Font Resize
London » A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British Embassy staff members on trial, a move that could provoke a tightening of European sanctions against Iran, including the withdrawal of ambassadors.
The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshippers at Friday prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had "made confessions" and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month's disputed presidential election.
In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking clarification from the Iranian government as to whether the cleric's remarks represented official policy.
"We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior," Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement. "We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran."
He said he planned to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.
Of the nine staff members seized Sunday, five were released Monday after the first British and European protests, and Iranian state media said Wednesday that three more had been freed, leaving only one in custody. British officials, however, said that two remained under arrest.
As local employees of the embassy, those arrested did not have diplomatic immunity. None are British
Although the Foreign Office has denied that it had any role in stirring the ferment in Iran, officials in London have said that the embassy in Tehran had not forbidden its local employees from participating in the protests as individuals. The Iranian authorities say they have video of some embassy employees at the protests.
Hours after the threat of trials, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 of the group's countries to send "a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release," a European diplomat said.
Other graduated measures -- like a slowdown in issuing visas to Iranian officials seeking to visit Europe and a potential withdrawal of all European ambassadors -- would be considered, the diplomat said.
Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a "velvet" revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest sparked by Iran's disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.
