The five Iranian diplomats who were held captive by U.S. forces in Iraq and freed this week are expected to arrive home on Sunday.

 

The diplomats were handed over to Iraqi officials under the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) security accord signed by Baghdad and Washington in December.

 

Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, told the ISNA news agency that three of the diplomats had been based at the Iranian consulate in Irbil, one had been based in Sulaymaniyah, and one had been based in Baghdad.

 

The five were received by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at his office in Baghdad before being handed over to the Iranian Embassy in the evening.

 

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari also met with the diplomats and said they were “happy and safe.”

 

U.S. troops stormed the Iranian consulate in Irbil, a city in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, on January 11, 2007 and arrested five diplomats under the pretext that they were fomenting violence in Iraq. Last year, two of those diplomats were released.

 

Their detention violated diplomatic protocols and strained U.S. relations with the Maliki government, which maintained the five Iranians were in the process of setting up a liaison office when they were taken prisoner.

 

Zebari said no deal had been struck for their release, adding that the men were freed in line with the SOFA accord.

 

As part of the SOFA accord, U.S. forces withdrew from Iraqi cities last week and the U.S. must hand over all detainees to the Iraqi government by the end of the year.

 

“There wasn’t any deal,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Zebari as saying. “This has been there for some time that this would happen. It was part of the agreement for the Americans, part of withdrawing and handing over security responsibilities.”

 

The continued detention of the five diplomats was a source of friction between Tehran and Washington.

 

Kazem Foroutan, the deputy head of mission of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, told the Mehr News Agency on Friday that the diplomats would return to Iran on Sunday.

 

Ambassador Kazemi Qomi said that in addition to the five diplomats, a number of other Iranians who have been detained by U.S. forces for illegal entry into Iraq are to be freed in line with the security agreement. Several have already been released, he added.

 

The Iranian government has advised citizens to only visit Iraq using valid visas, but some Iranians who continued to enter Iraq illegally to visit the country’s Shia shrines were later detained by the Iraqi police or U.S. forces.

 

 

Source:  MNA