Sarah Shourd Arrives Home

Some thirteen months after she and two fellow hikers took a wrong turn and landed in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison as pawns in a game of political chess, Sarah Shourd is on US soil again. Shourd, along with mother Nora Shourd, touched down in DC this morning, reports the AP, and was headed to New York for a news conference with the mothers of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was due in the Big Apple today for a UN General Assembly.

Confronted with the mothers' pleas for the release of the two remaining hikers, Ahmadinejad had a curt response: Nuh-uh. "They violated the law," he told ABC. "Do you want violators to be released. Is that what you're asking me?" Unless, of course, Politico notes, the US wanted to release eight Iranians: "It would not be misplaced to ask that the US government should take a humanitarian gesture to release the Iranians who were illegally arrested and detained here in the United States." (More Sarah Shourd stories.)