Introduction
Approximately one million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Iraqi citizens, were
forcibly deported to Iran between April 1980 and 1990. The deportations commenced six months
prior to the start of the Iraq/Iran war. The deportees were accused of being of Iranian origin
and therefore sent back to Iran. Their belongings and documents, including their homes,
businesses, passports and Iraqi citizenship documents were confiscated.
To silence protest on the part of the deportees and prevent retaliatory action, the Iraqi
authorities detained members of each family as hostages, approximately one detainee for
every 10 deportees, giving about 100,000 detainees. The majority of these hostages were men aged
between 16 and 40.
Many of these hostages were subsequently released. Foreign nationals, other than Iranians, were
released first. Non-Moslem Iranians were released next. This was followed by the release of some
of the detainees with immediate family members still living in Iraq. Lastly some of the detainees,
the whole of whose immediate families had already been deported and who were not doing military
service at the time of arrest were released from custody and immediately deported.
The remainder of the hostages were accused of being Or Iranian origin, although a large proportion
of them were doing military service (appendix B for Military papers)
and Iraqi law only allows Iraqi citizens to serve in the army. The 'civilian' detainees also all had Iraqi
citizenship(appendix H, photo 16 for citizenship documents).
Between 1986 and 1989 a further small number of hostages with immediate family members still living in Iraq were
released (testimonies of ex-hostages in appendix A). During the eight-year Iraq/Iran war (1980-88) some of the
hostages were sent to the war. Other hostages died from disease or as a result of the harsh conditions and inhuman
treatment in their places of detention.
Most of these hostages were well educated and they included lawyers. teachers, doctors, university lecturers
and students, business people and high-ranking military officers (appendix I, photos 8, 11, and 12).
Unfortunately the Iraqi Government has not yet released any information about these hostages. At present the
Committee has the names and details of 935 of the hostages remaining in detention and knows of at least another
three thousand, whose families have not given the Committee information for fear of reprisals. However, due to
lack of information from the Iraqi authorities, it is very difficult to arrive at a precise figure for the
number of people remaining in detention. This may be anything from about four thousand to many times that number.