Mykonos Killings
October 17, 2007
The office of Germany's chief federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, said this week there was no legal reason to delay the release of Iranian Kazem Darabi. He is set to be freed in December, along with a Lebanese accomplice, Abbas Rhayel.
The two have spent 15 years in jail in Germany and will be deported to Iran upon their release.
Harms reiterated her support for the release of the two men despite reservations in Israel and calls that Darabi's imprisonment be used as leverage to get information in the case of a missing Israeli pilot.
Israel wants release in return for information
On Tuesday, Oct. 16, Harms met with the brother and daughter of Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who went missing after his fighter jet was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. Arad is a national hero in Israel.
Arad's family has insisted that Darabi and Rhayel should be granted early release only on the condition that Iran offers information about the whereabouts of Arad.
Media reports in Germany and Israel said that Israeli authorities have long believed that Lebanon's militant Hezbollah movement could have information on Arad's fate and they hoped Darabi could help shed light on the case.
In 2004, Germany offered to trade Darabi for information about Arad, but Hezbollah did not agree to the deal.
German media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to urge her to block the release and deportation of the prisoners to Iran.
Germany denies deal with Iran
The German government has insisted that the decision to grant early release for the two prisoners is in keeping with German law and has denied there had been any deal with Iran that led to the early release of Darabi and Rhayel.
Earlier this year, German media reported that Tehran had made Darabi's release a condition for that of a German man imprisoned for over a year for fishing in Iranian waters. The man, Donald Klein, was released in March.
The government has denied claims of a trade-off. "There is no such arrangement," Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jäger told reporters last week.
Frank Wallenta, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office, said German authorities can free foreign prisoners early if they are sent out of the country and have served at least 15 years.
Diplomatic uproar
Darabi and Rhayel were the masterminds behind the killings of three Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders and their interpreter in the Greek restaurant "Mykonos" in Berlin in September 1992.
The two were given life sentences by a Berlin court in 1997 in a trial that attracted international attention when prosecutors accused the Iranian leadership of state-sponsored terrorism.
The trial incensed Tehran and strained ties between Germany and Iran because of allegations that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the killings of the Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders and President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani approved them.
Iran denied the charges, and both countries temporarily withdrew their ambassadors.