Hikers' sentence in Iran a miscarriage of 'justice'

THE SECRET TRIAL in Iran of two young American hikers, detained near the Iran-Iraq border in 2009, was a parody of justice, and the sentences they received eight years for illegal entry and espionage are a travesty. Not a speck of evidence has been publicly presented to substantiate the charges. The two supposed spies speak not a word of Farsi and were carrying nothing more incriminating than cameras.

In fact, Shane M. Bauer and Joshua F. Fattal, imprisoned now for more than 750 days, are simply the latest American hostages to be seized by Iran. Their continued confinement as bargaining chips for some yet unspecified concession is indefensible.

The trial took place after two years of imprisonment and intermittent ill treatment that has left Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal looking thin, pale and haggard. Mr. Bauer was beaten at least once, according to Sarah E. Shourd, Mr. Bauer's fiancee, who gave an account to Amnesty International this spring. Ms. Shourd was arrested with the two men and released last September on medical grounds.

The two men, both 29, are allowed out of their 10-by-14-foot cell at Tehran's Evin Prison for less than an hour a day. They are not allowed to send letters to their family or friends, and they have been permitted just three phone calls home in 25 months. Despite a standing request for consular access from the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. interests there, they have been allowed just four visits from the Swiss ambassador, the most recent 10 months ago.

That disgraceful mistreatment has been compounded by the fact that they were granted no private access to their own Iranian lawyer, Masoud Shafiei, who apparently has done his best to represent them. But he has stood little chance in the face of a kangaroo court closed to the public, the media or any independent witnesses and a judiciary that answers to hard-line Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran's internal schisms and power struggles are opaque, but they may explain the discord between the Americans' harsh sentences and the statements from the Iranian foreign minister and other officials suggesting, just before the sentencing, that they might be on the verge of release.

The Obama administration has called for the Americans' release, as has U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Amnesty International, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Ali and dozens of other prominent international figures. The Iranian government's contempt for international judicial norms does it no good. It ought to free the hikers.

Source: THE WASHINGTON POST