The Iranian government has asked Kenya to release its two nationals arrested in Nairobi over terrorism claims.
This is after the two together with their Kenyan driver were on Tuesday arrested for allegedly filming the Israeli Embassy in a car belonging to the Iranian Embassy.
The Kenyan ambassador to Tehran was on Thursday summoned by the Iranian Foreign Ministry where the "necessity for the immediate release of the two Iranians was underlined during the meeting".
According to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the two were university teachers and had not done anything wrong to warrant an arrest against them.
"The two Iranians are lawyers who had gone to Kenya to provide their jailed Iranian clients in Kenya with legal counseling," said the Ministry’s spokesman Bahram Ghasemi.
"Police arrested them as they returned from a meeting with their clients in prison," he added.
The duo’s defense lawyer Cohen Amanya however told Reuters that his clients were being detained by the Kenya Anti-Terrorism Police Unit "for further interrogation" after they pleaded not guilty on Thursday.