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13 members of a British military caving expedition in
Mexico were last night being held as prisoners of the
country’s police and immigration authorities amid a
continuing diplomatic row over the nature of their
mission.
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A British caver shown waiting last week for a
UK Royal Navy rescue team to arrive in Cuetzalan,
central Mexico. |
The team, including six members who had to be rescued
from a cave last week after being trapped for nine
days by floodwater, were preparing to spend their
second night at a holding center inside the Iztapalapa
detention center in Mexico City following an
eight-hour interrogation that ended late on Friday
night.
If charged and convicted of violating immigration
regulations by failing to declare their expedition as
military business, their punishment could range from a
fine of £180 to 18 months in prison.
"We have completed all the paperwork the
authorities required," said Dr Vijay Rangarajan,
deputy head of mission at the British embassy in
Mexico City yesterday. "We must now await word
from the authorities as to what will happen next and
when the team can leave."
Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered a letter sent to
the British Government, and demanded to know whether
the divers had been engaged in a military training
exercise.
Interior Secretary Santiago Creel said the issue was
that the Britons had entered on tourist visas and
might have been doing more than simply exploring
Puebla's caves.
Federal prosecutors admit, however, that the Britons
may not have committed any crime. "We have no
evidence at this moment of any illegal activity,"
said prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos.
"We cannot react in a paranoid or aggressive
manner."
Police have also been investigating uncorroborated
claims - first aired in a local newspaper report that
failed to cite any particular evidence to back it up -
that the group, consisting of 11 military personnel
and two civilians, may have been on a secret exercise
to extract uranium from the Alpazat Caves, located
near the town of Cuetzalan in Puebla state, five hours
north-east of the capital.
Theories among the Pueblan people, who are
traditionally superstitious, have ranged from claims
that the Britons were secretly building a nuclear bomb
in the caves, to one that they were staging a dummy
run for an underground showdown in Afghanistan with
Osama bin Laden.
"I don’t know what to believe," said one
man, sharpening a knife as he sat under an awning in
the marketplace. "There was something fishy going
on in those caves. Something doesn’t smell
right."
The Britons and the Foreign Office insist, however,
that the party consisted of nothing more than caving
enthusiasts.
The
caving expedition, featuring members of the British
Combined Services, stretched into a second week after
rising water blocked the entrance to the caverns.
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