Philippe Naughton,
Catherine Philp and Ed Gorman
December 1, 2009
Five British sailors detained in the Gulf after straying into Iranian waters could face "serious" punishment if they are found to have acted with "evil intentions", a close aide to President Ahmadijnejad said today.
The remark, the first official comment from Tehran since news of the sailors' detention emerged last night, appeared to put paid to Foreign Office hopes that the men would be released without a drawn-out diplomatic wrangle.
The five men were picked up by Iranian naval vessels last Wednesday after their racing yacht, the Kingdom of Bahrain, was boarded en route from Bahrain to Dubai.
Organisers of a race in which the yachtsmen were planning to take part said the vessel had reported problems with a propeller, suggesting that they may have have drifted off course. The father of one of those on board, Luke Porter, 21, said that his son had told him that the boat had strayed about 500 yards into Iranian waters near the island of Sirri.
The other sailors are David Bloomer, a Bahrain-based radio presenter, Oliver Smith from Southampton, Oliver Young from Plymouth and Sam Usher.
The incident recalled the capture in 2007 of 15 British sailors and Marines from HMS Cornwall, who were detained in Iran for two weeks before beng freed by President Ahmadinejad as a "gift" to the people of Britain.
Britain has always maintained that the group were in Iraqi waters at the time and any comparison between the two incidents was rejected today by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who insisted that the detention of the yachtsmen was a "purely consular matter".
Mr Miliband told the BBC that Iranian government business had all but stopped for the Eid holiday but he hoped that the matter would now be resolved. The British Ambassador in Tehran visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last night and the Iranians had promised to issue a statement on the issue later today.
"These are five civilians. They are yachtsmen. They were going about their sport," Mr Miliband said.
"It seems they may have strayed inadvertently into Iranian waters. We look forward to the Iranian Government dealing with this promptly ... There's certainly no confrontation or argument."
The signs from Iran were not promising. Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie, Mr Ahmadinejad's head of staff, told the semi-official Fars news agency that the five Britons could face legal action.
"[The] judiciary will decide about the five," he said, "Naturally our measures will be hard and serious if we find out they had evil intentions."
Meanwhile, the men's families are growing increasingly concerned that they could be exploited for political reasons given Iran's nuclear stand-off with the West and last week's resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agencty demanding that it stop enriching uranium.
Mr Young’s father, David, who found out last Thursday night that his son was being held, told the Plymouth Herald: "It is dragging along longer than we thought it would do.
"It’s just a worry that there are diplomatic stresses at the moment; they are under international pressure. We just hope they’re not used as a bargaining chip."
The Britons were delivering the yacht to the annual Dubai-to-Muscat race, a 360-mile voyage through the Straits of Hormuz scheduled to begin the following day.
The seized yacht, a 60ft Volvo, is owned by Sail Bahrain, a personal project of King Hamad of Bahrain to promote his country’s seafaring ancestry. It had arrived only recently from Southampton.
Sail Bahrain is backed by Team Pindar, a British yacht-racing team led by the Scarborough businessman Andrew Pindar, whose family owns Britain’s largest independent printers.
Team Pindar said last night: "On November 25, Sail Bahrain’s Kingdom of Bahrain ... racing yacht was stopped by Iranian navy vessels, as it was making its way from Bahrain to the start of the Dubai-Muscat Offshore Sailing Race.
"The boat may have strayed inadvertently into Iranian waters. The five crew members, all British nationals, are still in Iran. All are understood to be safe and well and their families have been informed."
Mark Turner, the chief executive of the leading Cowes-based sail racing company OC Group, who is familiar with sailing in the Gulf, told The Times last night that the Kingdom of Bahrain appeared to have been boarded twice by the Iranians. The first time the men were allowed to go on their way; the second time they were detained.
Mr Turner said that he had been informed that the crew had drifted in windless conditions into Iranian waters on Wednesday last week. They were then boarded by Iranian security forces who confiscated the yacht’s navigation computers. Once the Iranians were satisfied that the computers were harmless, they were returned to the boat and the crew was told they were free to go.
