Defections Iraq

Freed Iraqi prisoners of war claimed Thursday that during captivity they were offered "beautiful wives, furnished houses, cars and employment" in Iran if they refused to return home. In a press conference in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the prisoners, freed late last month in a short-lived, Red Cross-organized swap of sick and wounded captives in Iraq and Iran, said Tehran also launched a campaign "pressuring held Iraqis to betray their country."

Two Iranian pilots have defected to Iraq with their U.S.-made F-14 jet fighter, an Iraqi military spokesman said in Baghdad. The spokesman, quoted on Baghdad radio, said the plane's defecting pilot and co-pilot were a major and a captain. Last week, Iran's Speaker of Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said his country's air force had 74 or 75 of the sophisticated F-14s, but Western military analysts estimate that no more than a dozen remain operational.

Four Iranian defectors landed in Baghdad today aboard the plane of Iran's Parliament Speaker, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the official Iraqi News Agency reported. Rafsanjani, a key aide of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was not among the four, who were identified as three pilots and a flight engineer, the agency said in a report monitored in Nicosia. The report said the Falcon aircraft landed at noon. It identified the plane's pilot as Ali Akbar Mohammedi.