brawling between Germany and Iran were two relatives of the imprisoned German journalists allowed to meet with the pair Tuesday morning.
The absence of Persian hospitality was peculiar, especially as it was in marked contrast with the red carpet laid out for the three American mothers of the imprisoned hikers when the mothers visited last May.
The two relatives flew to Tehran last week, understanding that they would be allowed to visit the imprisoned journalists for Christmas. But they were barred from the visit.
They only got to meet three days later and after German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle made what Germany described as “repeated” telephone calls to his opposite number in Tehran. The German Foreign Ministry made no effort to paper over the fact that it was miffed.
The German reporter and photographer were arrested in Tabriz in October while interviewing the son and lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, the women originally sentenced to death by stoning.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Stefan Bredohl told reporters Monday, “We had the firm expectation that there could be a meeting between the two German detainees and their families over Christmas. As no such meeting has taken place so far, the Iranian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Ministry this morning.”
According to Iranian state-run PressTV, the Iranian Embassy in Berlin denied that, saying Ambassador Ali-Reza Sheikh-Attar’s visit was prescheduled, not a summoning, and that the fault for the lack of a visit rested with the Germans’ families.
The visit location was moved from Tehran to Tabriz, and “the families of these two prisoners have not agreed to go to Tabriz for the visit,” Iran’s Embassy in Berlin said Monday.
The two journalists are from Germany’s widely circulated tabloid paper, Bild am Sonntag. Bild has not released the journalists’ names, but PressTV identified them as Marcus Alfred Rudolf Hellwig and Jens Andreas Koch.