An MP has asked Iran to extradite two borough-based Iranian refugees who have been in jail there for more than a year.

Win Griffiths, MP for Bridgend in Wales, visited Ebrahim Khodabandeh, of Barnet, and Jamil Bassam, of Hendon, in jail in Iran last week. They were arrested in Syria last April and flown to Iran a move which broke the Geneva Convention on Refugees.

During the visit, Mr Griffiths asked for the men to be returned to the UK, where they have lived for 30 years.

"I did make a request to the minister for western European affairs that if Iran is confident about the case it has against them, it should return them to Britain and make a request for them to be extradited in the normal way.

"These men were illegally taken by Syria to Iran and the Iranian government illegally took them into custody," he said.

No formal charges have yet been made against the men. Mr Griffiths' visit follows two by Baroness Nicholson, MEP for the south east.

She said she had been told by the Iranian authorities that the pair were arrested on Syria's border with Iraq in possession of US$1million and documentation which was intended to help spread the network of a banned terror organisation, the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), which opposes the Iranian government. The group is listed as a terrorist organisation by the UK and the USA.

Mr Griffiths said: "It is clear that they were arrested near the Iraq-Syria border. There is an issue about the money but it's pretty vague. They are members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran an umbrella organisation that counts the PMOI as one of its members, so they were not surprised that they are being kept in prison."

Mr Griffiths added that the men appeared to be being treated well in prison.

"I don't think they've been subjected to any physical torture," he said.

But Jamshidi Madjidi, of Cumbrian Gardens, Cricklewood, a friend of Mr Bassam, maintained that the men had not been in Syria to collect money and documents but to meet relatives. "This is the version of the Iranian authorities. They are in prison and they cannot speak freely," he said.

Mr Griffiths has set up a committee to try to free Mr Khodabandeh and Mr Bassam. The Foreign Office says there is little it can do because they are not British citizens.