Forty detained foreigners walked off a chartered jet at Hamad International Airport on Saturday, and the flag-draped remains of U.S. service members killed during the six-week war with Iran were transferred to American custody, in a tightly choreographed prisoner exchange that the Trump administration and the Iranian government described as the first concrete deliverable of the Islamabad ceasefire framework.

The swap, which unfolded over roughly four hours on a cordoned section of the Doha tarmac, also returned dozens of Iranian nationals held in U.S. and Israeli detention, along with a smaller group of detainees affiliated with Hezbollah whose cases had stalled in Israeli military courts for months. Qatari mediators, who hosted the handover, said no tribunal or judicial process was attached to the deal; the exchange was conducted under the bilateral terms negotiated in Islamabad earlier this month and finalized by working-level teams in Doha overnight.

“This was a humanitarian act made possible by a ceasefire that, for now, is holding,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told reporters at a midafternoon briefing. “There are no winners on this tarmac. There are families, and there are remains, and there is a fragile peace we are all working to protect.”

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe operational details, said the U.S. delegation in Doha was led by Deputy Secretary of State Marcus Whelan and that 11 sets of remains had been transferred. American forensic specialists from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency took custody of the caskets and accompanied them aboard a C-17 bound for Dover Air Force Base, where dignified transfer ceremonies are expected in the coming days. The official declined to identify the deceased but said next-of-kin notifications had been completed before the handover began.

Among the released foreigners were citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria, according to a list distributed by the Qatari foreign ministry. The group included six dual nationals who had been held in Tehran’s Evin prison, in some cases for more than two years on espionage-related charges. Iranian state television showed footage of the freed detainees boarding a Qatari Royal Flight aircraft, several embracing diplomats on the jet bridge.

In return, the United States transferred 18 Iranian nationals — most of them convicted on sanctions-evasion and export-control charges — to Iranian custody. Israel released a smaller group of detainees, including five Hezbollah-affiliated fighters captured during the southern Lebanon flare-ups of late March. Israeli officials, who had resisted any prisoner movement involving Hezbollah operatives for weeks, signed off on the list late Friday after what one Israeli security source described as “very direct” calls from Washington.

President Donald Trump, in remarks from the South Lawn shortly before the planes departed Doha, called the exchange “a powerful moment for American families who have waited and prayed” and credited the Islamabad mediators — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — for “keeping people at the table when others wanted to walk out.” He repeated that the broader ceasefire, which took effect April 15, remained “tested every single day” but was a precondition for any further releases.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking from Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport as the returnees landed, struck a more pointed tone. “Our nationals were held under sanctions that punished ordinary Iranians for the policies of a hostile system,” he said. “Their return is justice delayed, not justice granted.” He added that Iran considered the exchange “humanitarian and reciprocal” and warned against any attempt to portray it as a concession.

Notably absent from the framework was any judicial component. Earlier proposals — floated during the second week of the Islamabad talks — would have routed certain detainees through a special tribunal in a third country to adjudicate war-related conduct. That mechanism was dropped, two diplomats familiar with the negotiations said, after both Tehran and Jerusalem objected to ceding any criminal jurisdiction to outside judges. Human-rights organizations criticized the omission.

“A swap without accountability sets a troubling precedent for a conflict of this scale,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with the Levant Policy Forum. “It buys peace on the tarmac, but it leaves the questions about civilian harm, about strikes on hospitals and oil terminals, entirely unresolved.”

Family members of the returning Americans gathered overnight at a hotel near Joint Base Andrews. In a brief statement read on her behalf, Karen Mosher, whose son’s remains were among those repatriated, said the family had been told of the recovery on Thursday. “We have been living between two phone calls for ten weeks,” the statement read. “Today we got the second one. We are grateful, and we are heartbroken.”

Markets reacted modestly. Brent crude eased another 70 cents to settle near $96 a barrel in late Asian trading as the exchange progressed without incident, while the Tehran Stock Exchange briefly rallied before paring gains. Currency traders said the Iranian rial firmed slightly against the dollar on the unregulated market.

UN observers, who began deploying to the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, reported no significant ceasefire violations during the Doha operation. A small Houthi rocket launch from Yemen on Thursday and a rocket fired from Iraqi territory on Friday — both intercepted — were the only incidents recorded since the truce began, according to a daily situation report circulated by the UN office in Geneva.

Qatari officials said a second, smaller exchange involving lower-priority cases is expected within ten days, though details remained under negotiation. Whelan, asked whether the United States would seek additional concessions tied to Iran’s nuclear program in subsequent rounds, said only that “every track is now open” and that further announcements would follow consultations in Riyadh next week.