Working to Free a Cousin Detained in Iran
Sarah Shourd, one of three U.S. hikers, detained in Iran. Laguna Beach relatives and others are working to win their release. Patrick Sandys, a lifelong Laguna Beach resident, had just finished taking the grueling 18- hour California bar exam and was heading out with friends to blow off steam.
"Right before I step out the door I get a call from my parents," he said.
They had terrible news. His cousin Sarah Shourd, 31, had been detained in Iran. No one knew where, or why, and no one could communicate with her.
"It was an absolute shock, of course. This kind of event happens to people all the time but never to someone you actually know, and certainly never to your family," said Sandys, whose youth included visits from Sarah's family from Los Angeles.
"They would come down all the time," said Sandys, who was in touch with his cousin by email just a few weeks before her de- tention on July 30. Upon hearing the grim news, Sandys boarded a plane to Oakland the next day to help his aunt, Nora Shourd, win her daughter's release. Two other U.S. citizens accompanying her were also detained.
Patrick Sandys and his mom, Susan, at the family home in Laguna Beach. In the first few days they hoped it would be resolved quickly. Nearly two months later, they are still waiting. On Wednesday, the families of the hikers issued a hopeful statement, "greatly encouraged" by the comments of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In an interview this week with the Associated Press, Ahmadinejad said he will ask the Iranian judiciary to treat the case with "maximum lenience.'' On the Today Show he said, "I'm not happy that they have been arrested, but these individuals have violated our borders and they need to be punished. However, I'm going to do my best for these individuals to be set free."
Sarah Shourd had been living in Damascus, Syria, where she was teaching English, and embarked on a planned one-week trip with her boyfriend, Shane Bauer and friend Josh Fattal, to Kurdish Iraq. They were hiking in Ahmed Awa, described in a New York Times article as "a lush, mountainous area of waterfalls and caves near the Iranian border," when they unknowingly crossed the unmarked Iranian border and were detained on July 30. Video of the area's mountains shows a rocky landscape where one hillside looks like the next.
"Assuming they did cross (the Iranian border)…you would think, 'Oh, mistake. Just send them in the opposite direction'," Sandys said. "But…they detain them. Alright, that's their right to do so, (but) give them due process. They have the right to call their home country if they want to," he said, frustrated that after 56 days not even U.S. or Swiss diplomats have been able to talk to the detainees.
In the meantime, the families established a website, freethehikers. org, and Sandys, together with the mothers and siblings, have made pleas for the hikers' release on 10 different network television shows.
Sandys formerly worked as a clerk in the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco before taking a position with O.C. District Attorney's special prosecutions unit. Now, he is trying to decipher Iranian law, no small task when there are no official charges, the penalties for illegal entry are not readily apparent and the country's legal process is cryptic, largely influenced by Koranic law.
"Even the Swiss, who have dealt with Iranians for decades, still don't understand it. In the U.S., the logical punishment for illegal entry is deportation. That's what we want. We want them to be convicted and deported. That would be the great end," he said.
The mothers of the three hikers wrote a personal letter to Ahmadinejad, asking him to bring their kids with him when he arrived in New York this week for the United Nation's General Assembly on Wednesday. He arrived without them.
Conscious of the delicate relations between the U.S. and Iran, and the importance of public opinion at home and in Iran, the families have received guidance from several sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists. Advisers emphasize describing the situation as a humanitarian issue, not a political one.
"There's nothing political about it on its face. Some reports have called them spies. They're definitely not spies," Sandys said. "Second of all, they have no political agenda. But after all, they are American."
U.S. relations with Iran sank to a low ebb in 2002, when former President George Bush included Iran alongside North Korea and Iraq as the "axis of evil" in a state of union address. Iran's nuclear program continues to vex the Obama administration.
The Shourd family has received guidance from Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who was charged with espionage and detained in Iran for four months before her release May 11.
Sandys recounts her advice. "She wasn't mistreated because the guards were basically afraid to hurt a westerner, or an American. This was a big deal and had some media attention so they didn't want to be the ones to injure that person."
Knowing Sarah as a fun loving person, Sandys expects she converses with the guards in Farsi, knows them by name and the names of all their kids.
A candlelight vigil to mark the second month of the hikers' detention is planned for 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 30 at Main Beach.
Shourd, Bauer and Fattal's story can be followed at freethehikers. org, Facebook and Twitter.
