More Americans in the Hands of Hostile Regimes

A week after three Americans went missing near the Iraq-Iran border, Tehran has officially confirmed that it is holding them.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - A week after three Americans went missing near the Iraq-Iran border, Tehran has officially confirmed that it is holding them -- amid concerns that the regime may view them as political pawns, just as North Korea viewed two U.S. journalists it captured earlier this year.

U.S. national security advisor Jim Jones said Sunday Washington had "sent strong messages" calling for their release as quickly as possible.

Confirmation that the trio had been arrested came in a meeting earlier in the day between Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and Iran's ambassador in Baghdad. Zebari said the envoy had told him the three were in custody and being questioned.

University of California-Berkley graduates Shane Bauer, Sara Shourd and Josh Fattal disappeared on July 31, reportedly while hiking in the vicinity of a waterfall in a remote part of Iraqi Kurdistan.

A fourth American who had been with them in Iraq, but said he fell ill and did not accompany them on the hike, broke word of their arrest after Bauer notified him by mobile phone. The man, Shon Meckfessel, said his friends evidently had strayed across the mountainous border by accident.

Iranian media began carrying reports on the arrests early last week, but attempts by the State Department to get formal confirmation - via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. interests in the absence of diplomatic ties - were stymied for several days.

The official Iran Daily said the Americans had been charged with "illegal entry," but a Iranian lawmaker, Mohammad Karim Abedi, a member of the parliamentary foreign affairs and security committee, told Iranian television they were probably spies.

The English-language Press TV said the parliamentary committee was due to discuss the matter during a weekly meeting on Sunday.

Jones, speaking on NBC television, said the three were "innocent people."

Bauer, Shourd and Fattal are as freelance journalists. The Iranian news site Tabnak carried a report last week saying both Bauer and Fattal were Jews, and called Fattal a "radical Zionist."

Bauer's personal Web site describes him as an Arabic-speaking "freelance journalist and photographer based in the Middle East."

Two liberal-left outlets that have published his work, Mother Jones and The Nation, carried a statement by Meckfessel saying the three had made "a simple and very regrettable mistake." The two publications both said Bauer was not on assignment for them at the time of his arrest.

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Shourd writes for a travel Web site, Matador. The site describes her as "an teacher-activist-writer from California currently based in the Middle East."

U.C. Berkley says Bauer, 27, was a 2007 honors graduate in "peace and conflict studies," Shourd, 30, graduated in 2003 with a B.A. in English and was an "aspiring journalist," and Fattal, 27 graduated in 2004 with a B.S. in environmental economics and policy.

'Hostile countries are looking for opportunities'

The arrest of the three comes at a time when relations between U.S. and Iran are even chillier than usual, following the disputed president election, protests and violent state clampdown. The longstanding standoff between Tehran and the West over its nuclear programs also remains far from resolved, despite the Obama administration stated desire to engage with the regime.

North Korea, another state hostile to the U.S., earlier this year captured two American journalists who allegedly crossing the border onto its soil and sentenced them to 12 years' imprisonment.

Last week, former President Clinton paid a brief visit to Pyongyang to secure their release, an encounter critics of Kim Jong-il say is being used for domestic propaganda purposes.

After Clinton had returned to the U.S. with journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, made an appeal to Americans.

"Please, please don't go near borders of hostile countries," she said during an interview in Africa with NBC News.

"This is something that countries are looking for," Clinton continued. "And you don't have to get very far away from some of these borders to be picked up by their border patrols and their security forces. It's regrettable that this has happened again."

"I mean, go hiking, have a great time, do journalism, but stay away from those borders. Do not put yourself in these positions where you can end up in prison in a country like Iran or North Korea."

Earlier this year an Iranian court convicted an American-Iranian journalist, Roxana Saberi, of espionage and sentenced her to eight years' imprisonment. She was freed the following month.

The International Press Institute said at the time that Saberi, like Lee and Ling, were being held by Iran and North Korea as "apparent political hostages" in their disputes with the U.S.

In 2007, Iran seized 15 British sailors and marines, claiming they had entered Iranian waters and held them for 12 days.

On their release the Britons said they had been apprehended by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps while "well inside Iraqi waters."

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They said they were blindfolded, their hands bound, and were held in small stone cells, in isolation. They were interrogated most nights, and told they could either admit guilt about their location at the time of capture, or face up to seven years in prison.

Meanwhile, two foreigners who were not identified but described as nationals of two Western European countries, were reported Sunday to have been arrested while filming an "illegal gathering" in Tehran.

When police examined the camera they found footage taken in Israel, leading them to check the passports and discover that the two had visited Israel before traveling to Iran, the Fars news agency reported.

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