News-Info-Alerts

Re: Iraqi POW Goes Home After 21 Years in Iran Captivity

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 07, 2003

"21 years as POW in Iran ends suddenly for Iraqi
59 prisoners surprised with flight home

MAUREEN FAN Knight Ridder


BAGHDAD - When Saber Mohammed Salah last saw home, his daughters were 4 and 7 and his son was 2. Today, his daughters are married, his son is an adult, and Salah, after 21 years as a prisoner of war in Iran, feels reborn.

"I feel just like I was dead and came back to life again," Salah said Tuesday, wiping away tears. "My happiness is indescribable."

Salah and 58 other POWs from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war were flown home Monday from Tehran in a gesture aimed at currying favor with the United States.

"No one told us that we will get out," he recalled of his release. "Just four days ago, some officials took us from Al-Awas (where he was imprisoned) to Tehran. Then a man from the Red Crescent Society came and told me I was going to Iraq.

"At that moment, I was so happy because I never believed I would see my family or my home again. We thought we would die in Iran."

There was no warning to the family that Salah would be sent back to Iraq.

Salah said he lived in a huge room with hundreds of other Iraqi prisoners until he was plucked -- there was no explanation of why he was selected -- to be repatriated.

Now home, Salah found a country he hardly recognizes. So accustomed to the thin soup his Iranian jailers had dished out, he scarcely knew what to do with the spoon he was offered when the International Committee of the Red Cross flew him home on the first direct flight from Tehran to Baghdad.

The garden Salah knew was gone; relatives built shops on his prized flower beds in order to charge rent to make up for his lost wages. He was 36 when he left. Today, at 57, he is a silver-haired grandfather. His commander in chief has been ousted from power.

Nearby, other former POWs who returned on the same flight from Tehran grabbed bags containing new clothing and health and sanitation kits as they piled into Red Cross vehicles in front of the Um al-Khoura hotel. Their convoy was bound for Irbil, Mosul and Kirkuk. Another group of cars will carry other POWs to Basra today."