Moms of 3 Americans jailed in Iran wait for visas

[May 11, 2010]  MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The three women have their bags packed and ready to go, waiting for the moment they get the all-clear to visit their adult children who have been jailed in Iran for nine months.

Laura Fattal, Cindy Hickey and Nora Shourd were excited but cautious after Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said on state television late Monday that the Iranian government has ordered visas for the mothers to be issued on humanitarian grounds. The three women said they don't want to count on making the trip to see their children until they have received official word they can pick up their visas.

"Yes we are excited, yes we are delighted at movement, delighted to think we will travel there," said Fattal, of suburban Philadelphia, the mother of 27-year-old Josh Fattal. "But we haven't got the word yet ourselves to come pick up those visas. We're in a truly holding our breath situation."

Josh Fattal, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd were arrested along the Iraqi border in July. Iran has accused the three friends of spying and having links to U.S. intelligence, and has said they would be brought to trial. Their families and the U.S. government have denied the spying accusations and called for their release.

Family members said they have grown more concerned in recent weeks after Swiss diplomats who visited the Americans on April 22 reported that two of them were in poor health.

"We're dying to see the kids, obviously," said Shourd's mother, Nora Shourd, of Oakland, California.

A U.S. State Department official said the Iranian Foreign Ministry has told the Swiss Embassy in Tehran -- which represents U.S. interests -- that the visas will be approved but that it was not yet clear when the actual visit would be approved. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Bauer's mother, Cindy Hickey of rural Pine City, Minnesota, said family members "have heard these rumblings before so we are being cautious with our optimism." But, she said, "I have to say I'm more hopeful than I've ever been."

During the Americans' nine months in jail, Iran has not brought them to trial or even made clear if formal charges have been filed. In February, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed swapping them for Iranians he says are jailed in the U.S., raising fears that the three are being held as bargaining chips.

The families of the three graduates of the University of California at Berkeley say they were hiking in the scenic Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and that if the did cross the border with Iran, it was unintentional.

Mottaki said Iran made a decision to grant visas to the mothers before Ahmadinejad attended a conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in New York this month. The mothers flew to New York in hopes of meeting Ahmadinejad to make a personal appeal for their children's release, but their request to see him wasn't granted.

Mottaki did not clarify where the visas would be issued, but it could be at Iran's U.N. mission in New York. The Pakistani Embassy in Washington also represents Iranian diplomatic interests in the U.S. in the absence of an official relationship between the two countries.

The families said that the Swiss diplomats who visit the three friends last month reported that Shourd, 31, is suffering a serious gynecological condition and battling depression, while Bauer, 27, has a stomach ailment.

Bauer, a freelance journalist, had been hired to cover the Kurdish elections in Iraq, but his family said the hiking trip was a vacation. He and Shourd were dating and had been living in Damascus, Syria. She taught English and had written for various online publications. Fattal went to visit them after traveling overseas on a teaching fellowship.

[Associated Press; By PATRICK CONDON]

Associated Press writers Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

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