Captured British sailor ‘felt like a traitor’ on Iranian TV

THE female British sailor detained by Iran for nearly two weeks said in paid interviews yesterday she “felt like a traitor” for agreeing to her captors’ demands to appear on Iranian TV and she believed they had measured her for a coffin.

The Sun newspaper also reported Faye Turney, 25, was told by her captors that her 14 male colleagues had been released while she alone was being held.

The interviews were the first results of the British Ministry of Defence’s decision to allow the former captives sell their stories.

Turney, who also sold her story to ITV, told The Sun that she feared at one point that she would be killed.

“I heard the noise of wood sawing and nails being hammered near my cell. I couldn’t work out what it was. Then a woman came into my cell to measure me up from head to toe with a tape,” The Sun quoted Turney as saying.

“She shouted the measurements to a man outside. I was convinced they were making my coffin.”

Turney said she asked one Iranian official where her male colleagues were.

“He rubbed the top of my head and said with a smile, ‘Oh no, they’ve gone home. Just you now,’” she said.

At another time, Turney said the same official asked her how she felt about dying for her country.

By her fifth day, she said she was told she could be free within two weeks if she confessed the crew intruded into Iranian waters.

“If I didn’t, they’d put me on trial for espionage and I’d go to prison for several years. I had just an hour to think about it,” The Sun quoted her as saying.

Turney told ITV1 that she “felt like a traitor” when she was forced to write letters of confession that were shown on Iranian television.

The British sailors and marines were searching a merchant ship on March 23 when they and their two inflatable boats were intercepted by Iranian vessels near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway. Iran claimed the British had strayed into its territorial waters, a charge that Britain denied.