Last update - 00:00 12/10/2007
Germany denies assassins' early release was part of deal with Iran
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
The decision to release early two men convicted in the 1992 assassination of four Iranian opposition figures in a Berlin restaurant is not related to the release of a German by Iran, the German government said Friday.
One of the assassins, Kazem Darabi, was to be released in exchange for information on captured Israel Air Force navigator Ron Arad, under the terms of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hezbollah in 2004.
"There is no such arrangement with Iran," German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger told reporters.
Germany's federal prosecutor's office confirmed Thursday that Kazem Darabi, an Iranian, and Abbas Rhayel, a Lebanese - both sentenced to life in prison in 1997 - would be released and deported in December, citing a law that allows early release for foreigners who have served at least 15 years of their sentence.
In the 2004 deal, 400 Palestinian terrorists were released, as well as other prisoners, including Mustafa Dirani and Sheikh Obeid, in exchange for the bodies of three Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed at Har Dov in 2000 as well as Elhanan Tannenbaum, an Israeli who had been abducted by Hezbollah four years earlier.
The deal included another stage, in which Germany offered to release Darabi if Hezbollah offered information on Arad. Hezbollah failed to offer any information and the deal fell through.
In an attempt to prevent Darabi's release, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but she told him the matter was being handled by the book, and he would be released after serving two thirds of his sentence.
The pair were held in pretrial custody for roughly five years, which counts toward their overall time served.
German media have frequently speculated that the government had struck a deal with the Iranian government in order to obtain the freedom of German citizen Donald Klein, who was arrested by Iran in November 2005 after entering the country's territorial waters during a sailing trip off the coast of neighboring United Arab Emirates.
Klein said after his release six months ago that his capture had been an effort to force the German government to release Darabi.
"I was a hostage who was to be exchanged," Klein told reporters at a news conference held after his release. "Iran wasn't interested in money."
A Berlin court convicted Darabi and Rhayel of murder in the Sept. 17, 1992, killing of Iranian Kurdish dissident leader Sadiq Sarafkindi and three of his associates.
The so-called Mykonos trial - named for the Berlin restaurant where the killings took place - raised an uproar when a German court ruled that Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-President Hashemi Rafsanjani had ordered the murders.
Both countries withdrew their ambassadors at the time.