Masud Shafii, the attorney for the men, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 28, showed up at court last Wednesday as he had been told. But he just sat there alone.
“My clients are in the custody of Judiciary officials, but they were not brought to court,” he told the Associated Press. “The trial date had been fixed a long time ago [in March]. There is no justification for the postponement.”
Journalists and Swiss diplomats representing the United States were kept waiting four hours in front of the courthouse before they were told there would be no trial that day. They were given no explanation.
The Judiciary originally set a trial date for November. That was canceled at the last minute when judicial officials said they had only just discovered that no one had sent an official notification of the trial to the third hiker, Sarah Shourd, 32, who had been freed on bail in September and returned to the United States.
The trial was then scheduled for February 6 on charges of espionage and illegally entering Iran. The two men appeared and testified. Shafii said no evidence whatsoever was introduced to support the espionage charge. The next session of this slo-mo trial was set for May 11. That is seven months with three sessions scheduled and only one actually held.
Shafii said he was told he would be able to speak with his clients before the February 6 session. But he never saw them until they were brought into the trial that day. And he has not been allowed to see them since.
The families have had no contact with them by phone or mail since last November.
Bauer’s mother, Cindy Hickey, used the world “devastated” to described how she felt. “We were thirsting for a resolution,” she told the AP.
Fattal’s mother, Laura Fattal, said she got the news in a late-night call from the US State Department. She said the families were becoming increasingly concerned.
There is growing suspicion that the Islamic Republic just plans to leave the two men in jail until the regime can arrange some political benefits from releasing them. Last year, the Iranian government freed two Germans after the German government made some small concessions.
Bauer and Fattal have now been detained in Iran for 21 1/2 months.
