TEHRAN — Iran has released five British sailors detained when their racing yacht was stopped in the Persian Gulf after entering Iranian waters last week.
The official IRNA news agency said the yachtsmen were let go after an interrogation by Iranian authorities found that their entry into Iranian waters had been a mistake.
The report said the British were released early today.
Iran had warned on Tuesday the sailors would be prosecuted if it was proven they had “bad intentions” when their 60-foot racing yacht entered Iranian waters.
Britain said it was an innocent case of a vessel accidentally going astray in the Persian Gulf.
London was trying to keep the incident from getting tangled up in politics — not only in the rancor between Tehran and the West over Iran’s nuclear issue but also the country’s own internal post-election turmoil, which has pumped up the leadership’s fears of foreign plots.
The yacht is the pride of a high-profile racing program sponsored by the king of the tiny Arab island nation of Bah rain. The vessel was on its way from Bahrain to Dubai on Nov. 25 for the start of its first offshore race when it had a problem with its propeller, according to Andrew Pindar, whose Team Pindar owns the yacht. It drifted into Iranian waters and was seized by the elite Revolutionary Guard near the Iranian island of Sirri.
The head of Britain’s diplomatic service, Peter Ricketts, met with Iran’s ambassador Tuesday to call for a “speedy resolution.”
British media identified the five Britons as Oliver Smith, of Southampton; Sam Usher, of Scarborough; Luke Porter, of Weston-super-Mare; Oliver Young, of Saltash; and David Bloomer, who is from Malahide, Ireland, but holds a British passport.
Also Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tehran is reviewing the option of decreasing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog after it issued a resolution critical of Iran last week.
Speaking in a live television interview late Tuesday, Ahmadinejad also criticized Russia’s support for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s resolution, calling it a mistake.
“Friendly relations with the agency are over. We will cooperate as much as they offer us compromises. We are reviewing this,” he said.
The sharply worded IAEA resolution last Friday demanded Iran halt all uranium enrichment and stop construction of a newly discovered nuclear facility.
