J's Cafe Nette

Anyone who has been reading or watching the news since Friday knows fifteen British sailors and marines (including one woman) have been captured by the Revolutionary Guards of Iran for supposedly being in Iranian waters while on a patrol in Iraqi waters while searching for smugglers.

The Brits claim they were in Iraqi waters and the Iranians claim they were in Iranian waters. At any rate the sailors and marines are now in Tehran on an unexpected detour and Iran is claiming they will charge them with espionage, which carries the death penalty under Iranian Islamic law.

The Times Online reports:

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.

There are some missing Iranian agents from Iraq, so this demand makes some sense.

At the same time there have been a couple of defections of high-ranking Iranians the Iranians would love to get back and give them a dose of Islamic justice.

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.

There are some Iraqi fishermen who have convinced an Iraqi general the Brits were in Iranian waters, but the British deny it, saying the last time this happened GPS devices proved they were in Iraqi waters and he is certain this will be the case also.

Meanwhile, this Fox News report states British Prime Minister is determined to get this situation solved as soon and as diplomatically as possible.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday that the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran as they searched for smugglers off the Iraqi coast were not in Iranian waters and warned that Britain viewed their situation as “very serious.”

The group was seized at gunpoint on Friday, and the Foreign Office in London said British officials do not know where Iran is holding them.

Speaking at an EU summit in Berlin, Blair said Iran’s claim that the sailors had crossed into Iranian territorial waters “is simply not true.”

“I want to get [the situation] resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible,” Blair said, but added he hoped the Iranians “understood how fundamental an issue this is for the British government.”

Britain said its diplomats met with Iranian officials in Tehran on Sunday where their demand for access to the group was denied after Iran refused to say where they were being held.

“This is a very serious situation,” Blair said.

We’ll soon see if it’s spies they want or if they really believe these sailors and marines breeched their waters.

Either way I pray for a peaceful solution to this mess.

Written by Jeanette

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