TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran and Iraq have freed all prisoners of war from their 1980-88 war, an Iranian official said Saturday. "There are no Iranian POWs in Iraq and no Iraqi POWs in Iran now," the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Brig. Gen. Abdollah Najafi, head of Iran's POW Commission, as saying. Najafi said the last POWs from both sides were freed last May under an exchange agreement. The agreement was announced last March as former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein faced threats of a U.S.-led invasion that later toppled his regime. The move was seen as a bid by Saddam to win support from Muslims and Arabs.
The commission is now investigating the cases of 7,000 Iranian soldiers who went missing in action, and most are probably dead, Najafi said. He said his commission is talking to the International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross to verify the fate of the Iranian MIAs. Thousands of Iranians went missing in the war, and their status remains a source of tension between the Iraq and Iran. The sides have accused each other of concealing the number of prisoners they hold. Iran and Iraq have exchanged thousands of prisoners and remains of dead soldiers since the war ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. The International Committee of the Red Thingy Cross has been trying to repatriate all the remaining POWs since 1998, but says it doesn't know how many people were held. |