The British government said Thursday it had "no evidence" to support claims that Iran was involved in the kidnapping of a British citizen released after two-and-a-half years in captivity, according to dpa. A Foreign Office spokesman was responding to reports Thursday that the capture of Peter Moore, a 36-year-old computer consultant, was masterminded by Iran"s Revolutionary Guards. Moore was freed Wednesday after being snatched with four British bodyguards from the Finance Ministry in Baghdad in May 2007. "We have seen speculation that Iran is directly involved in this kidnapping, but we have no evidence to substantiate claims of direct involvement in the kidnapping," the spokesman said. "We have no evidence that the British hostages, including Peter Moore, were held in Iran. We are not in a position to say with any certainty where they were held during each and every single day of their two and a half years in captivity," he added. There were also unconfirmed reports that Moore was freed within hours after the release of a leading Shi"ite insurgent from US custody in Iraq. The release of Qais al-Khazali, a leader of the Asaib al-Haq group, was reported to have been one of the key demands of the kidnappers who snatched Moore and his bodyguards. The bodies of three of them - Alec MacLachlan, Jason Swindlehurst and Jason Creswell - have been handed over to the British authorities. The fourth, Alan McMenemy, is also believed to have been killed by the kidnappers, the British government has said. Foreign Secretary David Miliband has insisted that no "substantive concessions" were made to the hostage-takers and said that the handover of Khalazi under a deal between the US and the Iraqi government was a "completely separate" matter. But he also said that Moore would not have been freed "without the current process of reconciliation" going on inside Iraq, a remark that was being seen as relating to the release of Khazali. Britain"s Guardian newspaper reported Thursday that the five men were taken to Iran within a day of their kidnapping and held in a prison by a unit "specializing in foreign operations on behalf of the Iranian government." The Guardian quoted a former, unnamed member of Iran"s Revolutionary Guard, as saying: "It was an Iranian kidnap, led by the Revolutionary Guard." The BBC reported that General David Petraeus, the former US commander in Iraq, had told one of its correspondents in mid-December that he was "90-per-cent certain" that Moore was being held in Iran. The British government imposed a news blackout during the entire two-and-a-half years of the kidnapping, a step Miliband linked to the fact that the four bodyguards had a background in the British army. If an Iranian connection to the kidnapping was to be confirmed, it would undoubtedly worsen already strained relations between London and Tehran. Ann Clywd, the British government"s human rights envoy to Iraq, said Thursday that reports of a direct Iranian involvement in the kidnapping were "very worrying." However, she described the reports as "rumours" which had not been mentioned when she visited Baghdad recently to discuss the hostage crisis.
