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BERLIN - Germany will grant early release to two men given life prison sentences for the 1992 assassination of a group of dissident Kurdish leaders despite protests from Israel, a German news agency reported.
The office of Germany's Chief Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms decided there was no legal reason to delay the release of Iranian Kazem Darabi, who is due to be freed in December along with a Lebanese man, Abbas Rhayel, news agency DPA reported.
Earlier on Tuesday Harms met the brother and daughter of Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who went missing over Lebanon in 1986, to plead with her to delay the release of the two men, DPA said.
Israeli authorities have long believed Lebanon's militant Hezbollah movement could have information on his fate and hoped Darabi could help in solving the case, Israeli and German media have reported.
Over the weekend German media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had spoken with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week to explain why Israel did not want the prisoners released.
Frank Wallenta, spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office, said last week that the two men would be released in December after spending 15 years in prison, a decade less than they were supposed to serve.
Wallenta offered no explanation for the decision but said German authorities can free foreign prisoners early if they are sent out of the country and have served at least 15 years.
After this announcement, Germany's Foreign Ministry denied that there had been any deal with Iran that led to the release of Darabi and Rhayel.
The two men were convicted in 1997 for killing the four Kurds after having spent five years in investigative custody before and during the trial. The court said at the time they would spend a quarter of a century in jail.
Prosecutors in the long trial infuriated Tehran and strained bilateral relations by alleging Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the killings and President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had approved them.
The Islamic Republic has always denied responsibility for the killings.
Earlier this year German media reported that Tehran had conditioned the release of a German man imprisoned for over a year for fishing in Iranian waters on Darabi's release. Tehran released the German fisherman in March.
- REUTERS
