Iran demands the immediate return of its captive pilots from Qatar

“The place where the captive pilots are being held on the water does not provide suitable conditions for maintaining their health,” Brigadier General Mohammad Bagherzadeh warned on Saturday.

Qatar must move the Iranian captives to land and transfer them to a fully equipped hospital as soon as possible, he said.

Bagherzadeh welcomed Qatar’s decision to receive a team of Iranian experts and urged Doha to cooperate in speeding up efforts to address the captives’ condition.

In a letter to ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric on March 16, Bagherzadeh had already urged the organization to investigate the pilots’ fate and establish direct contact with them.

He identified the three pilots as Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian and Emran Behrouzian, while confirming that Majid Kazemi, one of the four pilots involved, had been martyred and his remains 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,” he wrote, urging the ICRC to urgently interview them and inform Tehran of their health and whereabouts.

On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei reiterated that Tehran was using all diplomatic and humanitarian channels to determine the pilots’ fate, noting that the Iranian embassy had been following the case from 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 case dates back to March 2, when two Iranian Air Force Su-24 aircraft carried out a mission against Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar during the US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

‘Kuwait must respect rights of war prisoners’

Bagherzadeh also referred to the Kuwaiti government’s initial agreement to allow the Iranian ambassador to meet with four Iranian captives in the country.

“This has provided a glimmer of hope for the swift release of these dear individuals,” Bagherzadeh remarked.

Kuwait must respect the rights of prisoners of war under the four Geneva Conventions and facilitate initial contact between the captives and their families, he urged.

Pointing to the ICRC’s efforts to even establish video communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their families, he urged the committee to “urgently pursue the release of the Iranian captives, and also provide them with the possibility of video communication with their families.”

The commander also appealed to the ICRC office for the Arab countries to take the lead in the matter and take the necessary steps to follow up on the condition of the Iranian captives and establish communication between them and their families.