U.S. hikers arrive home after two-year Iran ordeal

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Two US hikers held by Iran for more than two years arrived back in the United States Sunday after the Gulf sultanate of Oman paid $1 million bail for their release from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

“They landed two seconds ago,” Samantha Topping, a spokeswoman for the hikers’ families, told AFP as a plane carrying Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, touched down at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport.

The pair were arrested with Bauer’s fiancee Sarah Shourd near the mountainous border with Iraq on July 31, 2009.

They have consistently maintained they innocently strayed into Iran while hiking in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Shourd was released last year on $500,000 bail also paid by Oman.