Iran: Detainees at border not part of al Qaeda

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's foreign minister said Monday that 150 people recently detained at the country's border with Pakistan are not members of al Qaeda, contrary to earlier intelligence that indicated they may have had connections to the terrorist training organization.

At a news conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said 40 of those detained were women and 70 to 80 were children, with the rest being nationals of European countries or Afghans.

"So far, we have found no members of al Qaeda," Kharrazi said.

Appropriate embassies have been informed so the detained people can be returned to their countries and their governments can deal with them as they see fit, Kharrazi said.

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Last week, the Iranian news agency, IRNA, quoted an official who did not want to be named as saying suspects taken at the border included Dutch, French, British, Belgian and Spanish nationals. It was not clear when they were detained, but the official said all were picked up in Iranian towns and cities close to the border with Afghanistan, and the number included women and children.

The official said the detainees crossed into Pakistan soon after the start of the U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan and then crossed into Iran after traveling some 465 miles (750 kilometers) through Pakistan.

At that time, the official said those detained were being interrogated to establish their backgrounds, but preliminary interrogations showed no prominent figures of the Taliban or al Qaeda were among them.

U.S. information about members of the Taliban or al Qaeda trying to slip into Iran "was outdated, incomplete and devoid of any intelligence value," the official said.

Iran has repeatedly denied U.S. allegations that it has helped members of al Qaeda escape Afghanistan. It has said that if any al Qaeda members were picked up in the country, they would be put on trial in Iran or returned to their countries.

The arrests came after harsh criticism leveled by Iranian officials at President Bush for naming Iran as part of an "axis of evil" that supports terrorism. Bush also included Iraq and North Korea as terrorism sponsors in his state State of the Union address last month.