Iran has publicly announced for the first time that the three military pilots who disappeared after the attack on the American military base in Qatar on March 2 were captured by the Qatari military. Tehran called on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to find out their fate and facilitate their release, Mehr reported.
This was mentioned in the letter of Brigadier General Mohammad Bagherzadeh, Commander of the Search Committee for the Missing Persons of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, addressed to Miryana Spoliarich Eger, President of the ICRC.
According to Bagherzadeh, on March 2, two Iranian Su-24 fighter-bombers went to the American military base in Qatar as part of Iran's retaliatory operation. After completing the mission, during the return, the planes were attacked by the enemy's air defense means, and the crews had to be ejected.
One of the four pilots, Brigadier General Majid Kazemi, was killed. His body parts were later found and taken to Iran.
"According to the received information, the other three pilots who participated in the incident, Javad Salehi, Abdolmajid Dashtian and Omran Behraveshian, were captured alive by the Qatari forces," the letter stated.
The Iranian general accused Qatar of the fact that during the past six months after the incident, the country's authorities did not provide the pilots with the rights of prisoners of war stipulated by international humanitarian law. According to him, despite diplomatic appeals, the Iranian side was not allowed to meet with the pilots, get information about their condition or establish contact with their families.
Bagherzade said that the situation requires an international investigation and may fall under the provisions on war crimes. He referred to the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War and called on the ICRC to urgently contact the three pilots, find out their state of health, inform Tehran and facilitate their release.
This statement became the first public claim by the Iranian military that the three missing pilots may be in captivity in Qatar. Until then, their fate remained unknown. On August 1, the representative of the Iranian army, Brigadier General Mohammad Akramnia, said that Tehran continues to find out the circumstances of the pilots' disappearance and called on Qatar to provide information about their whereabouts.
The Qatari authorities announced earlier that they have no information about the fate of the three servicemen.
According to the Iranian army, both Su-24s took off from the Shahid Doran air base in Shiraz and attacked the American Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, after which they were attacked by air defenses in the Persian Gulf.
