Elkins Park family presses on for son's Iran release

When her son and two other American hikers were detained in Iran in July, Laura Fattal's first instinct was to work 24/7 to somehow win their release.

"We were in a real state of shock," she said yesterday, recalling that she barely slept or ate in the days after Joshua, 27, was arrested with friends Shane Bauer, also 27, and Sarah Shourd, 31, for entering Iran illegally.

Since then, the Elkins Park woman has come to the realization that her fight to free her son is a marathon, not a sprint, and she has adjusted.

"As an individual, as a parent, you have to be in your best shape to help your child," she said. "You must sleep. You must eat to make your best decisions, and that's what I've tried to do."

Optimistic, but occasionally tearing up, Laura Fattal described the ordeal of not knowing the condition or whereabouts of Joshua and his friends, as well as the international campaign to keep a spotlight on their case.

She held out hope that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scheduled speech today at the United Nations might also include a goodwill gesture - timed to the recent conclusion of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan - to free the three.

In a letter routed to Tehran through the Iranian mission to the United Nations last week, Fattal and the mothers of Bauer and Shourd asked Ahmadinejad to use the visit as an opportunity to resolve the situation.

"For seven weeks now we have been unable to speak to our children," they wrote. "As you set out on your journey, please fill the emptiness their absence leaves in our hearts."

As of yesterday, they had received no reply. "But we still have hope," said Fattal, an art historian who teaches at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University.

She took a leave this semester to devote herself full-time to the case, as did her elder son, Alex, 30, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Harvard University. Joshua's father, Jacob Fattal, is the publisher of U.S. Tech, an international-technology monthly newspaper.

Working with the other families, the Fattals helped create a Web site - FreeTheHikers.org - to spread the word about their detention and, she said, hopefully humanize them in the eyes of their captors.

The site describes Josh, a Cheltenham High School graduate and president of the Class of 2000, as an environmentalist who worked for three years with a sustainable-living-skills group in Oregon. As a teaching fellow with the International Honors Program, he visited England, India, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Mexico.

Bauer, a freelance photographer, is originally from Minnesota. Shourd, an English teacher and freelance writer, was raised in California. They were living in Damascus, Syria, when Fattal joined them for the trip to Kurdistan.

Through the Web site, "we wanted to share the lives of our children. We wanted to have a coherency to the picture," Laura Fattal said.

"Josh, Shane, and Sarah are hikers. But also they have a global interest in religions and cultures and civilizations all over the world. He embraces the diversity of the world. And I know Sarah and Shane do as well."

The three friends, graduates of the University of California at Berkeley, were hiking in the mountains of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq when they wandered, apparently inadvertently, into Iran and were grabbed by border guards.

Because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, the State Department has attempted to negotiate through Swiss envoys in Tehran. But even the Swiss have not been allowed consular access to the detainees.

Seated next to Alex, Laura Fattal said yesterday that the information void was crushing.

While it appears Iran might charge the three hikers simply with entering the country illegally, at least one Iranian lawmaker has said he believes they are spies.

"I think if Josh were to hear something like that and he had a mouthful of water, he might spray it on you," his brother said. "It's kind of laughable."

His mother added: "Josh loves to hike. And this was a terrain of mountains, with unusual trees - fig, pomegranate, and pistachio. I know that was probably an attraction for him. . . . Any suggestion that they were doing anything but hiking is beyond belief."

As for the wisdom of hiking in Iraq nowadays, the Fattals say the Kurdish region was safer than many people realized.

"We can understand that people might look at this and see the images that we are consuming on a daily basis about Iraq and say, 'Well, what were they doing?' " Alex said.

The three were in a "region where a lot of Western tourists are going. This was a travel incident and they weren't taking undue risks. . . . This was 'the other Iraq.' "

The Fattals say they have tried to study similar incidents involving foreigners held in Iran but haven't found perfect analogies.

They "tend to be academics or journalists with dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship," Alex said. "But looking at the trajectory of other cases . . . it takes around a month [to be freed] if you are lucky, and more likely around three to four" months.

With that time frame in mind, the families are offering "Free The Hikers" T-shirts on the Web site. The money raised is used to translate parts of the site and other important documents into Farsi, Laura Fattal said.

If the captivity extends to next Wednesday - marking two months since the hikers' arrests - there will be a vigil at Wall Park in Elkins Park to coincide with other vigils around the country. The Web site will provide information about that event, but the Fattals are hoping it won't come to that.

Former President Bill Clinton's recent mission to North Korea to bring back two American journalists raised in their minds the possibility of a similar mission for their loved ones, Laura Fattal said.

"We were very happy for them, very happy," she said. "But we know every instance is different."

Added Alex: "There are a lot of people advocating for Josh, Shane, and Sarah's quick release. An envoy is only one option. . . . We'll take whatever works."