Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, also denied flatly that they had committed any crime to warrant their arrest and said they were held as “hostages” purely because of their nationality.
They refused to thank the Islamic Republic for their release, with Fattal saying the Iranian government does “not deserve undue credit for ending what they had no right and no justification to start in the first place.”
They also condemned US policies at Guantanamo Bay, saying those were used to by their captors to justify their mistreatment.
They said what happened to them does not compare to what happens to the Iranian people at the hands of their own government. Bauer said there would be no forgiveness for the Iranian government while it continues to imprison innocent Iranians.
He said, “It is the Iranian people who bear the brunt of this government’s cruelty and disregard for human rights. If the Iranian government wants to change its image in the world and ease international pressure, it should release all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience immediately. They deserve their freedom just as much as we do.”
They said they were denied mail that their families sent daily and told by their captors that their families had abandoned them.
The two men, along with Sarah Shourd, who was freed last September, appeared at a news conference in New York Sunday. The two men took turns reading from prepared statements. They did not take any questions.
Flanked by family members, Bauer and Fattal said the case against them was a “total sham” with “ridiculous lies that depicted us as being involved in an elaborate American-Israeli conspiracy to undermine Iran.”
“The only explanation for our prolonged detention is the 32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran,” Bauer said. “We were convicted of espionage because we are American. It’s that simple. No evidence was ever presented against us.”
Bauer said he had no idea whether the trio had actually crossed the unmarked border into Iran. But “even if we did enter Iran, that has never been the reason the Iranian authorities kept us in prison for so long.”
Bauer, who is engaged to Shourd, said, “Sarah, Josh and I have experienced a taste of the Iranian regime’s brutality. We have been held in almost total isolation from the world and everything we love, stripped of our rights and freedom.”
Bauer said whenever they complained about their treatment, the guards would remind them of what they said were cruel conditions at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Bauer said, “We do not believe that such human rights violations on the part of our government justify what has been done to us. Not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the US provide an excuse for other governments, including the government of Iran, to act in kind.”
The men spent the first three months of their detention in solitary confinement before they were put in an 8-foot by 13-foot (2.5-meter by 4-meter) cell together. They spent their time reading and testing each other on various topics and were allowed a short time in an outside yard to exercise daily.
They spent a total of 781 days in jail, 75 percent more time than the US embassy hostages were imprisoned in 1979-81.
“Many times, too many times, we heard the screams of other prisoners being beaten and there was nothing we could do to help them,” Fattal said.
“It was clear to us from the very beginning that we were hostages. This is the most accurate term because, despite certain knowledge of our innocence, the Iranian government has always tied our case to its political disputes with the US.”
Bauer and Fattal thanked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the governments of Turkey and Brazil, Oman and the Swiss ambassador to Iran.
They also expressed gratitude to actor Sean Penn, boxer Muhammad Ali, philosopher Noam Chomsky, singer Yusuf Islam, US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and Nobel laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mairead Maguire.
Shourd told the news conference the trio would be speaking and writing “at great length” about their ordeal in the future.
The trio was arrested near the mountainous border with Iraq on July 31, 2009.
Bauer said, “We were convicted of espionage because we are American. It’s that simple. The two court sessions we attended were a total sham. They were made up of ridiculous lies that depicted us as being involved in an elaborate American-Israeli conspiracy to undermine Iran.”
They described the moments that preceded their release, when guards suddenly led them downstairs rather than back to their cells, fingerprinted them and gave them street clothes.
“They did not tell us where we were going,” said Fattal. Instead, the two men were taken to another part of the prison where the envoy of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos awaited them and said, “Let’s go home.”
The hikers’ lawyer, Masud Shafii, said Oman paid the $1 million in bail demanded by Iran for the two men. Oman is believed to have paid the $500,000 in bail required to free Shourd last year. She also was released as President Ahmadi-nejad went to the UN for his annual appearance there.
The men were flown in an Omani plane to Oman last Wed-nesday where they spent three days in seclusion with their families before flying on to New York.
The pair were free just one day after their lawyer indicated he had given up hope for their early release following a full week in which Judiciary officials had diddled him and asserted their release was imminent.
In the news conference, Bauer made more political points than Fattal.
“The irony is that Sarah, Josh and I oppose US policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility,” said Bauer. He said he believes that US “human rights violations on the part of our government [at Guantanamo] … provide an excuse for other governments, including the government of Iran, to act in kind.”
The torturing of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay ended years ago, however, even before the trio was arrested by Iran. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is allowed to visit prisoners in Guantanamo to check on their treatment, something the ICRC cannot do in Iran. The issue at Guantanamo is no longer physical torture, but the fact that the prisoners there have been held without trial for many years.
President Barack Obama described the release of the two men as “wonderful news” and called Oman’s Sultan Qaboos on Friday to thank him for his role in pushing Iran to free the hikers who were sentenced to eight years just last month.
“I could not feel better for their families and those moms who we have been in close contact with, its a wonderful day for them and for us,” Obama said.
Bauer proposed to Shourd in prison and fashioned an engagement ring of thread in the prison yard. Shourd said the couple hasn’t yet made any concrete wedding plans.
Since her release, Shourd has lived in Oakland, California, Bauer, a freelance journalist, grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, and Fattal, an environmental activist, is from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb.
On Sunday, the men’s families told reporters that they hadn’t made plans for what they would do next—except for carving out some private time together. They would not divulge their destinations in the coming days.