While Reporters Without Borders celebrates the release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, Physicians for Human Rights are holding a virtual and live vigil today to draw attention to the continued imprisonment of Iranian doctors Kamiar and Arash Alaei.

The brothers’ HIV relief work landed them in an Iranian prison in June 2008. They were charged and later convicted of “communications with an enemy government” and “seeking to overthrow the Iranian government under article 508 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code” this winter according to the vigil website.

The doctors, who studied and have attended conferences in the US, had distributed condoms and clean needles in Iranian prisons to curtail HIV transmission.

Saberi’s conviction (“cooperating with a hostile state” ) was overthrown on the grounds that the United States is not hostile to Iran, according to an editorial in the Boston Globe. The reversal has diplomatic overtones, writes the Globe, which should also apply to the doctors.

Previous Nature coverage of this topic

An appeal to President Ahmadinejad – Nature Editorial, 29 January 2009

Iranian AIDS doctors’ trial draws condemnation – Nature, 28 January 2009

Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial – The Great Beyond, 07 January 2009

Iran holds AIDS doctors – Nature, 17 September 2008