BEIRUT — A senior Iranian cleric said Friday that the British Embassy employees arrested in Tehran in recent days would be put on trial on unspecified charges of acting against Iran's national security, a move immediately denounced by members of the European Union.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the conservative Guardian Council, said in a Friday prayer sermon that the employees, all of them Iranian nationals, would "definitely be tried." They are accused of taking part in or promoting weeks of unrest after the June 12 presidential election, which was marred by allegations of massive vote-rigging.
"The enemy made an effort to poison the people," Jannati, who is politically close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told worshipers gathered in Tehran. "They had planned a velvet revolution before the election. . . . A number of people at the British Embassy were arrested for involvement in the unrest and they will definitely be tried."
Eight or nine employees of the embassy's political section were arrested last weekend. All but two have been released, according to the British Foreign Office. Jannati did not say how many would be put on trial or on what specific charges.
Sweden, which took on the rotating leadership of the EU days ago, criticized the move. "It's not acceptable to file charges against the ones released or the ones still in custody," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in a statement.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said London was "urgently seeking clarification" of Jannati's remarks.
"We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior," he said. "We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran."
In a coordinated response, EU nations began summoning Iranian ambassadors to complain about the arrests. They are also weighing the possibility of pulling all 27 member nations' ambassadors from Tehran as well as imposing a travel ban on Iranian officials to protest the arrests, but want to wait for Iran's next move regarding the embassy employees, European news media reported.
The comments by Jannati, a hard-line octogenarian cleric, are in line with an official effort to paint days of protests and festering political divisions over Ahmadinejad's reelection as the work of foreign enemies. Iranian officials have cited Britain in particular, a former colonial power that has a long history of entanglement in their nation's affairs, including backing a 1953 coup against a democratically elected government.