At this point the sailors, who are described as "delivery crew" and do not include any well-known British racing yachtsmen, tried to start the boat’s engine but it broke down and they continued to drift on a flat sea.
They were reported to have made contact with a shipping company in Dubai to try to arrange a tow but, before this was organised, the Iranians seem to have had a change of heart and re-boarded the yacht and seized it.
Although the precise sequence of events remains unclear, it appears that the original decision by the Iranians to let the yacht continue on its passage to Dubai may have been overruled after its diplomatic value to Iran had been assessed.
The news comes at a time of renewed tensions between Iran and Britain. As well as the nuclear dispute, Tehran accuses Britain of fomenting the public unrest after Mr Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June. Last month an Iranian worker at the British Embassy in Tehran was sentenced to four years in prison for alleged spying and orchestrating the protests on behalf of the British Government.
Snatched in Iran
444 days. In November 1979 Iranian students seized 63 hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran, demanding that the Shah return from America to face trial. A rescue mission ended in disaster and led to the demise of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The last 52 hostages were freed on January 20, 1981, hours after Carter left office. They had been held for 444 days
122 days. Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, all Americans, were charged with espionage after straying into Iran from northern Iraq on July 31 this year. Their families say they were hiking and crossed the border accidentally. Espionage carries a possible death sentence in Iran. They have been held for 122 days
100 days. The US/Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was sentenced to eight years in jail this year on espionage charges and working for a “hostile state” after a trial lasting 15 minutes. An appeal court overturned this conviction on the ground that the United States and Iran could not be defined as hostile towards each other. She was detained for 100 days
12 days. In 2007 15 British sailors and Royal Marines aboard the HMS Cornwall were surrounded, arrested and taken prisoner by the navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Iran claimed that the British had strayed into its territorial waters; Britain said that the ship was always in Iraqi waters. The British personnel were freed after 12 days
3 days. In 2004 six Marines and two sailors were seized by Iran in the same area. The captured personnel appeared on Iranian television blindfolded but were released after Iran said that they had mistakenly crossed into its waters. Their ordeal lasted three days
The remark, the first official comment from Tehran since news of the sailors' detention emerged last night, appeared to put paid to Foreign Office hopes that the men would be released without a drawn-out diplomatic wrangle.
The five men were picked up by Iranian naval vessels last Wednesday after their racing yacht, the Kingdom of Bahrain, was boarded en route from Bahrain to Dubai.
Organisers of a race in which the yachtsmen were planning to take part said the vessel had reported problems with a propeller, suggesting that they may have have drifted off course. The father of one of those on board, Luke Porter, 21, said that his son had told him that the boat had strayed about 500 yards into Iranian waters near the island of Sirri.
The other sailors are David Bloomer, a Bahrain-based radio presenter, Oliver Smith from Southampton, Oliver Young from Plymouth and Sam Usher.
The incident recalled the capture in 2007 of 15 British sailors and Marines from HMS Cornwall, who were detained in Iran for two weeks before beng freed by President Ahmadinejad as a "gift" to the people of Britain.
Britain has always maintained that the group were in Iraqi waters at the time and any comparison between the two incidents was rejected today by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who insisted that the detention of the yachtsmen was a "purely consular matter".
Mr Miliband told the BBC that Iranian government business had all but stopped for the Eid holiday but he hoped that the matter would now be resolved. The British Ambassador in Tehran visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last night and the Iranians had promised to issue a statement on the issue later today.
"These are five civilians. They are yachtsmen. They were going about their sport," Mr Miliband said.
"It seems they may have strayed inadvertently into Iranian waters. We look forward to the Iranian Government dealing with this promptly ... There's certainly no confrontation or argument."
The signs from Iran were not promising. Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaie, Mr Ahmadinejad's head of staff, told the semi-official Fars news agency that the five Britons could face legal action.
"[The] judiciary will decide about the five," he said, "Naturally our measures will be hard and serious if we find out they had evil intentions."
