France Convicts 2 Iranians in Murder of Exiled Leader : Courts: Prosecutor says Tehran ‘at the heart’ of group that stabbed former prime minister of Iran.

After hearing testimony linking the state of Iran to a worldwide terror network, a French court Tuesday convicted two Iranians of murder in the 1991 assassination of Shahpour Bakhtiar, one of the Tehran regime’s political opponents.

Ali Vakili Rad, 35, one of three men directly involved in the stabbing death of Bakhtiar and an aide in his Paris apartment, was sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors said he was a secret agent of VEVAK, the intelligence and security agency that monitors the Iranian government’s opponents worldwide.

Two other alleged assassins, along with other accomplices, are still at large. French investigators say some of the suspects may be in the United States.

A second defendant, Massoud Hendi, 47, a relative of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and former Paris bureau chief of Iran’s broadcasting network, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison for helping the killers obtain false documents to enter France.

A third man, a diplomat in Tehran’s embassy in Switzerland and nephew of Iran’s current president, was acquitted of helping the killers escape through Geneva.

The five-week trial, presided over by a special terrorism court of seven magistrates, had created a political dilemma for the French government, which has buckled to pressure from the Iranian government in previous terrorism cases.

While it wanted to show that terrorist acts would be punished, the French did not want a political trial that would increase tensions between their nation and Iran and touch off renewed terrorist attacks.

Last year, the French government, ignoring an extradition request from the Swiss government, expelled to Tehran two Iranians wanted for terrorist acts in Switzerland. And in 1990, the French government pardoned an Iranian sentenced to life in prison for attempting to kill Bakhtiar.

The latest trial focused on the crime itself. Much of French investigators’ evidence of a vast terrorist network, which stretched from Istanbul to Los Angeles, was not presented in court. Since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979, 63 exiles have been killed or wounded.

But the French prosecutor, Jacques Mouton, contended in court that the Islamic Republic of Iran was “at the heart” of the criminal organization that ordered the killing of Bakhtiar and his aide. And Mouton called the plot “a perfect murder in perfect cold blood.”

Ali Chakeri, who replaced Bakhtiar as head of the Iranian exile group, said the trial and verdict amounted to a conviction of Iran for state-sponsored terrorism. But he and other Bakhtiar associates said they were disappointed that French concerns had kept the case from becoming a political trial of Iran.

No official from the Iranian government was called to testify, and Iran denied involvement in the assassination, contending that Bakhtiar was killed by his own associates.

Bakhtiar, 76, a longtime champion of democratic rule in Iran, was imprisoned by the shah of Iran. When the shah’s hold on power began to slip, he made Bakhtiar prime minister, but that government lasted barely a month before the Islamic revolution.

In exile, Bakhtiar was declared a target of Islamic punishment. He was slain Aug. 6, 1991.