Good journalism, publicly declared an interest and not want to make a judgment on that. An award for Public Service for possibly the greatest betrayal of National Secrets of all time strikes me as a crisis and it is a real danger of a very cozy media world, patting itself on the back, absolutely understanding the consequences for the dangers that we face in a very dangerous world so there is a dangerous disconnect there. As for the Guardian Newspaper itself my view was besides an individual gave the names of operatives outside the u. K. Jurisdiction that would be in breach of the 2000 terrorism act of the united kingdom. That would apply to me as an individual why would it not apply to a newspaper . This weekend on cspan former british teeth and secretary william fox on ed snowden, government surveillance and privacy issues this morning at 10 00 eastern. And on booktv from texas the san antonio book festival including doctors and panels on the stories the shaped san antonio and the nsa big brother and democracy. Also today starting at 1 00 p. M. Eastern cspan2 and on American History tv, tour the Nsas National crib the logic museum and learn about the making and breaking the secret codes and their role in u. S. History sunday at 6 00 and 10 00 p. M. On cspan3. Up next on booktv, shane bauer, Joshua Fattal and sarah shourd tell their story of being captured and imprisoned by the iranians after hiking to the border of iran and iraq in 2009. All three were charged with spying and entering iran illegally. This is an hour and 20 minutes. I would like to begin by congratulating shane our shane bauer, Joshua Fattal and sarah shourd on their memoir a sliver of light 3 americans imprisoned in iran. Their story begins on a warm summer day in july of 2009, the Three Friends who met as students decided to go for a hike in the mountains of iraq. Shane bauer and sarah shourd were teaching and writing in syria and josh was visiting from the u. S. Sera shared recently on cbs morning edition there are few moments in life when everything changes forever. This was one of those moments. Their capture was the beginning of the 26 months long experience of living in captivity. Shane bauer, Joshua Fattal and sarah shourd were cut off from everything they knew including one another. After a year in solitary confinement sarah shourd was freed in september of 2010. One year later almost to the day, shane bauer and Joshua Fattal were released and began the process of healing which youll hear more about tonight. Today shane bauer and Joshua Fattal have focused on prisoners rights in the u. S. And around the world. Shane bauer is an exec a recipient of the guggenheim award for criminal justice reporting. Sarah is a writer, educator and contributing editor at voluntary watch. Work as an advocate for prisoners rights featured in the New York Times, San Francisco chronicle and cnn. Bosh is a historian with a background in environmental sustainability, a doctoral candidate at new York State University and a new dad. At end of tonights program there will be time to ask questions. We will go ahead and have a microphone right there in the center. Please make sure you are asking a question. There are so many great statements to share tonight but we want to keep it concise the questions only please. The show is being recorded so just be aware of the lighting in the room and that end of the night we will go to the book signing and have the book signing located at the table in the back and have additional books for sale here as well. Thanks so much and please join me in welcoming shane bauer, Joshua Fattal and sarah shourd to speak tonight. Thank you. I am just going to tell a few stories. I wont try to tell our whole story and i will start with the story of a lot of you probably want to hear, which you are wondering about which is how this happened. We were living in damascus, in syria, working, josh was traveling, teaching in Different Countries around the world and another friend was in europe. Bosh came to visit us in damascus and we decided to take a trip and we chose iraq, i worked in baghdad before as a journalist. It never had been throughout the war. It is an autonomous region within iraq. No american had ever been killed or kidnapped there. It has a tourist industry of 2 Million People visit every year. In 2011, and the New York Times top 41 places to visit in the world. We went there and we were just there for a few days. We went to museums and wanted to get out of the city so we asked people where we could go and our Hotel Manager and taxi driver told us same places where there was a waterfall. It wasnt a big waterfall but there are not a lot of waterfalls in that region so it was attraction, there were hundreds of people there, kurdish families camped out and we went there and asked about the frail to hike on and there was an someone pointed to it and we slept near the bottom of the trail. In the morning we hiked for five hours. When we got near the top of this mountain we stopped and had lunch and trying to decide whether to keep going or turn back and lets just get the ridge right there, lets go up there and see what there is to see and come back and start walking and soldiers waved us to them and we got to them and decided they were iranian and we didnt know we were close to the Iranian Border and so we were really shocked and they asked for our passports and asked if we were American Dance took us to the next town. We call our friend who wasnt with us who called the u. S. Embassy and it went from there. For a few days we were driven around western iran and we didnt know what was going to happen. We thought we would be taken back to iraq relatively soon and we were taken to one city and we were in an Apartment Building and were interrogating and at night time we were put in a car and driven out of the town into the countryside. I will read a little passage from that, we are leaving the city. He has got a gun, josh said, startled but calm. In a busy round about our car swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle. Epistle scuds across the floor. My heart stops and my mouth goes dry. The pudgy man picks up and sets it on his lap. We turn to a road that leads out of town, city lights