Posted on 06/16/2010 7:53:30 PM PDT by Born Conservative
Three weeks after the failed mission to free her son Josh from an Iranian prison, Laura Fattal, of Elkins Park, is relentlessly on message, plotting new strategies and addressing criticisms that he put himself in harm's way.
"Iran says the investigation is ongoing," she said in her first detailed interview since her 48 hours in Tehran. "If it is, please conclude it. Let our kids speak with their lawyer and go to trial. They will more than defend themselves."
Josh Fattal, 28, and his friends Shane Bauer, 27, and Sarah Shourd, 31, were arrested 10 months ago for entering Iran across its mountainous border with northern Iraq. While the three have not been formally arraigned, some Iranian officials have accused them of espionage. The secretary-general of Iran's human-rights council said Friday that they could be charged and tried soon.
Fattal, 57, put a career as an art professor on hold to devote herself to her son's liberation. For more than 10 months, against the backdrop of increasingly strident U.S.-Iranian flare-ups, she has focused unerringly on the welfare of her youngest son, jailed 6,100 miles from Philadelphia by an avowed enemy of America. A less disciplined person might have cracked.
"People tell me, 'Laura, it's going to be a year,' " she said. "But I don't see that. I am really on this one-foot-in-front-of-the-other thing."
The one time she indulged the urge to get ahead of herself was in January, after applying for a visa to Iran, when she began assembling Josh's "clothes for release" - khaki trousers, a blue Oxford shirt, a beige sweater, socks, and underwear.
In the hours before her flight to Tehran, she folded and packed them in plastic bags. Now if only he would need them.
If these people ever get let out of Iran, they should be prosecuted in the USA. What business do these morons have messing around in or near a place like Iran?
More about these Berkley grads here;-) from 2009
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/08/03_hikers.shtml
Joshua Felix Fattal, 27, attended UC Berkeley for three semesters, from fall 2003 through fall 2004, graduating in December 2004 with a B.S. in environmental economics and policy from the College of Natural Resources.
(Prof Ken Light says...)Bauer had approached him with his photo portfolio and said he wanted to do photography in addition to majoring in peace and conflict studies.
Sarah Emily Shourd, 30, transferred from Diablo Valley College to UC Berkeley in the fall of 2000 and graduated in May 2003 with a B.A. in English. An aspiring journalist, she reported a story earlier this year for New American Media on the Golan Heights in Israel.
Environemental Economics!
Peace and conflict studies!
An aspiring journalist!
Wonder if they like their rice in prison!
What is it with Elkins Park? First, it was Philip Berg, now these LIBs. That community always struck me as eccentric, but not LIB. The ice rink was the coldest one I’ve ever been in. It was elevated and the sides were open. Not like the new one!
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