Captive Israeli soldiers 'held in Iran' [View All]

Source: AFP

Captive Israeli soldiers 'held in Iran'
7 hours ago

DUBAI (AFP) — Two Israeli soldiers captured by Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah in 2006 have been handed to Iran and could be freed in a German-brokered swap, an Arabic newspaper reported on Sunday.

Asharq Al-Awsat quoted a source identified as a high-ranking official in the office of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying they had been transferred by the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

"The operation to transfer the two Israeli soldiers to (a country) outside Lebanon and then to Iran was executed by a special unit belonging to the Al-Quds Legion," the source said, according to London-based Saudi-owned paper.

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The source claimed that the soldiers could be part of an exchange involving Germany, which decided last week to free an Iranian agent jailed for life for the 1992 murder of four Kurdish dissidents.

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A senior Israeli government official dismissed the report as "nonsense" and said it was an "attempt to dissiminate disinformation on this extremely sensitive issue."

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