Iran: Female British hostage Turney will be freed soon

March 28, 2007

London - British hostage, Faye Turney, will be released Wednesday or Thursday, Iran's foreign minister said today.

"Today or tomorrow, the lady will be released," Manouchehr Mottaki told the Associated Press.

Faye Turney is among 15 British sailors and marines detained by Iran in disputed waters off the Iranian-Iraqi coast last week, sparking a crisis between Iran and Britain. Britain insists the troops were in Iraqi waters, but Iran says they had crossed into its territorial waters.

Turney is a sea survival specialist who had wanted to join the forces all her life. After joining the Royal Navy she passed from its training facility HMS Raleigh in Torpoint, Cornwall, before moving to the land-based HMS Dryad at Portsmouth. Eight years later she became a leading seaman.

She told a local newspaper last year: "I love the satisfaction of being able to walk away from a job and know that I've coped and completed the task just as well as a man would have done it."

Speaking to the BBC last week, she said: "My parents made sure that I was under no illusions that I could and can go to war at any time - that was the choice I made. Sometimes you may be called upon, and when you do you've just got to deal with it and get on with it".