This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/world/middleeast/syria-iranians-prisoner-exchange.html

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 5 Version 6
Iranian Captives Freed in Prisoner Exchange in Syria Iranian Captives Freed in Prisoner Exchange in Syria
(about 5 hours later)
ISTANBUL — More than 2,000 prisoners incarcerated by the Syrian authorities were being released on Wednesday in return for 48 Iranians freed by rebels after five months in captivity in what appeared to be the biggest prisoner swap since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began almost two years ago. BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than 2,100 people incarcerated by the Syrian authorities were being released on Wednesday in return for 48 Iranians freed by rebels after five months in captivity, Turkish and Iranian officials said, in what appeared to be the biggest prisoner swap since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria began almost two years ago.
The exchange, brokered by Turkey and Qatar, came days after Mr. Assad warned on Sunday that he would not abandon the fight against armed adversaries pressing on the approaches to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and brushed aside calls for him to quit. The timing of the exchange, brokered by Turkey and Qatar, was notable, suggesting that negotiations over at least some aspects of the Syrian crisis had not been abandoned three days after Mr. Assad warned that he would not negotiate with his armed adversaries and dismissed calls for him to quit.
Word of the exchange dominated news in Iran, the Syrian government’s only Middle East ally, leading the Web site of the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran state television showed a brief clip of the released hostages at the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, grinning, flashing victory signs and holding flowers. In an interview on Iran state TV, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, thanked those involved in the swap for the hostages and expressed happiness that “we managed to get them released.” Word of the exchange came as allies of Mr. Assad and of his opponents announced that they would continue talking, at least to one another. Lakhdar Brahimi, the special Syria envoy from the United Nations and the Arab League, will meet in Geneva on Friday with senior diplomats from Russia, which has opposed efforts to unseat Mr. Assad forcibly, and the United States, which, like Turkey, supports the armed opposition and wants Mr. Assad out.
Precise details of the exchange, including when the 48 Iranians would be repatriated, remained unclear. Mr. Mehmanparast also said two Iranian engineers who had been abducted earlier in Syria remained captive. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a regional power broker allied to the Western and Arab nations seeking Mr. Assad’s departure, said he hoped the exchange on Wednesday would lead to freedom for more prisoners in Syria. While Mr. Assad’s unbending stance seemed to make a political solution to Syria’s civil war more remote, his only major foreign allies, Russia and Iran, have their eye on maintaining regional influence in a possible post-Assad future, and an interest in ending the Syrian war with state institutions intact. They have made clear they still favor a settlement. Backers of the opposition, too, worry about chaos in Syria and the region as the fight drags on, and the prisoner exchange suggested that Turkey and Iran, at least, wanted to maintain good relations even as they find themselves on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict.
“We wish many other innocent people, and people in need, to be released from Syrian jails without delay,” Mr. Erdogan said in a televised news conference in Niamey, Nigeria, where he arrived on an official visit. The prisoner exchange was an enormous relief for Iran, which had long contended the 48 hostages were innocent civilians seized on a religious pilgrimage — not pro-Assad paramilitary fighters as claimed by their rebel captors.
“This process needs to be appreciated. We are not in a position to say anything more than, ‘May this produce some good.’ ” The exchange was announced as Mr. Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, made his strongest suggestion yet that he would try to pressure Mr. Assad to step aside. Mr. Brahimi’s comments, in interviews with the BBC and Reuters, were his first since Mr. Assad, in a rare public address on Sunday, appeared to reject Mr. Brahimi’s mediation efforts as foreign interference.
The exchange emerged from months of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving a Turkish charitable foundation, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an Islamist-leaning aid organization based in Istanbul and widely known as I.H.H. “In Syria, in particular, I think that what people are saying is that a family ruling for 40 years is a little bit too long,” Mr. Brahimi told the BBC. Reuters quoted him as saying that Mr. Assad would surely not be a member of any transitional government, envisioned in a peace plan that major powers, including Russia and the United States, had drafted last year in Geneva.
The aid group had set up an operation center in Damascus to unite 2,130 prisoners, including 73 women, at one base while another aid team remained in Douma, near the Syrian capital, to oversee the return of the 48 Iranians. There were other signs that opposing nations were seeking to bridge differences on Syria. Iran’s foreign minister is scheduled to hold talks on Syria on Thursday with President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, who has made Mr. Assad’s removal his central foreign policy goal. A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that even countries that disagree on Syria realize its crisis has no military solution, and should talk more to bring their views closer. And a Turkish deputy foreign minister arrived on Wednesday in Moscow for high-level talks on the crisis, the Turkish news media reported.
“Captivity is a hard thing,” said Bulent Yildirim, the foundation’s director, who coordinated the exchange in Damascus. Some Middle East political experts speculated that the timing of the prisoner exchange — and the lopsided ratio of roughly 44 people released by Syria for every freed Iranian hostage — reflected both Mr. Assad’s increasing dependence on Iran as well as Iran’s increased pressure on him, possibly out of fear that Syria’s instability may worsen.
