“I’m staying with my family at a very comfortable guest house on the base, which has been a great place to begin my recovery”, he said in the statement. Hekmati was detained in August 2011 on espionage charges.
Advertisement
“We told him we’ve been talking about him for 545 days”.
The Iranian-American Washington Post journalist was freed on Saturday in a prisoner swap between his two homelands, and has been flown to Landstuhl in Germany to receive treatment after his ordeal.
Former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati said he had accepted his fate – that he would spend 10 years in an Iranian prison with little hope of being released before that decade passed.
“I feel alive for the first time”, Hekmati said on January 19 in his first public comments since his release.
Hekmati was convicted in a secretive trial and sentenced to death in 2012, but the sentence was later overturned.
Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter, also was undergoing medical tests at the USA military hospital after nearly 18 months in an Iranian prison.
There was no advance warning of his release, he added. And he said there wasn’t a big lead-up to his release: “They just came one morning and said, ‘Pack your things'”. It was only after frantic negotiations, including calls made personally from Secretary of State John Kerry to his Iranian counterpart, that the women were released and the plane took off.
“The Iranian officials, who were our captors essentially, were amazed and had asked us, ‘Why is it that they’re working so hard for you?’, and I just said, ‘Well, that’s America and they love their citizens'”.
Hekmati said there was no warning that he would be released.
As NPR reported last week, Hekmati’s sister attended President Obama’s recent State of the Union address.
“I didn’t want to let my fellow Marines down, and the reputation of the Marine Corps, so I tried my best to keep my head up and withstand all the pressure that were put upon me”, he said.
“Freed Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian said Wednesday he’s feeling fine and looking forward to watching basketball and seeing the new “Star Wars” movie”.
Over Amir’s time in prison, he implored US officials and lawmakers, through correspondence dictated to family members, to not forget the American hostages in Iran.
Advertisement
Rep. Jaret Huffman, a Democrat representing Rezaian’s home district in California was also visiting Landstuhl.
