[lbo-talk] Brits' shit fit over seized sailors misfires

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 4/1/07, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> > Since when are prisoners held by a government called hostages?
>
> I believe that starts when the government in question denys consular
> visits.

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

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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