IRAN / NEW YORK - Sarah Shourd met with Iranian’s president in New York Friday and spoke with CNN about prison life.
Shourd said nothing in life can prepare you for something like this. She said she knew she had to come home burised but unbroken but that she didn't expect her release from prison to be so bittersweet. She's now hopeful that Iran will soon release her fiancé and good friend who, too, were captured and who remain imprisoned in Iran.
Shourd, 30, her fiancé, Shane Bauer, 28, and their friend, Josh Fattal, 27, were held in an Iranian prison for over a year. The three were captured when they crossed the border from Iraq into Iran. Iran suspected they were spies, Shourd continues to deny that allegation.
Shourd told CNN she’s free, she’s grateful, and she knows she wouldn’t be free if it weren’t for huge groundswell of support from governments and people around the world.
They received support, she said, from Desmond Tutu in South Africa to a homeless woman she heard about in San Francisco who has been organizing vigils and donating money for their release.
Shourd said the same people who helped in her release have doubled their efforts to assist in the release of Shane and Josh.
CNN’s Kiran Chetry asked Shourd what it was like when she was first taken into custody in Iran. Shourd said, “Nothing in life can prepare you for something like this. The only thing that got me through was just thinking about my mother and her suffering and my loved ones, and just knowing I had to come back to them bruised but unbroken.
“I had to walk out strong and now I have to be stronger than ever. I didn’t expect it to end this way for me, it’s not over, but I just didn’t expect to have my freedom be so bittersweet.”
Since her release, there has been no information coming out of Iran about Shane or Josh. She was asked if she’d heard anything from anyone, including the Iranian government giving any indication of whether Shane and Josh will be free. Shourd said no, she hasn’t heard any news about her friends.
She said, “No, it’s always uncertain, there are no guarantees and no assurances. But,” she said, “of course we’re hopeful, this is a good precedent. I was released on humanitarian grounds and I feel very confident that the Iranian government will extend the same gesture to my fiancé and my dear friend.
“I hope it’s soon because it’s just been too long. Our pain was invisible. Everyone was seeing the pain of our families, which in many ways is just as bad, and in many ways worse, but no one can see your pain when you’re in prison. You’re invisible. Even the guards – I’d have streaming-down tears in my face and the guards would just slam the door and walk away.
“And now, I know what Shane and Josh are enduring. I can see them in their cramped little cell with very little sunlight. They only get out one hour a day and they exercise side-by-side on a space about the size of a towel.
“They’re wonderful, wonderful, people and I want the world to meet them,” Shourd said.
CNN’s John Roberts said the world has had a chance to see what the families were going through but not what she had gone through. People, he said, are wondering about the pain she was in and how she was treated during her time as a prisoner in Iran.
“I know you said some of your captors were nice. Some of them not so nice. Did they ever physically abuse you?” Roberts asked.
“No,” Shourd responded, “I mean, it is all psychological. And it’s just the hardest thing, of course, is being so alienated from your family. I begged and cried for a phone call and I didn’t get it until I think the seventh month. I’m still unclear on the chronology. But, you know, by the time I got a phone call I lost hope that it was going to happen and so many ups and downs. You think it will be over and then goes on and on and on.”
Chetry asked Shourd to describe that day when they were hiking in Kurdistan and everything changed in an instant.
Shourd said, “Yeah. My fiancee Shane Bauer and I have been fascinated by the region. We wanted to immerse ourselves in that part of the world to learn more about it and to be hopefully more of a bridge between the people in that region and the people in our country. So I taught in Damascus for a year and there's not a lot of green mountains in Damascus. It's a beautiful country.
“A lot of beautiful desert and craggy rocks and I had two friends that traveled in northern Iraq. It's not a war zone. Americans have not been hurt there. You know? Even while all of the violence was raging in the south. It wasn't happening in the north so it was an easy place. I only had a week off of work of my teaching job in Damascus so it was an easy, quick trip to some green mountains and we'd been assured by our research that it was safe and really nothing like this happened there before. Our story was completely unexpected and tragic. We did nothing wrong.”
Chetry asked, “Why didn’t the Iranians believe you? I mean, they’re accusing you of espionage-like charges. What was the point of that?”
Shourd said, I don't know if I'll ever completely understand that but all I can say is we did nothing wrong.
“We meant no harm to the Iranian people.
“We did not intend to cross the border. It was unmarked.
“We were on a trail behind the tourist site. There were hundreds of families there - very popular spot by a waterfall and families picnic and I - I just think it's a huge misunderstanding more to do with the problems between the countries than with us as individuals.”
Roberts said, “You said you got the idea, ‘Wait a second. This is all political.’”
Shourd said, “Yeah. Unfortunately, it's true. You know, I wouldn't be sitting here if there weren't countless people that believed in our innocence. I don't think there's a doubt in the world we didn't intend to go to Iran. We would never risk our safety in that way and put our families through this. You know?”
Roberts said, “President Ahmadinejad is here this week and I know that you have wanted to try to get in touch with him. He was on with Larry King on Wednesday talking about whether or not Shane and Josh would get out. He said that's 'in the hands of the judge. I've made my appeal.' Do you think you will have a chance to meet with him?”
“Yeah, well, I don't see why he wouldn't want to meet with us,” Shourd said. “I have no animosity towards him or the government. I want it to be resolved and I want it to be finished. And I think that it would be a really good opportunity to, you know, push this forward for us to meet each other.”
Chetry asked what Shourd would say to him.
Her response was, “I don't know if it's going to happen. I would just ask him to release my fiancé and my friend for the same reasons he released me, you know? As a humanitarian gesture. This is not politics and governments and we don't deserve to suffer any longer and neither do our families.”
Shourd was asked what she thinks about the idea he fought for a prisoner swap. Would she support that?
Shourd said, “Well, you know, I'm not a politician. Honestly, this is not my area of expertise. I don't know how it should be resolved but it should be resolved and I want to continue to emphasize it's a humanitarian issue and I hope that it ends in a way that, you know, can move us forward.”
“Our country and Iran,” she continued, “ And create a better relationship between us.”
Chetry said that in reading Shourd’s accounts it was amazing to see there were small and few and far between moments of her that happened while she was in prison. She questioned if one was that Shane asked her to marry him.
Shourd said, “Yeah. Shane’s a romantic guy.”
She held up her finger and showed the engagement ring he made her out of a string.
“It was just – you know, we see each other an hour a day outside and Josh stayed in the room so we could have some time alone and Shane said I have something to tell you. I said, I hope it’s not bad because I’m having a really bad day and it was a beautiful moment,” Shourd said.
He asked her to marry him. She planned to ask him upon their release and was glad he beat her to it.
“He beat me to it. I’m glad because he said we’ll be able to really believe in our future together and sustain us,” Shourd said.
Meeting with Iranian president
That afternoon, according to a family spokeswoman, Shourd and her mother, Nora, met Friday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York.
Press TV reported that Shourd called the encounter a “very gracious gesture and a good meeting.”
She said Ahmadinejad seemed friendly and that it was a “very human encounter, very personal.”
US prisoner freed from Iran; Iranian president balks idea of releasing friends
Sarah Shourd, prisoner in Iran for over a year, is finally back in the U.S.
Sarah Shourd, one of three American hikers detained in Iranian prison, released
Comments
They want knowingly to a country locked in war. It does not matter that the fighting is in the south, they should have known better than go hiking near a border of a country that has been on negative terma with their native country without local guides to let them know where to go. I would think they were spies too.
Why don't you go back to school and learn your grammar ! I mean it is irritating to read a dumb comment like yours while having to guess what you are trying to say !
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