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Iran parades blindfolded Brit soldiers on beach
Fury erupted yesterday over new TV footage of eight blindfolded British servicemen held in Iran. The sickening scene showed the captives marching single-file along a baking hot beach. It was their second day of public humiliation since they were held on Monday after being accused of straying on to the Iranian half of a waterway bordering Iraq. The beach is thought to be near where their boats were seized. The six Royal Marine Commandos and two Royal Navy sailors were forced to tramp up and down first hands on heads — then holding the shoulders of the man in front. Looking scared and disorientated, several of the captives stumbled into each other during the cruel charade filmed for Iranian TV. The ordeal sparked international condemnation as a promise to free the men was broken. At midday Iran had claimed the eight were free to go. But the deal stalled.

Last night the Foreign Office announced that the men would finally be freed this morning — if Iran sticks to its pledge. The international incident had threatened to become a full-blown crisis. Previous footage of the eight in blindfolds had already caused a storm. Two senior NCOs among them were forced to make a grovelling TV “confession”. A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: “We are deeply concerned to see these sort of pictures for a second day.” For the first time, UK diplomats were let into the Bandarmahshar army base where the men were held. But they were still not allowed to see them. The team had fallen into the hands of the hard-line Revolutionary Guards — an elite military unit who answer only to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Former SAS chief General Sir Michael Rose told The Sun: “The Geneva Convention was agreed to stop this sort of thing happening.” Top analyst Major Charles Heyman said: “There’s no military reason to march men up and down a beach blindfold. It can only have been done to humiliate them.”

It emerged yesterday that one of the group’s leaders, dad-of-two Chief Petty Officer Robert Webster, is a reservist and normally a firefighter at Newcastle airport.
Two others had been named as married Royal Marines Sergeant Thomas Harkins and ex-Scottish amateur boxing champ Marine Scott Fallon. A fourth was revealed yesterday as Royal Marines Corporal Chris Monan, 26, of Marske, Cleveland. The MoD insists the men were on a routine trip when they were forced on to the shoreline and arrested.
Posted by: TS(vice girl) 2004-06-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=36254