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Families Of Detained Bay Area Hikers Show Support Through Hunger Strike

BERKELEY (KCBS) – The families of the two UC Berkeley graduates, who are still being held in Iran, are participating in a rolling hunger strike.

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal have been held on spying allegations for nearly two years. The two men and Sarah Shourd were arrested in 2009 after they crossed the border into Iran.

Shourd was released last September. She said Bauer and Fattal recently went on a 17-day hunger strike in protest of being cut off from receiving letters from their families.

"You can imagine two innocent people just picked up, driven into a country they've never been to. They don't speak the language, they were stripped of their rights, thrown in prison and they're still there, two years later, with little to no information from the outside world" said Shourd.

KCBS' Chris Filippi Reports:

To show solidarity, Shourd and family members of Bauer and Fattal launched their own rolling hunger strike on May 19.

"It is really hard for us to do anything that we know can help Shane and Josh in this situation," she said. "They're completely subject to Iranian law."

Iran has called recent claims that the UC Berkeley grads are being mistreated "baseless allegations."

The two men are expected to stand trial on July 31, exactly two years after they were arrested.

(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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