British sailors arrested at gunpoint by Iranian navy.

[IN HOC SIGNO]

"Watching the press conference this AM of 6 RM/RN personnel and one thing that struck me was how unprepared these personnel were for captivity. This episode shows that all personnel need to go through some form of SERE training. In captivity you have a duty to resist becoming part of the bad guys propaganda effort.At the same time you want to survive.Some people cannot handle the pressure and give in and many others find ways to get through captivity with honor."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The RN pers may not have had much indoc as POWs but the RMs likely did...pretty tough guys and tough training in the RM.
On another note, I just watched the Beltway Boys on FoxNews and they are really playing the Brits as cowards saying they embarrassed themselves by not pulling a "John McCain for as long as 10 min."  Also another show on the network commented on the Brits caving although they didn't use the word "cowards" amidst the eyerolls.

Yeah nice way to treat your Allies. I treat this stuff the same as that earlier garbage in the NY Post as typical right wing BS....and as such worthy of being ignored.

 

[tomahawk6]

Here is a comment by one of the RM. Its all about the cash now and its not going over too well on arrse. Cant say that I disagree.

One of the hostages, Dean Harris, 30, an acting sergeant in the Royal Marines, told a Sunday Times reporter yesterday: “I want £70,000. That is based on what the others have told me they have been offered. I know Faye has been offered a heck more than that. I am worth it because I was one of only two who didn’t crack.”

 

[KevinB]

Thats FUCKED --

Makes me want to puke who in their right mind wants a book on surrender and whining.

 

[geo]

Hmmm... if we pass the hat around, maybe we can buy him airfare to Teheran and he can be brave for a little while longer

However..............

Just heard on the CBC that the Brit MOD has decided that it is "okie dokie" for the sailors and marines to bare all....

 

[Kirkhill]

It's official - I now accept that I understand SFA.

 

[Stoker]

Here's the story

Britain gives seized sailors permission to sell their stories
From the Associated Press, Times Staff Writer
3:50 PM PDT, April 8, 2007


LONDON -- The 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran for nearly two weeks have permission to sell their stories to the media, the Ministry of Defense said today, making an exception because of what it called "exceptional" interest.

Serving service personnel are usually not allowed to enter into financial arrangements with media organizations, but exceptions are allowed, the defense ministry said in a statement.

"It was clear that the stories they had to tell were likely to have emerged via family and friends regardless of any decision the navy took," the ministry statement said.

Lt. Felix Carman, who was in charge of the crew when it was seized by Iranian forces on March 23, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he was uninterested in making money from his time in captivity.

"My main aim is to tell the story," he said. "There's some people who might be making money, but that's an individual's decision, that's very private, but that's not something that myself or many of the others will do," he told BBC.

After their release last week, the crew members told reporters in Britain they were subjected to constant psychological pressure in detention.

In an attempt to refute that claim, Iran broadcast new video Sunday showing some of the crew playing chess and watching television during their captivity.

Some of the footage, briefly aired on Iran's state-run Arabic satellite TV channel Al-Alam, also showed crew members watching soccer on TV and eating at a long table decorated with flowers. The crew members could be heard laughing and chatting.

A newscaster said the video proved "the sailors had complete liberty during their detention, which contradicts what the sailors declared after they arrived in Britain."

At a news conference Friday, Carman said the sailors and marines were only allowed to socialize for the benefit of the Iranian media.

British media regularly pay for high-profile interviews, but the decision to allow the crew to sell their stories has come under some criticism.

The opposition Conservative Party's defense spokesman, Liam Fox, said many people would feel that selling the stories was "somewhat undignified and falls below the very high standards we have come to expect from our servicemen and women."

William Hague, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, told Sky News his party would question the decision in Parliament.

Menezies Campbell, who leads the third party Liberal Democrats, told the BBC he was concerned there could be "inadvertent" leaks of sensitive information.

"And there is, of course, the very understandable feeling of the families of those who have died in Iraq as to why it should be that those who have survived should -- putting it bluntly -- profit in this way," he said.

The Sunday Times reported that the only woman in the group, 26-year-old Leading Seaman Faye Turney, could earn as much as $300,000 from deals with a broadcaster and a newspaper.

