Killer of former Iranian PM may be freed in France

Ali Vakili Rad, who was convicted of the 1991 assassination of the last prime minister under the ousted Shah of Iran, will be freed from prison and sent home to Tehran, the French prosecutor's office said Tuesday.

The decision by the Paris Court of Appeals had been considered likely since the French Interior Ministry issued an expulsion order Monday. The French prosecutor's office said in a statement 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.

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.

Shahpour Bakhtiar, a respected politician, served as the last prime minister under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution. Bakhtiar fled to France.

Vakili Rad was found guilty in 1994 of killing Bakhtiar, then 76, and sentenced to life in prison. During Vakili Rad's trial, the prosecution representing the state maintained that Iran was behind the slayings.

The only issues that might interfere with 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.

Judges already had said they favor a conditional release as long as an expulsion order had come through. French law allows expulsion for foreigners with no ties to France once they are released.

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, has also denied speculation of a deal. "My client was in a position to be freed before the arrest of Miss Reiss."

An 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. Bakhtiar was killed in his home in the western Paris suburb of Suresnes. Two other Iranians were convicted for logistical roles in the killings, and two other alleged killers were never caught.