Tehran: A senior Iranian police official says an American woman has been detained on suspicion of spying — contradicting an earlier denial of her arrest on state TV.
Ahmad Geravand told state radio Saturday that the woman was arrested Wednesday while filming a town on the Iran-Azerbaijan border.
And the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Geravand as identifying the woman as Hal Talaian.
A state-owned Iranian newspaper reported Thursday that authorities had detained an American woman by that name on espionage suspicions. But state TV denied the report hours later.
A US official said Friday there was no indication that an American woman had been arrested in Iran.
Discrepancies in the official reports could not immediately be explained.
Bureau Report
