KUWAIT CITY, 27 October — There were no Kuwaiti POWs among the thousands of prisoners released in an Iraqi amnesty, the chairman of the National Committee for Missing and POWs said in remarks published yesterday.
Sheikh Salem Al-Sabah affirmed that contacts between the emirate’s Foreign Ministry and the Arab League have ended confirming there are no Kuwaiti POWs among Iraqi and Arab prisoners released in Iraq last Sunday, Al-Watan said.
Kuwait maintains that 605 of its and other countries’ nationals disappeared during the August 1990-February 1991 Iraqi occupation of the emirate, and claims they are still being held in Iraq.
Iraq has admitted taking prisoners but said it lost track of them during a Shiite uprising in southern Iraq following its retreat from Kuwait.
Baghdad claims 1,142 of its own nationals have been missing since the Gulf conflict.
Meanwhile, the Akhbar Al-Khaleej newspaper reported yesterday that a Bahraini national was among the prisoners freed under the Iraqi amnesty.
Ali Moussa Jaffar Al-Houri has been freed after spending 12 years in a Baghdad jail, the paper quoted his relatives as saying.
Ali moved to Iraq to study theology at Najaf in 1989. He disappeared following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, and his family had been trying to trace his whereabouts ever since, the report said.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced Sunday an amnesty for all prisoners to mark his new seven-year mandate as president following an Oct. 15 referendum in which official totals show he won 100 percent of the vote.
