News

Britain and Iran have downplayed a UK media report that the 2007 kidnapping of a British computer expert and his bodyguards in Iraq was led by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and that they were held there.

Peter Moore, 36, was freed unharmed on Wednesday after a two-and-a-half-year ordeal in which all four bodyguards are thought to have died.

Britain said it had "no evidence" to support the story in the Guardian newspaper that the Revolutionary Guard led the operation and took the five men to Iran within a day of their abduction.

Iran dismissed as "baseless" reports of its involvement, saying they were motivated by British "anger" over a crackdown on opposition protests.

"They emanate from the British anger towards the rallies in which millions of Iranians took part to condemn British interference in [Iran's] internal affairs," Ramin Mehmanparast, a foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying by Al-Alam, a state-controlled news channel.

Petraeus comment

Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, spoke to Nuri al-Maliki, his Iraqi counterpart, on Thursday "to thank him for his efforts in the release of the British hostage Peter Moore", Brown's office said in a statement.

There has been speculation that a deal was done to secure the release of Moore after it emerged that the leader of the group which took the men from a government building in Baghdad was being transferred from US to Iraqi custody.

The BBC also quoted Ge... >>>