RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We're learning more today about the ordeal of 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran last month. The crew was released earlier this week and returned to Britain yesterday.
Today some members of that crew gave details of their capture and described their treatment by the Iranians. Lieutenant Felix Carman of the Royal Navy said the crew was interrogated at a prison in Tehran.
Lieutenant FELIX CARMAN (Royal Navy): We were blindfolded. Our hands were bound. We were forced up against the wall. Throughout our ordeal, we faced constant psychological pressure.
MONTAGNE: That's British Navy Lieutenant Felix Carman. NPR's Rob Gifford has been covering this story and joins us now from London. Hello.
ROB GIFFORD: Hi, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And Rob, one member of the crew, Captain Chris Air, described when they were captured. Let's listen to a little of what he had to say.
Captain CHRIS AIR (Royal Marines): It was becoming increasingly clear they had arrived with a planned intent. Some of the Iranian sailors were becoming deliberately aggressive and unstable. They rammed our boats and trained their heavy machine guns, RPG, and weapons on us.
MONTAGNE: And Rob, according to Captain Air, what was going on there?
GIFFORD: Well, yes, he was describing in some detail what happened on March 23 when they were taken. They boarded this merchant vessel as they had done dozens of times before. They were just completed the search when these Iranian Revolutionary Guards in a couple of boats came up and as he said, they became very aggressive. And Captain Air described this sort of split-second decision that he and Lieutenant Carman had to make about whether to engage them. They were armed. The British boarding party was armed, and they had to make this decision whether to engage them and they decided not to because the Revolutionary Guards were better armed. They knew that they would take all sorts of casualties if they took them on militarily with their guns, and they decided in that split second that the thing to do was not to fight them because of the broader implications of what might happen.
MONTAGNE: What did they say about conditions after they were taken captive?
GIFFORD: Well Captain Air and Lieutenant Carman went into detail about the captivity as well. They talked a lot about the sort of psychological pressure that was put on them. They were taken to Tehran the following day. They had their hands bound. They were blindfold for a lot of the time. And they were for a lot of the time kept in isolation from each other. They also had one incident where they had blankets over their heads, blindfolds on. They were told to stand against a wall, and they heard the cocking of guns in the background behind them.
There was no suggestion that it was a mock execution, Captain Air said that. But he said, when things like that are happening to you when you're in captivity, obviously that tends to worry you. So throughout the period, they were under this psychological pressure constantly.
MONTAGNE: They were - suggested to them that they were possibly going to spend years in jail.
GIFFORD: They were threatened with years in jail if they didn't admit that they had crossed into Iranian waters. And throughout, especially the two officers, in the news conference were saying, we were trying obviously to steer a fine line between - we had to maintain that we were in Iraqi waters, but especially in the confessions that were televised and that were shown around the world, we used words like apparently. We used words, phrases like according to this Iranian map, it shows that we were in Iranian waters - and trying not to completely compromise what they believed to be the case, but at the same time, realizing that they were under a lot of pressure to make certain kinds of statements.
MONTAGNE: Rob, thanks very much.
GIFFORD: Thanks very much, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Rob Gifford speaking from London.
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