Five Iranian security personnel, who had been held by kidnappers 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 abducted 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.
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”.
Published in Daily Times, November 23rd 2018.
