The US military said on Tuesday it would release nine Iranians
detained in Iraq in recent months, including the two among the five
captured earlier this year in Arbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous
Kurdish region.
"It is our intent to release nine Iranians, currently in
custody, in the near future," US military spokesman Rear Admiral
Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's
communications division, told a news conference in Baghdad's Green
Zone.
"Two of the nine were detained in Arbil in January of this
year," he said, adding that the other seven were detained at
various time in other parts of Iraq.
The US forces arrested five Iranians in January in the northern
Iraqi city of Arbil, and accused them of being members of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards' elite Qods Force. But Iran said the five were
diplomats working in Iraq.
Smith said that the nine Iranians have been assessed as none of
them pose a further threat to Iraqi security.
US officials accused Iran of training Shiite militias in Iraq
and supplying them with weapons, including armored piercing
roadside bombs, but Iran denies the accusations.
(Xinhua News Agency November 7, 2007)
