US military frees nine Iranians held after Iraq raids

The United States military in Iraq has freed nine Iranians, including two who were seized in January in a failed American helicopter raid aimed at detaining Iran's most senior intelligence officers while they were on an official visit to northern Iraq.

"All nine individuals were determined to no longer pose a security risk and to be of no continued intelligence value," said a US military statement in Baghdad that may signal some easing of tension between Washington and Tehran.

A US helicopter raid on a house in the Kurdish capital, Arbil, on 11 January was after much bigger prey than the five junior officials who were seized. As The Independent revealed in March the purpose of the attack was to abduct Mohammed Jafari, deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Instead of abducting these senior officials the raid only netted men who worked in an Iranian liaison office that had been operating openly in Arbil for years. Iran responded with outrage and has been seeking the release of the "Arbil Five" ever since.

US officials are reported to have believed that the seizure of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines in March may have been a tit-for-tat response by Iran seeking to put pressure on the US through Britain to free the Iranian officials taken in Arbil. In April, the Bush administration overruled a recommendation by the US State Department that the five officials, whom it claims are Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence officers, be freed because they were no longer useful. One reason advanced for not freeing them was that it would look like a quid pro quo for the 15 Britons being freed by Iran.

Tension between the US and Iran has increased steadily this year with the White House claiming that Tehran is supplying arms and training to Shia militias in Iraq. The Iraq government has been trying to get the Arbil Five and other detained Iranians released. Paradoxically, Iran supports the present Shia-Kurdish government in Baghdad while Sunni-Arab allies of the US such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan do not.

"American officials in Iraq admitted that the freed Iranians were innocent and they have no links with insurgents in Iraq," the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammed Ali Husseini, told Iran state radio yesterday. It is, in any case, unlikely that Iranian officials would have any contact with Shia or Sunni-Arab insurgents in Arbil, which is entirely Kurdish.

The two Iranians captured in Arbil and freed yesterday were named as Mohammed Reza Asgari and Mousa Chegini. "We were their hostage for 10 months," said Mr Asgari. "Our release shows that their accusations were baseless." Some 11 Iranians remain in US hands.

Opposition to freeing the Iranians has consistently come from the Vice-President, Dick Cheney. His office said that their detention showed that the US would act firmly against any Iranian operatives in Iraq.

Mr Jafari and General Frouzanda had been in Iraqi Kurdistan at the invitation of the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, who met them at his lakeside residence at Dokan. He later called Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, saying the Iranians would like to see him. They then went to his mountain-top headquarters at Salahudin, a few miles north-east of Arbil.

US intelligence had got wind of the visit but, apparently misled by the presence of the Iranian officials' car at the liaison office in Arbil, launched their raid against the wrong target. "They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, Mr Barzani's chief of staff, told The Independent in April.

The Iraqi government is extremely worried by the prospect of the US starting a war against Iran, saying that this would inevitably lead to Iran striking back, probably using Iranian proxies or sympathisers, in Iraq. Most of the parties, Shia and Kurdish, in the Baghdad government have strong links with Iran. These are unlikely to be severed by the US seizing visiting Iranian officials and in the past Iran has retaliated either covertly or overtly. The recent detention of a visiting Iranian official in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah by US forces led to Iran immediately closing its border with Iraqi Kurdistan.