Shiite Prisoners Now Reported in Iran’s Hands

Most of the 15 Shiite Muslims imprisoned in Kuwait on terrorism charges and whose fate was linked to that of two U.S. hostages held in Lebanon have been handed over to Iran following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, a Lebanese magazine said Friday.

The magazine Ash Shiraa, which broke the Iran-Contra scandal, said most of the 15 Shiites, members of the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, are now in Iran.

Most of them are Iraqi Shiites. (There originally were 17, but two of the prisoners were released last year, having served their sentences.) They were serving different sentences for attempting to bomb the U.S. and French embassies and Kuwait’s oil refineries.

Imprisonment of the 15 is widely cited as one of the factors triggering a wave of abductions of Westerners in Lebanon.

Islamic Jihad, a radical group that claimed responsibility for kidnaping U.S. citizens Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland, had demanded the release of the 15 prisoners in exchange for freeing the two U.S. captives. The government of Kuwait had rejected these conditions.

Ash Shiraa said some of the 15 escaped on the first day of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and one showed up in his native Lebanese village of Yattir, 10 miles south of Beirut. The remaining 14 were handed over to Iran by Iraq, the magazine said.

Previous reports said that when the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, it seized the prisoners.