Unconfirmed reports from Britain and Iraq indicate that a deal may have been struck to free five British hostages who were kidnapped almost two years ago in an Iraqi ministry in the heart of Baghdad. According to the Telegraph, the group that kidnapped the Britons said U.S. has agreed to turn over 10 senior “Special Groups” operatives to free the men. The Special Groups are what the United States calls the Iranian-backed Shia terror groups.
Qais al Khazali was the leader of the Asib al Haq, the violent breakaway faction of the Mahdi Army that conducts attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians with the deadly explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs. His group was behind the raid on the Karbala Joint Provincial Coordination Center, which resulted in the kidnapping and murder of five U.S. officers and soldiers. Qazali’s men attempted to move the U.S. soldiers into Iran before they abandoned the mission. Ali Mussa Daqduq is not just an average Hezbollah operative. Daqduq is a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah and has commanded both a Hezbollah special operations unit and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s security detail. He was sent to Iraq with the explicit purpose to aid in transforming the Mahdi Army into a movement like Hezbollah. While the other Special Groups operatives who may be released have not been named, candidates would include Azhar al Dulaimi, one of Qazali’s senior tactical commanders; Mahmud Farhadi, one of the three Iranian regional commanders in the Ramazan Corps, the command set up by Iran’s Qods Force to direct operations in Iraq; and the “Irbil Five,” the five Qods Force agents detained in northern Iraq at the end of 2006. The report has yet to be confirmed, but if it is true, the release of these Iranian agents would be a blow to the improved security situation in Iraq and provide an unneeded morale boost to the Shia terror groups which have been beaten back over the past two years.
