Iran says oanmt coiffirm arrest of three An' ricaris Rei lers ,com littp://www.reuters.com /arficlePrint?articleld—IJSTRE573 1Z520090805
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Iran says cannot confirm arrest of three
Americans
Wed Aug 5, 2009 6:12am EDT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on
Wednesday he could not confirm Whether three Americans had been
detained by Iran.
“There have been contradictory and vague reports on their arrest in Iran. I
cannot confirm or deny the arrests until further investigation,” Hassan
Qashqavi told state radio.
On Tuesday, a local security official in Iran's Western Kurdistan province,
lraj Hassanzadeh, told state-run al-Alam television that three Americans had
been detained there.
“They are definitely Americans,” he said. “They were detained four days
ago. We don't know Whether they are tourists or not. We are questioning
them.”
A senior security official in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region said on
Saturday that three tourists had strayed across northern Iraq's border with
Iran near Ahmed Awa and been detained.
The same day a source told al Jam, Iran's Arabic-language television
channel, that the three, believed to be two men and a woman, had been
arrested after entering Iran.
The party had arrived in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya on Wednesday.
There is no clear border demarcation between Iran and Iraq at Ahmed Awa.
(Wrfting by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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