PARIS: France will on Monday sign a deportation order for Iranian agent Ali Vakili Rad, convicted in France of murdering the shah’s last prime minister, an aide to Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said.
A French court is due on Tuesday to rule on a parole request from Vakili Rad, who is serving a jail sentence for stabbing Shapour Bakhtiar to death at his home outside Paris in August 1991.
The deportation order paves the way for the court to rule in favour of parole and of sending Vakili Rad home.
The decision came a day after 24-year-old French academic Clotilde Reiss returned to Paris after a 10-month ordeal in Iran where she was put on trial on charges of acting against national security.
Reiss, a fluent Farsi speaker and Persian specialist, was arrested on July 1 shortly before she was due to fly home after a six-month study and teaching stint in the city of Isfahan.
France denies that it cut a secret deal with Tehran for her release.
