Two hikers jailed in Iran reportedly get 8-year terms

The eight-year sentences reported Saturday for two Americans - including Elkins Park native Josh Fattal - were a crushing blow to supporters of the hikers, who have been held virtually incommunicado in Iran since 2009 on charges of illegally entering the country and espionage.

Fattal and two friends, Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd, were captured by Iranian border guards after setting out to hike in northern Iraqi Kurdistan; Iran says they entered the Islamic republic. Shourd, who fell ill in prison, was released on bail in September. Fattal and Bauer were finally tried July 31.

After recent indications from Iran's Foreign Ministry that their release could be imminent, the harshness of the sentence, widely reported in world media but not officially confirmed, came as a shock, not least of all because of the offhand way it came out.

Two years awaiting trial - and now this, a sudden leak via Iranian state-run TV.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland appealed Saturday for the hikers' release and said, "It is time to reunite them with their families."

A spokeswoman for the devastated families declined to comment and requested consideration for their privacy.

Masoud Shafii, the hikers' Iranian lawyer, told reporters in Tehran he had received no formal notice of the sentences. He has 20 days to appeal, he said, and will if the sentences turn out to be true.

Observers said it was not unusual for Iran to use selected state-run news outlets to make high-profile announcements.

Because the United States does not have direct diplomatic ties with Iran, the hikers' families have had to rely on very sporadic reports passed through Swiss envoys, who had no comment Saturday.

In reporting the sentences, state TV cited the hikers' alleged "cooperation with . . . U.S. intelligence," a charge that President Obama directly denied a year ago.

The United States has made repeated appeals for the men's release, insisting they did nothing wrong.

Woodrow Wilson Center scholar Haleh Esfandiari, a Middle East expert who has followed the case closely, told The Inquirer, "We don't know even if the hikers know they were sentenced. It will take a day or two to put the pieces of this puzzle together."

But an apparent disconnect between Iran's Foreign Ministry and its judiciary, she said, "shows the hikers are victims of infighting in Iran."

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appoints the heads of the military, judiciary, and civil government.