• English Site
• > SPIEGEL Blog
• > Iran

16 Months in Jail For Trespassing

Iran Releases German Tourist

Iran has released a German tourist it held for almost 16 months because his boat accidentally strayed into restricted waters during a fishing excursion in the Persian Gulf. Klein's family and the German government spent over a year pleading with Iran to let him go. Now he's got to wait for an exit visa.

Donald Klein's ordeal is almost over. Iran has agreed to release the German tourist two months early after he spent almost 16 months in jail because his fishing boat accidentally entered a restricted zone in the Persian Gulf while on vacation in Dubai.

Klein, 53, from Lambsheim in southwestern Germany, was sentenced to 18 months in jail by an Iranian court for illegally crossing a border. The sculptor, a passionate angler, had been on vacation in Dubai in November 2005 and had hired a boat to catch swordfish and parrot fish in the Persian Gulf.

The Iranian authorities released his French skipper, Stephane Lherbier, on February 25. He had steered the vessel into the Strait of Ormuz and close to the island of Abu Mussa, a restricted zone. Both Klein and Lherbier would have reached the end of their sentences at the end of May.

It's not yet yet clear when Klein will return to Germany. He is still waiting for an exit visa. Klein's lawyer Klaus Kübler said: "It's a great joy and a great relief for his family and him."

Iranian officials had initially responded to German appeals for his release by linking the case to that of Kazem Darabi, serving a life sentence in Germany for the 1992 assassination of four Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders in a Berlin restaurant.

The court that convicted Darabi in 1997 said the orders for the killings came from the highest state levels in Tehran. But Iran appears to have dropped its demand for Darabi's release in connection with Klein.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Klein's arrest and imprisonment had placed a "severe burden" on German relations with Iran.

The German government had been working for months to secure Klein's release and DER SPIEGEL learned that President Horst Köhler had sent a letter appealing to Iran's spiritual leader Ali Khameini.

cro/dpa/Reuters/AP/AFP/ddp