Faye talks of horrible dilemma
Monday 9th April 2007, 6:58PM BST.
Shropshire sailor Faye Turney said all she could think about during her two-week ordeal at the hands of Iranian forces was getting home for her daughter’s birthday.
And Mrs Turney said she could not stop thinking about what her family, who live in Shrewsbury, must have been going through during her ordeal.
The 25-year-old said at night she was blindfolded and taken to an interrogation room and feared she was being measured for her coffin before being killed.
She also said she thought she was going to be raped.
Mrs Turney said: “Sometimes I’d have to go back two or three times. One session went on until 6am.”
She said the threats became more blatant and she was asked: “Do you not want to see your daughter again?”
Then she said the pattern suddenly changed and she was told: “If I confessed to being in Iranian waters and wrote letters to my family, the British people and the Iranian people, I’d be free within two weeks.
“If I didn’t, they’d put me on trial for espionage and I’d go to prison for ‘several years’.
“I had just an hour to think about it. It was a horrible dilemma.”
She said she feared everyone in Britain would “hate” her, but wanted to be home for her daughter Molly’s birthday next month.
Mrs Turney, who went to Meole Brace school in Shrewsbury, sent a coded sign by referring to her ship by its pennant number F99 – something sailors would not do.
She said: “There was nothing damaging to security in anything I wrote, I made sure of that.
“And I never meant a word of it.”
Mrs Turney also described the moment she was captured, with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher pointing at her head.
She said the alarm was sounded by Captain Chris Air, who called out to her using her nickname: “Topsy, we’ve got cowboys coming in.”
Today the Assistant Reverend Mary Fearnside, of Christ Church, Shelton and Oxon, which Mrs Turney’s parents attend, said prayers of thanksgiving had been said at the church during Easter services.
She said: “I made an announcement that we would pray. We were all relieved.
“We are obviously going to continue praying for people out there.”
By Rebecca Lawrence
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I suspect this article was contrived by this Newspaper to asauge public condemnation for this womens actions ….. not so much for her reaction to illegal incarceration but for her opportunistic behaviour after the event.
This young lady enlisted in the Armed Forces and like many of us before her took an Oath of Allegiance and also like many of us before her knew that we could be sent into Harms way …… As an exserviceman I can only register Disgust by the fact that she sought … and obtained profit from what I consider was her duty … no matter how unpleasent. I can only hope that she derives some pleasure from the proceeds of her endeavours
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They could have threatened to lock me up for 500 years and I would not have lied and betrayed my country like she did. What a gutless individual, a disgrace to the British people. What on earth was she doing on active service?
And now she has the nerve to cash in on it all by selling her story to the press. She clearly isnt that worried about the rest of the country hating her.
What a sad state the Country is in if we have to look to people like this to ‘protect’ us.
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I note that Faye is referred to as ‘Mrs Turney’ in this article, not by her rank. I am hopeful that means Faye is planning to leave the Service, as her actions have brought disrepute upon and to today’s service women in particular.
Of course I cannot put myself in her exact place but I do know that under duress when serving with the Australian Air Force some decades ago, neither I nor my section would have smiled, shaken hands and joked about in the manner of the sailors and marines.
I know I would as the officer have instructed necessary limited co-operation, not slavish pandering to my captors’ wishes.
And it beggars belief that she truly thought she was being measured for a coffin IF the foregoing parts of her story are to hold any semblance of truth. “Yep – first we will rape you, then we will shoot you and then we will make sure you have a perfectly fitting coffin as opposed to dumping you out the back in the pits”.
I trust she now closes her mouth and stops using her child as a shield for her appalling actions during a time when she could have behaved like a service women and earnt the respect of her peers and the world.
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