Iran postpones American woman's release

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran today postponed the planned release of an American woman jailed along with two friends for more than a year, state media reported, dealing a blow to the hopes of three U.S. mothers who have pleaded for the trio's release.

Iranian officials had said that Sarah Shourd, who was detained with her friends near Iran's border with Iraq, would be released Saturday. But the IRNA state news agency quoted the deputy chief of communication for the Iranian president's office, Mohammed Hassan Salilhimaram, as saying that would not happen.

He said details of the decision would be announced later, but Tehran's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, blamed the fact that "judicial procedures have not been done," according to the semiofficial ILNA news agency.

It was the latest in a series of mixed messages from Tehran in a case that has deepened tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a relationship already strained over Washington's suspicions that Tehran is trying to manufacture nuclear weapons — something Iran denies.