Hikers’ mothers plan trip to Iran next week

"The visas are on me. We are going" to Iran, an elated Laura Fattal, of Elkins Park, said Wednesday. "I will see Josh in less than a week."

Fattal's son Josh, 27, and his friends Shane Bauer, 27, and Sarah Shourd, 31, have been in prison in Tehran since their arrest for entering Iran illegally on July 31.

Fattal and the mothers of Bauer and Shourd said that now that they had their visas, they expect to fly to Iran on Monday or Tuesday.

"We cannot wait to see our children after nine long and distressing months," Fattal, Cindy Hickey, and Nora Shourd said in a statement. The three women are leading their families' campaign to gain freedom for their children.

While in Iran, the mothers want to meet Masoud Shafii, the local lawyer they hired in December to represent their children. They also have requested meetings with Iranian authorities.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the trip would be coordinated by Swiss envoys representing American interests because the United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 1979 after Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

While some Iranian officials have accused the three Americans of espionage, their supporters say they were hikers - trekking on vacation in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq - who apparently strayed into Iran across an unmarked border.

Bauer, a freelance photographer, Shourd, an English teacher, and Josh Fattal, an environmentalist, met as students at the University of California at Berkeley.

Bauer, of Minnesota, and Shourd, of California, were living in Damascus, Syria, last summer when Fattal joined them for vacation after an overseas teaching fellowship.

In February, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposed swapping them for Iranians he said were jailed in the United States, arousing fears that the three were being held as bargaining chips.

Swiss diplomats who visited them April 22 reported that Shourd had a serious gynecological condition and Bauer a stomach ailment.

In January, the mothers applied for visas to visit their children. On Monday, an Iranian official said the visas would be granted for humanitarian reasons. Laura Fattal then drove to Washington to pick them up.

She said she did not know if her son and his friends were aware of the impending visit.

Iran "is very smart," said Fattal. "They will alert the kids, I'm sure. As to when, that's their call."

From Minnesota, Cindy Hickey told the Associated Press that the mothers planned to carry cards, pictures, and homemade gifts to lift their children's spirits.

From California, Nora Shourd added: "We're really over-the-top excited about this."