France frees killer of Iran ex-PM

An Iranian assassin who killed the countrys last prime minister under its ousted shah was freed from a French prison on Tuesday and will be allowed to return to the homeland that now considers him a hero....

An Iranian assassin who killed the countrys last prime minister under its ousted shah was freed from a French prison on Tuesday and will be allowed to return to the homeland that now considers him a hero raising speculation that he is part of a prisoner exchange deal.

Ali Vakili Rad convicted of killing Shahpour Bakhtiar in 1991 will be sent back to Tehran after leaving a prison in Poissy,outside Paris,under police escort. French law allows for his early release,the prosecutors office in Paris said Tuesday.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast welcomed Vakili Rads expected return,saying earlier Tuesday at his weekly news conference,To see him in Iran after years,we are pleased. Vakili Rad is regarded as a hero by Irans leaders for killing someone they considered a counter-revolutionary.

He is the second Iranian freed by French courts in less than two weeks,leading to speculation that Paris struck a deal with Tehran in exchange for a young French academics freedom after she was convicted by Iran of spying and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

French officials have denied any deal-making to obtain the liberation of Clotile Reiss,who returned to France on Sunday after her sentence was commuted and replaced with a fine of 300,000. Reiss had been arrested July 1 in post-election violence in Iran.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said Monday he had no knowledge of such bargaining,and that such doubts cast doubts about the independence of French justice system.

Vakili Rads attorney,Sorin Margulis,also has denied any deal,saying,My client was in a position to be freed before the arrest of Miss Reiss.

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A French appeals court ruled July 2 that Vakili Rad could be given conditional freedom. The final decision was postponed twice. France has cut deals with Iran in the past to obtain freedom for French citizens.

Bakhtiar,a moderate opposition leader made Irans prime minister in a bid by the shah to save the crumbling monarchy from revolutionary fervor,fled to France when the shah was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution. He was killed in 1991,at the age of 76,in his home in the western Paris suburb of Suresnes. Vakili Rad was found guilty in 1994 of killing Bakhtiar and sentenced to life in prison.