How do you post bail to the Iranian government?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced to NBC on Tuesday that U.S. citizens Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, sentenced by an Iranian court in August to eight-year prison sentences for spying and entering the country illegally (the prisoners maintain that they were hiking and crossed into Iran accidentally), would be allowed to return home in the next ...

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced to NBC on Tuesday that U.S. citizens Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, sentenced by an Iranian court in August to eight-year prison sentences for spying and entering the country illegally (the prisoners maintain that they were hiking and crossed into Iran accidentally), would be allowed to return home in the next few days. While the U.S. government has not confirmed their return, it now seems likely that the two will not be serving the entirety of their sentence in notorious Evin prison.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced to NBC on Tuesday that U.S. citizens Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, sentenced by an Iranian court in August to eight-year prison sentences for spying and entering the country illegally (the prisoners maintain that they were hiking and crossed into Iran accidentally), would be allowed to return home in the next few days. While the U.S. government has not confirmed their return, it now seems likely that the two will not be serving the entirety of their sentence in notorious Evin prison.

The release is not without a caveat, however: A $500,000 bail must be paid for each prisoner. Masoud Shafiee, the pair’s attorney in Tehran, said that the hikers’ families are currently trying to find the money for the bail. But the business of posting bail to a hostile foreign government under U.S. sanctions is not so simple. 

The precedent for this case is Sarah Shourd, who was arrested with Bauer and Fattal in July 2009. Shourd was released in September 2010, in part due to health concerns, and was also required to make a $500,000 bail payment.

There was some speculation at that time that the U.S. government would pay the bail. However, then- U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley made it very clear that, "the United States government does not fund prisoner bail." This put the onus back on the families of the detainees, who said that they could not afford the steep payoff. On the other hand, Crowley also made it clear that a bail payment would not necessarily violate U.S. sanctions against Iran.

"There are transactions all the time between Iran and the rest of the world," Crowley pointed out, according to Al Jazeera. "Some of them violate sanctions, others don’t."

Eventually, the money was deposited into an Iranian bank in Oman (which helped to arrange the details of the payment, according to U.S. officials). At the time, it was unclear who paid the bail, although there was some speculation that the benefactor was the Sultan of Oman. Oman, while rarely in the headlines, maintains strong ties to both Iran and the U.S., giving it a unique ability to facilitate behind-the-scenes interactins between the two antagonistic powers. The AP quoted a U.S. official saying that neither the families nor the U.S. government fronted the money, but declined to say who did.

With the payment (called bail by Iran, but dubbed everything from ransom to blackmail elsewhere) now doubled as both Bauer and Fattal await their release, it remains to be seen if a mysterious third party will intervene to free them. It also remains to be seen if the move will prove a boon to the embattled Ahmadinejad, who has been mired in domestic infighting against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for months. Ahmadinejad reportedly intervened to help free Shourd, only to be rebuked by the Iranian judiciary. Whatever the outcome, Iran is unlikely to end its habit of seizing foreigners anytime soon.

Cara Parks is deputy managing editor at Foreign Policy. Prior to that she was the World editor at the Huffington Post. She is a graduate of Bard College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and has written for The New Republic, Interview, Radar, and Publishers Weekly, among others. Twitter: @caraparks

Tag: Iran

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