A senior prosecutor said yesterday that Iran would release US hiker Sarah Shourd on bail, as he criticized members of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government for interfering in judicial issues.
Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said that Shourd, one of three US hikers detained in Iran for more than a year for spying, had been granted bail on health grounds on a surety of about US$500,000.
“For the female defendant [Shourd], bail has been set at 5 billion Iranian rials [about US$500,000],” the official IRNA news agency quoted Dolatabadi as telling reporters.
“She can be freed by posting the bail ... Her lawyer has been informed,” he said, adding that the decision was taken after “the judge confirmed Ms Shourd’s illness.”
Shourd’s mother Nora said last month that her daughter was being held in solitary confinement despite suffering from a pre-cancerous cervical condition, a lump in her breast and depression.
Shourd was arrested with fellow hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal on July 31 last year, after straying across the border from Iraq.
Iranian authorities have accused the three Americans of illegally entering the Islamic republic and of spying. However, they insist they entered the country by mistake after getting lost during a trek in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Several Iranian officials had said on Thursday that Shourd would be released on Saturday. However, legal technicalities delayed her release, Dolatabadi said on Friday.
Shourd’s release could ease tensions between Washington and Tehran, which have heightened in recent months over Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment program.
Her case has highlighted deep divisions between Ahmadinejad’s government and institutions run by traditional conservatives such as Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who heads the judiciary.
Larijani last month hit out at Ahmadinejad over remarks he made about a separate legal case, while his brother, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, has repeatedly criticized the president over his handling of the economy.
Yesterday, Dolatabadi criticized the government directly, saying that “releasing information on judicial cases should not be done by government officials, and judicial authorities should handle it.”
Iranian officials, including Ahmadinejad, had previously said the three US hikers could be swapped for Iranian citizens in US custody.
Talk of such an exchange had emerged when US authorities allowed the return home of an Iranian researcher Shahram Amiri, who surfaced in Washington in July after disappearing in Saudi Arabia last year.
However, the Fars news agency quoted Dolatabadi as saying that there was “no link” between Amiri’s case and that of the three US hikers.
He reiterated that the three hikers were accused of espionage.
“The case is nearly complete and the judge has issued an indictment for the three Americans accused of spying,” he said, adding that Bauer and Fattal had been remanded in custody.
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