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IRAN-PAKISTAN-UNREST
Five freed Iran troops flown home from Pakistan
TEHRAN, Nov 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Five Iranian security personnel, who had
been held by jihadists for a month, have been flown home after Pakistani
forces secured their release, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Thursday.
The five were part of a mixed unit of 12 border guards, militiamen and
Guards intelligence agents who were captured by jihadists of the Pakistan-
based Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) group during an operation near the
border on October 16, a state television-run news agency reported.
The Pakistani foreign ministry announced on November 15 that police and
troops had secured the release of five of the captives and were still trying
to free the others.
“Following efforts and interactions with the Pakistani side to free the
border guards and militiamen,” five of them “were released and returned to
Iran last night”, the Guards said.
The Guards website carried photographs of the five being welcomed home by
generals as they got off the plane.
Sistan-Baluchistan province, where the men were captured, has long been a
flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and jihadists carrying
out cross-border raids.
The province has a large, mainly Sunni Muslim ethnic Baluchi community
which straddles the border.
Jaish al-Adl, which claimed the capture of the Iranian personnel and is
labelled a “terrorist” group by Iran, was formed in 2012 as a successor
organisation to the Sunni extremist group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) which
waged a deadly insurgency against Iranian targets over the previous decade.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif visited Islamabad twice in a month
for briefings on the progress of the efforts to secure the captured unit’s
release.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi blamed the kidnapping on
“our common enemies unhappy with the existing close, friendly relations
between Pakistan and Iran”.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1710 hrs