MINNEAPOLIS — The families of two Americans imprisoned in Iran for nearly two years say they’re counting on a court hearing Sunday to end their ordeal at last.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, are due for what Iranian authorities have said will be a final hearing in their long espionage case. It’s scheduled two years to the day after they were arrested along with another American, Sarah Shourd, during a hike on the Iraq-Iran border. Shourd was freed in September.
The families have been working to make sure Iranian authorities know the rest of the world is watching. They’ve elicited statements of support from President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and well-known Muslims such as former boxing champion Muhammad Ali and Yusuf Islam, the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens.
Shourd, Fattal’s mother, Laura, and his brother, Alex, planned a rally in New York today outside the Iranian mission to the United Nations.
The Associated Press
