Flint-native released from Iranian prison heading home

Kildee traveled to Germany with Hekmati’s sister Sarah and her husband, Dr. Ramy Kurdi, to meet Hekmati, who was released from Iranian imprisonment along with three other Americans on Saturday as part of a prisoner swap.

“We can confirm that the U.S. citizens who have left Iran this morning after being freed have indeed arrived in Germany”, said an official from the State Department.

The UN nuclear watchdog announced late Saturday that Iran had complied with its side of the July 2015 accord, allowing the lifting of sanctions.

The Americans released by Iran in a swap with the United States have landed in Geneva.

According to the Iranian news account, Hekmati is one of four Iranian-Americans being released from prison in Iran today in exchange for six imprisoned Iranian-Americans held for sanctions-related issues.

The United States on Sunday imposed sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile testing even as President Barack Obama hailed the release of five Americans from Tehran’s custody and the implementation of a nuclear deal he hopes will stand among his lasting foreign policy achievements. “When Americans are freed and returned to their families, that’s something we can all celebrate”. Again, the White House will stress that the folks, the Iranians who were being released, were not violent criminals or terrorists but were folks who had been accused and in some cases convicted of sanctions relations.

“We will be committed to the fact that our nuclear program is peaceful and will never deviate to weapons”, he told Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a meeting in Tehran, the Mehr News Agency reported.

“We actually shook hands thinking we had an agreement”, Kerry said. We’ve seen the results. “This gets Amir home”, says Kildee, “But it also makes a point that the responsible government means sometimes negotiating with people you have differences with”. He also noted that differences between the US and Iran remain, and pointed to new sanctions against Iran as evidence that the USA will remain steadfast in opposing Iranian violations of worldwide agreements.

The family added that Hekmati’s father is very ill and “soon he will embrace his son once more“.

US officials said on Saturday that completion of the prisoner swap deal and the verification of the nuclear deal weren’t linked.

Also released in the deal were former Marine Amir Hekmati, 32, of Flint, Mich., and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, 35, of Boise, Idaho.

The Iran nuclear deal was the product of years of careful negotiations between Tehran and the P5+1 – the permanent UN Security Council members and the European Union. They won’t be on USA soil for a few days, he said.

Hekmati was described “in good spirits” and in a photo with his family released by Kildee’s office, the former Marine was smiling and did not bear any observable indications of poor health. They spent about 15 minutes together, according to a brief statement from the family.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, officials said Khosravi-Roodsari, elected not to board the plane.

A senior Obama administration official pushed back against criticism of the prisoner swap, saying that those held in the United States were not a major threat, and the administration made a “judgment” that brought detained Americans home.