"I met Sarah and Shane in Damascus. Sarah was my English teacher in the Iraqi Student Project, and a dear friend. Being with Sarah and Shane have had changed my perceptions and views of America as well as its people. They are some of those people who you meet and would like to spend more time with and learn of their experiences! They broke the stereotypes I used to see and hear about through music and movies. They were those two fine people in Damascus who you see support Palestinians, on one hand, and with dedication, Iraqis on the other hand. They have created a circle of friends in Syria, Yemen and Iraq that is incomparable to others in such short period of time! Sarah and Shane have moved and touched me in different ways. Whenever I hear their names the first image comes to my mind was the smile of their faces. They lived in Syria with nothing in mind but to discover the world for themselves and to help others! It was more than a shock to me when I heard about their detention. They are not the type of people who should be in prison!"

"I met Shane at AK Press (my publisher) in October of 2005. Shane and I had already been corresponding for awhile, since no one else in our scene had both lived in the Balkans, and was also struggling to learn Arabic. Like me, Shane had become passionate about correcting reductionist misconceptions of conflict situations while living in the Balkans, and like me, had begun to study Arabic in order to better work against US and Israeli aggressions in the Middle East. (I began studying Arabic during the second intifada, while Shane began a year later, after Sept. 11, but soon far surpassed me.) We often joked about being twins (Shane/Shon) but his phenomenal work - much of which can be explored through his page on this site - is not something I'd want to compare to.

"Sarah and I met, coincidentally, only a month after Shane and I met, when the two of us shared a ride across the country to help poor people in New Orleans rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina. Our work there (incl. interviews with both Sarah and me) can be seen in the documentary "Solidarity not Charity." She told me stories from her work around the femicides in Juarez, Mexico; her years working with the Zapatistas; and struggles to fight evictions in Oakland. I also remember Sarah telling me in that drive how she was starting to see a somewhat persistent young journalist; she hadn't caved in to his advances yet, but confided that she found herself being won over. We both laughed when we realized her secret courtier was my new friend Shane! Sarah's empathy and compassion shone bright through the stresses of post-Katrina New Orleans, and I've treasured her friendship ever since.

"I met Sarah and Shane when working out in Damascus on a BBC TV series. We often talked late into the night about the Middle East over tea and backgammon in Yarmouk, one of the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria. I remember the devastation both of them felt after their friend Tristan was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier while peacefully protesting against the apartheid wall. When I heard they had been detained by the Iranian authorities while visiting Kurdistan, my immediate reaction was they'll be released immediately. The Iranians must know how much they have done for Palestine and justice in the Middle East. Soon it became clear that for whatever reasons, people weren't talking about their incredible work. It's time the Iranian authorities realised who they're holding."

"I met Sarah in Damascus, where we were both volunteering as English teachers with Iraqi refugees. Sarah and Shane have campaigned tirelessly against the war on Iraq and both were extremely dedicated to Sarah's Iraqi students. As Americans, they wanted to show solidarity with Iraqis who had suffered because of the actions of their government. Before their capture, Sarah and Shane were living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, a few streets away from me. Sarah and Shane are outspoken campaigners against the Israeli occupation and were respected and loved by their many Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi friends. Sarah, Shane, Josh were at my wedding in the camp the night before they left for Kurdistan. Our community of friends in the Palestinian camp is shocked and distressed at their continued detention."

I met and got to know Sarah and Shane in Damascus. I spent many evenings in their flat in Yarmouk Palestinian camp, a place where we could meet with our Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian friends, brought together by the spirit of warmth and conviviality of Sarah and Shane and our shared commitment to peace and justice in the region. I have gone back to Yarmouk several times, and their friends in Syria have repeatedly expressed grief and incomprehension about the detention of three young people who they feel have done much to support the Palestinian cause and oppose imperialist intervention in the Middle East. Sarah, Shane and Josh were working relentlessly to break stereotypes and create bonds of solidarity between people whilst never forgetting their commitment to the fight against imperialism and supremacy. The three of them are innocent and should be freed immediately.

