Faye Turney, the female British sailor who Iran said on Wednesday it will release shortly, says she always understood the risks she was taking when she joined the armed services.
The 26-year-old, who has three-year-old daughter Molly waiting at home, gave a series of interviews to British media in the days before she and 14 other sailors and marines were seized in the Gulf last Friday.
”My parents made sure I was under no illusions that I could, and can, go to war at any time,” Turney said in comments broadcast by the BBC.
”Sometimes it can be like a cruise being in the navy but sometimes you may be called upon,” she said. ”And if you are then you just have to get on with it. That’s what you’re paid for.”
Turney, whose husband Adam — also in the navy — is looking after their daughter at home in Plymouth, southern England, was the only woman among the 15 seized at gunpoint by Iranian Revolutionary Guards last Friday.
She has quickly become the human face of the stand-off, with pictures of the smiling blonde covering the front pages of Britain’s newspapers.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wednesday she would be released ”within a day or two,” giving no explanation why her colleagues were remaining in detention.
In her media interviews, Turney said she had never expected or demanded special attention for being a woman.
”I’ve coped and completed the job just as well as man would have done it,” she was cited by the Daily Telegraph as saying.
She told the Independent newspaper that she was in the navy to provide for her daughter.
”I know by doing this job I can give [my daughter] everything she wants in life and hopefully by seeing me doing what I do, she’ll grow up knowing that a woman can have a family and have a career at the same time,” she said.
Britain on Wednesday froze all contacts with Iran as the dispute over the detained sailors intensified with Prime Minister Tony Blair vowing to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran.
London produced evidence which it said proved that the sailors and marines were in Iraqi waters, while Iran insists the Britons were in its waters. — AFP
