TEHRAN (HRNW) – Iran said on Tuesday it has allowed about 20 crew members of a South Korean tanker seized almost a month ago for alleged pollution to leave the country in a “humanitarian move”.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized the Hankuk Chemi and arrested its multinational crew near the strategic Strait of Hormuz on January 4, saying it had polluted the waters.
The development came as Tehran urged Seoul to released billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea due to US sanctions. “In a humanitarian move by Iran, the crew of the South Korean tanker accused of polluting the environment of the Persian Gulf were allowed to leave the country,” foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement.
The permission for them to leave had been granted upon “the request of the South Korean government and (with) the cooperation of the judiciary in Iran”, he added. He did not specify whether the crew had already left.
The case of the tanker and its captain were still being reviewed, he added, without elaborating. The arrested crew were from South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Myanmar.
Former US president Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew Washington from a landmark nuclear agreement with world powers and then reimposed and reinforced crippling sanctions on Iran.
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