I first met Sarah and Shane in Damascus last summer. Even though I only knew them for a month or two, their passionate commitment to their activism was immediately apparent, and they always exuded exceptional warmth and humility. Nearly a year on, the continued detention of Sarah, Shane and Josh is as upsetting as it is senseless.

"I met Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer through the network of political activists in San Francisco in about 2003 - 4. Sarah is well known for her work with immigrants, and Shane for his journalistic work in Darfur and interest in the Middle East. In 2007 Shane and I went to Darfur to make a radical film about that region, and we all eagerly anticipated his dispatches from Iraq and Syria. They are much admired, loved, and missed by a wide community of activists and journalists in the Bay Area and elsewhere."

"I am a government misconduct attorney based in San Francisco, CA. I am also a member of the Board of Directors of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, based in Eugene, OR. (See www.cldc.org). I represent domestic targets of U.S. repression, including antiwar, anti-globalization, and environmental and animal rights activists. For example, I helped represent environmentalists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney against the FBI for falsely labeling them terrorists after a car bomb assassination attempt on Judi’s life in 1990, in a case which took 11 years to get to trial. (See www.judibari.org).

Sarah and Shane are close friends. I have known Sarah for over ten years, and Shane for about five years. I wished them bon voyage at their going away parties before they left for the Middle East and settled in Damascus. I share extensive common community and friends with them, and also with Josh, including our mutual friend Tristan Anderson, who was shot and seriously wounded by the Israeli military during a Palestinian protest against the annexation wall in Ni’ilin, on the West Bank. Like Tristan, Sarah, Shane, and Josh are deeply opposed to U.S. hegemony throughout the world, particularly in Central America and the Middle East.

Certainly, my friends are hostage in part to the U.S. and Israel’s wanton aggression in the Middle East (bombing, invasion, occupation, blockading, “droning,” abduction, rendition, etc.). But ransoming them for recognition of this idea, as Iran is doing, is cruelly ironic. They were far more effective in raising awareness about this when they were free than they are by their captivity in Iran, which does not redress injustice but only punishes three good and innocent people."

Shane and Sarah are two of my most trusted friends. We have, in certain periods of our friendship and for some distance, walked in the same shoes. We are on the same general political path. We split off sometimes onto separate branches of that path for a little while but then we always return to the big path again to check in and compare notes, share our experiences and prepare for the next journey.

Though Sarah, Shane and I are different people, with different personalities, backgrounds and abilities, we share many goals, maybe ALL of the most critical lifelong goals - to truly confront and challenge war and imperialism - brute, selfish force - where it exists and to change structures, power, laws, or norms that maintain war and brutality as tools of white elite supremacy on a global scale.

We do this in varying ways by healthily challenging ourselves and people around us, teaching ourselves how to do things that are not taught in schools or other institutions but only among people (like active listening, community journalism, solidarity work, cultural exchange) while keeping our analysis grounded in experience, critique and lessons learned from people of color in the U.S. and throughout the world.

All of our work as individuals of U.S. empire, contributes to a history and promise of popular, collective revolt revolt against war, racism, capitalism - the three headed horsemen - that we are fighting as activists, journalists, and human rights observers in one of the most uncertain, unstable and potentially transformational periods in history.

I met Shane in 2001, after September 11th. He was working in Berkeley and I was working in Santa Cruz for a group called Peace Action - a grassroots canvass and anti-war lobby who, at the time, was working to persuade the U.S. government to stand down militarily after the attacks, not go to war with the world, and get its house in order by abolishing nuclear weapons, ending weapons trade to dictators, and redirecting national spending from war to education, etc. So Shane and I, and about 40 other people were going door to door in California to find all of the people who agreed with us on these issues and we have some stories to share, as you can imagine. Shane and I got more politically connected outside of that work when I moved to Oakland and he had just left his Arabic class at UC Berkeley because it was moving too slow. He decided to teach himself the rest. We often came together at protests, potlucks, parties and political events in Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley.

