Iran waylays German journalists

Armed revolutionary committeemen have swooped down on the Intercontinental Hotel here and detained two journalists from the West German magazine Stern, their Iranian photographer, and his wife on unspecified "suspicions," Monitor correspondent Ned Temko reports.

Top government and security officials contacted by the West German Embassy were unable for many hours after the April 28 raid to locate the detainees, much less free them. Finally at about noon April 29, Tehran's Central Revolutionary Committee confirmed to German diplomats that it was holding the "suspicious" detainees. The committee refused the German officials' request to see the captives, saying they would probably be released April 30.

Friends of the detainees speculated the matter may have been complicated by the fact that the reporters had not secured official Iranian press credentials and had in their rooms a number of photographs of the aircraft left behind in the recently failed US hostage rescue mission.

As of this writing, at sunset April 29, West German diplomats were urging Foreign Ministry officials to speed up the detainees' release.

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