Two of the freed men – Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and ex-US Marine Amir Hekmati – posed for pictures with their relatives at the US military hospital in Landstuhl.
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“But then when I got back together with my counterparts, we kind of went back to square one and the whole process broke down”, McGurk said.
“I was at a point where I had accepted the fact that I was going to spend 10 years in prison”, Hekmati said.
The Swiss government plane carrying Hekmati and two others out of the country sat on the tarmac for several hours as government officials worked to clear up a last-minute issue. They were accused of exporting goods ranging from electronic components and satellite services to marine navigation and military equipment to Iran.
“Obviously, he’s been through trauma”, Kildee said, not elaborating further on Hekmati’s state of mind after being released from an Iranian jail on Saturday and reuniting with his family on Monday but saying he has maintained his sense of humor and has even talked to Kildee about his days playing high school hockey.
An Iranian-American born in Arizona, Hekmati was detained while on a trip to visit his grandmothers.
News of his eventual release was sudden and unexpected, Hekmati told reporters.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that a delay in the departure of the plane taking some of the detainees from Iran was partly due to a “temporary misunderstanding” about whether Rezaian’s mother, Mary, and his wife, who is also a journalist, were on the plane, as had been agreed.
When the plane finally took off, the passengers – including Rezaian, the other released Iranian Americans, and Rezaian’s wife and mother – burst into applause.
Iran never responded to queries from the group, which is charged with investigating cases of arbitrary detention and allegations of illegal treatment of prisoners.
“This is all so surreal and we’re just soaking it all in right now”, Hekmati said, adding his release had come as a surprise. “And I just really feel proud to be an American”. A fifth USA citizen, Matthew Trevithick, was released separately, officials said.
Rezaian was convicted of espionage charges that both the Post and USA government called absurd.
U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township.
Saeed Malekpour, serving a life sentence and Mostafa Azizi, an eight-year term, are also political prisoners in Iran.
Hekmati, like the other prisoners who have been released, declined to talk in detail about his time in prison, but he did credit his experience in the U.S. Marines for being able to “withstand all the pressures that were put upon me, some of which were very inhumane and unjust”. A briefing note written for Trudeau and obtained by The Canadian Press says that Ottawa could lift them “as early as winter 2016 and as late as summer 2016”.
A fourth American released in the deal, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, chose to remain in Iran, U.S. officials said.
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“I was anxious that maybe the Iranian side was going to make new demands at the last minute or that the deal wasn’t going to work out, so up until the last second we were all anxious and concerned”, he said.