In all, the crew could earn as much as $490,000 between them, the paper said.

The defense ministry said it decided to give permission "in order to ensure that the navy and the MoD had sight of what they were going to say, as well as providing proper media support to the sailors and marines."

The statement said the decision was made "as a result of exceptional media interest."

The crew included seven Royal Marines, who have agreed to pool their fees and split them evenly, sending 10 percent to a military benevolent fund, both the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph said. The rest of the captured crew was made up of Royal Navy sailors, including Turney.

The sailors and marines were captured in the Persian Gulf on March 23 and freed last week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called their release a gift to Britain. They began two weeks of leave with their families on Saturday.

Well I guess they can say whatever they want about their time in detention, its not like anybody can find out what really happened.

 

[devil39]

Show me another Shia majority that has closer relations with Iran than Syria does. I doubt you can. Sunni and Shia have nothing to do with Iran-Syria relations. The fact is that their relations are so close because they are two Arab nations who share common interests and are shunned by the USA. So please enlighten me on how my posting is "dumb" when all you've posted is a meaningless comparison.

Gimpy,

Your biggest misunderstanding here is that the Iranians are not an Arab nation.  Iranians are Persians... well 97 percent of them, and Arabs are Arabs.  Arabs are to Persians as the Mongols were to Chinese... English are to Spanish...

 

[Marauder]

So much for "Return With Honour"... While I deplore the fact that they are already licking the hand of the media whores, I still don't think anyone with two brain cells left thinks that any of the captives spilt their guts without a "bit" of coersion.

 

[TCBF]

If they were Canadians, they could claim they were tortured and collect $10,000,000 like Mahar Arar did.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

Manhattan District Attorney <a href="http://www.nbc.com/Law_&_Order/bios/bios_fred.shtml">Arthur Branch</a>, the next <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117608047503663677-WZrqXZL95sj7myO3fJrhc_Uvi9c_20070508.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top">President of the United States</a> has an <a href="http://www.redstate.com/stories/foreign_affairs/the_pirates_of_tehran">interesting take</a> on the bigger picture:

The Pirates of Tehran
By Fred Thompson

Oil prices fell. The stock market rose. Video images of smiling British soldiers with Iranian President Ahmadinejad were everywhere. So were pictures of the 15 freed hostages embracing family members back home. The relief over the return of the Brits was so tremendous; you could almost hear birds singing.

Maybe it's because military action won't be needed or maybe it's just because the ordeal won't drag on and on, but the world is breathing easier now. A lot of folks are happy. The problem, as I see it, is that Ahmadinejad seems to be the happiest.

And why shouldn't he be? He has shown the world that his forces can kidnap British citizens, subject them to brutal psychological tactics to coerce phony confessions, finagle the release of a high-ranking Iranian terror coordinator in Iraq, utterly trash the Geneva conventions and suffer absolutely no consequences.

The UN Security Council summoned its vaunted multilateral greatness to issue a swift statement of sincere uneasiness. The EU, which has pressured Britain to rely on Europeans for mutual defense instead of the US, wouldn't even discuss economic sanctions that might disrupt their holidays. Even NATO was AWOL.

Tony Blair doesn't appear to be in much of a mood for celebrating. I don't know how he could be, given the troubling spectacle of British soldiers shake the hand of their kidnapper as a condition of release. In the old days, they would have kissed his ring -- but wearing Iranian suits and carrying swag more appropriate to a Hollywood awards ceremony may have been as embarrassing. Ironically, Blair's options are fewer by the day as his own party moves to mothball the British fleet, once the fear of pirates and tyrants the world over.

Some in the West seem part of Iran's propaganda war; claiming that the release of the hostages was a victory that proves the Iranian dictatorship can be reasoned with. To misrepresent unpunished piracy as a victory is as Orwellian as the congressional mandate banning use of the term "the global war on terror." What are we — Reuters?

Ahmadinejad must be particularly pleased to see "deep thinking" journalists making the case that American actions in Iraq were the true cause of the kidnappings. To believe this, all you have to do is ignore the history of the Iranian Revolution, which has been in the extortion business ever since it took power. Between the 1979 American embassy crisis in Tehran and the seizure of Israeli soldiers last year by Iran's Hezbollah proxies, there have been more than a hundred other examples.

