Thursday, September 9, 2010; 1:28 PM
TEHRAN – One of the three American hikers jailed in Iran for more than a year on spying charges will be released Saturday, at the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, Iranian culture ministry authorities said Thursday.
Reporters were told by an official with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to gather in a northern Tehran hotel on Saturday for a meeting. The hikers’ lawyer, Masoud Shafii, said it is widely expected that Sarah Shourd, the only woman among the three, will be released.
“They are not spies, they have been held for over a year without a trial and according to the law should all be released. I will be very happy if Sarah will be freed,” he said.
Shourd, 32, has been held alone in a cell and is said to have been ill and depressed. She is engaged to Shane Bauer, 28, who with the other member of their group, Joshua Fattal, 28, is in another cell.
By keeping the two men in Tehran, Iranian authorities are indicating that the case is not over. On Sunday, the minister of intelligence, Heydar Moslehi, said investigations were ongoing. “In my opinion, legally they can only be charged with illegal entry,” said Shafii, the hikers’ lawyer.
The three were hiking in the mountains of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region on July 31, 2009, when, according to their families, they strayed across the border accidentally. Authorities in Tehran confirmed three days later that the three had been arrested, and an Iranian Arabic-language television network quoted police sources as saying they were “CIA agents.”
Bauer and Shourd were freelance journalists who were living together in Damascus, Syria, where Shourd also taught English and was studying Arabic, friends and relatives said. Fattal, 27, is a friend of Bauer’s who was visiting the Middle East to explore his father’s roots in Iraq, friends said. All three graduated from the University of California at Berkeley.
Their mothers came to Tehran to visit them in May.
Representatives from the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. interests in the Islamic Republic, were not immediately available for comment Thursday.
The United States has approached several countries to intervene as third parties in the case, diplomats in Tehran said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.
U.S. officials “expected Iran to release at least one of the hikers, after nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri returned to the country. They said they had released him, and wanted us to secure the release of one of the hikers in return,” a senior diplomat representing a Muslim nation said.
Amiri played a central role in a cold-war-like spy drama that reached a climax in July when the scientist arrived at the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. He had posted a series of conflicting videos online, some saying that he was kidnapped and others claiming he was studying in the United States. U.S. officials disputed Amiri’s account, saying that he defected voluntarily and provided valuable intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program before increased worries over his family prompted him to seek a return.
