Iran blames France for hijack part

Press, 11 July 1983, Page 10

Iran blames France for hijack part

NZPA-Reuter Teheran Iran announced at the weak-end that it was closing the French Consulate in the provincial town of Isfahan and the French Cultural Institute in Iran in retaliation for what it said were France’s actions in the hijack of an Iranian plane.

The national news agency, Irna, quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying that the action was being taken “to counter the ‘socialist-Zionist’ French Government’s collaboration with the Munafeqin and the hijackers of an Iran Air jumbo jet which landed in Paris on Thursday.” Munafeqin is the Iranian Government’s term for the outlawed Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a Leftist group opposed to the Government.

The Boeing 747, with 350 passengers on board, was seized by six men during a domestic flight to Teheran and forced to fly to Kuwait, and then Paris. The hijackers have been charged with air piracy by a French court.

France has rejected an Iranian request for extradiction of the hijackers and French officials in Paris said on Saturday that they would probably be granted asylum. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that the French Government had shown animosity to Iran many times, and this time by providing what it called facilities for the hijackers. “The French regime has not refrained from any action in the course of its hositility towards the Islamic revolution and has played its role in all the criminal and inhuman acts committed by the counterrevolution.”

It also criticised what it said was French military, political, and propaganda support for Iraq and said that the French economy had suffered greatly as a result.

France has been selling arms to Iraq to help it fight Iran in the 34-month-old Gulf war and many Iranian opposition groups are represented in Paris.

The Ministry said that France had become the capital of Iranian counterrevolutionaries and “terrorists” who were responsible “for the martyring of many innocient people and officials.”

immediately after the hijack Iran accused France, Kuwait, and the United States of complicity, and the influential Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said that his country would take revenge.

French newspapers said recently that Paris had agreed to lend Iraq several Super Etendard fighterbombers armed with Exocet missiles, a potentially devastating weapon against Iranian shipping and oil installations.

The six hijackers, who say that they oppose the Teheran Government, face five to 10 years in jail under French law but the sentence could be lighter if the court decides there were extenuating circumstances, Justice Ministry officials in Paris say.