Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was hopeful the US would release several Iranians it is holding now that Tehran has freed an American jailed for more than a year and accused of spying.
Before setting off for a trip to the UN General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said the release of the Iranians would be an appropriate moral gesture by Washington.
“We are hopeful the Iranians there will be released and reunited with their families,” he said in a state TV interview broadcast on Friday night.
American Sarah Shourd was released on Tuesday after more than 13 months in prison in what Iranian officials have described as a humanitarian gesture because she is said to be in ill health.
Two other Americans with whom she was arrested last year — Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal — are still being held in a Tehran prison on espionage charges.
Ahmadinejad has suggested in the past that the three could be traded for Iranians held in the US, raising concerns that the Americans were to be used as bargaining chips as the two countries face off over issues like Iran’s disputed nuclear program. In December, Iran released a list of 11 Iranians it says are in US custody.
One of them, nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, returned to Iran in July. Iran said he had been kidnapped during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June last year and taken to the US.
Washington said he was a willing defector who later changed his mind and was allowed to return home.
Ahmadinejad said the US should now release the others.
“From a moral viewpoint, there is an expectation that the US takes a step,” Ahmadinejad said. “There is an expectation in public opinion to release some of them.”
Speaking of Shourd’s release, he said: “We hope they appreciate this job.”
Iranian officials have said Ahmadinejad personally intervened to get Shourd released on medical grounds.
Her mother has said the 32-year-old Shourd has a lump on her breast and precancerous cervical cells.
The three Americans were detained along Iran’s border with Iraq in July last year and later accused of spying. Their families say the Americans were innocent hikers in the scenic mountains of Iraq’s Kurdish region and if they did stray across the border into Iran, they did so unwittingly.
The Gulf sultanate of Oman played a key role in helping mediate the release of Shourd, who left Tehran on Tuesday and flew to Oman’s capital, Muscat, where she reunited with her mother.
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