French court orders release of killer of former Iranian PM under last Shah

Killer of former Iranian PM to be freed in France

PARIS — An Iranian who was jailed for life in France for assassinating a former Iranian prime minister will be freed and allowed to return home, raising speculation that he is part of a prisoner exchange deal between the two countries.

The French prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that the country’s laws allow Ali Vakili Rad, who was convicted of killing Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last Iranin prime minister under the ousted Shah of Iran in 1991, to be released early.

Vakili Rad will be sent back to Tehran, where he is regarded as a hero by Iran’s leaders for killing someone they considered a counterrevolutionary.

Speaking shortly before Tuesday’s announcement in Paris, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, welcomed Vakili Rad’s expected return to Iran.

“We also heard that Mr. Ali Vakili Rad after the verdict that is issued by a French court is going to enter Iran. To see him in Iran after years, we are pleased,” Mehmanparast said at his weekly news conference.

Vakili Rad would be the second Iranian freed by French courts in less than two weeks, leading to speculation of a deal between Paris and Tehran to obtain freedom for a young French academic convicted by Iran of spying, who returned home Sunday.

French officials firmly have denied any dealmaking between Paris and Tehran to obtain the liberation of Clotile Reiss who was sentenced to 10 years in prison by Iran, with her jail term quickly commuted and replaced with a fine of 3 billion rials ($300,000). Reiss was arrested July 1 in postelection violence in Iran.

“We were never in a logic of the slightest bargaining,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Monday during an interview with Associated Press Television News. When such questions are asked “that means one has doubts about the independence of the French justice system.”

Sorin Margulis, Vakili Rad’s attorney, also has denied speculation of a deal. “My client was in a position to be freed before the arrest of Miss Reiss.”

A French appeals court ruled July 2 that Vakili Rad could be given conditional freedom. The final decision had been postponed twice.

France has cut deals with Iran in the past to obtain freedom for French citizens.

In 1990, France pardoned the man convicted of carrying out a 1980 failed attack on Bakhtiar that killed two other people. Anis Naccache, a Lebanese, and his four accomplices were expelled to Tehran. Naccache’s freedom had been demanded by Iranian-backed terrorists who set off deadly bombs around Paris in 1986.

Bakhtiar, a respected, moderate opposition leader, was brought in as prime minister by the shah of Iran in a bid by the crumbling monarchy to save itself from growing revolutionary fervor. The shah was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and Bakhtiar fled to France.

In 1991, Bakhtiar, then 76, was killed in his home in the western Paris suburb of Suresnes.

Vakili Rad was found guilty in 1994 of killing Bakhtiar and sentenced to life in prison. During Vakili Rad’s trial, the prosecution representing the state maintained that Iran was behind the slayings. Two other Iranians were convicted for logistical roles in the killings, and two other alleged killers were never caught.

Tuesday’s decision by the Paris Court of Appeals to free Vakili Rad had been considered likely after the French Interior Ministry issued an expulsion order Monday. French judges already had said they favored a conditional release, if an expulsion order had come through.

French law allows expulsion for foreigners with no ties to France once they are released. The French prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that it was able to order Vakili Rad’s release because he had requested that he be sent back to Iran if he were freed.

The only issues that could delay a Tuesday departure are whether Vakili Rad has received an up-to-date passport and whether formalities are concluded in time to catch a flight home.