Iran ready to free US female hiker

Sep 13, 2010 |

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Sept. 12: A senior prosecutor said on Sunday that Iran will release US hiker Sarah Shourd on bail, as he criticised members of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government for interfering in judicial issues. Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said that Shourd, one of three American hikers detained in Iran for more than a year for spying, had been granted bail on health grounds on a surety of around $500,000.

“For the female defendant (Shourd), bail has been set at five billion Iranian rials (around $500,000),” the official IRNA news agency quoted Mr Dolatabadi as telling reporters. “She can be freed by posting the bail... Her lawyer has been informed,” he said, adding that the decision was taken after “the judge confirmed Shourd’s illness.”

Shourd’s mother Nora said in August that her daughter was being held in solitary confinement despite suffering from a pre-cancerous cervical condition, a lump in her breast and depression. Shourd was arrested with fellow hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal on July 31, 2009 after straying across the border from neighbouring Iraq. Iranian authorities have accused the three Americans of illegally entering the Islamic republic and of spying. But they insist they entered the country by mistake after getting lost during a trek in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Several Iranian officials had said on Thursday that Shourd would be released on Saturday. But legal technicalities delayed her release, Mr Dolatabadi said on Friday. Shourd’s release could ease tensions between Washington and Tehran, which have heightened in recent months over Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment programme.

Her case has highlighted deep divisions between Mr Ahmadinejad’s government and institutions run by traditional conservatives such as Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who heads the judiciary. Larijani in August hit out at Mr Ahmadinejad over remarks he made about a separate legal case, while his brother, Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, has repeatedly criticised the President over his handling of the economy.

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