In U.S., hikers lash out at Iran

NEW YORK — Two American hikers held for years in an Iranian prison came home Sunday, declaring they were detained because of their nationality, not because they might have crossed the border from Iraq.

Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer arrived in New York Sunday, ending their diplomatic and personal ordeal with a sharp rebuke of the country that sentenced each to eight years in jail for espionage and illegally walking into Iran. They say they may never know if they actually stepped across the border while hiking and getting lost.

“From the very start, the only reason we have been held hostage is because we are American,” Fattal said. “Iran has always tied our case to its political disputes with the U.S.”

The two 29-year-olds were freed last week under a $1 million bail deal and arrived Wednesday in Oman, greeted by relatives and fellow hiker Sarah Shourd, who was released last year.

The men’s families said Sunday they don’t know who paid the bail.

The men’s 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 Iran-Iraq border 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 last year before any trial.

A beaming Shourd faced reporters. “There’s a huge burden lifted off of all of our chests — so much joy,” she said. “Shane and Josh and I are beginning our lives again, and there are so many new joys that await us; I’ve never felt as free as I feel today.”

But her face darkened when she was asked whether the men had been mistreated in captivity. She said Bauer was beaten and Fattal forced down a flight of stairs.

The men took turns reading statements, surrounded by relatives and Shourd. They didn’t take questions from reporters.

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.”

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 United States and other Western nations see 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 don’t know whether they had even crossed into Iran: “We will probably never know.”

The irony of it all, Bauer said, “is that Sarah, Josh and I oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility.”

The two also detailed the difficult conditions in the Tehran prison 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,” Fattal said.

Added Bauer: “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 in 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.

“Solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives,” Fattal said. “We lived in a world of lies and false hope.”

Until their release, the last direct contact family members had with Bauer and Fattal was in May 2010, when their mothers were permitted a short visit in Tehran, which Iranian officials used for high-profile propaganda.

Since her release, Shourd has lived in Oakland, Calif. Bauer, a freelance journalist, grew up in Onamia, Minn., and Fattal, an environmental activist, is from Elkins Park, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb.