TEHRAN, 29 February 2004 — Iran and Iraq have freed all prisoners of war from their 1980-88 war, an Iranian official said yesterday.
“There are no Iranian POWs in Iraq and no Iraqi POW in Iran now,” Brig. Gen. Abdollah Najafi, head of Iran’s POW Commission, was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Najafi said the last POWs from both sides were freed last May under an exchange agreement between the two countries.
The agreement was announced last March as former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein faced a US military strike that later toppled his regime. The move was seen as a bid by Saddam to win support from Muslims and Arabs.
Iran did not back Saddam but had opposed a unilateral US attack against Baghdad.
The commission is now following up the case of 7,000 Iranian missing-in-action, “a majority of whom have most probably died,” Najafi said. He said his commission is now in talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross to verify the fate of the Iranian MIAs.
The fate of thousands of Iranians missing in action from the war remained a source of tension between the two neighbors. Each side has accused the other of concealing how many prisoners they hold.
Iran and Iraq have exchanged thousands of prisoners and remains of dead soldiers since their war ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire.
Since 1998, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been trying to repatriate all the remaining POWs, but the agency has said it does not know how many people were being held overall.
