Oman offers to mediate in US spies case

Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah says his country is willing to act as an intermediary between Tehran and Washington.

“We would like to help and find ways and means to help,” Associated Press quoted Abdullah as saying on Friday.

“At this moment there are no plans for the other prisoners to be released,” he added.

The Omani foreign minister, however, did not disclose the source of USD 500,000 bail payment which was deposited in a Bank Melli branch in Muscat on Wednesday.

Iran released American national Sarah Shourd on a bail of USD 500,000, 14 months after she was arrested with two other Americans for illegally entering the country.

Shourd, 31, Shane Michael Bauer and Joshua Felix Fattal, both 27, were arrested in July 2009 after illegally crossing the border from the mountains of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

They were later charged with espionage after Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi found “compelling evidence” that the three US citizens had been cooperating with US intelligence agencies.

Bauer and Fattal will remain in jail and the trio will have to stand trial for espionage.