Border guards arrested Shourd on July 31, 2009, along with the boyfriend who became her fiance, freelance photographer Shane Bauer, 28, and their friend Joshua Fattal, 28, an environmentalist and 2000 graduate of Cheltenham High School. Supporters of the three say they were hiking in a mountainous section of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and may have strayed across Iran's unmarked border.
Since their arrest, Bauer and Fattal have shared a cell in Evin Prison.
"We hope we hear very, very soon that the boys will be released too," said Josh's mother, Laura Fattal, of Elkins Park. With details still sketchy, and so much in flux, she said, she was reluctant to say more.
Bauer's mother, Cindy Hickey of Pine City, Minn., told the Associated Press that she was excited about the release, even if the hiker being freed was not her son.
"I'm hoping that even if one is released, the other two will follow," she said. "I'm holding my breath.. . ."
In a joint statement, the three mothers said: "Shane, Sarah, and Josh are all innocent and we continue to call for their immediate release.. . ."
In August, during a brief telephone call that Shourd was permitted to make, she told her mother, Nora Shourd, that prison officials had denied her requests for medical treatment.
Last week, prominent Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed sent a letter to Iran's supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asking him to release the hikers as an act of "Islamic compassion," citing Shourd's illness. Leniency to prisoners is a common practice in the Muslim world during Ramadan, the month of daily fasting, which ends with a feast on the holiday called Eid al-Fitr.
