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Iran balks at release of American woman

Iranian authorities who reversed plans to release a detained American woman have insisted she and two friends will remain in custody until legal procedures have been exhausted.
Image: Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal
In this May 20 photo, American hikers Shane Bauer, left, Sarah Shourd, center, and Josh Fattal, sit at the Esteghlal Hotel in Tehran, Iran.Str / Press TV via AP, file
/ Source: The Associated Press

Iranian judicial authorities who reversed plans to release a detained American woman have insisted she and two friends will remain in custody until legal procedures have been exhausted.

Saturday's statement by Tehran's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, was a further blow to the trio's families.

It did not specify whether the decision means there will have to be a trial — which could take weeks or months — or another form of case review.

Sarah Shourd had been due to be released Saturday, but judicial officials blocked the plan at the last minute.

The about-face is an embarrassment to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly personally intervened in Shourd's case as an act of clemency at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

It also was the latest in a series of mixed messages from Tehran in a case that has deepened tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a relationship already strained over Washington's suspicions that Tehran is trying to manufacture nuclear weapons — something Iran denies.

Shourd and two friends, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, were arrested along the Iran-Iraq border in July 2009, and Tehran has accused them of illegally crossing the border and spying. Their families say they were hiking in Iraq's scenic north and that if they crossed the border, they did so unwittingly.

The U.S. State Department and relatives said they had no immediate information about the recent reports.

Patrick Clawson, deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the last-minute quarrels over Shroud's release highlight the internal fissures in Iran's power structure between Ahmadinejad and others such as the prosecutor who could see him overreaching his authority.

"There are all kinds of internal pressures," he said. "A case like this shows there are various factions at play."

A judicial official close to the prosecutor's office said that Dolatabadi believes the release is unacceptable because Shourd should first stand before the court and then the amnesty will be granted, but not before a court hearing.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

Shourd's name was not among the official list of prisoners freed at the end of Ramadan, suggesting that prosecutors want the Americans to first face trial before any kind of pardon or clemency is considered.

Typically, inmates released during Ramadan have already been convicted.

The planned release of Shourd had provided a long-sought sign of hope to the Americans' families, who have been pleading with Iranian officials to free their children since their arrest.

Now, they are once again left wondering what is going to happen.

"We don't know anything," said Samantha Topping, a New York publicist working with the families. She said the families knew only what they were hearing from media about a delayed release.