Iran on Friday called news conference by the freed British sailors painting a grim picture of their 13 days in captivity a "planned show," and stood by its claim that the soldiers were in Iranian waters at the time they were captured, according to dpa. "The propaganda and planned shows can not cover up the violation of Iran's sea borders by the British military personnel," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. Speaking for the first time since their release and return to Britain Thursday, six members of the group on Friday described how they were put in solitary confinement in tiny stone cells, constantly interrogated and threatened with long prison terms, during a news conference at a naval base in Chivenor in the south-western county of Devon. Meanwhile the state television IRIB showed a short footage of the conference and said that: "while only six members have been ready for speaking, they were all nervously reading from a written note in their hands." "Immediate transferring the sailors to a military camp, dictating them what to read and what to say along with the organized media propaganda, can not distort the realities and the facts," Hosseini said, referring to the service members' transfer to their base for debriefing. The seven sailors and eight Royal Marines were seized from a British patrol boat on March 23 in the Shatt al-Arab waterway, triggering a diplomatic stand-off between Tehran and London. Iran alleges that the marines crossed illegally into the country's territorial waters. Britain insisted that they were in Iraqi waters and demanded the immediate release of its personnel. The sailors, in their news conference, said they were told by their captors that if they refused to admit they were in Iranian waters when captured they would face seven years in prison.
