Joint Iraq–Iran intelligence operation rescues kidnapped Iraqi

Shafaq News– Baghdad

Security forces freed an Iraqi citizen abducted in Iran through an external intelligence operation carried out in coordination with Iranian authorities, Iraq’s National Intelligence Service announced on Thursday.

In a statement, the agency confirmed the rescue of Hussein Taha Yassin, who had been held by a criminal gang seeking to extort his family. Investigators, it noted, located the detention site and arrested several suspects linked to the kidnapping.

The operation follows a recent rise in abductions of Iraqi travelers in Iran, particularly from Basra, with criminal networks demanding large ransoms and issuing death threats. In one case, an Iraqi visitor to the Imam Reza Shrine, the eighth Imam in Shiite Islam and a major pilgrimage site, in Mashhad, northeast Iran, was kidnapped while touring northern Iran, after which captors demanded $20,000. In another incident, the family of an Iraqi man identified as Hassan appealed for urgent intervention after he was abducted, in exchange for a $40,000 ransom, while retrieving a personal item in Iran.