Oil Platforms merits hearings open

Iran filed an additional response to the counterclaim after the Court authorized another pleading.

The ICRC completed a handover that included 507 Iraqis held since the 1980–88 war and 188 held since the 1991 Gulf War. The groups had different origins.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri visited Iran for talks on unresolved bilateral issues left by the war. Diplomatic contact did not itself settle every humanitarian or reparations claim.

Iran received the remains of 570 soldiers and returned 1,166 Iraqi remains in a border exchange. Recovery did not mean every returned person had been identified.

A Tehran funeral honored 570 Iranians whose remains had been returned from Iraq. RFE/RL’s Persian service reported public debate over how the men had died.

The hearings ended and the Court moved to deliberation on the claim and counterclaim.

ICRC archive documentation identifies a repatriation operation on 17–18 March. Some Iraqi prisoners remained for a separate return in May, so the March operation was not comprehensive.

The ICRC documented a final operation returning Iraqi prisoners from Iran. The unresolved captivity legacy had outlasted the war by nearly fifteen years.

The ICRC handed the remains of two Iraqi soldiers killed in the Iran-Iraq War to British authorities at a Basra warehouse, preserving a humanitarian channel after Iraq’s invasion.

The Court rejected the U.S. security justification for the attacks, but did not uphold Iran’s treaty-commerce claim. It also dismissed the U.S. counterclaim.