With music, hugs and tears of joy, families welcomed Monday the return of 192 Iraqi men who had been detained in Iran since the 1991 Gulf War.
As the former prisoners crossed the frontier at this post on the Iraqi-Iranian border, 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of Baghdad, aid workers and their loved ones showered them candies and applause.
Dressed in gray suits, some ex-prisoners were too dazed to react. Others waived vaguely to the crowd. Those who saw their loved ones burst into tears.
Those released were the first batch of 697 prisoners that Iran has recently agreed to release, said a senior official of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, Fahmi al-Qaysi.
The remaining prisoners are expected to be released within the coming two days, al-Qaysi said. They are prisoners of war captured during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war.
Iranian officials said those released Monday were Iraqi troops arrested on the Iranian border in 1991.
Kasandra Vartell of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which arranged the repatriation, said they were seized in the ``chaos'' of the 1991 war.
``Raad, this is Omar, your son. He hasn't seen you,'' cried Emad Taha Yassin, brother of one of the released prisoners.
A sobbing Omar, a teen-ager, threw himself into his father's arms.
``I was detained by the so-called Islamic Republic (of Iran),'' said Raad Taha Yassin. ``It has nothing to do with Islam ... I've been living in a tragedy.''
Some members of the waiting crowd were disappointed.
Ramzi Ali Hassan, a member of the Iraqi military band that played for the returnees, ran after one of the red buses carrying the men to ask if they had heard of his cousin, a POW in Iran. They had not.
``I feel like losing the dearest person to me. I can't describe my feeling ... But hopefully he'll be among the coming groups,'' Hassan told The Associated Press.
Later, the official Iraqi News Agency quoted al-Qaysi as saying that Iraq had handed over to Iran 50 Iranian prisoners on Monday.
Al-Qaysi said the 50 had ``nothing to do with the Iraq-Iran war or with the POWs issue and they are not POWs.''
The problem of returning POWs has bedeviled relations between Iraq and Iran for years. In the past, each state has accused the other of concealing how many prisoners it holds. Iran says Iraq still holds 2,806 of its prisoners, but the Baghdad government denies holding any Iranian POWs.
More than 100,000 prisoners of war Iran have been repatriated since the end of the war.
(China Daily January 22, 2002)
