Two British nationals have been arrested in Iran and given access to the UK ambassador, Hugo Shorter, according to reports.
State media published photographs of what it said showed Shorter meeting two British “national security” suspects at the general and revolutionary prosecutor’s office in Kerman province, about 500 miles south-east of Tehran.
The published photo shows that the meeting on Wednesday was held in the presence of Kerman prosecutor Mehdi Bakhshi and Kerman governor’s deputy for security and law enforcement, Rahman Jalal.
The faces of the two individuals sitting across a table from Shorter were blurred so they could not be identified. The British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was transferred to Kerman after her initial arrest.
The UK Foreign Office did not issue a statement about the development, which came just as the new Iranian ambassador to the UK, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, was due to arrive.
The UK and other European powers are under pressure from Iran to distance themselves from the recent economic sanctions reimposed on Iran by the US that may be a precursor to opening talks on Iran’s nuclear programme – but which could also hinder further talks.
Iran secured the Italian release of an Iranian exporter, Mohammad Abedini, wanted by the US for allegedly supplying goods used in a drone attack on US soldiers in Jordan. Abedini had been apprehended in Milan on a US warrant. Three days later Iran arrested Italian reporter Cecilia Sala in Tehran, who was in the country on a journalist’s visa.
Washington had been seeking Abedini and another Iranian national’s arrest for allegedly supplying drone parts that the White House says were used in last year’s attack in Jordan.
After Sala had spent three weeks in an Iranian jail, the government of Georgia Meloni released Abedini, leading to Sala’s release.
Separately, German authorities have announced that the body of Jamshid Sharmehed, an Iranian-German political activist who was executed in an Iranian prison in November last year, has been transferred to Germany and undergone an autopsy.
The German foreign ministry said the transfer was the result of intensive diplomatic efforts. It is understood the negotiations over the body’s return was one reason Germany urged the Munich security conference not to issue an invitation to Iran’s crown prince Reza Pahlavi. The invitation was reinstated.
The security atmosphere is tense in Iran with law enforcement officers stationed outside the University of Tehran after a call for a rally to protest against the 14-year detention of Mir Hossein Mousavi, a 2009 presidential candidate, and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard.
