After being trapped for two whole years, the pair of American hikers have finally
been set free.

Americans, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, were sentenced to eight years of jail
after they were accused of being spies for the United States while hiking in Iran.
According to Anne Barker, from ABC news, “Iranian authorities rejected their claims they’d been innocently hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan and crossed the unmarked border with Iran purely by mistake.”

They were held as prisoners for a little over two years. Within the jail, they heard other prisoners being beaten and tortured. According to the Los Vegas Sun, “Bauer himself was beaten while Fattal was forced down a flight of stairs.” They were unable to receive letters from their families until they went on hunger strikes. Both Americans were even told that their families had abandoned them, even though that information was false.

While in jail, they managed to stay in shape both physically and mentally. They
discussed books and asked each other questions, as well as lifted with water bottles to stay fit. They even ripped off slivers of cloth from their blindfolds to keep their sandals in shape and ran to stay in shape.

They had been traveling with another woman at the beginning, Sarah Shourd,
who was released last year because she had been diagnosed with cancer. While in jail, Shane Bauer had even proposed to Sarah Shourd. He managed to create an engagement ring out of the cloth from his shirt. She was sent back to America after she had noticed a lump in her breast. The two remaining Americans were set free a year later only after their lawyer, Masoud Shafiei, paid a bail of $500,000 each. The Iranian president stated, “We didn’t make this decision under pressure. It is a humanitarian decision.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said their release was a “gesture of Islamic mercy.”
Bauer and Fattal felt that the only reason they were held captive was because of
their nationality. They treated them as Americans differently because of the disputes currently happening between the United States and Iran. The hikers refer to their trip as “the wrong turn in the wrong country.” Now that they are free, the hikers are trying to put their lives back together and move past all of the hardships that they have endured in the past two years.