Iran holding 15 UK troops, US holding 5 Iranian officials in secret

[donsu]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/30/192/print/


As the Western media turns its attention to the fate of 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters over the weekend, the status of five Iranian officials captured in a U.S. military raid on a liaison office in northern Iraq on Jan. 11 remains a mystery.

Even though high-level Iraqi officials have publicly called for their release, for all practical purposes, the Iranians have disappeared into the U.S.-sanctioned “coalition detention” system that has been criticized as arbitrary and even illegal by many experts on international law.

Hours before President George W. Bush declared that they would “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq,” U.S. forces raided what has been described as a diplomatic liaison office in the northern city of Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and detained six Iranians, infuriating Kurdish officials in the process.

The troops took office files and computers, ostensibly to find evidence regarding the alleged role of Iranian agents in anti-coalition attacks and sectarian violence in Iraq. One diplomat was released, but the other five men remain in U.S. custody and have not been formally charged with a crime.

“They have disappeared. I don’t know if they’ve gone into the enemy combatant system,” said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served in the White House under former President Jimmy Carter. “Nobody on the outside knows.”
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the games men play - to the detriment of us all

[leftchick]

1. why do you hate amerika?

don't you understand the US is ALWAYS right in whatever it does anywhere in the world? Bill oreilly told me so.

[peacetalksforall]

2. Kurds upset. Makes sense. Kurds need Iranians if country

splits to help them in a stand-off against Turkey? The U.S. needs Kurds for pipelines and their oil - AND TO PIT THEM FOR AND AGAINST the people they PNAC0 are trying to take over, including the Kurds?

PNAC is not so good at planning, not so good at hunting. How are they at playing pool?