News

JAKARTA — East Timorese president Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, appealed Sunday to Iran to release two American hikers arrested on the Iraqi border in 2009 and accused of espionage.

The trial of Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal will resume on May 11, 18 months after they were detained for alleged spying and illegally entering the Islamic republic across a remote section of the border.

The three have pleaded not guilty to the spying charges and maintain they innocently strayed into Iran across the unmarked frontier.

Iran has dismissed repeated pleas from the United States for the release of Bauer and Fattal after it allowed Shourd to return home on bail of around $500,000 in September last year on humanitarian grounds.

"It is hard for any of us to appreciate the torment these individuals... and their families have suffered since that fateful day," Ramos-Horta, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner, told AFP in a statement.