Iran to Free Iraqi POWs, Red Cross Says
Iran will soon release up to 2,000 Iraqi prisoners who had been reported missing during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the head of the Red Cross in Iraq said Wednesday.
Beat Schweizer said he expected the release to take place Saturday at the Iran-Iraq border. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been negotiating the release with Iran, which earlier this year allowed a delegation to visit Iraqi POWs.
A Tehran daily, Iran, quoted Iranian Brig. Gen. Mohammed Balar on Wednesday as saying that the release is a humanitarian gesture to mark last month’s Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday. Balar is the spokesman for Iran’s POW commission.
Fahmi Qeisi, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official, was quoted as saying that the release confirms Baghdad’s claims that “there are thousands of Iraqi prisoners held in Iranian jails.”
Several families in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, were preparing to head for the border even though authorities have not yet said who will be released.
Iraq says that at least 13,000 of its POWs still languish in Iranian jails. But Schweizer said that several thousand Iraqis have chosen to live in Iran and that many want to be resettled in third countries.
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