The United States transferred to a Qatari account six billion dollars in Iranian funds, until now frozen in South Korea based on international sanctions against the regime in Tehran, as part of a prisoner exchange deal reached in August following a year of negotiations. He declared this to the international agency Afp a source close to the matter, specifying that a plane from Qatar reached Iran for the evacuation of five US citizens detained: at the same time, the Washington government will have to let five Iranians go.
They will return to America four men and a woman, detained in the infamous Evin prison (the same one where the Italian Alessia Piperno was locked up) and also in possession of an Iranian passport. Between them Mothers Shargi, a 59-year-old businessman, and 67-year-old environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, who is also a British citizen. In exchange, Washington will release five Iranian citizens held in US prisons after they were found guilty of having violated the sanctions.
“The prisoner exchange will take place today and five prisoners, citizens of the Islamic Republic, will be released from US prisons,” the spokesperson for the Islamic Republic confirmed at a press conference. Foreign Ministry Iranian. Of these, he specified, two will return to Iran, and one will join his family in a foreign country, while two others have expressed the desire to remain in the United States.