Iran releases rebuttal footage of sailors playing chess
The Truth Will Set You FreeMonday April 9, 2007
The Brits really should've quit while they were ahead . . .
Too late now.
Iranian television broadcast video footage Sunday showing a British navy crew playing chess and watching television during their nearly two-week captivity in Iran, saying the footage refutes the sailors' and marines' claims that they were mistreated.
Crew members told reporters two days ago after returning to Britain that they had been blindfolded, held in isolation, frightened and coerced into falsely saying that they had entered Iranian waters before they were seized.
Some of the video clips, briefly aired on Iran's state-run Arabic satellite TV channel Al-Alam, showed several of the eight sailors and seven marines dressed in track suits and playing chess and table tennis. Other clips showed crew members watching soccer on television and eating at a long table decorated with flowers. Crew members could be heard laughing and chatting.
A newscaster who spoke over the beginning of the footage said the video proved "the sailors had complete liberty during their detention, which contradicts what the sailors declared after they arrived in Britain."
On Friday, Lt. Felix Carman, who was in charge of the crew when it was captured March 23, said the sailors and marines were only allowed to socialize for the benefit of the Iranian media.
"We were kept in isolation until the last few nights, when we were allowed to get together for a few hours, in the full glare of the Iranian media," Carman said at a news conference. "But that was very much a setup, very much a stunt for Iranian propaganda."
The crew members also insisted that they were in Iraqi waters when they were seized.
Iran dismissed the sailors' news conference as propaganda.
Two days before their release, Tehran had pledged not to show more video of the captured crew.
So? And