If you include the imprisonment of pro-Democracy dissidents and non-Shi'a Muslim minorities within Iran, the number reaches easily into the tens of thousands. The dwindling and persecuted Christian population of Iran, I suspect, found little joy in Ahmadinejad's explanation that he was freeing his victims as an "Easter gift."

It is critical that we see this incident as part of a long pattern of behavior -- that will continue as long as the current leadership is in power. More importantly, it will escalate unimaginably if Iran achieves nuclear status, and with it the ability to hold millions rather than individuals hostage.

I have no idea if Ahmadinejad and those who put him in power really believe the Shi'a Twelver doctrine that they can spur the messiah to return by triggering Armageddon. You have to admit, though, that the possibility that they look forward to entering paradise as martyrs would make them a whole lot scarier as a nuclear power than the USSR ever was.

There is hope, though. The Iranian people are not an anti-Western horde. They're an educated and freedom-loving people for the most part, and reformers there have been begging us for support and sanctions that would weaken the ruling theocracy. Instead, they've just seen the Iranian dictatorship successfully bully the West into impotent submission. This is not a good thing.

We need to understand this and use every means at our disposal, starting with serious and painful international sanctions, to prevent Iran's rulers from becoming the nuclear-armed blackmailers they want to be. Unfortunately, we are hearing demands that we abandon the people of the Middle East who have stood up to Islamo-fascism because they believed us when we said we would support them.

If we retreat precipitously, the price for that betrayal will be paid first in blood and freedom by the Iranian people, the Kurds, the Afghanis, the secular Lebanese, the moderates in Pakistan and the Iraqis themselves. And America's word may never be trusted again.

Right now, the pirate Ahmadinejad is clearly more confident about the outcome of the Global War on Terror than we are. That ought to give us pause.

 

[MarkOttawa]

I have some hesitation, as a civilian who has never served in our military (but we do have a son in the CF), in mentioning this--in any case note the music in this guest-post at Daimnation!:

Shame reconsidered
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/009212.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Juvat]

Stay tuned folks, Iran is coming up with a "truthful" documentary concerning these rescued members.  :

With the usual caveat....

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=29e1fd39-8739-4a0a-8d44-92ce11fe0264

Iran planning documentary on British 'confessions'
Reuters
Published: Tuesday, April 10, 2007
TEHRAN — Iran's armed forces are preparing to release a documentary and book about the detention and "confessions" of 15 British sailors and marines held captive in Iran, a military commander said today.

"A documentary about their arrest, interrogation and confessions ... is being prepared and soon it will hit the market," Commander Alireza Afshar, cited as deputy for "defense propaganda," said in a faxed statement.

Iran released the captives on Thursday, 13 days after surrounding their boats in what it said was its territory but Britain said was inside Iraqi waters.

In captivity, several of the Britons were shown on Iran's state television saying they were sorry for entering Iranian waters illegally. Afshar's statement did not say whether the documentary would contain any material not already shown.

The 14 servicemen and one woman said in a statement given at an official news conference after their return to England they had been blindfolded, bound, kept in isolation and threatened with up to seven years in jail.

Iran has dismissed the news conference as "propaganda."

"Instead of thanking and welcoming the Islamic Republic for its clemency in pardoning the sailors, the childish staged theatre ... once more displayed Britain's aggressive habit," Afshar said.

Britain's Ministry of Defence waived the rules this week barring serving military personnel from selling their stories to media because of huge public interest.

It revised that decision yesterday in the face of criticism, but not before several of the soldiers sold their stories. Afshar said letting the sailors profit from the situation was a "scandal" for the British army.

Reuters

 

[geo]

Ugh... I'd usually say that I will wait till it comes out in paperback
This time, I'll wait till it comes out in firewood.

Cheers!

 

[TCBF]

Ugh... I'd usually say that I will wait till it comes out in paperback
This time, I'll wait till it comes out in firewood.

Cheers!

- I'm with you on this one.

8)

 

[Kirkhill]

Here's some more info from Amir Taheri on why those Brits might have been seized in the first place......the rest of the article is pretty good as well.  Basically it says that if Maliki has both the Yanks and Tehran angry with him he might be doing something right.   