“I saw young women crying, many people lost a lot of weight, and there were also many sick people.” “I’m wondering if this is the beginning of Iran starting to cut its losses, pulling out these folks, reducing its presence in the country,” said Mona Yacoubian,  a senior adviser on the Middle East at the Stimson Center, a Washington research group.
The Syrian opposition has claimed that the Iranians are members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but Tehran has denied the assertion, saying the captives are Shiite civilian pilgrims. The Iranians were seized in August while traveling on a bus from Damascus International Airport to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of the capital, Iran’s Press TV said.  But some members of the Syrian opposition said the prisoner exchange merely showed that Mr. Assad showed more concern for Tehran than for his own soldiers, far more of whom are being held in captivity by rebels.
Opposition fighters had threatened to kill the Iranians unless Mr. Assad’s forces halted military operations. But since then the fighting around Damascus has intensified. “If only we had half a million Iranians,” Adeeb Shishakly, an exile opposition member said on Facebook, “we would have released them for the freedom of 23 million Syrians.”
Iran is Mr. Assad’s main ally in a region where most Arab states and neighboring Turkey have turned against him. The Iranian captives offered the rebels holding them a source of powerful pressure on the Syrian leader to release opposition prisoners in return. Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement thanking Turkey and Qatar for helping to secure the release of the Iranian hostages. Iran state television showed a brief clip of them at the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, grinning, flashing victory signs and holding flowers.
“We expect the swap to be completed in the next hour,” Huseyin Oruc, a member of the aid group’s executive board said in a telephone interview around midday. He said the captives released by the Syrian authorities included four Turks and a Palestinian. The Iranians were seized in August while traveling to a Shiite shrine near Damascus. Opposition fighters had threatened to kill them unless Mr. Assad’s forces stopped shooting. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said he hoped the exchange would lead to freedom for more prisoners in Syria — and emphasized, “This process needs to be appreciated.”
By midafternoon it was not clear whether the 2,130 prisoners had been freed. The exchange emerged from months of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving a Turkish charitable group, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, widely known as I.H.H.
“It is the first time that the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ we initiated succeeded in releasing such a large group of people at once,” Mr. Oruc said. “There are many more held captive and our efforts to free them will continue without delay.” The group had set up an operation center in Damascus to unite 2,130 prisoners, including 73 women, at one base while another aid team remained in Douma, near the Syrian capital, to oversee the return of the 48 Iranians.
The Turkish aid group gained international attention in 2010 for organizing a flotilla of boats heading to Gaza, ostensibly with relief supplies, that prompted a deadly Israeli commando raid in which eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent died. At the time of the raid, the group was reported to have extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite. The episode began an unraveling of Turkey’s once close ties with Israel. Precise details remained unclear. There were no pictures or lists released of the Syrian prisoners, or official confirmation from the Syrian government.
In recent months, the organization has also been part of negotiations to free smaller numbers of prisoners, including two Turkish journalists held in Syria, Reuters reported. It has been active since the early 1990s in charitable works in the Middle East and Africa, focusing most recently on Gaza. But Syrian fighters and activists reported that prisoners had been freed, including the “brides of freedom,” Rima Dali and three others arrested in a Damascus market while wearing wedding dresses and carrying signs condemning bloodshed. The aid group said the prisoners included four Turks and a Palestinian, and its director, Bulent Yildirim, described prisoners at the Damascus exchange he coordinated.
Since the start of the uprising against Mr. Assad, the organization has also cast itself as a leading private charitable organization in Syria, delivering food and other basic supplies and pursuing what it calls “humanitarian diplomacy” to help free captive civilians. “Captivity is a hard thing,” he said. “I saw young women crying, many people lost a lot of weight, and there were also many sick people.”
While the numbers involved in Wednesday’s exchange seemed dramatic, some rebel commanders said more modest prisoner exchanges had become a feature of the conflict. The Turkish aid group gained international attention in 2010 for organizing a flotilla of boats heading to Gaza, ostensibly with relief supplies, that prompted a deadly Israeli commando raid in which eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent died. Recently, the organization has also negotiated to free smaller numbers of prisoners, including two Turkish journalists held in Syria, Reuters reported, and delivered aid to Syrians.
The leader of a rebel fighting group in the central city of Hama, reached via Skype, said pro-government militia members had captured his uncle and two other relatives in a village in the northern Idlib province more than a month ago. Some rebel commanders said more modest prisoner exchanges had become a feature of the conflict.
 “The  only  way to release them is capturing  hostages,” the commander said, adding that negotiations were under way to win the release of his relatives in return for 12 captives held by the rebels. Two months ago, the commander said, nine members of the pro-government militia, known as shabiha, were  exchanged for five captured rebels. Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations, but a harsh suppression broadened into civil war with an estimated 60,000 people killed, according to United Nations estimates. The leader of a rebel fighting group in the central city of Hama, reached via Skype, said pro-government militia members had captured his uncle and two other relatives in a village in the northern Idlib Province last month.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul and Alan Cowell from London. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.

“The only way to release them is capturing hostages,” the commander said. He said talks were under way to release his relatives in return for 12 captives held by rebels. Two months ago, he added, nine members of a pro-government militia, known as shabiha, were exchanged for five captured rebels.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran, Alan Cowell from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York.