Freed British captive Faye Turney branded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "shallow" and said he looked embarrassed after she took him to task over her detention.
LONDON: Freed British captive Faye Turney branded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "shallow" and said he looked embarrassed after she took him to task over her detention, in comments reported on Tuesday.
Royal Navy Leading Seaman Turney, 26, recounted the moment she came face to face with Ahmadinejad, who decided to free her and her 14 male colleagues on April 4, 13 days after they were seized in the northern Gulf.
According to Turney's comments to The Sun newspaper, the detainees were taken to meet the president soon after he announced their freedom and she was the first to be introduced, in front of a bank of television cameras.
"How is your daughter?" he asked, speaking through a translator.
"I haven't seen her for 13 days -- remember?" Turney replied.
Ahmadinejad said: "Oh yes. But haven't you been allowed a phone call to her?"
Turney snapped: "No, I most certainly have not."
Ahmadinejad was then momentarily lost for words before he muttered: "Er, well, good luck in your life and your future".
Turney said on Monday that while in detention she feared rape and execution, had been stripped to her knickers, held in solitary confinement and threatened with never seeing her three-year-old daughter again.
"My feeling was he'd started to regret taking us, and he was trying to say to us, 'No hard feelings, guys'," Turney said of her encounter with Ahmadinejad.
"To me that just defined the sort of man he is -- shallow. It would be fair to say I'm not his biggest fan," she said.
Her version of events would explain why Iranian television only showed the clip of their meeting briefly and without sound, The Sun said.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}