President Obama paid a $400 million ransom to Iran for the release of four American hostages, but apparently refused to foot the bill for their plane tickets home.
State Department spokesman John Kirby recently confirmed that a $400 million payment to Iran was contingent on the release of four American prisoners, effectively exposing the president’s lie to the American public weeks earlier that “we did not pay ransom,” the New York Post reported in August.
But what Kirby didn’t reveal is that after the Iranian captors released the four American hostages in January and the U.S. government flew them to a German hospital, they were essentially abandoned by their country, according to Fox Business Network.
One of the hostages, Pastor Saeed Abedini, told Fox Business’ Trish Regan he spent several days in a hospital in Germany nursing wounds from his torturous treatment, only to be released with little more than “prison clothes” and no way home.
“We flied from Iran to Germany and we were in a hospital in Germany for a few days before we come to United States. In Germany, actually, they told us you need to buy your own (plane) ticket to come to United States, and I was shocked. …
“They said that was our job just to bring you out of Iran not bring you inside the country, in United States,” said Abedini, who was born in Tehran. Abedini converted to Christianity in 2000 and was arrested in 2012 in Iran, where he was tortured for three years, according to the news site.
“And I talked to other Americans in hospital and actually we were all shocked because … I came out; I had just prison clothes and they just told us you need to buy your own ticket,” he said, adding that he was in rough shape from his time as a hostage.
“I had the stomach bleeding for months in prison because they beat me very bad there … some physical attacks from the guards,” Abedini said. “And they kind of like make a team against me in the prison from the other prisoners, actually, so they tortured me psychologically and physically a lot.
“So I wasn’t in good health, but I was in my best part because just six months before we get released they let us to order from the restaurant in prison, and now I know probably they knew that we were going to be released so they wanted us to look in good shape,” he said.
Abedini said he told U.S. officials he believed they should return him to Boise, Idaho, where he lived before he was taken hostage, but they responded “there was no budget for that.”
Abedini said U.S. officials told him Christian outreach organizations could probably help get him home.
The former hostage also spoke with Fox Business about Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s recent to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, and provided an analogy to convey his feelings about it.
“I was just telling people that imagine leader of ISIS come to the United States after 30 years of all the executions that they did and the leaders of the world shaking his hand,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
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