Spokesman for powerful Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist group said the Syrian opposition had not involved in direct talks with Iran-allied Shiite militias over the Qatari hunting party who was kidnapped in southern Iraq in 2015 and released on Friday.
Imad el-Din Mujahed said the agreement of four towns not related to the release of the Qarati hostages. Their release was due to direct negotiations between the Qatari government and the The Irqai militias, he added.
The Qatari hunting party have been handed over to a Qatari delegation in Baghdad on Friday, AFP reported.
Mujahed comments come after the news agencies said the release was part of a far-reaching regional deal involving the release of prisoners and the evacuation of civilians in neighboring Syria.
The Syrian deal included the evacuation of thousands of people from the northern Syrian villages of Fuaa and Kafraya, which are government-controlled but have been besieged by rebels.
Mujahed told Ammar Johmani that 750 detainees were freed by the Assad regime as an outcome of the Four-Town deal. 120 detainees, including 20 woman, who refused to stay in regime-held areas have reached Idlib on Friday.
“The interior ministry has received the Qatari hunters, all 26 of them,” the minister’s adviser, Wahab al-Taee, said. “They will be handed over to the Qatari envoy.”
The group of hunters, believed to include one or several prominent members of the Qatari royal family, were kidnapped in mid-December 2015 during a hunting trip in southern Iraq.
“The Qataris are now in (Prime Minister) Haider al-Abadi’s office following a deal between Jabhat al-Nusra and the kidnappers,” the source told AFP, referring to the former Al-Qaeda affiliate now known as Fateh al-Sham Front.
There was never any claim for the kidnapping of the hunters who were seized in a Shiite area of Iraq and widely believed to have been nabbed by militias with close ties to Tehran
