Stena Bulk Chief Executive Eric Henel said that Swedish tanker "Stena Impero" arrested by Iran for two months will soon be sailed.
"We received information this morning indicating that the ship Stena Impero is going to be released in a few hours," Hanell said. “We hope we can get out in a few hours, but we won't make any advances. First, we want to see the ship leave Iranian territorial waters,” he added to SVT.
Contacted by AFP, Stena Bulk spokeswoman Lena Alvling confirmed Hanell's remarks but said, several hours later, that the ship had still not been freed.
"We have nothing new to report," she said.
Government spokesman Ali Rabiei said Monday all legal steps had been completed for the release of the detained tanker but that he did not know the timing of the release, the semi-official news agency ILNA reported.
"The legal work and administrative procedures for the release of the English tanker have been completed but I have no information on the time of the release."
Rabiei was quoted as saying: "The legal work of the oil tanker is over and the oil tanker can move and the decisions indicate the end of the detention."
He did not elaborate.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized the tanker after a speech for Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei who threatened the UK to respond to the seizure of an Iranian oil tanker on July 4th as it passed through Gibraltar's waters, under suspicion it was breaking EU sanctions on oil deliveries to Syria.
Iranian forces seized control of the British-flagged Stena Impero on July 19th.
