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Sailors talk of ordeal in Iran

By TIMES WIRES
Published April 7, 2007

LONDON - Early during their two-week detention in Iran, a group of British sailors and marines were blindfolded, handcuffed behind their backs and lined up facing a wall in a prison in Tehran. Behind them, they recalled, Iranian guards cocked their guns.

Held in isolation by guards who spoke no English, barred from talking to one another, so bereft of information that they thought perhaps no one knew they were missing, "Some of us feared the worst," said Royal Marine Capt. Chris Air, 25.

"Lads, lads, I think we're going to get executed," a voice said in the darkness, recalled one of the marines, Joe Tindell. After that, someone got sick, "and as far as I was concerned, he had just had his throat cut."

In fact, it was psychological intimidation, six members of the crew said Friday at a news conference, the first time they spoke publicly about their March 23 capture by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their time in captivity, which ended with their surprise release Thursday. They spent long periods blindfolded and in isolation, and they were threatened with up to seven years in prison if they did not admit to invading Iranian waters, said Royal Navy Lt. Felix Carman.

They said there was no doubt the 15 crew members were in Iraq's territorial waters when they were seized by heavily armed boats of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Iran, which has been celebrating the incident as a victory, quickly rejected the charges, dismissing the news conference as "propaganda" and "a show." Iranian state TV accused British leaders of "dictating" the crew's statements.

The crew also rallied around the only female sailor in the group, praising Leading Seaman Faye Turney for maintaining her dignity.

Turney, a 26-year-old mother whose television appearances and purported letters were widely aired by Iran, was kept isolated from her crew mates, a colleague said.

"She was under the impression for about four days that she was the only one there," Royal Marine Capt. Chris Air said at a news conference. "She coped admirably and has maintained a lot of dignity."

Turney, who did not appear at the news conference, appeared in videos wearing a black head scarf. Smoking a cigarette, she apologized in the video footage for trespassing into Iranian waters.

Some newspapers and Britons have questioned why the crew members appeared so relaxed in pictures aired on Iranian television, and why they seemed to confess so readily to trespassing in Iranian waters. Military analysts have wondered why the service members allowed themselves to be captured without a fight and whether the 15 sailors and marines truly were in Iraqi waters, as Britain has steadfastly maintained.

No time to react

Some of the answers emerged Friday during the 30-minute news conference at Royal Marines Barracks Chivenor, about 210 miles southwest of London in Devon. The explanations came as the British Defense Ministry announced that British sailors had stopped boarding vessels and conducting inspections in the Persian Gulf pending a wide-ranging investigation of the incident.

The crew members insisted that they were in Iraqi waters when apprehended, that they were surrounded by Iranian speedboats and had no time to react, and that they were simply outgunned.

When confronted by the Iranians, "I explained we were conducting a routine operation, as allowed under a U.N. mandate, but when we tried to leave, they prevented us by blocking us in," Air explained in a prepared opening statement. "Some of the Iranian sailors were becoming deliberately aggressive and unstable. They rammed our boats and trained their heavy machine guns, RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and weapons on us.

"Another six boats were closing in on us. We realized that our efforts to reason with these people were not making any headway, nor were we able to calm some of the individuals down. It was at this point that we realized that had we resisted, there would have been a major fight, one which we could not have won and with consequences that would have had major strategic impacts."

Helicopter left

Although a British helicopter initially had provided air cover for the boarding operation, for some unknown reason it had left, Air said.

Their two inflatable boats were commandeered and taken to a local Iranian naval base, where they spent the night before being transferred to a prison in Tehran. There, they were subjected to "constant psychological pressure," said Carman, who also made opening remarks from a statement.

Letters and televised shots of members admitting to trespassing in Iranian waters were coerced, Carman said.

"They appear to have played it by the rules," Navy Chief of Staff Jonathon Band told BBC radio on Friday. "They don't appear to have put themselves into danger, others into danger, they don't appear to have given anything away. And indeed I think at the end, they were a credit to us."

Iranian commanders targeted: American forces who captured five Iranians in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil three months ago were really after commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who were visiting Kurdish officials, Massoud Barzani, president of the 15-year-old Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq said in remarks broadcast Saturday by Al-Arabiyah television. Barzani said the Iranians first visited Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and then went to visit him. U.S. Defense Department officials in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Information from the Washington Post and the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified April 7, 2007, 02:21:39]