.....Despite months of pressure from Tehran, Maliki has also refused to scrap the maritime inspection mission of the coalition forces under a mandate from the United Nations Security Council.

(The 15 British sailors captured by Tehran last month were operating within that mission.)

Tehran wants the mission terminated for two reasons.

First, it wants to impose total control on the Shatt al-Arab, a border waterway between Iran and Iraq, thus violating the 1975 Algiers agreement that established the thalweg (the deepest channel in the river) as the frontier between the two neighbors.

Exclusive control of the estuary would enable the Islamic Republic to impose its terms for a future continental shelf agreement with both Iraq and Kuwait. In plain language, the Islamic Republic wishes to control access to Iraq's 75-kilometre long coastline on the Gulf, turning the Iraqi ports of Basra, Um-Qasar, Al-Bakr and Fao into strategic hostages.

If such a scheme were imposed, the Islamic Republic would also control access to the Kuwait islands of Warbah and Bubiyan, designated as new development zones by the Kuwaiti government.

The second reason why Tehran wants Maliki to scrap the maritime inspection mission is the mullahs' fear that the UN might, at some point, use the mechanism against the Islamic Republic in the context of the current showdown over the nuclear issue.

The two resolutions recently passed by the United Nations' Security Council against the Islamic Republic, would allow the monitoring of Iranian naval traffic in the Gulf to continue from Iraqi bases even after the US-led coalition has left Iraq.

http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=8620

PS - still can't fathom the behaviour of the Brit captives or the MOD allowing them to sell their stories.....Oh well (maybe Scotland won't vote for sovereignty  :-\ )

 

[observor 69]

I keep having this thought on the Brits selling their stories.

1. The Brits made a mess of properly protecting their personnel on boarding inspections. (They got captured.)

2. The Iranian government was playing this for political and PR gain.  They jerked the hostages around, trotting them out when it suited their purpose, and generally treated them like play things.

This capture was not like a conventional war scenario. This was a CNN war.

At the end of the day if the hostages can get a few bucks out of it I feel like it's one way to jack up the Iranians and as the MOD originally said get the true story out.

 

[Cloud Cover]

If they were Canadians, they could claim they were tortured and collect $10,000,000 like Mahar Arar did.

Only if the MND and CDS delete the exculpatory emails from their BlackBerry's detailing how they accidently deployed them there in the first place.

 

[tomahawk6]

Here is the Queens Regulation regarding sale of stories. My reading of it is that if the article/story is done in your off duty time then you can sell the story and accept monies for same.

From Queens Regulations.
Annex A(J) to Chapter 12 and J12.022

Broadcasts by serving personnel acting as official spokesmen and speeches and lectures on official subjects will normally be undertaken as part of their official duty and, as such, covered by their Service pay; no question of extra payment to individuals will therefore arise. If, however, all or part of the preparatory work and delivery of the broadcast, speech or lecture is done during the individual's off duty time he may retain the whole or part of any fees payable, as appropriate. This provision also governs the retention of any fees payable for the writing of books or articles on official matters or involving material or experience. Details of any payments should be sent to the appropriate Public Relations or Publication Clearance authority (see Annex A to this Chapter) to consider what proportion should be credited to public funds.

 

[Kirkhill]

So, when you're being detained by a foreign power are you "on duty" or "off duty"? Or are you "on duty" only when being interrogated or in front of the cameras and "off duty" when resting comfortably in your cell? How do you calculate the over-time?  Are the loot bags and free clothes to be retained by the detainees or are they the property of the Crown?  : :-\ ^-^

Amazing.

 

[TCBF]

One wonders if any of the memoires will contain the sentence:

"But then the @#$%^ &*$$% in the ^^&&)#$# ship lost their fudge and didn't back us up.  Well, you can just imagine how that made us feel.  Do you think one minute that if the Iranians had gone after the mothership, that we would have sat on OUR butts and telephoned mommy in London asking for permission to look bloody stern about it?  Not bloodly likely, mate!  We would have rode in after them, no butts about it.  It's no wonder now that all of our boarding parties are cracking jokes about the 'spine' of the ship that's backing up THEIR arses: 'Best leave Taffy on the Bridge with an HK so they won't go all bloody wobbly on us'..."

Or words to that effect.

;D