U.S. Muslims plead case of hikers with Ahmadinejad

(RNS) The Council on American-Islamic Relations is taking a “wait-and-see” approach after meeting last Thursday (Sept. 24) with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to seek the release of three American hikers imprisoned by Iran on July 31. “We’re still in discussions. We’re cautiously optimistic,” said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. The three-man CAIR delegation also gave the […]

(RNS) The Council on American-Islamic Relations is taking a “wait-and-see” approach after meeting last Thursday (Sept. 24) with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to seek the release of three American hikers imprisoned by Iran on July 31.

“We’re still in discussions. We’re cautiously optimistic,” said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. The three-man CAIR delegation also gave the Iranian strongman, who was in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, letters from the families of the hikers, as well as the family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

Because of the “sensitive” nature of the talks, Hooper declined to go into the details of the meeting, or when an announcement might be expected.


The three hikers, Sarah Shourd, 31; Shane Bauer, 27; and Joshua Fattal, 27; all graduates of the University of California at Berkeley, were hiking in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq when they strayed, inadvertently they contend, into Iran.

Iranian authorities say the hikers, who have not spoken with their families or U.S. officials since their capture, entered illegally. Ahmadinejad softened Iran’s posture during his U.S. visit, saying he would ask Iran’s judiciary to expedite the case with “maximum leniency.”

While many officials have criticized attempts at dialogue with Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and threatened Israel with nuclear destruction, others believe meeting with a politically influential Muslim-American group makes it more difficult for the Iranian regime to depict America as a “great Satan.”

“When you have this kind of interaction, it’s harder to demonize people,” said Steven Miller, an Iran expert at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

“We hope that President Ahmadinejad will take this opportunity for a humanitarian gesture to create a more positive atmosphere for constructive dialogue between our two nations by releasing the American detainees,” said CAIR National Board Chairman Larry Shaw, a state senator from North Carolina, in a statement. “As an American organization, we must do what we can to help our nation’s citizens when they are swept up in international events.”

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