Two UC Berkeley alumni arrested in Iran for allegedly entering the country illegally were released Wednesday morning on $1 million bail after more than two years in an Iranian prison.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, were seized in July 2009 for crossing the border from Iraq into Iran while hiking. Bauer’s fiancee, 33-year-old Sarah Shourd, was also with them but was released last September on $500,000 bail.
According to The New York Times, Bauer and Fattal were seen Wednesday morning by Associated Press reporters leaving Evin Prison in Tehran in a diplomatic convoy that included Swiss and Omani officials. They flew to Muscat, Oman, where they were met by their families and throngs of reporters.
The families of the two hikers said in a statement that the release made Wednesday the “best day of our lives.”
“We now all want nothing more than to wrap Shane and Josh in our arms, catch up on two lost years and make a new beginning, for them and for all of us,” the families said in the statement.
The release of the hikers comes about a week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised that they would be freed as a humanitarian gesture “in a couple of days.” The next day, Iran’s judiciary contradicted these statements, saying the Americans’ release was not imminent.
Last month, Bauer and Fattal were convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison after more than two years of detention in an Iranian prison. Each received a five-year sentence for espionage and three additional years for allegedly illegally entering the country.
The conviction was widely condemned by world leaders as unnecessarily harsh. Last year, President Barack Obama denied that the three were ever affiliated with the U.S. government, so they could not be guilty of espionage, calling their detention “unjust.”
Claire Holmes, UC Berkeley associate vice chancellor for public affairs and university communications, said in a press release Wednesday that the hikers’ release “brings a joyful end to what was a heartbreaking ordeal for our alums and their loved ones.”
“We are relieved and thankful that our two alumni, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, will soon be reunited with family and friends after more than two years of imprisonment,” she said in the statement.
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After Bauer and his fiance Shourd had shilled for the loony left New American Media with their championing of Palestinian Islamofascists and castigation of democratic Israel, I was wondering if their incarceration by Iran’s Muslim fundamentalist regime had engendered some enlightenment on their part. At least for Shane Bauer, it appears that his imprisonment has taught him nothing. He and Shourd are the perfect reflections of those who majored in UC Berkeley’s “Ideology I,” Peace and Conflict Studies (a misnomer if there ever was one).
Here is Bauer’s first public response after his plane touched down in Oman:”Two years is too long in a prison,” Bauer said in a brief statement, “We sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and in Iran.”
“Unjustly imprisoned people in America?” “Political prisoners” unjustly jailed in the US? Now that’s gratitude for you. In addition to intoning a baldfaced ideological lie, it may reasonably be asked: What country does this anal passage think got him out of Islamofascist incarceration.
You put my very thoughts to word so beautifully that all I can add is, Bravo for laying it out clearly and cleanly. : } IMO, These ‘hikers’ should have remained guests of their Iranian friends…I’m sure their ideology suits better there than it will ever fit or suit here.
“released Wednesday morning on $1 million bail”
This is nonsense. Convicts can’t post bail and be released.
Go Bears!