The six British cavers rescued unharmed and cheerful after nine days trapped deep in a flooded Mexican cave system were detained on Friday as the diplomatic spat over their expedition worsened.
Mexico’s Assistant Interior Secretary, Armando Salinas, said the explorers and their nine colleagues would be transported to a military hospital before agents from the National Immigration Institute escorted the team to a migration detention centre in Mexico City.
Salinas refused to say what punishment the Britons could face, but said under the migration law they could be expelled or jailed if they had broken visa laws.
The six were brought out of the caves at Cueva de Alpazat, north-east of Mexico City, in scuba gear with the help of two British divers, flown in for the operation, and local specialists.
The problem for the Mexican authorities was the discovery that five of the team were members of the British armed forces travelling on tourist visas.
Such was the furore that President Vicente Fox instructed his Foreign Minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, to demand an explanation from London and lodge a protest.
The team was on a joint services surveying exercise, called Cuetzalan Tiger 2004, organised by the Combined Services Caving Association with support from the Royal Geographical Society, and included two civilian scientists.
On reaching the surface on Friday the men said they had planned their camp inside the system carefully, with food, sleeping bags, a cooking stove and communication equipment, as it was well known that the caves could flood. One of them said they had never been in danger and would have preferred to wait for the water to subside.
They had spent part of the time playing games with a deck of cards fashioned from a logbook.
”The thing is, everything went as planned,” Jonathan Sims said. ”It wasn’t scary. It was inconvenient. The unfortunate thing is we got too much media attention.” — Guardian Unlimited Â