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US military releases nine Iranians arrested in Iraq

Nine Iranians were released yesterday from US custody in Iraq, including two the military had accused of being members of an elite Iranian force suspected of arming Shiite extremists in Iraq.

The nine were released to Iraqi officials, and were being transferred to the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, the US military said in a statement. They were expected to return to Iran later yesterday, it said.

The nine Iranians included two men -- identified by the military for the first time as Brujerd Chegini and Hamid Reza Asgari Shukuh -- who were among five people captured when US forces stormed an Iranian government office in the northern city of Irbil in January.

At the time, US officials accused them of being members of Iran's elite Quds Force, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards that Washington has accused of funding and arming Shiite extremists fighting US forces in Iraq. Iran said the five were diplomats working in a facility that was undergoing preparations to be a consular office.

The building, along with another Iranian office in Sulaimaniyah, was shut after the Jan. 11 raid. Both offices -- located in the two largest cities of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish zone -- reopened on Tuesday as Iranian consulates.

The US statement said the Iranians were released after a "careful review of individual records to determine if they posed a security threat to Iraq, and if their detention was of continued intelligence value."

"All nine individuals were determined to no longer pose a security risk," it said.

The release came a day after US authorities freed about 500 Iraqi prisoners in an ongoing push to empty US jails of detainees no longer deemed a threat.

But the military says it's still holding 25,800 Iraqis waiting to face charges or be given freedom.

About 17,000 of those were captured this year, in largely successful campaigns to secure Baghdad and its surrounding belts, the military said.

In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told state radio: "From the beginning of the abduction of the five Iranian diplomats, we said they were innocent. Now the US military has confirmed it."

Hosseini said that he hoped the remaining three Iranians detained in Irbil would also be released soon. He also reiterated Tehran's offer for talks with US and Iraqi diplomats.

Also see: Washington tells EU firms to leave Iran
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