I met Sarah in different circumstances in 2002. Sarah, her mom Nora, and another close friend had taken a very strong, concerted focus on the femicides (mass murder of women) in Juarez, Mexico. Sarah and Nora had just returned from a human rights delegation to Juarez with the promise that they would help raise material and aid and awareness for the Mothers of the Disappeared - women whose daughters were abducted near the U.S.'s Free Trade Zone, where they worked in factories sometimes 12 hours every day for a pittance, murdered and burned in barren fields that lay in the area between communities and the FTZ. I think Nora and Sarah worked on these cases together with the Mothers for a very long time and probably still maintain those bonds today.

In 2008, my friendship with Sarah and Shane coalesced because the two of them were together more often but also because of broader political and social urgencies created by the U.S. Iraq invasion and occupation and the very difficult situation our communities were facing as a result of economic plundering, neoliberal strategy at the local government and local business level. Homeless shelters and cooperative housing were/still are under attack, heavy/militarized policing on Black and Brown youth and poor people, a sharp rise in U.S. militarism in Latin America that mirrors closely what was/is happening in front of us in our own public spaces. So the three of us talked about this a lot and have studied, looked and acted upon potential pathways of resistance to this collective predicament.

Shane is, I think, many people's link to what is really happening in Iraq and Syria. Our political education roots are in Latin America and we're looking with that lens at U.S. war crimes in the 'Middle East'. Because there is not an Iraq and Afghanistan solidarity movement in the U.S. like there was for Central America in the 80s, anti-war activists and concerned people have had to rely upon a handful of brave journalists who can get themselves into the war zone and report from the people's perspective and that's where Shane has channeled his energy for the past few years.

I spent some time with Sarah before she left for Syria with Shane in 2008 and I remember feeling concerned and confused and trying not to show it. I wondered when I would see her again but didn't want to put that open question out there, knowing it couldn't be answered. She wanted to meet new people and explore other cultures and who knew when she'd be back or if she'd be back and whether she would be the same. She would be forever changed for the better and who knew how much time that would take? :-) tears now.. one moment..

The last time Shane and I talked was in March 2009. I was in El Salvador to observe the elections (which the left party and people finally won!) and he was in Iraq, uncovering the presence of Iraqi death squads. This was something Cheney promised and he certainly followed through on - The Salvador Option - in other words, the U.S. training of death squads to terrorize and sometimes slaughter communities into submission, as was done in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua from the 70-90s. Shane had discovered the presence of Salvadoran commanders alongside U.S. military, training Iraqi Special forces. His findings were published in the Nation article: Iraq's New Death Squad in May, two months before he, Sarah and Josh were captured. The issue of Iraqi death squads really hasn't been touched since his capture, as far as I know.

I'd like to close this note of introduction to my relationship with these beautiful, true, brave friends of ours with a message of hope suspended.

Sarah and Shane are first and foremost dear friends-and this ongoing unjust detention breaks my heart every day. I met Sarah while working in a grassroots feminist solidarity project called the "Black Whole Collective", which worked to resist the Femicides (murdering of women) in the state of Chihuahua and in Ciudad Juarez, Mexcio. The collective organized street theater, and informational and fund-raising events in the San Francisco Bay Area, all funds going directly to support grassroots organizations in Mexico who were working with the families of missing or murdered women. I know Sarah as an anti-war activist, a talented writer, a teacher, and an honest and giving friend who does all she can to build community wherever she goes. I have always admired her thoughtful forms of activism and dedication to building horizontal solidarity while always, always, advancing her self & global analysis. We will continue working every day towards the release of our friends Sarah, Shane, and Josh.

During my time volunteering to work with young Palestinian refugees in Syria, I had the privilege of meeting Sarah and Shane.I quickly learnt about the activism that Sara and Shane did, and we grew closer by our common passion for improving the welfare of refugees in the Middle East
It is unfortunate that they have found themselves incarcerated as a result of their genuine drive to add value to the lives of others. This prolonged detention has since stopped their much required charitable work and their freedom should be granted so that they can continue.

May Abdalla is a filmmaker living in London who met Shane, Sarah and Josh whilst working in Damascus in 2008.