U.S. Refuses to Free 5 Captured Iranians Until at Least October

[RiverStone]

Source: Washington Post

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2007

The United States will not release five Iranians detained in a U.S. military raid in northern Iraq until at least October, despite entreaties from the Iraqi government and pressure from Iran, U.S. officials said. The delay is as much due to a communication and procedural foul-up within the U.S. government as a policy decision, they added.

During his Washington visit this week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari appealed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to free the Iranians, who were arrested in Irbil in January, U.S. and Arab officials said.

Zebari told U.S. officials that the release would help the new U.S.-Iran dialogue on Iraq, which brought diplomats from the two nations together last month in Baghdad at their first public meeting in almost three decades. Iran has become pivotal to U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq because Tehran exerts great influence in Iraq with a wide cross-section of parties and has armed and trained many militant groups. Zebari also warned that Tehran might not attend a second session unless the Iranians are released, the sources said.

The U.S. raid on Iran's northern liaison office Jan. 11 was designed to detain two senior Iranian officials who were visiting Iraq, U.S. officials said. The two escaped arrest, but U.S. commandos did detain five mid-level operatives working with Iran's elite Quds Force, which is the foreign operations wing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and is tied to arming, training and funding militants in Iraq.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/20/AR2007062001456_pf.html

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Can you imagine BushCo's response if the situation were reversed? Under what governing law, international or otherwise, can the US use to justify holding these Iranians?

Oh, it's just the decider.

Anything to keep war with Iran on the table and tensions high...

[Javaman]

1. I'm waiting to see how moron* ties these guys to some false flag op he's* planning. nt

[Eugene]

2. This would be comical if it didn't reflect so badly on America.

Arbitrary arrests upheld by star chamber judicial procedure.
Which police state is the Cheney Mob using as its model?

Excuse #1:
We can't let them go because Iraqi law requires keeping them
until the end of their 6 month term and scheduled security
review in July.

Excuse #2:
Oops! Somebody did a security review in the middle of the term
and the detainees got a new six month term ending in October.
(Wasn't that around the time Condi and other "realists" said
that holding the Iranians served no purpose?)

I wonder what the excuse will be in October.

So let me get this straight. They can't let the Iranians go
because they have to follow rules that they make up as they
go along. :crazy: :eyes:

[Brigid]

3. I still want to know . . .

what army Bush thinks he's going to use in order to go to war with Iran. Ours is at the breaking point already.

[BushOut06]

4. What a bunch of hypocritical fucking assholes

They demanded that Iran return some British sailors who had wandered into Iranian waters. Yet we refuse to hand over a couple of Iranians? Sounds like the very definition of hypocrisy.

[area51]

5. Way to go, GW Hoover.

</sarcasm> Aren't there 3 American citizens being held by Iran? This will ensure that they aren't released. :eyes:

[pinniped]

6. The words kidnapped and hostage appears nowhere in this article.

What a freaking surprise.

[3waygeek]

7. Yet another October surprise

from the GOP...