fade behind us. Where are we going to . He asked in a honey sweet voice. The pudgy man hisses and turns around to face as putting a finger to his lips. The headlights of the cars trailing a slight up his face revealing his cold eyes. He turns back to face the front. This solitary light in country houses stream by like a little media rights. He picks of the gun in his right hand and cox it three times. Sarahs eyes widen, preposterous stiffens. She leans toward the man in front and with a note of desperation says Mahmoud Ahmadinejad good, obama bad. The pistol is resting on his lap. He turns to face again and holds two handout with palms facing each other. Iran, he says, holding his head toward one hand, america, he says lifting the other, problem, he says stretching the distance between them. She checks our faces to make sure his message registers and drops his arm. Sarah turns to me. What does she see . Her eyes are penetrating. Do you think he is going to hurt us . I dont know whether to respond or just stare at her. We walked into our fear together letting its around us off like a fog. The immediate prospect of death is different than i imagined it. I see as pulling over to the side of the road and leaving the car quietly. My legs convey mechanically of a rocky earth. I will be holding sarahs hand and yours too but mostly gone already. Walking flush with no spirit. We wont scream or run or other fabulous words of defiance. We will be like mice paralyzed by fear, limp, and we will stand there and each of us will fall one by one hitting the gravely earth with the fund. So we were taken, we were taken out of the car in the middle of the countryside, we were taken to an empty jail house and held for a few days and were driven across the country to tehran and were blindfolded and put in a van and brought to a prison. We didnt know we were in prison for several months but we were all separated immediately and solitary cells and for two months we were interrogating. That time in solitary confinement was a time i watched my mind slow down, where i felt i was becoming more of an animal land wasnt thinking because i didnt have much to reflect back to myself. I hope for the interrogators to come every day. And i would leave from outside and tie them in my room and smell the men have some connection to the outside. I thought about escaping a lot. There was a lock up on the window and i thought maybe i could take something from the back of the toilet or one, guard gave me a razor blade and i thought i could keep a razor blade and use it to get out. One day a guard left my door open and i reached through it and felt the key in my door so it was late, i waited for a long time, i opened the door, peeked out and saw a guard sitting down there so i waited until late at night and when i didnt hear anybody anymore i reached through and opened the door and came out and across the hall to another cell which was sarahs sell and we hadnt seen each other for a few weeks. And 20 or 30 minutes together, i wont go into the details of what happened because i am a little more shy than when i am writing. The next morning i found out i was wearing sarahs pants. So there were there were a lot of kind of surprising things that happened throughout that time. There were guards that would bring pens that were illegal and make it so we could see each other. I had strained relationships with interrogators with so much power over me and i wanted them to like me because i thought i would make them feel bad and try to get me out and i had to deal with their bizarre questions like what newspapers are controlled by the cia, questions i was trying to figure out what they wanted, what they were after. One time they asked me about an email like an e. Card my grandmas century with a turkey flapping its wings for thanksgiving. It was ridiculous but it was kind of scary because ridiculous. The truth it became clear the truce didnt matter. After two months my interrogator told me i asked him do you think i am us by as at the end of the interrogation he told me i know you are not a spy, none of you are spies but the situation has become political and it is going to be between politicians and my government and politicians in your government and you are going to have to wait. Later we were told iran wanted to do a Prisoner Exchange with us and that gave us power in a sense. It allowed us when we heard prisoners being beaten, we would bang on the doors and we could actually get them to stop. They wouldnt beat us the same way they beat them. One of surprising thing that happened was after josh and i were put together in a cell after four months and sarah state in solitary confinement for year and then was released and after her release, after she was let out in september, josh and i had to get our hair cut and whenever this happens we were asked to days to use a razor and the guards brought us to a little cell next to a bathroom and the cells in this prison that we were in for most of the time didnt have bathrooms so prisoners had to go out in this other bathroom. I was cutting joshs hair and a razor was really bad and it took forever and i heard the shower turn on in the cell next to me so we knocked on the window that connected these two rooms and this prisoner came to the door, the shower was on, he was naked and he said you the guy married to sarah shourd . I said i am engaged to sarah and proposed to her in prison. He saw this on tv apparently. He said is she out . I said yes, she is out. He said i sent wyatt . Is your duty he said i am al qaeda very matteroffactly. And he said what is your religion . I said christian. Which isnt really true. He asked what is his religion and josh said i am jewish. He said a okay. All people of the book, that is good. And he said but islam is the best. And he said if you become muslim you will sleep better at night. Which was a pretty soft attempt at conversion. And he said Everybody Knows you are innocent and that you shouldnt be here. And i hope you get free. And this was kind of in prison we kind of all were just prisoners and there was a sense of connection between everyone because we were prisoners and guards. Identities were stripped away in that context. He told me god willing i hope that you will be free soon and i said you too. One of the things that lot of my energy in prison was not becoming a prisoner. I never wanted to really accept that i was of that place. Never wanted to call it home. Solitary confinement is like a slow death. I was in solitary for 410 days. The world gets farther and farther away. Everything you know, everything that you are becomes smaller as you become smaller and you shrink. The waste that i tried to account of the dehumanization of those four white walls were really important to me. After months in solitary confinement you get reduced to an almost animal like a stage where you are pacing yourself compulsively, i would crouch down, listening for a sound to orient myself. There were times i completely lost my grasp on reality and sanity and i heard screaming and i thought it was from another prisoner and another selling another corridor and i just wanted it to stop. I put my hands over my years and it went on and on and the door of my cell burst open and the guards started and start shaking me and i realized i had been screaming. I want to read you a passage. This is a few months into might imprisonment. Interrogation was over. You are not even told you a political pawns, we dont know what is going to happen to you and things have been pretty quiet in section 209 in a womans section and one day all of a sudden the guards are frantic. There was this Kinetic Energy everywhere. Was december 27, 2009, five months into our captivity. I watched as a procession of new inmates are led past my sell. One woman has a bandage around head caked in blood. Another limps past, her bright red hair screaming out of her torn headscarf commerce head hanging like a wilting flowers. I want to know what is happening beyond these prison walls. Now the streets of tehran on being brought to me. A few months before we were captured the Green Movement erupted. After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was named president the second time, reelected, there were monumental protests, millions of people in capitals all over iran saying the vote was stolen, he was an illegitimate president. And all the people around us were political prisoners, a human rights lawyers, student activists, opposition of all kinds. In the beginning i assume that didnt know that. I assumed they would all hate me and believe the lies the government were telling about me but i found out that wasnt the case. Suddenly a soft whisper. The voice was close as if it were in my cell. My head darts to the right and left looking for the source of the sound. Am i imagining it . The voice is louder now. It seems to be coming from the corner of the door where my sink is. Above the sink is the bench. As soon as the thought crosses my mind i leap off my mattress compelled by a force beyond my control and, to the sink. I press my mouth to the event. Coo are you i ask of voice. How do you know my name . My name is zaja, almost the same as you. I saw your mother on tv. I am sorry for you. I am a mother too. I almost yell and remember to hush my voice. Did you talk to her . As soon as the question escapes my mouth i realize how irrational it is. No. I need pictures of you on bbc. You are a small girl. Is easy free to stand on the sink before me is so difficult. I didnt mean that to come across as so funny. Is not funny. Prepare yourself. For me it is difficult. They beat me, kicked me and tortured me. My head hurt and it is difficult for me to stand. Her english is almost perfectly, strongly accented with scratched quality. I feel the tears welling under my eyes. Is a miracle, she knows me, we can talk to which the. How is it possible the guards dont know about this . I try to imagine her in her cell, being taken out for beatings and interrogation and put back in a cage separated from her children, her life, her country, so much like me. As bad as my situation is, hers is worse. Why did they rescue, i ask, i was at the protest. Suddenly the door of my still burst open. A guard named lay low, her voluptuous the lead on the doorway, she put her hand on her hips, she heard us talking and cut down hallway probably shoeless so we wouldnt hear her footsteps and pounce on us in the middle of are forbidden conversation. As if we were being caught masturbating by ruthless school mom, discover a private secret pleasure and being exposed and humiliated. This time my pleas had no effect on whale. Her kind motherly face slammed shut like a steel door. She says she will tell my interrogators what i have done. The new prisoners immediately transferred. When lana comes to my cell there are no more smiles, no more conversations in arabic. Hands my food with a cold and focused stair and wordlessly leads me out to the courtyard for a few minutes of sun. I no longer heard her sweet sister and plants that she paid gets paid to keep alive. These interactions with other women in the prison, even though i got caught that time, it was frightening, did know what would happen. They fueled my desire to connect with them more. Gave me a taste of food the women were around me and why they were there and being in solitary confinement i couldnt resist breaking the rules. The spirit of resistance permeated the political prison, section 209. Once i had been caught several times i wanted to get smarter and smarter about to make contact. One of the conversations shane bauer and Joshua Fattal and i would have a lot, i got worse and worse and my mental state disintegrated in solitary they would let me have periods of seeing Joshua Fattal every day. It means fresh air. We would talk about things, have philosophical conversations. And store of my ideas all day and spilled out on them. And it is still question i ponder to this day, it is our ability to write, the ability to have a complex conversation with another human being, exchange of language . Is it the human touch, being able to feel a physical connection . Is it making choices about what you are going to have for breakfast lunch . Is it having a role in your community, your family . When you are in prison all these things are taken away from you. You realize how valuable they are. I hadnt interacted the one i read that, she was taken away after that. They transferred her but months later she came back and there were many women i interacted with, some of them would push past the guards and tell me that they loved me. We devised a calculated way of passing messages to one another. We would not three times on the wall and that meant there was a note waiting. We data shared bathroom and i would write a note and wait until the lazy guard was working and i knew she wasnt looking through the peephole and catch me writing a note and i have a little piece of metal. Didnt have a pen little little piece of metal from the edge of the vaseline bottle i got from the doctor and i tore it off and it may mark almost like a pencil so i would write little love notes and tuck them inside a maxi pad that would make foiled by fading a little bit of beef stew and dipping the maxi pad in the beef stew and memorize the guards footsteps of that i knew where they were so that that time she would go into the bathroom the god that i didnt like what and the nearby. That is how smart prisoners. That is how details they get. That is how important it is to find a way to connect to another human being. The other way i resisted dehumanization was by finding ways to be creative. Finding ways to feel alive and by using that 10 x 14 foot cell to the maximum that i could, i would challenge myself to see how many parallels i could do across the room without falling. Eventually i could do 16. I would walk on my hands backwards like a bridge back and forth so when the guards came in they would be impressed. I would recite poetry i memorized and invisible audience like this one. I would knock on the wall with other prisoners and there was one prisoner that really got into it, went on for weeks and weeks. I would start with a few knocks and she would repeat the mend at something and i would repeat them and add something and eventually we were composing music together. All of this is a resistance. All of this is warding off dehumanization that call terry confinement and prison is designed to do. Broken prisoners are a lot easier to control. The more you hate your cells the more you accept your condition and your reality and the more you are divided from other prisoners, the more passive you are, the easier it is to push you around. We all resisted that in so many ways. It was difficult to see two people i loved as prisoners. I remember the first time i was going to the clinic and happened to pass by shane bauers hall and i saw him for the first time walking down his hallway blindfolded carrying, stumbling and carrying a bag of trash and for me to see someone who was the most free and beautiful and vibrant person i have ever known subjected to that kind of senseless humiliation and degradation was very painful. It was also incredibly amazing to see each other always fight back, always pushed the limits. Joshua fattal would never wear a blindfold properly. Sometimes it annoyed me, just do it, whatever. Do we have to have this conversation with the guards again and again but ultimately i admired so much that josh never accepted it was okay to be blindfolded walking down a hallway. So i think that the notes i passed back and forth a main message was we loved each other. She was an iranians dont hate americans, please dont hate us. We are opposed to our government, we are opposed to what they are doing to you and look what theyre doing to us. What makes me feel most human, what i discovered in those 131 2 months in solitary confinement is to love and to be loved makes me feel most human and most alive and that is something they could never take from us. Even after all these years the sun never says to the earths you owe me. Look what happens to a love like that . It lights the whole sky. After nine months in prison, our mothers got to visit us and i recited that poem to her, to my mother. She had written that letter in a letter to me. And she often put poems in her letters from medieval persian poets. Perhaps gods, people like her who are censoring letters. It is a powerful sentiment. I knew that mothers launched an International Campaign to get us out. And i was just sitting and watching in a sell, wanted to pour a glass of water, peel her an orange and tell her how much she meant to me. I just remember when the elevator door closed, when the session ended. And knowing that i wouldnt know the next time that i wouldnt see her again. Weathers and books and sodas heading to prison. The van turns sharply to the left. The vehicle comes to a stop. I see a dozen guards standing around a volleyball in the parking lot of the entrance in prison. I recognize all the guards, john comes over to me and for a moment i think he is going to ask me to play. The guard likes me and sometimes this we way allows me, sometimes this report allows me a little bit of leeway. The rest of the guards see what he is doing, interrupts commotion and everyone arguing in 5 c. I have no idea what they are saying. I see a guard which we named a pay. He carries the volleyball in his hand, strips my forearm and hand me the ball. It is so characteristic of y me play. Grabs the snowcapped mountains, i savor this moment of power. To the deep left side, they bump the ball out of bounds. Content to walk off the court to the sounds of approval. Inside the prison gate take all the letters and photos, i wish i could carry the feeling of carrying my mother back into the cell. I wanted to cherish all the she gave me and remember the warmth that exists in the world. But they took everything except the 4 pins in my underwear. I wanted to read that section. It is very weird that i played volleyball with them that they. I still cant believe that happened. It is the exception that proves the rule that guards and prisoners dont really played together, dont really joke together. The jokes they found funny we didnt and they found funny we didnt. Even with us we struggled at times to find ways to relate. Theres so little stimulus. We constantly create things to do to think about, to talk about. After we shared all our life stories and had as many philosophical questions as we could think of, one of the ways in which we marked time and moved forward was to celebrate holidays so we celebrated the equinoxes, solstice, ash wednesday, palm sunday, good friday, passover, persian new year. First time i ever had a passover ceremony using the koran as my book of reference where it talks about the story of moses. But the guards did in fact try to be funny at times. But they werent. I will share with you their jokes just to get a sense of their mind set. When we went on Hunger Strike, immediately at the beginning when they separated and isolated as and decided they were to do that, then at the end in the last year we went on pretty regular Hunger Strikes to get letters from our families and one guard was always come by and say you are on a diet. You will lose weight, a diet. Not funny. Another guard thought it was funny one time to show up with the medical gloves on and the pair of scissors saying he would only let us outside for 30 minutes if he could cut off all little bit of our genitals before going out. And the one jokethe one joke that was universal throughout our time in prison was we had this litany of complaints, phone calls and spending a yearandahalf and havent seen a lawyer, that you see boards saying that. They say no, no, no. What about guantanamo . Cant argue with that. This hotel, five star hotel, every guard. But of course we were not that funny to them either. We would, once when i was in the bathroom and a guard was going by ourselves and looking to make sure we were both in the cell and he didnt see me, he asked shane bauer about me and he suggested i had escaped, that guard got alarmed. And it wasnt so much a joke but a moment where the guards were beating a prisoner very close to ourselves and we could hear the chains, the desperation of the prisoner and shane bauer and i ran to the door and pounded on the door, when he comes, we say what is this, guantanamo . He was one of many gods calling at a 5star hotel and amazingly he stopped beating that prisoner. The sort of last moment joke of anything i could think of of humor or a joke or anything, my joke, they didnt find it funny but when we were getting released, i didnt know i was getting released until i was on the plane going out and they took us to an exit interview. It was like they wanted to do a lastminute propaganda thing so they were saying you were sentenced to eight years but only served just over two years, you must be grateful to the ayatollah for that. You must be grateful to my could damage a new job, going on and on to get some nugget they could put on state television. Of course shane bauer and i werent giving it and they gave up and said you must have fought the food was really good. Persian food is so good. I stumbled on the question. They began giving us a good amount of lamb and i was tempted to give a propaganda moment but i didnt. Know, the food was whatever and they said okay, you must have learned some farcy while you were here. Yes, i did. Thanks for asking. They of course know the words in farsi which are hurry up, stopped, bring your blindfold down. The interviewer and the videographers just shut the thing. And so the power dynamic, we were living in different worlds. And getting out was a hole different book. But it was a big adjustment as you might imagine after such a long time. And as time went by, i was blessed to have a child, almost a month now. And he, like me, has a biblical first name and an arabic last name and me and my partner decided to give him a parisian middle name, farsi for 40. I want to leave you with this idea, this dream that i have that i cling to after having 26 months of my life stolen from me. I feel it my dream is to grow up in a world where people, arabic speaking, a hebrew speaking, arabic speaking will come together and talk together and walk along a road that is not forged work and be able to laugh and joke together. Thank you. [applause] we are going to transition to the q a. Line up behind this column. In case you didnt hear that there will be a line in the center near the column for questions. I encourage everyone to ask your wildest, silliest, stupidest questions. If you dont want to take ownership of your question you could say my friend told me to ask. Good evening, thank you for coming. Is a horrific story, and absolutely captivating read. My wife and i read it continuously over the weekend, just couldnt put it down. I commend you for your writing ability, feel sorry that you had to go through that experience. Dont want to take much time. I have a hard time formulating the question but it has to do with the timing of your release. You were released year earlier. Just wondered if the staging of that action will be helped you and because you had been out a year and had experienced some things about the free world the staging of that release helped all of you assimilate back into society after your ordeal . Does that make sense . When i first heard i was going to be released my reaction was hell no. I am not leaving without them. I couldnt stand the idea of being that far away from them and not knowing when i would see them again but then it hit me that i could have an impact. This was my responsibility. That i could get them out sooner and i had to believe that so i hit the ground running and for that year, i lived out of my suitcase, crisscrossed the country dozens of times and in the first two weeks i met with president obama and oh them did a shot, i was on oprah. So i didnt as far as the recovery, we all experienced how difficult the transition was, i would never be alone again and never feel that pain. It was physically painful to make eye contact and when someone touched me jump two feet in the air and i wanted to crawl back into a box and that helped me because i needed to keep fighting for them. It is really hard to compare mine and josh sarah was in a situation where she was not really able to have an enjoyable free moment. When i got out, that moment of getting out was no, there went my life. It was the most incredible thing i had ever experienced. Quickly after that, things get a lot more complicated. I felt i was in this cloud for a while and had a hard time, for a little while have a hard time making choices. We would go to the restaurant and i couldnt choose what to eat. I had to ask sarah to do it and i couldnt read body language at first, facial gestures other