By NNN-FNA,
Tehran : Iran is seeking the assistance of the United Nations to help secure the release of four Iranian diplomats kidnapped in Lebanon in 1982.
Tehran believes the four – three diplomats and a journalist – are being kept in Israel, but the Zionist regime has so far denied holding the four.
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 were seized north of Beirut by Lebanese Christian militiamen during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
They were traveling by car to the Lebanese capital from Syria.
Christian warlords have said they were abducted by the Lebanese Forces militia then allied with Israel and killed shortly afterward. Israel has said they were killed by the militia.
But in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday, Iran’s UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee reiterated that they were handed over to Israel 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 the abduction.
It urged Ban Ki-moon 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 and journalist by the Israeli regime, and by helping secure their safe and immediate release.”
Last week, Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said that, as part of a UN-mediated prisoner swap with Israel it expected to take place in mid-July, a German negotiator would receive a report from Israel on the fate of the four Iranians.