TEHRAN – Iran will soon free two Americans jailed for spying, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday, in what he called a humanitarian gesture weeks before he travels to the United Nations in New York.
"I think these two persons will be freed in a couple of days," the Iranian leader said through an interpreter in an interview broadcast on NBC's Todayshow. Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were sentenced in Iran last month to eight years in prison.
They had been arrested in July 2009 near Iran’s border with Iraq, where they say they were hiking in the mountains as tourists, along with a third American, Sarah Shourd.
Both men were convicted last month and share a cell in Tehran’s Evin prison.
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Washington has denied they were spies. – (Reuters)