The UK Foreign Office categorically denied claims made by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on Wednesday evening that they’ve detained Giles Whitaker, the deputy head of the United Kingdom’s mission in Iran.
Without offering further detail, a foreign ministry spokesman said in London that the reports of the arrest of a British diplomat in Iran are completely false.
Iranian Fars news agency and state television had reported previously on Wednesday that IRGC detained Whitaker along with a number of other foreign diplomats and academics for allegedly spying and taking samples of soil from a prohibited area during a missile exercise.
The number and nationality of the other detained diplomats were not immediately clear although the speculations identify the other detained men as Maciej Walczak, a Polish university professor visiting Iran under a scientific exchange program, and the husband of Austria’s cultural attaché in Iran.
Fars added that a British diplomat was subsequently expelled from the country though the state television reported that Whitaker was only expelled from the area in central Iran where the diplomats had been detained, accusing him of carrying out intelligence ops in military areas.
Whitaker reportedly apologized for the infraction before he was expelled from the area.
They’ve also published a video showing images of a man presented as the veteran envoy Whitaker, who was among people who were gathering soil samples in Iran’s central desert Shahdad in the Kerman province – where missile exercises were being conducted in a restricted area – where they went as tourists.
Iranian media reports suggested that the detained foreigners were trying to help the International Atomic Energy Agency to build a new case on military aspects of Iran’s file.
Previously in January 2020, IRGC arrested Rob Macaire, then UK ambassador to Iran, for allegedly inciting protests over the Iranian military’s accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger airplane.
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