(12-30) 04:00 PST Baghdad -- Two senior Iranian operatives, who were detained by U.S. troops in Iraq and were strongly suspected of planning attacks against American military forces and Iraqi targets, were expelled to Iran on Friday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The decision to free the men was made by the Iraqi government and has angered U.S. military officials, who say the operatives were seeking to foment instability in Baghdad.
"These are really serious people," said one U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They were the target of a very focused raid based on intelligence, and it would be hard for one to believe that their activities weren't endorsed by the Iranian government. It's a situation that is obviously troubling."
One of the commanders, identified by officials simply as Chizari, was the third-highest-ranking official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' al-Quds Brigade, the unit most active in aiding, arming and training groups outside Iran, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, U.S. officials said. The other commander was described as equally significant to Iran's support of foreign militaries, but not as high ranking.
American military forces nabbed the two men in raids last week. Their capture, U.S. officials said, represents the strongest evidence yet that Iran's Shiite theocracy is meddling in Iraq's affairs and strengthening its relationship with the government in Baghdad.
Iraq's Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said it wanted to continue "good relations with its neighbor Iran and hopes that such incidents will not be repeated in the future, which may disturb these relations."
U.S. defense officials familiar with the raids said the captured Iranians had detailed weapons lists, documents pertaining to shipments of weapons into Iraq, organizational charts, telephone records and maps, among other sensitive intelligence information.
"The evidence shows that they were exactly up to the things our suspicions indicated," said one U.S. defense official.
The Iraqi government decided to honor Iran's claims that the two detainees had diplomatic immunity. U.S. officials had argued that although the men had diplomatic passports, they were operating under aliases and therefore did not deserve immunity.
Despite their frustration at the release of the Iranians, U.S. officials said they now had a treasure trove of data from computers and documents and the lists of weaponry recently shipped to Iraq.
"The materials they had will factor into additional planning for operations and will likely be very helpful. But with weapons and advanced IEDs (improvised explosive devices) coming into the country, we've identified a major problem," said a U.S. defense official.
The U.S. military said Friday that three more Marines were killed during fighting in Anbar province, making December -- 106 U.S. deaths as of Friday -- the deadliest month this year for American troops. In October, 105 U.S. service members were killed. Through Thursday, at least 2,139 Iraqis have been killed in war-related or sectarian violence, an average rate of 76 people a day, according to an Associated Press count.
In violence Friday, a suicide bomber killed at least nine people near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, and 32 tortured bodies were found across the country as Iraqis braced for Saddam Hussein's execution.
American troops killed six people and destroyed a weapons cache in separate raids in Baghdad and northwest of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. military said. One of the raids targeted two buildings in the village of Tharthar, where U.S. troops found 16 pounds of homemade explosives, two large bombs, a rocket-propelled grenade, suicide vests and multiple batteries, the military said.
A suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt detonated himself near a mosque in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding about a dozen, police said.
Twenty-two bodies showing signs of torture were found dumped on the streets of the Iraqi capital Friday, and 10 more were found in Baquba northeast of Baghdad, police and morgue officials said.