New Visions

Three UC-Berkeley graduates in their late-20s, planned to hike along Iran border in 2009, and landed in jail.

It was in July 2009 when Sarah Shourd, with her boyfriend Shane Bauer and friend Josh Fattal, decided to hike the autonomous area of Kurdistan of northern Iran. The route was safe from the then ongoing troubles in Iraq. What followed was not imagined by any of the American hikers. The three were captured by the Iranian authorities and accused of illegally crossing the border of Iraq in to Iran.

They were taken to the Evin Prison of Iran which is famous for its allegations of torture. Sarah was kept in solitary confinement, where she was allowed to make a phone call to her home after seven months. Though she says that the female prison guard was kind to her and would console her when Sarah would break down in to sobs of hopelessness, her male friends were physically harassed to quite an extent. Josh was thrown down the stairs for having taken extra food, while a guard knocked Shane’s head to the wall till his head started bleeding. Sarah recalls that there was a time when they were afraid that they would be executed.

After much trouble and trying from the families of the three hikers, as well as from the US government, Hillary Clinton requesting the Iranian head of the state for a few times to leave the three Americans on “humanitarian” grounds, Sarah was released after 14 months of imprisonment.

Shane and Josh are still in prison.

The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly announced that the two men will be released on “humanitarian” grounds very soon. 26 months, and the wait is still on.