The lawyer of freed US-Iranian reporter Roxana Saberi said that she was convicted for espionage, since she was guilty according to Iranian law, local media reported on Wednesday.

"Saberi had been convicted because she had copied and kept a confidential Iranian government document about the US war on Iraq, the local satellite Press TV quoted Saleh Nikbakht as saying.

She had also visited Israel in 2006 which is forbidden for Iranians, Nikbakht said.

In her appeal court, Saberi confirmed that she obtained the document and copied it out of "curiosity" while she was working as a freelance translator for the influential Expediency Council, a legislative arbitration body, he added.

Saberi, who acknowledged visiting Israel, said in her defense that she had carried out no activities against Iran there, according to the report.

In April, Saberi received eight years of sentence, but in the appeal court on Monday, her sentence was reduced to a two-year suspended term.

"She provided the necessary cooperation and in her remarks she confessed" to the involvement in acts of espionage, Iran's judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said on Monday.

"Since she had requested the court's pardon, the court reduced her sentence to two years, and considering it was the first time she had committed such a crime and she showed remorse, the judges suspended her sentence for five years," Jamshidi added.

Saberi, a 32-year-old freelance journalist born in the United States and whose father is an Iranian, was arrested in Iran in the second half of January 2009 on charges of espionage for the United States. She was freed from the jail in Tehran on Monday afternoon.

In Iran, Saberi has been working for various news organizations including the BBC and U.S. National Public Radio (NPR).

According to Iranian authorities, Saberi had been denied press credentials since 2006, but she defied the ban and continued journalistic activities.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2009)