Iraqi FM: The Irbil Five could be released by June

posted at 8:51 pm on May 8, 2007 by Allahpundit
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The perfect complement to that PJM vid from earlier today. You’ve seen the bombs; now here’s the update on what’s happening with five of the Quds Force degenerates who are bringing them into the country.

Mr Zebari said there was “a possibility they will be released”. This is because under an agreement governing such detentions the US “can detain them for 90 days and this can be renewed once. This is the military rule for holding such people: charge them, hand them over to the Iraqi authorities or release them. The time for their detention will expire in June when a decision will have to be made.”…

“Iran doesn’t want to bring down this government,” he says. “It’s friendly, its Shia-led; they know everybody in it. They could not find a better government in a lottery. [Exactly the problem. -- ed.] It came to power legitimately through the popular will of the people.”

How strong of a possibility? Well, Condi’s been pushing for their release for weeks and the military just recently relented on family visits for the five. With a de facto September deadline to show progress on the surge, Bush might be willing to make a goodwill gesture in hopes of getting some Iranian cooperation (which won’t work, but that won’t stop him). Still, he held out a lot longer than I thought he would. My date in the Quds Pro Quo pool was April 26th.

Tangentially related and worthy of note but not a new post, a Saudi paper owned by the royal family claims that some of the jihadis pinched two weeks ago in that mega-bust had been liaising with AQ in — wouldn’t you know it — Syria.

“One of the uncovered cells used Syria as a `safe house’ for meetings and coordination with active elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq,” Al-Watan claimed. “The houses were used for recruiting and testing loyalties of new members, most of them were youngsters.”

The paper said that this cell, described as the most dangerous of the seven, had members train in camps in a mountainous area inside neighboring Yemen and close to the Saudi border.

All plausible, but the Saudis obviously have an interest in demonizing Iran and its allies and they’re also hopelessly compromised fanatics themselves, so discount the credibility accordingly.

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