DHAKA: Iranian intelligence minister Mahmoud Alavi said on Wednesday that four people accused of sabotaging one of the country’s sensitive nuclear sites were only thieves.

Iran’s Mehr news agency reported, says Turkish daily Hurriyet.

‘These four people were not saboteurs. They cut the fences and entered the area to collect scrap iron and steel and sell it on the market,’ Mehr quoted Alavi as saying.

‘In fact, they were thieves not nuclear saboteurs,’ said Alavi, adding they were ‘villagers who had done this before’.

Alavi did not specify at which nuclear site the arrests were made.

Iran’s nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said earlier this month that four people suspected of attempting to sabotage one of Iran`s nuclear plants were arrested.

On Wednesday he said, ‘If the intelligence ministry... says they are thieves, then we accept it, but what an interesting thief who dug under the concrete wall and tried to enter the site’.

BDST: 2010 HRS, OCT 30, 2013
RoR/SRS