-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 25, 2007 9:06:59 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Iran to Try British Sailors for Espionage
Iran ‘to try Britons for espionage’
Uzi Mahnaimi, Michael Smith and David Cracknell
Times Online (UK), March 25, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/
article1563877.ece
Fifteen British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.
A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian
president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before
a court and indicted.
Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is
proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will
be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a
very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is
one of the most serious offences.”
The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British
navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain
their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British
officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were
held.
The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar
accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were
detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on
television but did not appear in court and were freed after three
nights in detention.
Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be
held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in
Iraq earlier this year.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted
an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the
Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards.
The claim was backed by other sources in Tehran. “As soon as the
corps’s five members are released, the Britons can go home,” said
one source close to the Guards.
He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s
supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take
“illegal actions” if necessary to maintain its right to develop a
nuclear programme.
Iran denounced a tightening of sanctions which the United Nations
security council was expected to agree last night in protest at
Tehran’s insistence on enriching uranium that could be used for
nuclear weapons.
Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, met the Iranian
ambassador in London yesterday to demand that consular staff be
allowed access to the Britons, one of whom is a woman. His
intervention came as a senior Iranian general alleged that the
Britons had confessed under interrogation to “aggression into
Iran’s waters”.
Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was
likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the
commander of the Revolutionary Guards.
Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that
the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-
haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”.
Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the
West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the
effect of UN sanctions on his own finances.
A senior Iraqi officer appeared to back Tehran’s claim that the
British had entered Iranian waters. “We were informed by Iraqi
fishermen after they had returned from sea that there were British
gunboats in an area that is out of Iraqi control,” said Brigadier-
General Hakim Jassim, who is in charge of Iraq’s territorial
waters. “We don’t know why they were there.”
Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed
suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian
waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took
place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then
that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.
--------------------
15 Britons Taken to Tehran
As Iran Dispute Intensifies
"Recordings made by the seized British vessels attest to the fact that
the sailors were fully aware they were trespassing on Iranian
waters."
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post, March 25, 2007; A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/
AR2007032400095.html
LONDON, March 24 -- Fifteen British sailors and marines seized by
Iranian naval forces have been taken to Tehran for questioning as a
diplomatic dispute between Iran and the West intensified Saturday.
The Iranian Fars news agency reported that the British personnel
were being asked to explain what Iran calls their "aggressive"
trespass into Iranian territorial waters on Friday. The agency
quoted a senior Iranian military official, Alireza Afshar, as
saying that the British service members had "confessed" and that if
the United States and its allies invaded Iran, they would "not be
able to control the dimensions and period of the war."
British officials insist that the sailors and marines, on two small
patrol boats, were in Iraqi waters in the Persian Gulf conducting a
routine patrol under a U.N. mandate. British officials said the
eight sailors and seven marines had just completed an inspection of
a merchant ship when they were surrounded by Iranian vessels and
captured near Shatt al Arab, a waterway between Iraq and Iran that
has long been a source of territorial disputes.
In London, British officials summoned the Iranian ambassador,
Rasoul Movahedian, for an hour-long meeting to "reiterate our
demand that our people be released immediately," according to a
spokesman for the Foreign Office. It was the second such meeting in
two days.
The European Union said Saturday that it would demand the
"immediate liberation" of the British personnel. "We are doing our
utmost in cooperation with the British authorities," E.U. foreign
policy chief Javier Solana told reporters in Berlin. "They have our
support and solidarity."
A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Seyed Mohammad Ali
Hosseini, said the "illegal and interventionist entry by the
British forces into the Iranian waters is a dubious act which
contradicts international laws," the Iranian news agency reported.
The agency quoted an unidentified official as saying that Iran had
evidence that the British service members knew they had crossed
into Iranian territory.
"The explanations provided by the British marines and recordings
made by the seized British vessels testify to the fact that the
British forces were fully informed they had trespassed the Iranian
waters," the official said.
The incident comes at a time when Iran is under increasing
international pressure over its nuclear ambitions and its growing
influence in Iraq.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose
tougher sanctions against Iran for its refusal to stop enriching
uranium. The United States and several other countries fear that
Iran's ultimate goal is to produce a nuclear weapon with its
enriched uranium, while Iran insists it is simply exercising its
right to create a peaceful nuclear power program.
Officials have said the seizure might be a reprisal for the U.S.
detention of five Iranian Revolutionary Guard operatives in January
in Iraq. U.S. officials accuse the men of being involved in arming
and aiding Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran denies those allegations
and has demanded their release.
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