Reply #36: NPR has been doing a pretty good job of getting into the relevant details of the story.

[scarletwoman]

You might want to go to npr.org and go through all their reports on this particular story.

I live in Pine County in Minnesota, which is where one of the captured hikers is from -- his mother lives in Pine City, the county seat -- so I may be getting more on the local news than others elsewhere. Minnesota Public Radio has broadcast a lot about this story, as well as our local TV news network affiliates.

The one guy whose mother lives in Pine City is a freelance journalist who's been living and travelling in the Middle East for three years, and speaks fluent Arabic (and NO Farsi). The woman in the group is a freelance travel writer who sells stories to online travel sites. The third guy is someone who went to Iraq because of his heritage -- he wanted to know about his roots.

There was a fourth guy with them who stayed behind when the other three went hiking because he wasn't feeling well. He says they contacted him when they first got into trouble -- they sent a message that they were surrounded by Iranian soldiers.

I'm pretty much of the opinion that they simply screwed up and hiked down a mountain to wrong side of the unmarked border. There's nothing I've read or heard that would imply that they would have deliberately wanted to cross into Iran.

sw