TEHRAN – One of the three American hikers jailed in Iran for more than a year on spying allegations will be released Saturday, at the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, Iranian culture ministry authorities said Thursday.

Reporters were told by an official with the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture to gather in a northern Tehran hotel Saturday for a meeting. The hikers’ attorney, Masoud Shafii, said it is widely expected that Sarah Shourd, the only woman among the three, will be released.

Shourd, 32, is said to have been ill and depressed. She is engaged to Shane Bauer, 28, who with the other member of their group, Joshua Fattal, 28, is in another cell.

The three were hiking in the mountains of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region on July 31, 2009, when, according to their families, they strayed across the border accidentally. Authorities in Tehran confirmed three days later that the three had been arrested, and an Iranian Arabic-language television network quoted police sources as saying they were “CIA agents.”

Bauer and Shourd were freelance journalists who were living together in Damascus, Syria, where Shourd taught English and was studying Arabic, friends and relatives said. Fattal, 27, is a friend of Bauer’s who was visiting the Middle East.

 


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