The three women were on an Emirates airline flight from Dubai expected to land at New York's Kennedy Airport at 1900 GMT, a spokeswoman for the families said Saturday.
The detained Americans — Sarah Shourd, 31; her boyfriend, Shane Bauer, 27; and their friend Josh Fattal, 27 — have been held in Iran since July, when they were arrested along the Iraqi border. Iran has accused them of espionage; their families say that the three were hiking in Iraq's largely peaceful mountainous northern Kurdish region and that if they crossed the border, it was accidental.
The mothers — Nora Shourd, of Oakland, California; Cindy Hickey, of Pine City, Minnesota; and Laura Fattal, of suburban Philadelphia - had hoped to at least make a face-to-face appeal for their children's release to Iranian leaders.
The Swiss ambassador in Iran told AP Television News there were no negotiations with Iranian officials to free their children.
"The point was that they should see their children. They have seen them quite a lot over the last two days," Ambassador Livia Leu Agosti said late Friday in an interview at the Tehran airport after the mothers left the country. "It was a visit to the children. That was the purpose." Asked whether there were any positive signs from Iranian authorities, Agosti told APTN: "Well, they were very generous in the time that they allotted the mothers to be with their children. So it was a good gesture."
Iran announced Friday that two of its nationals held in Iraq by US forces for years had been freed, raising the possibility that a behind-the-scenes swap was in the offing or that their release was a gesture of goodwill in an attempt to free the Americans.
