Tehran Hails France for Freeing Five

The Iranian government Saturday welcomed the release of a pro-Iranian Lebanese gunman and four accomplices from a French jail, and a Tehran newspaper said the action could help efforts to free Western hostages in Lebanon.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Anis Naccache and the four others arrived Friday night in Tehran after being pardoned by French President Francois Mitterrand.

France had jailed them for killing two people in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in Paris in 1980. Naccache’s accomplices were another Lebanese, two Iranians and a Palestinian.

The news agency quoted an Iranian Embassy spokesman in Paris as saying that the release was a humanitarian, positive gesture which would “greatly affect the process of expansion of bilateral ties.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmoud Vaezi met Naccache on arrival at the Tehran airport, and they spoke briefly, report said.

The Tehran Times called the release a welcome move which could “facilitate the Islamic Republic’s humanitarian efforts to convince the Lebanese groups to free the hostages.”

Naccache has described himself as the representative in France of Hezbollah, or Party of God, the pro-Iranian Lebanese group believed to hold most of the Western hostages in Lebanon.

France has no more nationals among the hostages. There has been speculation that the pardon was linked to negotiations over repayment of a $1-billion loan to the French nuclear consortium Eurodif by the late shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.