than josh capsule i had to tell sarah tell me what you mean because i am not getting the subtleties. In that way, sarah had been out for a year and she was able to guide me through a lot of these stages of becoming free. At the same time, she had that kind of moment of getting free taken from her so she was also getting free at that time in a very different way because she had been out for a year. There were definitely a couple times when i just i just gave myself up and she guided me around. Thank you so much for being here. This is incredibly fascinating. I am not sure how to do this in an eloquent manner and this may come across as insensitive but i am wondering given your experience on prisoner releases essentially obviously every human life is valuable but im wondering about your perspective on what you think is worthy of sacrificing essentially. I dont know if that makes sense, to what extent should a country go to get one of their citizens back. Does that make sense . Anyone . That is a good question. It is obviously very complicated but i think there are a couple things. One is in our situation the extent that our country had to go to at some point was not that far. After sarah was released she was getting messages directly from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It became clear that giving a simple diplomatic gestures, iran would have considered that enough for implication for releasing sarah to release us. They said at one point they said if president obama would have written a note to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying he hoped for better relations in the future that that would have been enough to release us. And it is characteristic of this larger situation we are in. And that made it difficult for us to resolve the Nuclear Issue. And we are part of a much larger context. And i was even more processingfrustrated that there was a larger situation, this deadlock and neither side, it is hint that might happen now with nuclear negotiation. A month or two after we got out, 1,020 prisoners slot, and, you know, while we were in prison, there were three german and three belgians that were held for three or four months respectively. I remember hearing about them. I met one of those in prison. He was out in the hall and he quickly told me that i was a hiker. It seems there is some equations, has to do with how much power between the countries, and other countries do get along. I admit feeling i was very happy but a little jealous when the germans and belgians got out after three or four months and i also saw on the television at that time there foreign minister flew to iran and within three days was flying back with the prisoners and of course they dont have the u. S. Doesnt have diplomatic relations with iran in that way so that wasnt the possibility. Part of the question of to what extent to get prisoners out, i think the bigger issue, the bigger context is making it so there is lessening hostility between governments in such a way that there can be communication back and forth and events like this dont drag on. Briefly i want to add you have to look at every case separately. And determine it on its own merits but in our case it was particularly frustrating because the good gesture we were asking our government to give were things that would benefit people on both sides. The letter shane bauer referred to, the discussion of the prisoner swap we asked if they could release a few iranian americans that overstayed their visass, these are not things that should be a hard push. I dont want to make any generalizations but the argument was benefits, iranians will benefit americans, lets open up some discussion between our governments. Thank you for taking the time to answer the question. Is an amazing story and i appreciate you being with us and i agree is in fact something that needs to be taken on a case by case basis. One of the smarter persons explained how there are things to be learned and gained from both sides but the first question for you and the other two, what would you point to in your opinion as being the straw that broke the camels back or the event that led to the eventual release in those cases in which you think probably for you all was the most effective in raising awareness, almost as an interlocutor and anything else you share would be greatly appreciated. I feel strongly that the pressure that the International Campaign, a tipping point, there was enough pressure internationally. In my case my mother and with the support, the medical issues and medical issues in the months leading up to solitary confinement. I had concerns about a lump in my breast but the clean bill of health. It was a convenient way not to look weak like they were giving in to u. S. Pressure and letting them go for medical reasons so that was a brilliantly strategic thing. In joshs place diplomacy was crawling along at a snails pace and there was a lot of fear among families. What if we come out and criticize the human rights abuses. If it makes things worse . We decided at a certain point, very strong and critical and that would put the pressure on diplomacy what would work. A lot of countries were involved, of iraq, venezuela, senegal, iman was very crucial land is hard to point to one thing that happened that led to our release, and in our case there were allies with u. S. And iran. They eventually paid half a Million Dollars each, and they came to iran and negotiated and brought us out and that relationship that was created was leader, we recently found out in the last year, there was an actual facetoface negotiation between the u. S. And iran happened around the Nuclear Issue proceeding the more formal nuclear talks. What questions were you asked in interrogation this, theres a need to be less than honest . Tim gave a couple examples. I will give a couple more. Every interrogation, please write your full biography. And the favorite question, every time with what i you doing . Why did you cross into iran was how they phrased it. And it was pretty honest about nervous about saying that i was jewish and my dad was israeli, and a story i dont want them to weave. Several times in the past ten years. And it lasted ten days. And then, trips to israel, what did you do . And do the same thing. They were waiting to hear the things that just didnt exist. At a certain point i let go of it and they have my email and thanks to a machine mail everything is stored and whatever happened in the past bunch of years, and you know, i just stop hiding things. I want to thank you for sharing from your incredible resilience. The question i have, if you would reflect a little bit on what it was like to return after this experience to the United States, the highest incarceration rate in the world, 2. 