LONDON -- When he granted the 15 British sailors and marines their freedom in a theatrically stag... Controversy greets freed B

It began to feel like a real vacation yesterday. The 14 men and one woman who had been held for 13 days in Tehran were driven in the predawn hours to Tehran's airport. Still dressed in the ill-fitting suits the Iranians had given them and clasping ornate gifts and matching sets of luggage that were gifts from the Islamic regime that had imprisoned them, they boarded a British Airways flight.

There, in business-class seats, they sipped champagne and read the London newspapers, learning for the first time that many of them have become household-name celebrities and figures of great controversy in Britain and around the world.

Five hours later, having changed back into military garb, they descended into a realm of sober questions and puzzling reactions: What had happened? How had they been freed? And why had they so eagerly praised their captors?

The sailors had been seized at gunpoint in the waters between Iran and Iraq by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on March 23, triggering a dangerous showdown between Britain and Iran, whose leaders said that they had trespassed on Iranian waters. British officials denied this.

On Iranian TV yesterday morning, after their freedom had been guaranteed, they were shown drinking tea with their captors. Faye Turney, the only woman among the captors and a focus of media attention, was shown waving and saying teshakkor -- Persian for thank you -- and making another statement, in English, which seemed to support the Iranian interpretation of events: "Thank you for letting us go, and we apologize for our actions, but many thanks for having it in your hearts to let us go free," she told an Iranian TV interviewer.

After being flown in helicopters to a military base in southern England for debriefing, the sailors and marines issued a statement thanking the British people for their attention and expressing gratitude for their release. But at no point did they retract their repeated words of gratitude to their captors, or suggest that the Iranians had treated them unjustly.

Military officials scoffed at this, noting that British military personnel are trained to submit to their captors in order to maintain their safety if there is no chance of escape.

While both Britain and Iranian officials had described the release as a victory for their nations, the assessments yesterday were much more sober.

Prime Minister Tony Blair was even more reserved in a statement he made to reporters yesterday morning, suggesting that Iran should be considered a terrorist state. He insisted that nothing had been offered in exchange for the release. There have been reports suggesting that Iranian officials held captive in Iraq had been released as a quid pro quo.

He said that while the negotiations have brought British and Iranian officials in close contact, it is unlikely to improve the difficult political tensions between Iran and the West over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

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