Iran urges Qatar to allow fact-finding team to launch probe into missing pilots
Iran urged Qatar to allow a fact-finding team to enter the Persian Gulf country to launch an investigation into the whereabouts of the three Iranian pilots missing after an operation against a US base in the Arab country in March.
“The Qatari government should allow and facilitate the entry of the Iran Air Force fact-finding team rather than deny the detention of Iranian pilots,” Commander of the Missing-in-Action Search Committee of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Seyyed Mohammad Bagherzadeh, said on Sunday.
He added that a team of elite experts from the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) has been waiting for months to obtain permission to enter Qatar and conduct a field investigation.
The senior Iranian military commander further advised the Qatari government to allow the IRIAF fact-finding team to depart for Doha, rather than deny the matter and block the revelation of the truth.
He once again called upon the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to follow up on the cases of the Iranian fighter pilots.
On Saturday, Bagherzadeh said Qatari forces captured three Iranian pilots alive during an operation in response to the recent US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
He made the remarks in a letter addressed to the President of the ICRC, Mirjana Spoljaric.
According to Bagherzadeh, following the start of the US and Israeli strikes against Iran in late February, some of which were launched from US bases in the region, two Iranian Army Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jets flew to Qatar on March 2 to conduct a military mission.
The fighter jets were hit by the “enemy’s air defense” on the way back, and the pilots ejected, he said.
While one of the four Iranian pilots in the jets died, the rest were captured alive by Qatari forces.
The body of the fallen Iranian pilot, Majid Kazemi, was returned to Iran and buried in the southern city of Shiraz in late July.
Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari later denied the assertions, stating that Doha is surprised by the statements and reaffirmed that Qatari forces are not holding any surviving aircrew.