Two Belgian tourists who were detained for three months in an Iranian prison revealed today they had had contact with the three UC Berkeley graduate students who have been imprisoned there since July, reports the Oakland Tribune today.
Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal (above) were arrested July 31, 2009 while hiking a trail that crossed the unmarked Iran-Iraq border and have been held in Evin Prison since then. Belgian bicycle tourists Idesbald Van den Bosch and Vincent Boon Falleur said they were arrested in Iran on September 5 on suspicion of espionage and held in the same prison for three months before being released without a trial in early December.
They said that when they were released, the American hikers were still in solitary confinement.
For more information visit the hikers’ families’ website, Free The Hikers.
Read the full Tribune story here.
[Photos: freethehikers.org.]
