Iran Reports Releasing 50 Ailing Iraqi Captives

Iran on Monday released 50 ailing or disabled Iraqi prisoners of war as a gesture of good will, Tehran radio reported.

It was not clear whether Iraq would release some Iranian POWs in return. An earlier attempt to arrange an exchange was unsuccessful.

The broadcast said that the prisoners were released to Red Cross representatives in Tehran for eventual repatriation.

Tehran radio, monitored in Cyprus, quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying that the 50 were freed for humanitarian reasons and in response to a request from U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.

It did not say when Perez de Cuellar made the appeal. Baghdad last week sent him a memorandum expressing concern for POWs held in Iran after the Red Cross reported on Dec. 6 that 22 Iraqis had died in jail.

The deaths were attributed to “heart attacks and relevant diseases,” but Iraqi media suggested that the prisoners might have been tortured.

The Red Cross knows of about 50,000 prisoners held by Iran and more than 19,200 in Iraqi camps. U.N. officials and diplomats had estimated the number of captives at about 100,000 overall.

The Red Cross obtained an agreement for the return of ailing prisoners immediately after a U.N. cease-fire halted the war on Aug. 20, 1988. That deal fell through, however, after 400 disabled and wounded prisoners had been exchanged. Both sides accused each other of falsifying the number of captives seeking asylum with their captors.

Angelo Gnadinger, Middle East chief for the Red Cross, visited Tehran and Baghdad last week, seeking to arrange for release of the remaining 1,000 wounded and disabled men still held on both sides.

That effort collapsed, mainly because Tehran insisted that the exchange be coupled with a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from territory captured in the final weeks of the war.

U.N.-sponsored peace talks have been deadlocked, mainly because of the troop withdrawal issue and Iraq’s demand that the border be redrawn to give it sovereignty over the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway.

The channel, a confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is Iraq’s sole outlet to the Persian Gulf. Before the war, it formed the border between Iran and Iraq.