Masoud Barzani rejects claims he has info on missing Kuwaitis in Kurdistan Region

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Masoud Barzani, the President of the leading Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), has rejected reports which claim he has information on missing Kuwaitis or prisoners in the Kurdistan Region, stressing he will inform Kuwait if he has any info about the matter.

Recently, Kuwaiti social media networks and news agencies allegedly quoted Barzani discussing information about the country’s prisoners and missing citizens in Kurdistan.

A journalist named Najem Abdulkarim made a reference to the KDP leader on a Kuwaiti television network, claiming that shortly after the fall of the former Iraqi regime, Barzani told him that he knows the specific burial sites of Kuwaiti prisoners and missing persons in areas of the Kurdistan Region, Barzani’s press office said in a clarification statement issued on Wednesday.

“President Masoud Barzani, in this regard, completely denies the validity of the false information attributed to him and reiterates that it is completely baseless,” it added.

According to the statement, Barzani “stressed his keenness to inform Kuwaiti brothers of any information he has about this humanitarian issue, which represents a common suffering due to the Iraqi Kurds who were also captured and missing by the former regime.”

Barzani, a senior Kurdish political figure who served as president of the Kurdistan Region over the past years, visited Kuwait last month where he met several top Kuwaiti officials, including Kuwait’s Emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

The Kurdistan Region and Kuwait have strong bilateral ties and share a common history as both were oppressed under Iraq’s dictatorship regime before 2003.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany