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Iran FM hopes for release of US suspects
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi expresses hope that the trial of the three US nationals detained on charges of espionage and illegal entry will result in their freedom.
“God willing … the Judiciary will present necessary information in this respect when the time is right,” Salehi said at a joint press conference with his Beninese counterpart Nassirou Arifari Bako in Tehran on Saturday.
He praised the Judiciary for processing the case with “fairness and justice.”
The fourth and final trial session to address the charges against Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal was held on July 31in Branch 15 of Tehran´s Revolutionary Court.
The session was held behind closed doors in the absence of Shourd, who was released in September 2010 on bail.
Shourd, Bauer and Fattal were arrested in July 2009 after illegally crossing the border from the mountains of Iraq´s Kurdistan region.
They were later charged with espionage after the Tehran prosecutor found "compelling evidence" that the three US citizens had been cooperating with US intelligence agencies.
The three American nationals have pleaded not guilty.
The Iranian foreign minister also made a reference to the condition of Iranian nationals detained in the US, including Shahrzad Mir-Qolikhan, an innocent Iranian woman who has been in a US prison for three years.
“We are pursuing the matter through different channels and there is a great hope that the issue will be resolved,” Salehi pointed out.
“Ms. Mir-Qolikhan´s family is now in the US to meet their loved one,” he added.
Mir-Qolikhan was arrested in the US in December 2007, after being forced to return to the States from a vacation in Cyprus. She has been permitted brief phone calls to her family in Iran during her three-year imprisonment.
Her former husband, Mahmoud Seif, had allegedly tried to export night-vision goggles to Iran from Austria. However, she was detained and sentenced to five years in prison by a Florida federal court in the absence of her husband.
Tehran has repeatedly slammed the case as an example of human rights violation in the United States, demanding the release of the 33-year-old Iranian national.
End.
Last Updated: 7 August 2011
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