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American Hikers Moved to Tehran, Pre-Trial on Sunday
Breaking Friday Evening: ABC News's Martha Raddatz is reporting that Mother Jones contributor Shane Bauer, his girlfriend Sarah Shourd, and friend Josh Fattal—who apparently strayed into Iran while hiking in the Kurdistan region of Iraq—are being moved to Tehran. ABC characterizes this as a sign that the negotiations over the fate of the three Americans will drag on.
Yesterday, Mother Jones printed the account of a fourth American hiker, Shon Meckfessel, about how Shane and his friends came to be detained. " I hope that people understand my friends’ presence in the area for what it was: a simple and very regrettable mistake," he concludes.
Shane has a piece in the upcoming issue of Mother Jones on corruption among Iraqi contractors. In accordance with the wishes of the families of all three missing Americans, we plan to post the piece early next week.
Update: On Saturday, PressTV, an English-language news agency funded by the Iranian government, reported that the a commission of the Majlis (Parliament) will meet to discuss the fate of the three Americans tomorrow. Since the US has no formal diplomatic relations with Iran, the Swiss are acting as an intermediary. Things got odder on Saturday when Iraq (an age-old enemy of Iran) also pressed Tehran officials for details surrounding the hikers' arrest.
Clara Jeffery is Co-Editor of Mother Jones. You can follow her on Twitter here.
Oh just admit it
Why doesn't the CIA just admit that they were spies?
Hikers in Iran
The Hikers in question have been described as experienced travelers but the reality is that they were extremely naive and nonchalant about the whole thing. With hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and a huge navy armada just off the coast of Iran and all the talk of bombing Iran both by Israel and the US who in his right mind will just go for a stroll and enter illegally into Iran?
This is a pathetic case of ignorance and insanity on the part of the American hikers. Things will just have to run its course and hopefully they will be wiser once they are released. Let us not forget that the US detained 5 Iranian diplomats and kept them for 2 years in absolute defiance of international law.
Perhaps not ignorance and recklessness
Apparently Kurdistan is very stable and has always been a place worth visiting; NYTimes had a travel feature on it within the past year.
Shane Bauer is fluent in Arabic, a freelancer and seems to have spent a lot of time in Iraq and probably the Mid-East. (His late-June article in The Nation, on US-trained Iraqi special forces, is quite good and rather critical of the operation. It should vindicate him of ridiculous "he's-a-CIA-agent" charges.)
IF, I spoke Arabic and had the necessary funding, Syria, Jordan, Kurdistan and other "Muslim World" destinations are places I'd like to visit.
Why should it vindicate
Why should it vindicate him??? Have you never heard of disinformation and deceit? Both of which are used liberally by all sides. And, the possibility that he is CIA connected isn't ridiculous, he's just the sort of person they DO recruit.
Misha
Misha, what's it like to be a stark raving lunatic?