Brown: Sailors ‘Have to Be Released’

Efforts to free 15 members of the British military captured by Iran will enter a different phase if diplomacy fails, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

These people have to be released, Blair told GMTV.

The members of England’s navy and marines were captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Persian Gulf last week. Iran has charged them with trespassing into its waters but British officials maintain they were on a routine patrol in Iraqi waters under a U.N. mandate.

Iran, meanwhile, reported via its official Fars News Agency that the captured sailors and marines — 14 men and one woman — were in a healthy state.

The Fars report said that the British ambassador to Iran had met in Tehran with a Foreign Ministry official who emphasized that the case needed to proceed.