The strange detention of EU diplomats returning from Tehran - Responsible Statecraft
On the morning of May 13, Enrique Mora, the political director of the European External Action Service (EEAS), was briefly retained in the Frankfurt airport by the German police upon his return from Tehran, where he traveled in an effort to salvage the faltering nuclear agreement with Iran, known as JCPOA.
The head of the EEAS Iran Task Force Bruno Scholl, who accompanied Mora, was similarly retained, as was EU Ambassador to the UN in Vienna Stephan Klement. Noting that he was carrying a Spanish diplomatic passport, Mora pointed to a possible violation by the German authorities of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. According to the diplomat, no explanation was given for their detentions, and his phones and passport were taken for examination by the police.
For their part, the police said the detention was due to “IT-based indications, not related to the individuals.” According to this Politico account, “one explanation circulating among EU officials was that the travel patterns of the diplomats, who had to rebook their flights back to Europe several times due to a fluid schedule in Tehran, triggered an automatic alert with the border police, who failed to take into account the identity of the travelers.”
