The semi-official Fars new agency initially quoted Ahmad
Geravand, deputy commander of state border police, as telling a news conference
his guards had seized a “female American spy,” but Geravand later said her
nationality was not clear.
The woman was captured at Jolfa, on Iran’s northern border
with Azerbaijan, close to Armenia. Fars said she had entered from Armenia.
“On Jan. 5 a woman with foreign citizenship who was at the
Jolfa border filming police stations and all the border traffic with advanced
cameras was arrested by Jolfa border forces,” Geravand told national radio in
an interview.
“She once said she was an American citizen but at other
times she said she was a Swiss citizen. She mentioned the names of different
countries,” he said.
The ISNA news agency quoted Geravand as saying the woman was
“on a mission for the Americans to film the borders” and had been turned over
to the intelligence ministry.
Initial reports of the arrest emerged earlier this week.
Fars said on Thursday that a 55-year-old US woman identified as Hall Talayan
had been arrested trying to cross the border without a visa, and espionage
equipment was found in her teeth.
Later that day, however, Iran’s Arabic language television
Al-Alam said the arrest report was false.
Saturday’s news reports gave Talayan’s age as 34. The arrest
happened on Wednesday, they said.
The news comes at a time of high tension between Tehran and
Washington, which have been in a long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear
program.
The two countries have had no diplomatic relations since
Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution but both will be represented at talks in
Istanbul later this month which Western countries hope will address the nuclear
stand-off.
Three Americans - two men and a woman - were arrested in
July 2009 near the Iran-Iraq border on suspicion of spying. The woman, Sarah
Shourd, was released on bail a of $500,000 in September and returned to the
United States. She has said the three of them strayed across the border while
hiking in Iraq.
Her two companions remain in jail awaiting trial, which was
postponed in November due to Shourd’s absence.