8 million incarcerated and 80,000 in solitary confinement on a given day and if you could speak to how your experience, sarah shourd in part together, has been a resource for connecting with survivors and also working to confront this human rights crisis on going. It was amazing to come back to this country. I was dreaming of coming back here and has continued to to feel great to be here. And when i got back my mind was still in prison. It took all long time. I feel very connected to prison. That kind of when i came here that led me to really Pay Attention to what was happening in prison and there was a big Hunger Strike that happened shortly after i got out in california protesting the use of longterm solitary confinement. After about six or seven months of readjusting and reconnecting with the family, i went back to my work and decided to investigate this issue of solitary confinement. I went to pelican bay prison in Northern California and went inside so that the 7 x 11 feet, no window and people lived in those cells were identical to that one for ten, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and i dug into cases of people that were in there and found the some of them, many of them had not committed acts of violence in the prison. Labor there because they had and popular public will believe, black panther books, a picture with a gang member. And it is something as a society that i think anyone you ask say they believe in justice and human rights and judicial process, something we could look at. We have more people in solitary confinement than any country in the world and more people in prison than any country in the world. Similarly from me when i first got out one of the most difficult things in my recovery was not understanding what happened to me all those months, what happened to my brain. Solitary confinement, scientific studies have shown two or three days your brain waves shift toward super or delirium. I was in 410 days and the un says 15 days can cause lasting permanent psychological damage and constitute torture. People in this country for years and decades, i work with solitary watch and collect oral and written history stories of people that are living in solitary confinement. In that letter correspondences, i visit them in prison or people on the outside. Some of the stories i told you of how i stayed human, how i resisted, how i kept myself alive. Everyone i write to has these incredible stories. As devastating as it is the suicide rate is 50 higher for prisoners in solitary than the general population. A lot of people give up, a lot of people find no reason to keep fighting. The ones that do have incredible stories to tell and i want to bring them out. I am writing a play based on these characters called opening of the box. I want to say thank you for coming. I am amazed at your ability to take this kind of experience and try to make something great out of it. I am traveling with a group of eight High School Students from california. Many of whom are foreign nationals. Saber interested to hear your story. I am curious to know what this experience did for each of you in terms of your relationship with your guard. Thank you for asking that question. Profound question. And one that while i was in prison has radical changes in my relationship with god. I went from being a source of mischievous kicked out of Hebrew School kind of do to and observant one. And went from an observant one back to a secular guy. And i really took on god most during solitary. I took on god didnt take on god, i opened up to god. I needed something beyond me. I needed some way to relate to the world beyond my middle cubic area the size of this platform where i was living the whole time. But though which will part of it. I like the ritual and continued doing all sorts of rituals but i stopped observing it strictly and keeping kosher and stopped doing these things in prison because i realized i dont sort of take the bible literally. I do feel stronger. I feel stronger in the belief that there are forces that are unknown to us, that i barely know blanche definitely unable to be spoken about that are around us. This is not nearly as deep a question but is a serious question. You guys have very intelligent people. To know where you were hiking was near iran. Did you not have but map or any sense of how far you have gone. You were walking and i remember before hand. I remember seeing on the map of the town, it was on the eastern part of iran but not not like on the border. Some people said go here, to this waterfall. I remember thinking we are near the eastern side. At one point during a hiking, i remember mentioning we are heading to iran. Total without any notion we were in year it. But feeling like we turned around at that point . It is probably like a far away more miles than we can height in a day or week. We are very surprised. One of those things like when something terrible happens we all went over it 10,000 times. If we had taken less time eating breakfast and more time at the internet cafe and printed out the map. Of the internet hadnt gone down a million things contributed to what happened. Our guards were down because we were in a safe part of the middle east and traveled in more dangerous parts and going by word of mouth. I am sure you are told this often but youre a very brave for living this over and over again. These of the comments we will allow you to say. I have a two part question related. On your perspective of the media you were watching, you mentioned you had television. Dont know if you had newspapers or not but wondering if you had this International Campaign going at home did you see the news that was being said about