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Arrested while vacationing with his family in Paris in September 1991, Hendi admitted seeking the visas but said he had done so innocently: Hossein Sheikhattar, a senior aide to the telecommunications minister, had asked him to help two friends enter France by inviting them as guests of Syfax. Hendi's lawyer, Jerome Herce, insists that his client's efforts to obtain visas "prove nothing," since the two alleged killers actually entered France on a different set of visas. But the prosecutor claims this fact has "no effect on the charges of complicity" in the murder.
Another alleged co-conspirator is Zeinolabedine Sarhadi. According to Swiss border police, Sarhadi arrived in their country on Aug. 13, 1991, ostensibly to work as an archivist in the Iranian embassy. His real mission, Bruguiere claims, was to help whisk Bakhtiar's murderers out of the country. Phone data, backed up by questioning of hotel personnel and inspection of guest registers, indicate that Sarhadi was in touch with both the Istanbul base and the Geneva hotel where hit-man Azadi stayed just before his escape from the country. Sarhadi's lawyer, Nuri Albala, admits that his client's "passport arrived in Switzerland on Aug. 13, 1991" but insists that someone else was using it. The travel document was "stolen," says Albala, after being handed over to the Iranian airport police.
Arrested in Switzerland in December 1991 and extradited to France five months later, Sarhadi has not taken his imprisonment gracefully. He has written repeatedly to his ambassador, Ali Ahani, demanding that Tehran intervene on his behalf; Ahani has visited Bruguiere several times seeking to get the charges dropped.
The diplomatic interest is understandable: one of the most direct links between the plot and the Iranian government is the order of mission dispatching Sarhadi to Switzerland. The one-page typed document was issued on the authority of Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati. The original of this letter, dated July 16, 1991, will be a key piece of evidence at the trial.
Bruguiere believes that he has established a final link between the killing and Tehran in the person of Gholam Hossein Shoorideh Chirazi Nejad. A well- traveled Iranian businessman with high-level government connections, Shoorideh prevailed upon a visiting Swiss businessman to help two friends get visas by having his company invite them as guests. One of the "friends" was Nasser Ghasmi Nejad, whose real purpose was apparently to rendezvous with Azadi and shepherd him back to Tehran. Shoorideh and Nejad thus joined the list of six alleged co-conspirators, including Azadi, Boyerahmadi, Sheikhattar and Edipsoy, who are to be tried in absentia at the same time as Vakili, Hendi and Sarhadi.
Rajavi: Riding the Tiger
Kassem Rajavi was a tempting target. Not only was he the brother of Massoud Rajavi, leader of the largest and best-armed Iranian opposition force, the % People's Mujahedin, but he was the group's spokesman before the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights, where he was known for his vehement denunciations of the Tehran regime. "For years he tickled the tiger," says Swiss investigating judge Roland Chatelain. "In the end the tiger bit him."