ISRAEL – HEZBOLLAH – IRAN – PRISONERS
14:20GMT—10:20AM/EST
Washington, 3 July (IranVNC)—Iran’s embassy in Lebanon said in a statement today that four Iranians, kidnapped during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, are still alive and being held in Israel.
The statement marked the 26th anniversary of their disappearance and was based on accounts from former prisoners liberated from Israeli prisons, the statement said.
Mojtaba Ferdowsi-Pour, charge d’affaires at the embassy, called for the prisoners’ release during a news conference in Beirut. “All the information that we have confirms that they are imprisoned by the Israelis…we will not be desperate and we will continue our humanitarian efforts,” he said.
The statement comes at a time when Israel is also
expected to provide details on the case to Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, as part of the exchange of prisoners’ agreement the two sides have reached.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who spoke yesterday at a news conference held by video link from a secure location in Lebanon, said that his group was seeking information on the fate of the four Iranians whom it believes were handed over to Israel, adding that a United Nations-appointed German mediator should soon receive a final report from the Israelis on the case.
The four Iranians – Mohsen Mousavi, Ahmad Motevaselian and Taghi Rastegar Moghadam, along with Kazem Akhavan, a photographer for Iran’s official news agency IRNA – were kidnapped at a Lebanese Forces Christian militia checkpoint, north of Beirut, on 4 July 1982.
The militia maintains that the Iranians were killed soon after their abduction. Other reports have said that they were killed in an artillery bombardment, but no bodies have ever been found.
For its part, Iran insists Israel was handed the prisoners after they were kidnapped, and that it is still holding them to this day, a statement that Israel denies.
Raed Mousavi, son of one of the missing Iranians, said today that he was confident the prisoners were still alive. “We are confident from years ago that those Iranian hostages are alive and we have the information from the prisoners liberated from the Israeli prisons,” he said.
Hezbollah agreed yesterday to a UN-mediated deal to exchange prisoners with Israel, adding that it will not set an exact date for the swap. Under the agreement, Israel will free five Lebanese prisoners in return for the two Israeli prisoners that Hezbollah captured during the July 2006 war in Lebanon.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Nasrallah statement (Al-Manar TV), The Daily Star
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