The Global Note: Hikers Free…Obama & The World…Typhoon Slams Japan…Jack The ... ABC News (blog)

21.09.11

FINALLY FREE

-BREAKING…After more than two years – and then a wrenching week of on-again, off-again news about a potential release, Americans Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal have been freed from Tehran’s Evin Prison today – the expectation (ours and their families’) being that their next step will be the Persian Gulf sultanate of Oman. That’s where Jim SCIUTTO is, and he reports the second judge signed the release order for the Americans held in Iran, setting the way for the processing of a bail payment and then freedom for the Americans. Omani and Swiss representatives entered the prison to bring the hikers out. The hikers’ Iranian lawyer, Masoud Shafiei, en route to see the men earlier Wednesday, said “The case is over.”

-BACKGROUND Bauer, Fattal, and Sarah Shourd were arrested along the Iran-Iraq border in July 2009 and sentenced last month to eight years each in prison. Shourd was freed last year on bail. The three Americans — friends from their days at the University of California at Berkeley — have maintained their innocence and denied the espionage charges against them. Since her release last year, Shourd has lived in Oakland, California. Bauer, a freelance journalist, grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, and Fattal, an environmental activist, is from suburban Philadelphia. Bauer proposed marriage to Shourd while in prison.

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