Ordeal ends: Captured Iranian guards freed in Pakistan

Iranian officials, Jaishul Adl confirm the release; FO denies guards were held in Pakistan.

TEHRAN:

Iranian border guards captured by Jaishul Adl rebels near the Pakistani border in February have been freed, the extremist group and an Iranian official announced on Friday.

According to a media report, however, only four of the five abducted men were handed over to Iranian officials in Pakistan alive. They were accompanied by the body of the fifth, whom the rebels said last month they had executed.

“The soldiers were handed over some hours ago by the small terrorist group Jaishul Adl to Iranian representatives in Pakistan,” said the Fars news agency, quoting an unidentified security official.

Pakistani officials could not confirm the release. “They have not been released in Pakistan. We don’t know where they were kept or released. We have no indication that these Iranian border guards were kept in Pakistan,” Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told Reuters.

For its part, Jaishul Adl, which operates in southeastern Iran, announced the releases on its Twitter account. “At the request of eminent Sunni clerics in Iran, the Iranian soldiers held hostage have been freed and handed over to a delegation of clerics,” it said.



The five soldiers, who were serving their 24-month mandatory military service, were abducted in the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, where Iran has been confronting the Jaishul Adl rebels.

Last month, the group announced it had executed one of the five, Jamshid Danayifar, and warned of more executions to come unless Iran freed prisoners.

The Iranian authorities immediately denied the execution claim, insisting that all five soldiers were alive.

However, Mehr news agency, citing Iranian MP Esmail Kossari, said on Friday that four soldiers “and the body of the martyr Jamshid Danayifar have been handed over to an Iranian official in Pakistan”.

The soldiers are believed to have been taken into neighbouring Pakistan after being kidnapped on February 6, prompting Iran to warn it was considering sending troops across the border to free them. The incident strained relations between the neighbours, with Iran denouncing what it said was Pakistan’s inability to secure its own borders.

Border guards chief Hossein Zolfaghari has admitted that there was ‘negligence’ in the lead-up to the kidnapping, saying those responsible were suspended, with some facing prosecution.

Jaishul Adl took up arms in 2012 to fight for what it says are the rights of Iran’s minority Sunni population. Jaishul Adl, whose name in Arabic means ‘Army of Justice,’ has claimed several attacks against Iranians in the region. These include the assassination of a local prosecutor and the killing of 14 border guards in an ambush in 2013.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2014.