New York:
Sarah Shourd, a teacher released last week after 410 days in an Iranian prison, said on Sunday after her arrival back in the United States that she felt only "one-third free" because the two other American hikers arrested with her remain incarcerated in Tehran.
Shourd, her cropped, dark brown hair no longer shrouded underneath the purple head scarf that was mandatory for her fleeting public appearances in Iran, told in a news conference in New York that her joy upon leaving Tehran was tempered by the fact that she left without her fiancé, Shane Bauer, and their friend Josh Fattal, both 28.
"My disappointment at not sharing that moment with Shane and Josh was crushing," said Shourd, 32, reading from a prepared statement and declining to answer any questions.
"I stand before you today only one-third free," she continued in a calm voice, her mother, Nora, constantly fighting tears behind her. "That is the last thing that Josh said to me before I walked through the prison doors. Josh and Shane felt only one-third free at that moment and so did I."
Fattal had gone to visit the couple, who were working and studying in Damascus, Syria. They took a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan and went on a hike to Ahmed Awa waterfall. Iranian security forces detained them that day. They were accused of crossing the Iran-Iraq border.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran called Shourd's release "a huge humanitarian gesture" during in an interview on Sunday on ABC's "This Week" and said that in return the United States should "release the Iranians who were illegally arrested and detained here in the United States."
Ahmadinejad is in New York for the start of the annual United Nations General Assembly. His generally provocative remarks to the news media usually provide some electricity away from the speeches by dozens of world leaders -- although there has been little movement for years in questions about Iran's nuclear program and long frozen ties with the United States.
Shourd's release on Tuesday, which Ahmadinejad apparently engineered with some resistance from political competitors, provided a new focus.
"He loves publicity and thinks what he is doing is a very effective public diplomacy," said Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii.
Iran has repeatedly demanded the release of jailed Iranians, but who exactly Iran wants out has never been entirely clear. In his ABC interview, Ahmadinejad said there were eight Iranians.
The interviewer, Christiane Amanpour, questioned whether Iran was holding the two remaining hikers "hostage" to exchange for the Iranians, some convicted of violating international sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Ahmadinejad replied, "How would you know these Iranians are criminals? Are you a judge?"
While Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomed Shourd's release, the United States has rejected any connection between Iranians jailed on criminal charges here and the hikers, who Iran has said repeatedly would be tried on espionage charges.
"There is no equivalence between the hikers who wandered across an unmarked border and the individuals in custody convicted of arms trafficking in violation of international law," P. J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, said in an e-mail. "Iran demonstrated in the case of Sarah Shourd that they can resolve the cases of the hikers if they choose."
Shourd said on Sunday that she and her companions "committed no crime, and we are not spies."
"If we were indeed near the Iraq-Iran border, that border was entirely unmarked and indistinguishable," she said.
Shourd started by thanking the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad for securing her release, as well as the governments of the United States, Switzerland and Oman for intervening. She was released on $500,000 bail, the source of which remains a mystery.
Shroud said she had worried about her health while she was in jail but that doctors in Oman, where she went first, assured her she was "physically well." After her appearance with her mother at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, the mothers of the other hikers took to the podium to say they were requesting a meeting with Ahmadinejad while he was in New York to ask for their sons' release.