Iran Asks for UN Help on Diplomats’ Case

Source: Alalam.ir, 08-07-2008

NEW YORK--Iran has called on the UN to help secure the release of 4 Iranian diplomats kidnapped in Lebanon by the ‘Israeli' occupying regime's agents more than quarter of a century ago.

The diplomats were kidnapped north of Beirut by Lebanese Christian militiamen during ‘Israel's' 1982 invasion of Lebanon when they were travelling by car to the Lebanese capital Beirut.

The four are Seyyed Mohsen Mousavi, then charge d'affaires of the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, military attaché Ahmad Motevaselian, embassy technician Taghi Rastegar Moghadam and journalist Kazem Akhavan of the official news agency IRNA.

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Iran's UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee repeated Tehran's long-standing demand that they were handed over to the Zionist regime at the time and remain imprisoned there.

"No credible piece of evidence has ever been presented to indicate the martyrdom of the said Iranian officials to date," said the letter, written two days after the 26th anniversary of their abduction.

It urged Ban and the Security Council "to live up to their responsibilities under the UN charter without further delay by reacting to the illegal abduction and continued unlawful detention of Iranian diplomats by the ‘Israeli' regime, and by helping secure their safe and immediate release."

Last week, Lebanon's resistance movement Hizbullah said that, as part of a UN-mediated prisoner swap with ‘Israeli' regime which is expected to take place in mid-July, a German negotiator would receive a report from the Zionist regime on the fate of the four Iranian diplomats.

Christian warlords have said they were abducted by the Lebanese Forces militia then allied with the Zionist regime and killed shortly afterward.

The ‘Israeli' occupying regime claims they were killed by the militia.