Swiss Arrest 1 of 3 Suspects in Bakhtiar Death

A man believed to be one of three Iranians suspected of murdering former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar and his secretary was arrested in Geneva on Wednesday, according to Swiss police reports received here.

Swiss police said they believe the arrested man is Ali Vakili Rad, one of the last three men known to have visited Bakhtiar at his Paris home on Aug. 6, the day of the killings.

The detained man had no papers on him and further checks were being made, they said.

Bakhtiar was the late Shah of Iran’s last prime minister before the Islamic revolution in 1979 and was a prominent Iranian exile opposed to the current fundamentalist regime in Tehran.

Shortly before news of the arrest was made public, police spokesman Thierry Magnin told Reuters that Swiss police believed Vakili Rad and fellow suspect Mohammed Azadi were still in Switzerland.

The two Iranians, who flew to Paris from Tehran in July, are believed to have enlisted the help of a third Iranian, Sarqdoum Boyer Amadi, who knew Bakhtiar and had won his trust.

A 36-hour delay in discovering the bodies of Bakhtiar and his secretary, knifed to death despite round-the-clock police protection, allowed Azadi and Vakili Rad to flee to the French border with Switzerland.

The two Iranians were briefly held by French police after trying unsuccessfully to cross the border with forged Swiss visas but were released because the murders had not yet been discovered.

One of the suspects was later tracked to a hotel in Geneva but a temporary breakdown involving the computer used to check hotel registers against the list of wanted men allowed him to get away.

The delay in discovering the murders and several near-misses in the police hunt for the suspected killers have prompted a public outcry in France.

Iranian exiles and French media questioned whether the government let the murderers escape in order not to jeopardize international negotiations under way to free Western hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.