Meanwhile, the men's families are growing increasingly concerned that they could be exploited for political reasons given Iran's nuclear stand-off with the West and last week's resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agencty demanding that it stop enriching uranium.
Mr Young’s father, David, who found out last Thursday night that his son was being held, told the Plymouth Herald: "It is dragging along longer than we thought it would do.
"It’s just a worry that there are diplomatic stresses at the moment; they are under international pressure. We just hope they’re not used as a bargaining chip."
The Britons were delivering the yacht to the annual Dubai-to-Muscat race, a 360-mile voyage through the Straits of Hormuz scheduled to begin the following day.
The seized yacht, a 60ft Volvo, is owned by Sail Bahrain, a personal project of King Hamad of Bahrain to promote his country’s seafaring ancestry. It had arrived only recently from Southampton.
Sail Bahrain is backed by Team Pindar, a British yacht-racing team led by the Scarborough businessman Andrew Pindar, whose family owns Britain’s largest independent printers.
Team Pindar said last night: "On November 25, Sail Bahrain’s Kingdom of Bahrain ... racing yacht was stopped by Iranian navy vessels, as it was making its way from Bahrain to the start of the Dubai-Muscat Offshore Sailing Race.
"The boat may have strayed inadvertently into Iranian waters. The five crew members, all British nationals, are still in Iran. All are understood to be safe and well and their families have been informed."
Mark Turner, the chief executive of the leading Cowes-based sail racing company OC Group, who is familiar with sailing in the Gulf, told The Times last night that the Kingdom of Bahrain appeared to have been boarded twice by the Iranians. The first time the men were allowed to go on their way; the second time they were detained.
Mr Turner said that he had been informed that the crew had drifted in windless conditions into Iranian waters on Wednesday last week. They were then boarded by Iranian security forces who confiscated the yacht’s navigation computers. Once the Iranians were satisfied that the computers were harmless, they were returned to the boat and the crew was told they were free to go.
At this point the sailors, who are described as "delivery crew" and do not include any well-known British racing yachtsmen, tried to start the boat’s engine but it broke down and they continued to drift on a flat sea.
They were reported to have made contact with a shipping company in Dubai to try to arrange a tow but, before this was organised, the Iranians seem to have had a change of heart and re-boarded the yacht and seized it.
Although the precise sequence of events remains unclear, it appears that the original decision by the Iranians to let the yacht continue on its passage to Dubai may have been overruled after its diplomatic value to Iran had been assessed.
The news comes at a time of renewed tensions between Iran and Britain. As well as the nuclear dispute, Tehran accuses Britain of fomenting the public unrest after Mr Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June. Last month an Iranian worker at the British Embassy in Tehran was sentenced to four years in prison for alleged spying and orchestrating the protests on behalf of the British Government.
Snatched in Iran
444 days. In November 1979 Iranian students seized 63 hostages at the US Embassy in Tehran, demanding that the Shah return from America to face trial. A rescue mission ended in disaster and led to the demise of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. The last 52 hostages were freed on January 20, 1981, hours after Carter left office. They had been held for 444 days
122 days. Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 31, and Josh Fattal, 27, all Americans, were charged with espionage after straying into Iran from northern Iraq on July 31 this year. Their families say they were hiking and crossed the border accidentally. Espionage carries a possible death sentence in Iran. They have been held for 122 days
100 days. The US/Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was sentenced to eight years in jail this year on espionage charges and working for a “hostile state” after a trial lasting 15 minutes. An appeal court overturned this conviction on the ground that the United States and Iran could not be defined as hostile towards each other. She was detained for 100 days
12 days. In 2007 15 British sailors and Royal Marines aboard the HMS Cornwall were surrounded, arrested and taken prisoner by the navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Iran claimed that the British had strayed into its territorial waters; Britain said that the ship was always in Iraqi waters. The British personnel were freed after 12 days
3 days. In 2004 six Marines and two sailors were seized by Iran in the same area. The captured personnel appeared on Iranian television blindfolded but were released after Iran said that they had mistakenly crossed into its waters. Their ordeal lasted three days
Times Online
1 comment:
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