WASHINGTON — One morning last April, in the 16th month of a grueling hostage negotiation, a top Qatari diplomat sent a text message to his boss to complain about a brazen robbery being perpetrated against his own country.
Qatar had entered secret talks to free 25 of its citizens from Iraqi kidnappers, yet the bargaining had turned into a kind of group shakedown, the official said, with a half-dozen militias and foreign governments jostling to squeeze cash from the wealthy Persian Gulf state.
‘‘The Syrians, Hezbollah-Lebanon, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Iraq— all want money, and this is their chance,’’ Zayed bin Saeed al-Khayareen, Qatar’s ambassador to Iraq and chief negotiator in the hostage affair, wrote in the message. ‘‘All of them are thieves.’’
And yet the Qataris were willing to pay, and pay they did, confidential documents confirm.
In the April text message and in scores of other private exchanges spanning 1½ years, Qatari officials fret and grouse, but then appear to consent to payments totaling at least $275 million to free nine members of the royal family and 16 other Qatari nationals, according to copies of the intercepted communications obtained by The Washington Post.
The Qatari citizens were kidnapped during a hunting trip in southern Iraq. Qatari officials quickly sought help from the Iraqi government and Iraqi Shi’ite leaders in initiating contact with the kidnappers.
They soon learned that the hostages were being held by Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, an obscure Iraqi Shi’ite militant group affiliated with Kata’ib Hezbollah. Both organizations receive funding and weapons from Iran, and the latter is designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist group.
The secret records reveal for the first time that the payment plan allocated an additional $150 million in cash for individuals and groups acting as intermediaries.
These include Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata’ib Hezbollah, which has been linked to numerous lethal attacks on US troops during the Iraq War, the records show.
The payments were part of a larger deal that would involve the Iranian, Iraqi, and Turkish governments as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and at least two Syrian opposition groups, including al-Nusra Front, the notorious Sunni rebel faction linked to Al Qaeda.
The total sum demanded for the return of the hostages at times climbed as high as $1 billion, although it is not clear from the documents exactly how much money ultimately changed hands.
Qatar, which acknowledged receiving help from multiple countries in securing the hostages’ release last year, has consistently denied reports that it paid terrorist organizations as part of the deal.
In a letter last month denouncing an account of the events in The New York Times, Qatar’s ambassador to the United States asserted flatly that ‘‘Qatar did not pay a ransom.’’
‘‘The idea that Qatar would undertake activities that support terrorism is false,’’ the ambassador, Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad al-Thani, wrote.
The conversations and text messages obtained by The Post paint a more complex portrait.
They show senior Qatari diplomats appearing to sign off on side payments ranging from $5 to $50 million to Iranian and Iraqi officials and paramilitary leaders, with $25 million earmarked for a Kata’ib Hezbollah boss and $50 million set aside for ‘‘Qassem,’’ an apparent reference to Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
