Three Americans who were jailed by Iran for more than a year and accused of being spies while hiking along the border with Iraq are suing their former captors, hoping to persuade a judge to award them damages for the torture they say they endured.
The lawsuit is pursued by Sarah Shourd, her ex-husband and fellow journalist Shane Bauer, and their friend Josh Fattal.
It is being overseen by federal judge Richard Leon in Washington, who in 2019 ordered Iran to pay Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian $180m for imprisoning him for more than a year on false espionage charges.
The Guardian newspaper said that any damages that Shourd, Bauer, Fattal and their families might receive through their lawsuit would come out of Iranian government assets that the US has seized through sanctions as part of the congressional Justice for Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.
It said that adding to the intrigue of a saga that began back in 2009 is that Shourd and Bauer had publicly presented themselves as opponents of US sanctions against Iran after they were freed.
In 2016, Bauer had called such penalties “totally irresponsible” and Shourd had said they hit “the poorest of Iranians the hardest.”
The lawsuit recounts how the two moved to Yemen and then Syria in 2008 while dating because they wanted to continue practicing their Arabic language skills while Shourd engaged in anti-war activism and Bauer supported himself through freelance journalism.
Fattal visited them in July of the following year and accompanied them on a hike to a waterfall in Iraqi Kurdistan that was popular with tourists.
During that hike, they apparently crossed into Iran without realizing it, and a group of soldiers whom they mistook for Iraqis stopped them to rummage through their hiking gear, cameras, wallets and passports, the lawsuit said.
The three Americans were brought blindfolded into the infamous Evin prison in the capital, Tehran, and held in small, sparse cells where they were interrogated in a manner that seemed aimed at trying to get them to admit they were US spies.
The plaintiffs’ lawsuit then recounted how they often heard the screams of other prisoners who were being tortured, making them fear that they would be next.
Bauer, Fattal and Shourd were all held in isolation, where they described barely clinging on to their sanity.
Bauer and Fattal were put together in one cell, but Shourd remained alone, denied treatment for a breast lump, precancerous cervical cells and other health problems, the lawsuit added.
The Iranian regime released Shourd in September 2010, holding up her release as an act of clemency honoring the end of Ramadan after the intervention of the country’s president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Bauer and Fattal were released a year later, apparently as a gesture meant to curry favor for Ahmadinejad as he prepared to fly to New York to attend a UN general assembly meeting, the Guardian wrote.
The three described experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress after returning to the US, making it difficult for them to readjust to their lives there. Family members of theirs also reported suffering high levels of distress not knowing whether their efforts to bring Shourd, Bauer and Fattal back to them alive would work.
The Iranian regime had not responded to their complaints in court and no trial date had been set as of Friday.
Iran’s government never replied to the lawsuit Rezaian filed against it in October 2016.
