Detained Americans freed in prisoner swap with Iran

[Valin]

CBS News:

Jan 16, 2016

 

U.S. and Iranian officials say Iran is releasing four detained Iranian-Americans in exchange for seven Iranians held or charged in the United States.

 

U.S. officials say the four Americans, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former Marine Amir Hekmati, pastor Saeed Abidini and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, were to be flown from Iran to Switzerland on a Swiss plane and then brought to a U.S. military base in Landstuhl, Germany, for medical treatment.

 

A U.S. official confirmed to CBS News that a fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, would also be released from Iranian custody.

 

In return, the U.S. will either pardon or drop charges against seven Iranians - six of whom are dual citizens - accused or convicted of violating U.S. sanctions. The U.S. will also drop Interpol "red notices" - essentially arrest warrants - on 14 Iranian fugitives it has sought.

 

Iran also committed to continue cooperating with the U.S. to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owWBUMsESu8

[Valin]

14 Testy Months Behind U.S. Prisoner Swap With Iran
PETER BAKER and DAVID E. SANGER
JAN. 17, 2016


(Snip)

The Iranians were not the only ones grappling with divisions in their government about a possible deal. The Obama administration was engaged in a vigorous debate about whether to trade Iranian prisoners and, if so, which ones, with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch objecting to any deal that equated innocent Americans seized for political gain with Iranian criminals indicted or convicted under Western legal traditions.

 

In the end, officials said President Obama decided that to spare the Americans years — if not life — in an Iranian prison, he would make what he called a “one-time gesture” by releasing Iranians who had been accused or convicted of violating sanctions that he was lifting anyway as part of the nuclear agreement.

 

Even then, there was a last-minute dispute on the airport tarmac — what one American official said “was like a scene out of ‘Argo’ “ — as Iran was reported to be refusing to let the mother and wife of one prisoner, Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post, leave with him.

 

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