Freed US hikers: Iran held us because we’re American

Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer tell press conference of difficult prison conditions and surprise of sudden release Declaring that they were detained because of their nationality, not their actions, two American hikers held for more than two years in an Iranian prison came home on Sunday, ending a diplomatic and personal ordeal with a sharp rebuke of the country that accused them of crossing the border from Iraq. Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, both 29, were freed last week under a $1m (£640,000) bail deal and arrived on Wednesday in Oman, greeted by relatives and fellow hiker Sarah Shourd, who was released last year . Their saga began in July 2009 with what they called ‘a wrong turn into the wrong country.’ The three say they were hiking together in Iraq’s relatively peaceful Kurdish region along the border with Iran when Iranian guards detained them. They always maintained their innocence, saying they might have accidentally wandered into Iran. The two men were convicted of spying last month. Shourd, to whom Bauer proposed marriage while they were imprisoned, was charged but freed before any trial. The men took turns reading statements at a news conference on Sunday in New York, surrounded by relatives and with Shourd at their side. Fattal said he wanted to make clear that while he and Bauer “applaud Iranian authorities for finally making the right decision”, they do not deserve undue credit for ending what they had “no right and no justification to start in the first place.” “From the very start, the only reason we have been held hostage is because we are American,” he said, adding that “Iran has always tied our case to its political disputes with the US” The two countries severed diplomatic ties three decades ago during the hostage crisis . Since then, both have tried to limit the other’s influence in the Middle East, and the US sees Iran as the greatest nuclear threat in the region. The hikers’ detention, Bauer said, was “never about crossing the unmarked border between Iran and Iraq. We were held because of our nationality.” He said they did not know whether they actually had crossed the border. The irony of it all, he said, “is that Sarah, Josh and I oppose the US policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility.” The two also told of difficult prison conditions, where they were held in near isolation. “Many times, too many times, we heard the screams of other prisoners being beaten and there was nothing we could do to help them,” said Fattal. Bauer added: “How can we forgive the Iranian government when it continues to imprison so many other innocent people and prisoners of conscience?” They said their phone calls with family members amounted to a total of 15 minutes over two years, and they had to go on repeated hunger strikes to receive letters. Eventually, they were told – falsely – that their families had stopped writing them letters. “We lived in a world of lies and false hope,” Fattal said. Fattal called their release a ‘total surprise’. On Wednesday, he said, they had just finished their brief daily open-air exercise and expected, as on other days, to be blindfolded and led back to their 2.5m by 4m cell. Instead, the prison guards took them downstairs, took their fingerprints and gave them civilian clothes. They were not told where they were going. The guards then led them to another part of the prison, where they met a diplomatic envoy from Oman, whose first words to the pair were “Let’s go home.” Hours later, the Americans were driven to the airport, then flown to Oman. Shourd was with the families to greet them on the tarmac at a royal airfield in Oman’s capital, Muscat. Close to midnight on Wednesday, Fattal and Bauer bounded down the steps from the blue-and-white plane. The men appeared very thin and pale, but in good health. The first hint of change in the case came last week when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Fattal and Bauer could be released within days, but wrangling within the country’s leadership delayed the efforts. On Wednesday, Iranian lawyer Masoud Shafiei secured the necessary judicial approval for the bail – $500,000 for each man. Iran’s foreign ministry called their release a gesture of Islamic mercy. Iran United States Middle East guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 25, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.