you from the United States or mostly iranian or persian mia and with that question were you seeing skewed information . What was your perspective on what was being said about you . The news was absolutely absurd. There is an englishlanguage paper that was always on and verify times that it said israel commits the most crimes in the entire world. Or the earthquake in haiti was caused by the United States exploding a Nuclear Weapon underground. Still totally off the wall. We didnt get a lot of information about our case on the news. We would mostly get it from letters from family but things would come up and it was like state tv, it wasnt a satellite or even press tv. It was a lot worse than that. But sometimes there would be a story from outside like cnn that would be spliced in. The first time we had a television the day we got a tv we turned it on and there was the christian christiane am p amanpour with pictures of us on tv. Was a strange show. Like one of those shows with a kid that went missing and died. Watching myself as a memory. We got things like three american spies to be tried separately. Talk about who it is going to be the goes first, might sarah shourd get out, we would get little snippets like that that we would just obsess about. They werent we didnt have that channel but within the Iranian State television, within their news program they would show a 20 seconds clip of cnn or something. They werent iranians and guards, they werent watching the american media. Some of them watched a lot of watched bbc farsi on satellite. It was illegal but they had it and are supposed to have in the prison. Every prisoners it gave me information from the outside was from bbc. Most iranians have illegal satellites in urban centers and watch bbc religiously. A lot of the news that we were trying to figure out in the world was we would have the news we would see would be a reaction to western media usually end they wouldnt give what they reacting to. We were trying to figure out who the tea party was, the iranian reaction or the arabs they didnt say anythql said tht are we realize western media was saying they threw him in the ocean and there would be the pictures they would show. One pictures they would show of him and they would casting doubt on it being him. The a anger at the u. S. Killing him but it was a conspiracy and he was actually a live. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on in the world and really had no idea. Taking questions. I want to thank you for your courage in recounting your stories. As an American Jewish woman i want to thank you for shedding light on the horrific experiences that are lived day today in prisons. Two questions, one serious and one later question. Thank you for sharing your experiences with the gentleman who declared himself as al qaeda. I am wondering if you experienced women and minorities who were treated differently in prison and whatever you can tell us about them and on aid lighter note are you still hiking . Once we going to religious faith in iran that is persecuted heavily. We were going to that clinic and we were lined up and not supposed to talk to each other or look at each other and the woman behind me started to rub my back when the guards werent looking and she told me her name and i learned more about her. I do want to point out, take this opportunity to point out even though we were psychologically tortured through solitary confinement, interrogation, it started to dawn on us that we had a certain powers that they couldnt physically hurt us because we were valuable to them and they were eventually going to cassius in and didnt want to look too horribly cruel. They wanted to have a happy ending. After our release, but there are other people come and just to let you know the lawyer was detained afterwards and he was when he tried to leave the country. And he couldnt really practice anymore. [inaudible] whenever there is time. It was weird to find out that they were caught hikers imprisoned. I remember after we got out we were traveling around the country seeing family and her brother in colorado i realized that i wanted to turn away from that identity and i realized i still hike a lot and i have to either kind of do it in secret or open it. I cant be a hiker but still allowed to hike. With your family and your friends they supported you a lot while you were in iran that you like several times a day so i just wanted to know how often you actually got these letters and were they censored in books and what was that experience like . Just yesterday we spoke at a different venue and i saw somebody that wrote a letter to me and she wrote it and i got it i remember the day that i got it i could do that for the other 50 letters those were the first it took two months to get them but when i got them it was like i was shaking the letters out the sky and i was laughing and crying but that was from friends and family. After that, they cut down. It was only an immediate family and it wasnt once a month, once every two months and we had to ask and act a certain poin at ai think it was around a year and i stopped getting letters from my brother and it was only from my mother and father and my mom was writing in her letters i write you every day but i wasnt getting everyday is letters so it was a huge mystery of where they were going and i asked the interrogator and they say this is all we get. We dont know. So about a year and a half in, we started this sort of campaign and the first time we did it just took five days for the interrogator to come, and when he came he gave us letters from sarah for the first time and she had been out about four months by that point so sarah and my brother and then we didnt know if they were going to keep getting letters so we said thank you for these letters but just so you know every 30 days if you dont bring a new batch of letters and no missing letters we will continue a Hunger Strike. So it will take so long. We couldnt write out so we realized we never realized if we were getting all of them. So we got a phone call five months later and one of us said right on the letter the next letter like that eight of the last two letters that you sent. Once that started happening we had a little m