After nearly a year and a half in captivity, Qatar on Friday secured the release of 26 hostages, including members of its ruling family, in what became possibly the region’s most complex and sensitive hostage negotiation deal in recent years.
Footage released by the Iraqi interior ministry showed some of the former hostages wearing white gowns and red head scarves as they were greeted by officials in Baghdad’s "Green Zone", where the country’s main institutions are based.
Some of them could be seen later in the video boarding a Qatar Airways plane at Baghdad airport and state media later confirmed they had landed in Doha.
"Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, received Qatari nationals who were kidnapped in the Republic of Iraq on arrival at Doha International Airport this evening, " read the statement released by the Qatar News Agency.
The statement gave no details about their detention. A large motorcade was seen heading to the airport and then returning through central Doha at around 1600 GMT.
Several people with knowledge of the talks and a person involved in the negotiations said the hostage deal was linked to one of the largest population transfers in Syria’s six-year-long civil war, and was delayed for several days due to an explosion one week ago that killed at least 130 people, most of them children and government supporters, waiting to be transferred.
The transfer of thousands of Syrian civilians was also tied to another deal involving 750 political prisoners to be released by the Syrian government.
The complexity of the talks highlights Qatar’s role as an experienced and shrewd facilitator in hostage negotiations — this time involving members of the Gulf state’s ruling family.
Qatar is home to Centcom’s regional headquarters and is where the US has its largest military base in the Middle East. It is also a member of the US-led coalition fighting ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
The incident was sparked when the group was kidnapped on December 16, 2015 from a desert camp for falcon hunters in southern Iraq. Hunters from the Gulf states often make trips there during the winter months to buy falcons and hunt the Houbara bustard, a rare bird whose meat is prized by Arab sheikhs.
They apparently had permits to hunt in that area inside Muthanna province, some 370 kilometres south-east of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Shiite militias are active in that area and work closely with the neighbouring Shiite power Iran. and the ~Iraqi interior ministry said the hunters had failed to heed government instructions to stay within secured areas of the desert.
A person involved in the negotiations said that 11 of the captives were members of Qatar’s Al Thani ruling family,
and that the Qatari group was being held by Iraqi Shiite militia Kata’eb Hizbollah. The group officially denies it was behind the kidnapping and no other group has publicly claimed responsibility for the abduction.
The abduction of the Qatari group drew Iran, Qatar and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hizbollah into negotiations which are believed to he taken place in Beirut.
The negotiator said the continuing evacuation and transfer of thousands of Syrians from four besieged areas was central to the release of the Qataris. The two pro-government villages, Foua and Kfarya, had been besieged by rebel fighters and under a steady barrage of rockets and mortars for years. The two opposition-held towns, Zabadani and Madaya, were under government siege for joining the 2011 uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The opposition-run Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict through a network of on-the-ground activists, says the transfer included 800 armed men from both sides. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the group, lso said the population swap in Syria was directly tied to the issue of the kidnapped Qataris.

Source: The National