Released hiker asks Iranian to send fiance, friend home

— Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans arrested last year while hiking near the Iran-Iraq border, met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday to plead for the release of her still-imprisoned fiance and their friend.

“I’m just going to keep pushing every minute for their release on humanitarian grounds,” Shourd told ABC News outside a hotel after she and her mother, Nora Shourd, met with Ahmadinejad, who was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Shourd, 32, called the encounter “a very gracious gesture and a good meeting,” said Ahmadinejad seemed friendly and that it was “a very human encounter, very personal.”

Shourd went to New York to push for the releaseof her fiance, Shane Bauer, and their friend Josh Fattal, who remain imprisoned in Tehran after 14 months.

“He was very positive,” Shourd said of Ahmadinejad. He asked her mother questions about her grandchildren and other family, and Sarah Shourd spoke to him about her fiance, she said, adding that the meeting left her feeling “very happy” and “hopeful that the president will try to advocate” for the two men.

Shourd told The Associated Press on Thursday of the monotony, cramped quarters and fears for her future during her 410 days in an Iranian prison, mostly in solitary confinement.

In one of her first interviews since her Sept. 14 release from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, she said that she chooses to savor the few moments of joy she found in her imprisonment.

One of her happiest days, she said, was the celebration of her 32nd birthday last month. Somehow the men, who remain in the prison, had persuaded a guard to provide her the cake and even found a way to give her a whiff of liberty.

They talked her through a whole imaginary day that they called a “freedom walk” - from waking up and having pancakes, to going to a lake, then walking to her mother’s apartment. When they came to the part of their story where the apartment door opened, Bauer and Fattal spun Shourd around.

“They had brought all the pictures we had of our family and put them on these boxes, so everyone was there, and it was asurprise party. It was beautiful,” she said, her voice catching. “I cried.”

But most days in prison were far more monotonous - or terrifying.

She recalled how the three made a vow while blindfolded in a prison van shortly after their capture: If they were separated, they would go on hunger strike until they were reunited.

On the fourth day, the hikers were reunited for five minutes. Shourd began eating again, but their captivity was just beginning.

Alone in her cell, Shourd began going over multiplication tables in her head. It was the only way she could keep out thoughts of her mother.

If she thought of her mother, she began to fall apart, Shourd recalled.

“I just had to be sure that I was strong when I went into the interrogation room because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t, that they didn’t manipulate me into saying anything that I didn’t want to say,” she said.

She was amazed at their “good cop, bad cop” approach, just like on TV shows back in the U.S.

They questioned her about her e-mails and about her Skype contacts, looking for any indication she had intended to enter Iran.

Eventually, the interrogations ended. The two men were moved into a cell together. The three Americans were allowed to see each other, at first for 30 minutes each day, then for an hour, then for two.

The three had local TV, including 15 minutes of English language news every day. They received a bundle of letters from their parents and siblings about once a month. And they had books in English. Shourd read the Koran, using her basic Arabic to communicate haltingly with some Farsi-speaking guards about religion.

On one evening, Bauer asked Fattal to stay in their cell during their allotted time outdoors, so that the couple could have a moment alone.

The two held hands, and Bauer asked her to marry him. He made them engagement rings from two thin pieces of string.

“It’s not what every person thinks of as romantic, but it was romantic for me,” Shourd said.

And now, she is back on the outside, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, preparing for a tour of TV studios, a bit of string tied around her finger.

Iran has issued espionage related indictments against the three of them, which could bring trials for the two men and proceedings in absentia for Shourd, although she says she hasn’t ruled out returning to face trial.

Part of Shourd wishes she were still with Bauer and Fattal, she said. But outside prison, she said, she can act as their voice.

“The only thing that gives my freedom meaning is that I have this work to do, because honestly if I felt like there was nothing to do out here, if I wasn’t needed in so many ways, I would have rather stayed with them,” she said.

And until they’re at her side, “my life will not resume.”

Front Section, Pages 3 on 09/25/2010

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