Investigations into spying allegations against three American hikers detained in Iran will be completed soon, Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said in a news report on Saturday.

Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal were detained after they strayed into Iran from northern Iraq at the end of July 2009, further complicating relations between Tehran and Washington already deadlocked over Iran’s nuclear work.

“Investigations about the three Americans will be completed soon. The result will be announced then,” Moslehi said in a report carried by Iran’s student news agency, ISNA. Iran has said the three Americans would be put on trial, without giving a date. They have not formally been charged with spying.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in February that the three US citizens may be swapped for the release of Iranians jailed in the United States. Iran said last year it believed 11 Iranians were being held in the US, including a former deputy defence minister who disappeared in 2007.

The United States, which cut diplomatic ties with Iran shortly after its 1979 Islamic Revolution, has said the charges against the hikers are totally unfounded and they should be released. Under Iran’s Islamic law, espionage can be punishable by death. Families of the trio said they were hiking and had strayed across the border accidentally. Their mothers visited Tehran briefly in May and urged Iranian authorities to release them.

source: Reuters