LONDON, 6 April 2007 — Fifteen British naval personnel held by Iran for 13 days flew home to emotional scenes yesterday at the end of a standoff that Prime Minister Tony Blair said had been resolved without “any deal.” But there were questions amid the celebrations, after Tehran said it had received an apology from Britain, a key demand it made for releasing the seven Marines and eight sailors.
In new revelation, one of the Marines said in an interview broadcast yesterday that the seized personnel were gathering intelligence. “We sort of gather int (intelligence) as well,” Royal Marine Capt. Chris Air, 25 told Sky News television in the interview filmed three weeks ago but only broadcast after their release so as not to jeopardize efforts to free them.
The British channel was with many of those captured as they carried out patrols in the northern Gulf, under a United Nations mandate to protect Iraq’s territorial waters.
On an Iraqi fishing vessel, during a routine boarding, Air said they gathered intelligence from such boats. “If they do have any information — because they’re here for days at a time — they can share with us, whether it’s about any piracy or any sort of Iranian activity in the area, because obviously we’re right near the buffer zone with Iran,” he said.
The Britons were flown by two military helicopters to a military base in Devon, southwest England, after arriving on a scheduled British Airways flight from Tehran at London’s Heathrow airport. The 14 men and one woman looked relaxed and were seen smiling and hugging each other outside the officers’ mess at Royal Marines Base Chivenor, before being reunited with their families.
Both sides in the tense diplomatic standoff came out of the dispute claiming at least a moral victory 24 hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was freeing them as a “gift” to the British people.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and now adviser to supreme leader Ali Khamenei, said Britain sent a letter of apology to Iran the day before Ahmadinejad’s announcement.
But as the 15 arrived home, Blair said their release was obtained “without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature whatever.”
At a press conference on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad said that Britain had sent a letter promising its military would not enter Iranian waters.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, said the United States had no plans to release five Iranians captured in Iraq and accused of supporting Iraqi insurgents. Gates rejected speculation that the United States was preparing to release the group or allow consular access to them as part of a deal under which Iran released the British sailors.
“I think there’s no inclination right now to let them go,” Gates told reporters in Washington when asked about the fate of the five Iranians captured by US forces in Iraq and held since January.
Speculation intensified about their release after an Iranian diplomat was freed in Iraq on Monday. The sailors’ release has been widely linked with that of the diplomat and there was speculation the United States will free the five Iranians too as part of a secret deal with Tehran in exchange for the Britons.
