U.S. hikers held in Iran contact families

[Robb]

Source: SF Chronicle


On Tuesday, Nora Shourd of Oakland received the phone call she had been waiting more than seven months to receive: It was her daughter, Sarah, calling from an Iranian prison.

"She told me, 'I'm OK, I'm coping,' " Nora Shourd, 61, recalled Wednesday.

Sarah Shourd, 31, and two other recent UC Berkeley graduates who have been held in Iran since hiking across the border from Iraq last summer were each allowed to call home for the first time.

Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 27, were hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan July 31 when they crossed the Iranian border and were arrested on suspicion of spying. Friends said the three had been backpacking to see a waterfall during a break from teaching jobs in Damascus, Syria. Their families maintain the hikers strayed across the unmarked border accidentally.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/11/BA051CDLOR.DTL

[yava]

1. Let them go Ayatola, I-telayuso

[yava]

2. Just let them go home Ayatola, Ayatolayouso