September 20-2013
The Islamic Republic freed 19 Indian fishermen Tuesday after dropping a demand that they pay fines for entering Iranian waters.
The general view was that relations with India were getting testier every day over the recent tanker detention and the new attention focused on the fishermen and that Iran decided to cut its losses and try to repair the damage with India.
There was also a suspicion that the Pasdaran were the hardliners and were not responsive to orders from Tehran.
That emerged when the Foreign Ministry announced earlier this month that the tanker Desh Shanti was being freed after 25 days of increasingly more hostile news coverage in India. But the ship’s captain reported that the Pasdaran occupying the ship would not allow it to sail until 48 hours after the release order had been announced. Indian officials generally concluded that the Pasdaran were being recalcitrant and disobedient to the orders of civilian officials in Tehran.
As the critical news coverage mounted in India over the tanker’s detention, attention was given the 19 fishermen by local government officials in the state of Tamil Nadu, where the fishermen come from.
The fishermen were arrested last December 16 and accused of straying into Iranian waters. They were sentenced to six months in jail and fined $5,750 each.
Their sentences were up in June, but they were not freed because they hadn’t paid the fines, which come close to their annual wages.
The daily newspaper The Hindu reported this week that the Iranian government had agreed to waive the fines and put the fishermen on a plane bound for India on Tuesday.
The two cases have put a strain on relations. The Indian government has displayed considerable and growing anger over the ship’s detention. It was not active on the fishermen until the Tamil Nadu governor —who comes from the opposition federal party—began accusing the federal government of neglecting ordinary fishermen.
The ship was freed a week ago. But the Indian government hasn’t dropped the issue and has since appealed to an international body and called for it to take on Iran for the ship’s seizure.
The Indian government’s irritation seemed to rise several notches when, according to The Times of India, the authorities at Bandar Abbas port authority demanded that India pay $500,000 for the ship’s release.
New Delhi, however, refused to pay the money and finally the ship was released after India pledged it would pay for the alleged pollution caused by the Desh Shanti “should it be held accountable by an appropriate court of law.”
But India has now filed an appeal with the Indian Ocean Memorandum of Understanding (IOMOU) on Port State Control — a 16-nation grouping of maritime nations — calling for a review of Iran’s action.
India has now been flooded by queries from European and Far East Asian countries about what exactly happened and why India didn’t retaliate, The Times of India reported.
India had made it clear that any arbitration could only be held in a third country and not in Iran. Going by the conduct of the Pasdaran, the government is also looking at the possibility of the incident being a rogue operation.
Indian officials were “stunned with Iran’s response,” The Times said, as Tehran treated the Indian tanker as a hostage and proposed trading it for the Iranian ship Diyanat — a vessel mired in commercial disputes and accused of violating international admiralty laws.
Desh Shanti is said to have discharged oily ballast into the Persian Gulf. After the ship was detained August 13, India was first told that the discharge took place July 29. When it was pointed out to Iran that the ship was not even in the Persian Gulf that day, the date of the offense was changed to July 30. However, even on July 30, India said the ship was around 80 miles away from the spot where it was said to have discharged oily ballast.
