Three Americans jailed in Iran for 10 months embraced their mothers and spoke of their life in Tehran’s most dreaded prison in an emotional reunion that Iranian authorities broadcast on a main international channel.
The women hope their week-long visit will secure the release of Sarah Shourd, 31, her boyfriend, Shane Bauer, 27, and their friend Josh Fattal, 27.
The mothers on Thursday rushed to embrace their children as they entered a room at a high-rise hotel overlooking Evin Prison, where the three have been held.
The families later ate lunch together, a feast of rice, kebabs and other traditional Middle Eastern dishes. The prisoners ate heartily and appeared to relish the food.
The visit was scheduled to last until evening, said the families’ Iranian lawyer, Masoud Shafii, but it was not clear whether the three detainees would have to return to the prison for the night.
Iran’s main task appeared aimed at leveraging high propaganda value for the visit.
The meeting at the Esteghlal Hotel in north Tehran received extensive coverage on Iran’s state-run Press TV, the government’s main English-language broadcast arm.
Reporters for foreign media were also allowed their first glimpse of the three Americans since their arrest on the border with Iraq in July last year.
The trio has been accused of spying and entering Iran illegally.
Relatives say the three were simply hiking in Iraq’s scenic and largely peaceful mountainous northern Kurdish region.
Shafii predicted it was “very unlikely” that the jailed Americans would be allowed to return home with their mothers because the case has not yet reached the courts, but he added in an interview that decisions could be made outside the normal legal framework.
“Anything can happen,” he said.
Iran granted the women visas to visit their children in what it called an “Islamic humanitarian gesture” and the mothers appealed for them to release the three on the same grounds.
“We hope we’re going home soon, maybe with our mothers,” Josh Fattal said as the group was interviewed.
“We don’t really know much what’s going on outside prison. We hope that Iran can continue with humanitarian gestures, like letting our mothers come, by releasing us on humanitarian grounds,” Shane Bauer said.
They described their routines behind bars and the small things that take on major significance — being allowed books, letters from home, exercise and the hour each day they are all together.
The last direct contact with their families was a five-minute phone call in March.
Sarah Shourd said the their treatment by the Iranian authorities has been “decent,” but that loneliness had been the hardest part of her detention because she was isolated as a woman.
“Shane and Josh are in a room together, but I’m alone and that’s the most difficult thing for me ... I am alone for 23 hours,” she said.
Swiss diplomats, who represent US interests in Iran, had reported that Sarah was suffering a serious gynecological condition, while Bauer had a stomach ailment. Health issues were not raised during the meeting.
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