The United States is pressing Sri Lanka not to repatriate survivors from an Iranian warship it sank this week, or the crew of a second Iranian vessel in Sri Lankan custody, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters.
A US submarine sank the IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, about 19 nautical miles off Galle on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, killing dozens of sailors. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described the torpedoing — the first such US action since World War Two — as “quiet death,” in a sign of the Iran conflict’s widening geographic scope.
Sri Lanka began offloading 208 crew members from the second vessel, the naval auxiliary ship IRIS Booshehr, on Thursday after it was found stranded in the country’s exclusive economic zone. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said his country had a “humanitarian responsibility” to take in the crew.
The State Department cable, dated 6 March, shows that Jayne Howell, the US charge d’affaires in Colombo, told Sri Lankan authorities that neither the 32 Dena survivors nor the Booshehr crew should be sent back to Iran. The cable said “Sri Lankan authorities should minimize Iranian attempts to use the detainees for propaganda.”
Howell also informed the Israeli ambassador to India and Sri Lanka that there were no plans to repatriate the crew. The envoy asked whether there had been any engagement with the crew to encourage “defection,” the cable said. The Israeli embassy in New Delhi did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department also did not immediately respond.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the Dena was armed when it was struck and that no warning was given before the attack. The ship had taken part in naval exercises organised by India in the Bay of Bengal last month and was returning to Iran when it was hit.
Sri Lanka’s deputy minister for health and mass media, Hansaka Wijemuni, said Tehran had asked Colombo for help repatriating the bodies of those killed aboard the Dena, though no timeframe has been set. The Booshehr is being escorted to a harbour on Sri Lanka’s eastern coast, with most of its crew transferred to a navy camp near Colombo. The cable said the vessel will remain in Sri Lankan custody for the duration of the conflict.
(Reuters)
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