Many of the Iranians (among other nationals) detained by the US, UK, and other forces have been not only denied consular visits but their fates are unknown. Are they hostages? Or are they "disappeared."?
<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC31Ak04.html> Mar 31, 2007 US silent on detained Iranians By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - As the Western media focus on the fate of 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters, the status of five Iranian officials captured in a US military raid on a liaison office in northern Iraq on January 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 US-sanctioned "coalition detention" system that has been criticized as arbitrary and even illegal by many experts on international law.
Hours before US President George W Bush declared that they would "seek out and destroy the [Iranian] networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq", US forces raided what has been described as a diplomatic liaison office in the northern city of Irbil, 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 US 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 president Jimmy Carter. "Nobody on the outside knows."
<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC31Ak01.html> Mar 31, 2007 Real US battles with Iran still lie ahead By Mahan Abedin
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Where is General Asgari?
Ancient battles aside, the disappearance of a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general in the Turkish city of Istanbul is being widely interpreted as the latest covert US operation against Iranian interests. Ali Reza Asgari, a former deputy defense minister under the Mohammad Khatami government and a former top commander in the IRGC, disappeared in Istanbul in early February. The Washington Post was the first major Western newspaper to claim that the former general had defected to the United States. Citing an anonymous senior US official, the paper claimed on March 8 that the former minister was cooperating with Western intelligence agencies. [2]
The London Times quickly followed the Post's lead in sensationally identifying the former general as the "father of Hezbollah" and, citing Israeli sources, claimed that Asgari had defected with his family. [3] The Times' diplomatic editor confidently asserted that he had defected and - highlighting the alleged defection's significance - quoted Ali Ansari, a British-Iranian academic based at St Andrew's University, claiming that "there has never been a defection from Iran in the 27 years since the revolution". [4]
Strictly speaking, Ansari's comment is not true. While there has not been a single case of a senior political figure or a senior diplomat defecting, there were plenty of defections from the Iranian military, in particular the air force, in the 1980s. However, the defections stopped with the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. It seems that a combination of greater political liberalization and the impressive competence of the Islamic Republic's intelligence services put a stop to the defections altogether.
It has now emerged that much of the information in the Western and Israeli media has been inaccurate.
First and foremost, Asgari is 43 years old, not 63 as has been widely alleged. Second, it has now emerged that his family, including his wife, are safe in Tehran and desperately waiting for news on the whereabouts of the former IRGC commander. Asgari's wife even told the Baztab website (a quality news service run by Mohsen Rezai, the former overall commander of the IRGC) that she believes her husband was kidnapped by US intelligence in Istanbul.
-- Yoshie