Iran says detained Germans not spies

Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei

Iran’s Prosecutor General announced today that they do not consider the detained German reporters in Iran to be secret agents.

According to ISNA, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei told a press conference today: “These individuals claim to be reporters but they failed to inform the Ministry of Culture and entered an illegal activity. On this basis, the file is being processed now.”

In September, two German reporters met with the Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to stoning in Iran, at the office of Mohammadi’s lawyer. All four of them where arrested by Iranian authorities and the German nationals were charged with engaging in activities not warranted by their tourist visa.

While some allegations of espionage had been mentioned by some Iranian officials earlier in this case, the Prosecutor General's statement today indicated that they are not after pressing such charges against the two German detainees.

Gholamhossein Mohaseni Ejei also told reporters that the “direct culprits in the case of two recent assassination operations in Tehran have not been arrested yet.

He maintained: "But those who were linked to this affair, that is, those who were under orders by foreign secret services to carry out terrorist operations or were being trained for it and were in possession of certain tools in this regard, were identified and arrested by our intelligence forces and are currently in custody.”

Two Iranian university professors were targets of two separate assassination attempts last Monday which led to the death of one and the injury of the other.

Iranian authorities have accused the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and the UN Security Council of precipitating these attacks by publishing the names of Iran’s nuclear scientists.

Ejei told reporters: “The Agency is not allowed to collect information beyond its concerns, according to its own regulations. And if they gather certain information, they are not allowed to provide it for other individuals.”

Nuclear negotiations between Iran and the G5+1 opened this morning after over a year of interruption with Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief negotiator condemning the assassination attempts against Iranian scientists.