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British government has "no evidence" of Iran hostage link
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 31 - 12 - 2009


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.


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