24 September 2011 - 20:30

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the four Iranian diplomats abducted 29 years ago in Lebanon are alive and still held captive by the Israeli regime.

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the four Iranian diplomats abducted 29 years ago in Lebanon are alive and still held captive by the Israeli regime.

“Regarding the four abducted diplomats of our country, there are documents [that show] they are alive and in the hands of the Zionist Regime [of Israel],” said President Ahmadinejad in a Saturday meeting with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York.

“It is therefore expected of the UN general secretary to take serious measures for their release,” Fars News Agency quoted the Iranian president as saying.

Four Iranian staff of Tehran's embassy in Lebanon , chargé d'affaires Mohsen Mousavi, military attaché Ahmad Motevasellian, Taqi Rastegar Moqaddam, an embassy employee, and former IRNA reporter-photographer Kazem Akhavan were kidnapped by a group of Israel-backed gunmen at an inspection point in northern Lebanon in 1982.

They were last heard of in June 2008, when the Lebanese Hezbollah Resistance Movement received a report indicating that the diplomats were alive and held captive by Israel.

The Israeli regime claims that the four diplomats were abducted by a Lebanese militant group and were killed shortly after their abduction.

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