text: Shane Bauer (2nd L), Sarah Shourd (3rd L) and Josh Fattal (2nd R) sit with their mothers during a news conference in Tehran May 20, 2010. 
   
   TEHRAN | 
   
   TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian authorities have delayed the trial of two Americans arrested near the Iraqi border in July 2009, a judiciary spokesman said on Monday, less than a week before they were due their first day in court. 
   
   Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who say they were hiking in northern Iraq and were not aware they had crossed into Iran, are at the center of a much bigger dispute between the United States and Tehran, which have been bitter foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 
   
   Iran's judiciary spokesman said the trial could not go ahead as scheduled because of the absence of a third suspect, Sarah Shourd, who was arrested with the men but released on $500,000 bail in September this year and returned to the United States. 
   
   "Due to the absence of the third person, the court has delayed the trial time so that in between this time the third person can return to Iran or, in the event of her refusal to appear, her case be dealt with differently," Qolamhossein Mohseni-Ejei was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. 
   
   Their lawyer said he was not aware the trial had been postponed. 
   
   "It is illogical. If they want to delay the trial, they should announce it in a notification to me or to Sarah Shourd, but they didn't," Masoud Shafiee told Reuters. 
   
   "So the trial should be held on Saturday then the judge will decide whether the trial will be delayed or not." 
   
   Shourd was released shortly before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended the U.N. General Assembly in New York. He said letting her leave jail was a humanitarian gesture due to concerns about her health. She denied the spying charge. 
   
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   The trial delay comes as Washington and other powers are trying to prod Tehran to return to talks this month about its nuclear activities which they fear are aimed at making an atomic bomb. 
   
   Iran, which says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, has said it is ready to restart the talks which stalled last year, but has yet to agree a date and has even suggested the talks should not address the nuclear issue. 
   
   Ahmadinejad suggested in February that the Americans might be released as part of a prisoner swap for Iranians he says have been abducted or tricked into going to the United States and jailed without due legal process. 
   
   One of those Iranians, a woman jailed for trafficking defense hardware to Iran, gave a telephone interview to Iran's state-run English language television channel on Monday in which she said she had been tortured. 
   
   "They took me to the prison and they started to torture me in every possible way, more especially, you know, mentally," Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan told Press TV. She did not give any further details of her ill-treatment. 
   
   Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said he hoped publicity about the case would help secure release of Iranian prisoners in U.S. jails. "Iran will pursue all channels regarding the matter," he was quoted by Fars news agency as saying. He did not mention the possibility of a prisoner swap. ||||| Besides stating that the three hikers were captured in Iraq, the American military report, by an anonymous official, also said, “The lack of coordination on the part of these hikers, particularly after being forewarned, indicates an intent to agitate and create publicity regarding international policies on Iran.” 
   
   Ms. Shourd said that she was mystified by that conclusion. The three had no idea they were near the border and had not been warned about anything, she said. “Those claims are illogical and unsubstantiated. It is ridiculous to claim that mountain climbers would be agitating along a border.” 
   
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   The United States State Department has never suggested the version published by WikiLeaks, she said, always maintaining that it did not know how their arrest happened. 
   
   The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, confirmed that on Sunday. “We don’t know whether they had two feet on one side or the other or one foot on each,” he said. “All we know is Iran has held them far too long.” 
   
   Ms. Shourd described what began as a relaxed overnight camping trip, undertaken by three reunited friends from Berkeley happy to escape to the fresh, green Kurdish mountains from the sweltering Syrian plains. 
   
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   She had been teaching English in Damascus, Syria, where Mr. Bauer was working as a freelance journalist while both studied Arabic. Mr. Fattal came to visit, and they set off to Kurdistan after reading on a Web site that it was safe and listening to a friend rave about the place. 
   
   Various Kurds suggested they visit Ahmed Awa, a spectacular mountain waterfall where local people camp overnight. The hikers had no idea it abutted Iran, Ms. Shourd said, and twice encountered Kurdish pesh merga soldiers who greeted them warmly. The music and laughter around scores of campfires at the waterfall gave no sense of imminent danger. 
   
   The next day, they trekked up a dirt road past the waterfall. After a lunchtime nap, a soldier with a gun appeared on a ridge above them and gestured for them to keep climbing. He was the first person they saw on the mountain, Ms. Shourd said. 
   
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   About 500 yards farther up, with no sign to indicate the border, a guard standing by a stone hut gestured for them to approach. A news report that a shot had been fired over their heads was wrong, she said. 
   
   At a second, larger structure, according to Ms. Shourd, more guards repeating in Persian, “Mushkil nadereh,” or “no problem,” blocked their attempt to run away and ignored their pleas to return to Iraq. Four days and several moves later they ended up in Evin prison, where Mr. Bauer and Mr. Fattal remain. 
   
   “I think we were extremely unlucky,” said Ms. Shourd, concluding that their one mistake was hiking too far. “I guess I never believed there would be so many hundreds of people close to a border.”
target: – The three American hikers detained by Iran weren’t captured in Iraq, says Sarah Shourd: They were beckoned over the border by an armed soldier, she tells the New York Times in an effort to set the WikiLeaks version of the story straight. “We did not actually enter Iran until he gestured to us. We were confused and worried and wanted to go back." In Shourd's fullest account of her ordeal to date, she goes into detail about their fateful overnight camping trip, describing "scores of campfires" near the waterfall they were hiking to—which abutted Iran. “I think we were extremely unlucky,” says Shourd. “I guess I never believed there would be so many hundreds of people close to a border.” Her interview with the Times comes ahead of a court date for her fellow hikers, which was set for Saturday but has been delayed by Iran until Shourd “can return to Iran or,” if she refuses, her case can “be dealt with differently,” said an Iranian official. But her lawyer says the trial should go forward; neither he nor Shourd, he tells Reuters, were notified of the change.