In an interview Saturday with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Acting Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi insisted that the company must admit it “made a mistake” by not applying for working journalist visas, as Iranian law requires.
Salehi also said Axel Springer should apologize for “distorting events” and “make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Salehi said it could be helpful if the publisher and the principal editors recognized they had made a mistake and apologized to Iran. “We should talk about everything—including this case—based on mutual respect,” Salehi said.
In Berlin, Axel Springer said it was ready for talks “anytime” with Salehi on the matter. The implication was that it would apologize to him, but the firm did not issue a public apology in its announcement Sunday.
The two men—a reporter and a photographer working for Bild am Sonntag, a major Springer publication—were arrested in Tabriz October 10 as they were in the middle of an interview with the son and lawyer for Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani.
They have been detained ever since. At one point officials spoke of charging them with espionage, a capital offense, but now they are only charged with working in Iran without a proper visa.