamic Republic after three decades of mutual mistrust.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on Tehran's general prosecutor to ensure that the freelance reporter enjoys full legal rights to defend herself. The judiciary chief has said her appeal must be dealt with "in a careful, quick and fair way."

"We hope that in the court of appeal the verdict will be overturned and our daughter will become free," Reza Saberi said in the Tehran apartment where she was arrested in late January.

But if the sentence was upheld, she "will most probably go on hunger strike and she will commit suicide," he told Reuters, his Japanese wife Akiko sitting beside him.

"She won't stay there for eight years ... even for eight months is too much for her," said the soft-spoken 68-year-old, who moved to the United States in 1973 and returned with his wife earlier this month to follow their daughter's case.