DOHA, AUG 16: Qatar denied on Saturday that it was holding Iranian pilots, saying they had violated Qatari airspace in March and had failed to respond to attempts to contact them.
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said on X that search and rescue teams later found the remains of one of the pilots and that it had contacted Iran to coordinate a handover.
The spokesperson said Tehran had yet to respond to an invitation to review details of its operations.
Iranian military official said on Sunday that Qatar should let an Iranian team in to investigate the fate of Iranian pilots who Tehran says are being held there, Iranian media said on Sunday.
Mohammad Baqerzadeh, commander of the Committee for the Search for Missing Persons of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, said the air force and fact-finding team had been waiting for months to enter Qatar, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Baqerzadeh accused Qatari officials of repeatedly delaying the investigation and preventing the pilots’ return to Iran. He called for the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently follow up on the case.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said that Qatar refuses to allow an Iranian expert and fact-finding committee to investigate the fate of Iranian pilots, adding that Doha should allow a team of experts to be present instead of denying the issue of the pilots’ detention.
The Qatari statement came after Iranian state news agency IRNA cited a senior military official as saying three Iranian pilots had been captured alive by Qatari forces after ejecting from fighter jets during a combat mission targeting a military base in Qatar.
The official called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to follow up on their fate.
IRNA said the mission took place during Iran’s response to US and Israeli attacks that started on February 28. Qatar said it took measures to defend its territory after the pilots entered its airspace and did not respond to attempts to communicate with them.
The US-Israeli attacks on Iran in February triggered a wider regional war, with Tehran striking targets in Israel and US military facilities in the Gulf.
