TEHRAN - An Iranian official charged with hunting for three Iranian diplomats and a reporter who went missing in Lebanon more than two decades ago has said he believes they could still be alive and in an Israel jail, the student news agancy ISNA said Friday.
"According to our latest information, the four Iranians have been seen in the Zionist regime's jails. If it is said they have been martyred, it is only to cover up the Zionist regime involvement in this issue," said Raed Mousavi, a member of an official follow-up committee charged with the case.
He said the information that the four had been transfered to Israel came from someone released in a prisoner exchange between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement.
"He had seen the four diplomats in Israeli prisons in 1988," said the official, who is also the father of one of the missing men.
He added that he believed Israel may have hoped to exchange them for missing airman Ron Arad.
The four Iranians disappeared in northern Lebanon in July 1982.
Iran has stepped up its search for news on their fate after hundreds of Palestinians and Arab prisoners were freed in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers in January 2004.
The second phase of the Hezbollah-Israel exchange arrangement reportedly involves seeking news on Arad -- an Israeli air force navigator missing since his aircraft was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 -- as well as the four Iranians and missing Lebanese.
Hezbollah believes the Iranians may have been handed over to Israel by a Lebanese Christian militia after their arrest in 1982.
There have also been allegations that Arad is alive and was transferred to Iran, something the Islamic republic has repeatedly denied.
03/04/2005 12:26 GMT