US: No Iranians among ICRC delegation

AP: The U.S. military issued a statement Friday clarifying that there were no Iranians in an International Committee of the Red Cross team who had visited five Iranians in American detention after they were arrested three months ago in Irbil. Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) – The U.S. military issued a statement Friday clarifying that there were no Iranians in an International Committee of the Red Cross team who had visited five Iranians in American detention after they were arrested three months ago in Irbil.

On Wednesday, U.S. military spokesman said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said that an ICRC delegation had visited the captive Iranians and that one of the group was Iranian.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, issued the clarifying statement Friday in an e-mail statement to The Associated Press.

“The ICRC committees that visited the five Iranians detained in Irbil on two occasions did not contain an Iranian national. One of the two committees contained an individual who speaks Farsi and lived in Iran, but he is a British citizen by birth,” Garver said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor, meanwhile, said the United States was still considering an Iranian government request to visit the five.

Washington has said the five men, who were arrested in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, were rounded up on suspicion that they were providing aid to militia fighters who are targeting U.S. and Iraqi troops and civilians.