3 hikers could face Iran trial

The three American hikers detained in Iran, including Joshua Fattal, a 2000 graduate of Cheltenham High School, were dealt a setback yesterday in efforts to negotiate their release after a senior Iranian prosecutor accused them of entering Iran as spies.

Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabaddi said Fattal, 27, and his friends Shane Bauer, 27, and Sarah Shourd, 31, are "accused of espionage." He added that "an opinion" on their cases "will be given in the not-distant future."

Experts on Iranian affairs said such statements often precede the announcement of trials.

"If it comes to a formal trial, they would get some sort of [legal] representation. Whether that representation would be worth anything is quite another question," said Simon Henderson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The announcement that they are going to be put on trial ought to be seen not so much as a legal move but as another diplomatic twist seeking to get some sort of leverage."

While it is ominous whenever Americans are tried in Iran, any movement on the hikers' case also is encouraging, said Hooshang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers professor of Middle Eastern studies.

"A spy case is a one-way street. Whatever Iran decides, it decides," said Amirahmadi, who is also president of the American Iranian Council, a think tank on U.S.-Iran relations.

"Even if they are convicted - and they will be" if tried, he predicted - "I still think they will be set free at some point. I don't think they are facing long-term imprisonment or anything close to that."

He cited the precedent of Iranian American Roxana Saberi, a freelance journalist, who was arrested in January, convicted of espionage in April, sentenced to eight years in prison, and freed after her sentence was suspended in May.

In other incidents, non-American foreigners who were jailed for violating Iran's borders or territorial waters were granted clemency by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Amirahmadi said.

The families of the hikers issued a short joint statement yesterday.

"The allegation that our loved ones may have been engaged in espionage is untrue. It is entirely at odds with the people Shane, Sarah and Josh are and with anything Iran can have learned about them since they were detained," they said, declining further comment.

In the last two weeks, the parents of the hikers have met privately with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. They have released campy videos that present their children as cut-ups, not trespassers. In the self-made clips, the hikers dance and rap about Iraq and Kurdistan just days before they were arrested.

"They had no intention of doing anything wrong," said Josh's mother, Laura Fattal, of Elkins Park.

The hikers' supporters say Fattal, Bauer, and Shourd, who are friends from their days at the University of California at Berkeley, were in a tourist region of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq when they strayed across the unmarked border into Iran and were arrested July 31. Since then they have been held without charges and without contact with their families.

"We believe strongly that there is no evidence to support any charge whatsoever," Clinton said while traveling in Germany yesterday. "And we would renew our request on behalf of these three young people and their families that the Iranian government exercise compassion and release them, so they can return home."

Clinton said she would continue pressing that case through Swiss envoys, who represent U.S. interests in Tehran. The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1979, after students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held its staff hostage for more than a year.

At the White House yesterday, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the Americans were innocent hikers and called for their immediate release.

And Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and Arlen Specter said in a joint statement that "after more than 100 days in captivity, these young hikers and their families have suffered enough."

In September, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters that he would ask the judiciary for forbearance in the case. "What I can ask is that the judiciary expedites the process and gives it its full attention, and to basically take a look at the case with maximum leniency," he said.

Because Iran and the United States have been at odds for 30 years, however, Iran always tries to use jailed Americans as "bargaining chips," said Amirahmadi. Rather than simply freeing the hikers, he said, Iran has a tactical need to convict them first.

"Remember, Iran plays this game," said Amirahmadi. That, he said, allows Iran to say: " 'We did not free an innocent person. We freed a convicted person.' That way you can claim you gave mercy . . . and hope for reciprocity of some kind from the United States."

In the current context, Iran wants the release of several Iranians they contend were arrested outside of Iran and extradited to the United States, although Washington has neither confirmed nor denied it has them, Amirahmadi said.

On Sunday, supporters of the hikers held "vigils of hope" at 20 locations across America to keep a spotlight on the case.

Outside the Fattal family's Elkins Park house, more than 100 supporters rallied to send "light and strength" to Josh and his friends.