WASHINGTON - Two American men sentenced in Iran last month to eight years in prison onspying charges will be freed in two days , Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told aUS television network.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested in July 2009 near Iran's border with Iraq, wherethey say they were hiking in the mountains. A third American, Sarah Shourd, was freed inSeptember 2010 and returned home.
The US network NBC, which interviewed Ahmadinejad in Iran, said in a Twitter message that theIranian president had told it
Bauer and Fattal would be released in two days. The interview was due to air later on Tuesdayon NBC's Today show.
Bauer, Fattal and Shourd say they were hiking in the mountains of northern Iraq and, if theycrossed the unmarked border into Iran, it was by mistake.
Shourd was freed on $500,000 bail. Bauer and Fattal were convicted at a trial held behindclosed doors and share a cell in Tehran's Evin prison.
Their supporters say evidence against them has never been made public, and that thesentence came as a shock after hopes for their release had been boosted by positivecomments from Iran's foreign minister.
U.S President Barack Obama has denied that the Americans, who were working in the MiddleEast when they decided to hike in the scenic mountains of Iraq, had any link to US intelligence.
The affair has heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington, which severed diplomaticties after the storming of the US embassy in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
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