Contractor: Hostages in Syria forced to confess under pressure
Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:7PM
Amir Mehdi Kazemi, Press TV, Tehran
While the whereabouts of some 11 Iranian nationals abducted in Syria on January 26 still remains unknown, a new video released on the internet shows five of the seven Iranian engineers and technicians kidnapped last month in the troubled city of Homs are still alive. The video attempts to show the men making confessions claiming that they were members of Iran's revolutionary guard's corp. the IRGC and that they were involved in military operations in Syria.
This is while documents released in Iran show the men working at the Jandar power plant in Syria. The MAPNA group is a well known Iranian company specialized in the development of power plants both inside and outside Iran. The company says that all the men where working for Iranian companies in charge of building the power plant as MAPNA contractors. The company says that the men had been forced to make false confessions.
On December 21st, 2011 the five men namely Hassan Hassani, Majid Qanbari, Sajjad Amirian, Ahad Sohrabi and Kiumars Qobadi were abducted on their way to work by gunmen who later appeared to be members of the al-Farouq brigade, affiliated to the so-called Free Syrian army. 24 hours later two other Iranian experts namely Pejman Bovairi and Abdolkhaleq Sahneh were also nabbed after trying to clarify the whereabouts of their colleagues in the city of Homs.
The latest video claims that the five hostages in the picture were IRGC members by simply referring to one of their ID cards.
According to Iran's embassy in Damascus the al-Farouq has announced that it would soon release two of the seven hostages. This is while Iran's foreign ministry has condemned the kidnappings and has called for the safe and secure release of all the hostages including the seven engineers and the 11 pilgrims kidnapped last Thursday.
