University of California, Berkeley grads freed from Iranian Evin Prison!
Freelance journalist Shane Bauer and is friend Joshua Fattal, both 29, were released from Evin Prison, after 26 months, when a local court set bail for each of them at $500,000, essentially ransoms, rather than force each of them to serve eight-year sentences for espionage convictions. The two men RAN down the stairs from the airplane in Muscat, Oman, ONE DAY before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Also in Oman was Sarah Shourd, 33 and Bauer’s fiance, was released last year for medical reasons, also on $500,000 bail, after serving 410 days in solitary confinement. An analyst said that the timing of Shourd’s release last year was no coincidence (either!)
“I think President Ahmadinejad really wanted to use this as a way of building up a store of goodwill just before he comes to New York,” Columbia University Prof. Gary Sick said last year after Shourd came home.
In addition to Shourd, Bauer’s parents and two sisters, as well as Fattal’s parents and brother, were waiting in Oman. The attorney for Bauer and Fattal, Masoud Shafii, said that the $1 million bail had been paid by the Omani government. The Swiss represented U.S. interests, since the U.S. has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the hostage crisis of 1979.
The two men released statements but accepted no questions.
“We’re so happy we are free and so relieved we are free,” said Fattal. “Our deepest gratitude goes toward his majesty Sultan Qaboos of Oman for obtaining our release. We’re sincerely grateful for the government of Oman for hosting us and our families.”
Bauer said: “Two years in prison is too long and we sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and Iran.”
President Barack Obama welcomed the “wonderful news” and said that he could not be happier for the families of the men. President Obama thanked Oman, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, and the Swiss government for their assistance.
The Omani envoy to Tehran, Salem al Ismaily, said in an earlier statement that the two men were in the custody of the Omani government and would spend a couple of days in Muscat “before heading home.”
Bauer is a Minnesota native whose photography and writing have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. He and Shourd were living and working in Damascus, Syria – he as a freelance journalist and she teaching English to Iraqi refugees. Fattal is a native of Pennsylvania and visited the couple after working as a teaching fellow in Africa and Asia. Shourd, a native of Los Angeles, said that the three were arrested while hiking near a waterfall that is popular with tourists. An armed guard beckoned them off a path and then refused to let them return. The border in the area is “unmarked and indistinguishable” according to Shourd.
At UC Berkeley, Bauer majored in peace and conflict studies with a minor in Arabic. Shourd graduated with a major in English and tutored middle-school students in Berkeley. Later, she did some writing from the Middle East. Fattal majored in environmental economics and policy.
-Bill at
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