vIndianz.com (15 Dec, 2009) — Three U.S. citizens were under arrest in Iran and charged with espionage will stand trial, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Monday, in a case that could further damage relations between Tehran and Washington.
The three were held subsequent to them straying into Iran from northern Iraq at the end of July. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Washington strongly believed there was no evidence to maintain any charges against them.
“They have entered Iran with suspicious aims. The judiciary will try them,” Mottaki told a news conference, adding that “relevant sentences” would be issued. He did not elaborate.
Last month, Iran’s judiciary announced espionage charges against the trio — Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27. Their families said they were mountaineering and had strayed across the border unintentionally.
The United States cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. The two countries are now involved in a row over Iran’s nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at making bombs.
Under Iran’s Islamic law, sharia, espionage can be liable to be punished by death. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested in an interview with the American television network NBC in September that the Americans’ release may be associated to the release of Iranian diplomats he said were being held by U.S. troops in Iraq.
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