{"id":56,"date":"2007-03-30T18:59:18","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T18:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/british-marine-apologises-to-iran\/"},"modified":"2007-03-30T18:59:18","modified_gmt":"2007-03-30T18:59:18","slug":"british-marine-apologises-to-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/british-marine-apologises-to-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"British marine ‘apologises’ to Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

Al Jazeera and agencies<\/a><\/p>\n

Iranian television has broadcast an interview with a captured British marine in which he admitted to entering Iranian waters illegally and apologised to the Iranian people.<\/p>\n

The Arabic-language Al-Alam television channel showed an interview with the marine on Friday in which he said: “I deeply apologise for entering your waters.”<\/p>\n

Footage of three of the 15 captured British navy personnel was shown by Al-Alam.<\/p>\n

“The treatment has been very friendly,” the marine – identified as Nathan Thomas Summers – said on the state-run channel.<\/p>\n

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, said people would be disgusted by the broadcast.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know why the Iranian regime keeps doing this. All it does it heightens people’s sense of disgust.<\/p>\n

“Captured personnel being paraded and manipulated in this way, it doesn’t fool anyone.”<\/p>\n

Letter published<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summers was shown sitting with another male serviceman and the female British sailor Faye Turney – who was shown issuing a televised apology herself earlier this week – against a pink floral curtain.<\/p>\n

The Iranian embassy in London also released a third letter it said was written by Turney on Friday, in which she said she had been “sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair governments”.<\/p>\n

The letter said: “It is now time to ask our government to make a change to its oppressive behaviour towards other people.”<\/p>\n

The embassy also issued a statement criticising the British move to involve the UN in the diplomatic standoff.<\/p>\n

“Attempts to engage the Security Council with this matter of purely bilateral nature are completely unacceptable, unwarranted and unjustifiable,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

Official visit<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ali Reza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tehran, says that the broadcast was part of Iran’s attempt to prove that the British personnel were in Iranian waters.<\/p>\n

“However,” Ronaghi said, “I’m not sure if the credibility of these pictures will be trusted by a global audience”.<\/p>\n

Fifteen British sailors and marines were captured by the Iranian navy on March 23 while patrolling near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.<\/p>\n

Britain has demanded their release, insisting that they were in Iraqi waters at the time they were intercepted.<\/p>\n

Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, said that British officials would be able to visit the military personnel “in a consular framework.”<\/p>\n

So far Iran has denied Britain access to the 15.<\/p>\n

Apology<\/strong><\/p>\n

The interview was broadcast as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, demanded an apology by the British government, the Fars news agency said.<\/p>\n

The Iranian leader made the statement in a telephone conversation with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, Fars said.<\/p>\n

The statement came as Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary, said a diplomatic note from Tehran did not contain a way out of the standoff.<\/p>\n

“We have been looking for a way out of it for them, for us and particularly for our service personnel from the very beginning.<\/p>\n

“I wish I saw any sign that this is what Iran is trying to do.”<\/p>\n

The note is the first written communication from Tehran to Britain over the issue.<\/p>\n

It appeared to resemble a statement used to resolve a similar standoff in 2004 when Iran seized eight British servicemen and held them for three days.<\/p>\n

The note protests against what it describes as an “illegal act” by British personnel and urges the UK government to accept responsibility for it.<\/p>\n

European Union foreign ministers said on Friday that they were considering backing London with practical measures to put pressure on Iran to free the 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al Jazeera and agencies Iranian television has broadcast an interview with a captured British marine in which he admitted to entering Iranian waters illegally and apologised to the Iranian people. The Arabic-language Al-Alam television channel showed an interview with the marine on Friday in which he said: “I deeply apologise for entering your waters.” Footage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[34],"class_list":{"0":"post-56","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news","7":"tag-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}