ROYAL MARINE BASE CHIVENOR, England – British sailors and marines freed by Iran said Friday they were blindfolded, isolated in cold stone cells and tricked into fearing execution while being coerced into falsely saying they had entered Iranian waters.
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 a news conference held by six of the freed personnel as “propaganda” and “a show.” Iranian state TV accused British leaders of “dictating” the crew’s statements.
Appearing a day after being flown home to reunions with their families, the eight sailors and seven marines reported undergoing constant psychological pressure and being threatened with seven years in prison if they did not say they intruded into Iranian waters.
“At some points I did have fears that we would not survive,” said Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor, 20, the youngest sailor among the captives.
Speaking at the news conference with five colleagues, the boat team’s commander, Royal Navy Lt. Felix Carman, said the prisoners were harshly interrogated during 13 days in custody and slept in stone cells on piles of blankets.
“All of us were kept in isolation. We were interrogated most nights and presented with two options: If we admitted that we’d strayed, we’d be on a plane to (Britain) pretty soon. If we didn’t, we faced up to seven years in prison,” he said.
“Let me make this clear – irrespective of what was said in the past – when we were detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard we were inside internationally recognized Iraqi territorial waters,” he said.
Royal Marine Joe Tindell said he came to believe one of his colleagues had been executed on the second day of their ordeal.
“We had a blindfold and plastic cuffs, hands behind our backs, heads against the wall. … There were weapons cocking,” Tindell told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. “Someone said, I quote: ‘Lads, lads, I think we’re going to get executed.’ … Someone was sick and as far as I was concerned he had just had his throat cut.”
Royal Marine Capt. Chris Air said the crew, operating in two inflatable boats in the Persian Gulf on March 23 checking vessels for smuggled goods, was confronted by two Revolutionary Guard boats.
“They rammed our boats and trained their heavy machine guns, RPGs and weapons on us. Another six boats were closing in on us,” Air said.
He said the team quickly decided that a gunbattle would risk a major escalation of tensions with Iran and that they were too lightly armed to resist anyway.
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