Was Kakavand’s Acquittal Part of a Quid Pro Quo with Iran?
May 19, 2010 On May 7, a French appeals court denied a U.S. extradition request and acquitted of smuggling charges thirty-seven-year-old Iranian engineer Majid Kakavand. On May 17, the French Interior Ministry demanded the expulsion of an Iranian serving a life sentence on murder charges, and on May 18 a French court granted his parole. One day earlier, Iran released a French academic held in that country for nearly a year on espionage charges. The close association of these events strongly implies that France engaged in an unwise quid pro quo with Iran. Kakavand was accused by the United States of smuggling more than $1 million in U.S. electronic dual-use military parts to Iranian entities associated with Iran’s military and ballistic missile programs via his Malaysian trading company. (See earlier ISIS analysis of the Kakavand case here, and updates about the French court case here and here). Iranian Ali Vakili Rad was serving a life sentence for the 1991 murder of the Iranian shah’s
