Minister meets with Iranian officials, secures release of detained journalist

BERLIN (AP):

GERMANY'S FOREIGN minister held a rare meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran in what appeared to have been a complicated deal to obtain the release of two journalists detained for four months, officials said Sunday.

Leading Iranian exile opposition representatives called Guido Westerwelle's visit a "disgrace," saying Germany was bowing to the regime and it could deal a blow to popular protests gathering new steam amid the turmoil in the Middle East.

But the foreign ministry stressed the visit's aim was solely to obtain the release of the two German journalists who had been detained in connection with a highly publicised stoning case.

Westerwelle spoke "clearly about human rights and democracy" in his meetings with his counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, and Iran's president, the spokesman said. He declined to be named, in line with policy.

"This is a simply a disgrace," said Kazem Moussavi, a spokesman for the Green Party of Iran in Germany. He added that Westerwelle's visit came as a blow in the face of those currently taking to the streets in Iran hoping to oust Ahmadinejad.

"His meeting ignored the ruling regime's terror, the people's suffering," he said, warning the president could now use Westerwelle's visit for his propaganda.

A Paris-based spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran said Westerwelle's visit at a time when the president faces popular unrest will "only embolden the regime to further suppress Iranian people".

Reporters released

However, the rare top-level visit by a Western government representative in Tehran secured the release of the two German reporters.

Westerwelle described the months-long negotiations as "very complicated," but the minister was ultimately able to take the pair home on his government plane late Saturday after their 132-day long ordeal in Iranian detention.

A German government official said reporter Marcus Hellwig and photographer Jens Koch had been detained under "poor conditions," and both had suffered great psychological wounds. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidentiality of the information.

"I wish for both of them to quickly get over what they've experienced and find their way back to a normal life," Westerwelle told journalists in Berlin.

The reporters, working for the Berlin-based mass-circulation tabloid Bild am Sonntag, were detained in October after interviewing the son of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, whose case has generated widespread international outrage.

Iranian officials accused them of a range of serious crimes and also claimed they admitted to violating Iranian laws barring those entering the country on tourist visas from working as journalists.