London: The UK Foreign Office says the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have confirmed that five British sailors detained by Iran have been released.
A Foreign Office spokesman said in a brief statement Wednesday that the yachtsmen are being towed to international waters.
A spokeswoman for Sail Bahrain says they are to be met by a representative of the company, who will then tow them to Dubai.
The yacht was on its way from Bahrain to Dubai last Wednesday for an off-shore race when it had a problem with its propeller. It drifted into Iranian waters and was seized by the Revolutionary Guard near the Iranian island of Sirri, which lies near the mouth of the narrow Hormuz Strait off Dubai.
The five British sailors were detained last week when their 60-foot racing yacht drifted accidentally into Iran's Persian Gulf waters.
The elite Revolutionary Guard, whose navy had stopped the vessel, interrogated the yachtsmen and found that their "illegal entry" into Iranian waters had been a mistake, the official IRNA news agency said.
The release is an overture to London, which has been trying to keep the incident from getting tangled up in politics — not only in the rancor between Tehran and the West over Iran's nuclear issue but also the country's own internal postelection turmoil, which has pumped up the leadership's fears of foreign plots.
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