A group of eight Iranians, including two diplomats, were released by US forces on Wednesday after being detained because unauthorised weapons were found in their cars, the US military said.
Four cars carrying the Iranians, as well as seven Iraqis, were stopped at a checkpoint on Tuesday evening and then allowed to proceed to the nearby Sheraton Ishtar hotel, where they were later taken into custody and questioned, the military said.
Saadi Othman, an adviser to Gen David Petraeus, the top US general in Iraq, told BBC that the incident was “regrettable” and had “nothing to do” with President Bush’s remarks on Tuesday, when he lashed out at Iran for meddling in Iraq’s affairs and fomenting instability here. Troops seized three weapons from the cars — an AK-47 assault rifle and two 9mm pistols that had been in the possession of the Iraqis in the group. The Iraqis were serving as a protective detail but had no weapons permits, the US military said.
At the hotel later, US troops confiscated a laptop, cell phones and a briefcase full of Iranian and American money in the hotel, the military said.
“Following the brief room search the group was taken to a coalition facility for questioning,” the statement said. “The Iranian nationals had passports. It was later determined that two of them were carrying diplomatic credentials.”
Meanwhile, an Iranian diplomat said that one of those released contacted the embassy on Wednesday to say that they had been handed over to Iraqi authorities.
‘HOLOCAUST IF IRAN GETS NUKES’
US President George W Bush on Wednesday warned that letting Iran acquire atomic weapons risked putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”, AFP reports from Reno in Nevada.
“Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” he told a veterans group here. Bush’s speech to the American Legion aimed to convince a war-weary US public that the war in Iraq was the central front in the fight against what he described as the Sunni Muslim extremism of the al Qaeda terrorist network and the Shiite extremism fuelled by Iran. “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. We will confront this danger before it is too late,” he said.