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The head of the Missing-in-Action Search Committee of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff has warned about the poor physical condition of Iranian fighter pilots held in Qatar, urging the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to dispatch an air ambulance to transfer them home.
“The place where the captive pilots are being held on the water does not provide suitable conditions for maintaining their health,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagherzadeh warned on Saturday.
Bagherzadeh stressed that Qatar must move the Iranian captives to land and transfer them to a fully equipped hospital as soon as possible.
He welcomed Doha’s decision to receive a team of Iranian experts and urged local authorities to cooperate in speeding up efforts to address the captives’ condition.
The case stems from a March 2 mission, when two Iranian Air Force Su-24 aircraft carried out operations against Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar amid the United States-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic. The air base is a key hub for American forces in the region.
Qatar denied last week that it was holding Iranian pilots, saying it had contacted Iran to coordinate the handover of the remains of one pilot and had invited Tehran to review details of its search and rescue operations, but had received no response.
Bagherzadeh previously addressed the situation in a March 16 letter to ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric, urging the organization to investigate the pilots’ fate and establish direct contact with them.
He identified the surviving pilots as Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian, and Emran Behrouzian. He confirmed that a fourth aviator, Majid Kazemi, was killed during the operation, and his remains have since been returned to Iran.
“The Missing-in-Action Search Committee of the Armed Forces General Staff expresses its grave concern over the condition of the Iranian pilots held in Qatar,” Bagherzadeh wrote, urging the ICRC to urgently interview them and inform Tehran of their health and whereabouts.
Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei reiterated that Tehran is utilizing all diplomatic and humanitarian channels to determine the pilots’ fate, noting that the Iranian embassy has monitored the case since its early stages.
“As long as their status remains unclear, it is assumed that they have been captured, and we are using all available capacities to determine the status of the pilots,” Baghaei said.
The fate of the three pilots could spark a serious crisis between Iran and Qatar, especially as Doha continues to deny holding them.
The two neighboring countries enjoyed excellent relations before the start of the war on the Islamic Republic. Iranian retaliatory strikes hit Qatar, causing unprecedented tensions.
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accountability for the mia/kia missing on both sides… i still don’t know why the western media has said nothing about the captured u.$. special forces the first month in the war in iran that were video recorded… or the number of dead aboard the c-130 “rescue operation” that was anything but a rescue op!…
because they don’t want to frighten the herd who think america can go to war without losing anyone.
true. but it’s not a good move by the iranians to keep those mia/kia and worse still captured under wraps as a negotiating tool with a terr0ri$t like the united states .gov. look how well that playbook has worked out for the russian federation since 2014 with us. generals, admirals, colonels that have either been captured or died in ukraine, only to be posthumously represented as “retired’ and living the good life beyond their uniforms?… truth is best especially when they are killed or mia!
i doubt these soldiers are in qatar. the us and israelis will find personal reasons to conduct interrogations. the pilots can not be allowed to publicly not speak of these techniques.
iran needs to give an ultimatum to the qatari zionist pimps to release the brave pilots or face missile and drone strikes on the petropimps palace. their us masters have removed all air defences so qatar can be flattened at will.
it was until qatar allowed attacks on iran from there, that they had good relations…certainly not the other way ’round. qatar is like the other gcc members, not one are to be trusted. iran may have to go get them, or at least threaten to do so. that would mean a land invasion. they surely don’t want to test that. iran is fully capable of that and what would the u.s. do? threaten more maximum sanctions?