France Frees 5 Jailed for Trying to Kill Iranian
Lebanese guerrilla Anis Naccache and four accomplices, jailed after trying to kill former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in 1980, were granted a presidential pardon by France on Friday, the Justice Ministry announced.
The five men were immediately put on board an Iran Air plane bound for Tehran, airport sources said.
The ministry said the five, who had served 10 years of their jail sentences, were pardoned by President Francois Mitterrand and then expelled.
Naccache’s four accomplices were another Lebanese, two Iranians and a Palestinian. Naccache and three other members of the group were serving life sentences, and the fifth was serving a term of 20 years.
A police officer and a passerby were shot dead in the 1980 Paris attack on Bakhtiar, the shah of Iran’s last prime minister. Another police officer was paralyzed for life. Bakhtiar was not injured in the attack.
Naccache’s imprisonment soured relations between Paris and Tehran. The Iranian government insisted that France had promised to free him as part of a 1988 deal that won freedom for all French hostages then held in Lebanon.
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