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France frees Iranian jailed for Bakhtiar murder ahead of FM visit
TEHRAN, Aug 1 (AFP) - An Iranian jailed in France for complicity in the 1991 assassination near Paris of Iran's former prime minister Shahpur Bakhtiar has returned home after being freed early, his family said Saturday.
Massud Hendi, who was convicted to 10 years in jail, returned to Iran on Friday, said Hendi's brother, Ali-Reza. The release came ahead of a landmark visit here by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, due August 22-23.
In Paris, a foreign ministry spokesman said Hendi was freed on Thursday, while the justice ministry explained he had served two-thirds of his sentence and was paroled.
Hendi, 51, is a former employee of Iran's state-run radio and television organisation who was based in Paris at the time of the August 6, 1991 assassination of Bakhtiar in Suresnes, near the capital.
He was convicted by a Paris court in December 1994 for helping to kill Bakhtiar and his secretary, Sorush Katibeh, by providing passports for the assassins.
The French justice ministry pointed out that as Hendi had been arrested in September 1991, the three years before his conviction were also taken into account and it denied reports from Hendi's family that he had been pardoned.
Bakhtiar served as the late shah's last prime minister before the imperial regime was toppled by the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Despite French police protection, the killers gained access to his Suresnes residence because one of them had joined Bakhtiar's opposition group and gained his trust.
Ali Vakili Rad, another Iranian, was detained in Switzerland for the killing and extradited to France, where he was condemned to life imprisonment. Six other Iranians on the run were given the same sentence in absentia.
Bakhtiar already escaped assassination in 1980, when a five-man hit squad led by Anis Naccache killed two people. They were all jailed for life, but former president Francois Mitterrand pardoned them in 1990.
In a statement sent to AFP in Nicosia, Iran's main armed opposition group on condemned France's release of Hendi.
"The Iranian resistance strongly condemns the release of Hendi, whose role in terrorism was confirmed by a French court and who had a long record in terrorist activities," said the People's Mujahedeen.
"It considers the action a mockery of France's judicial system."
The release came shortly ahead of Vedrine's visit, which will be only the second by a French foreign minister since the Islamic revolution. It comes at a time of improving relations, notably on the economic front.
A consortium led by the French group Total signed a two-billion-dollar deal with Tehran in September to develop Iran's South Pars gas field despite US threats to penalize companies making energy-related investments in Iran.
The French car maker PSA Peugeot-Citroen is also set to begin building Peugeot 205 cars in Iran under licence.
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