http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1563877.ece
From The Sunday Times
March 25, 2007
Iran =E2=80=98to try Britons for espionage=E2=80=99
Uzi Mahnaimi, Michael Smith and David Cracknell
FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran=E2=80=99s 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 =E2=80=9Cinsurgents=E2=80=9D, the site concluded: =E2=
=80=9CIf 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.=E2=80=9D
The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy
personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their
=E2=80=9Caggressive action=E2=80=9D in entering Iranian waters. British off=
icials
insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.
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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. =E2=80=9CAs soon as the
corps=E2=80=99s five members are released, the Britons can go home,=E2=80=
=9D said one
source close to the Guards.
He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran=E2=80=99s
supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take =E2=80=9Cillegal
actions=E2=80=9D 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=E2=80=99s 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 =E2=80=9Caggression into Iran=E2=80=99s waters=E2=80=9D.
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=E2=80=99 weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that
the force had =E2=80=9Cthe ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-
haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks=E2=80=9D.
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=E2=80=99s claim that the
British had entered Iranian waters. =E2=80=9CWe 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,=E2=80=9D said Brigadier-
General Hakim Jassim, who is in charge of Iraq=E2=80=99s territorial waters.
=E2=80=9CWe don=E2=80=99t know why they were there.=E2=80=9D
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.
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