Muhammad Ali asks Iran to release 2 U.S. hikers

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Boxing champ Muhammad Ali is asking Iran to release two American hikers held since 2009 on spy charges.

Ali, 69, arguably the most prominent U.S. Muslim, on Wednesday released a February letter he wrote to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asking that Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer be freed.

Fattal, 28, of Elkins Park, and Bauer, 28, of Minnesota, were arrested in July 2009 while hiking in northern Iraq near the Iranian border. A third hiker, Sarah Shourd, 32, of California, was released on bail in September and returned to the United States.

"Please show the world the compassion I know you have in your heart," Ali wrote, asking Khamenei as a brother in Islam to show the same mercy and compassion for the two men as he did for Shourd.

Ali also wrote to Khamenei shortly before Shourd was released. Ali's wife, Lonnie, said they did not receive any responses to the letters.

Ali founded a center for world peace in Louisville, where he grew up and began a boxing career that included three world heavyweight titles.

Lonnie Ali said from their Arizona home that her husband had been asked to intervene by John Arum, son of boxing promoter Bob Arum.

John Arum, also a hiker, died in a mountain-climbing accident shortly after asking Ali to help and before Shourd was released, she said.

Lonnie Ali said her husband had visited Iran twice, once in the early 1990s when he tried to secure the exchange of prisoners during the Iran-Iraq war. He would be willing to go to Iran to help secure the hikers' release, she said, but it would depend on his health. Muhammad Ali has Parkinson's disease.

Lonnie Ali said that Alex Fattal, Josh's brother, visited the Alis on Tuesday.

The hikers' families said in a statement that they were "deeply grateful to Mr. Ali and the many other people around the world who know that Shane and Josh absolutely do not deserve to be in prison.. . . We hope and pray that Iran hears this appeal and responds with compassion."

The hikers' trial began in February, and the two men pleaded not guilty to the espionage charges. Shourd pleaded not guilty in absentia. A second trial session is scheduled May 11 in Tehran. The U.S. government has denied the charges against them and demanded their release.