TEHRAN -- Vice President for Parliamentary Affairs Seyyed Ahmad Musavi said here on Sunday that the four Iranian nationals kidnapped in Lebanon in 1982 are still alive and are being held in Israeli prisons, adding that the Zionist regime as well as former Lebanese Phalangist leader Samir Geagea should be held accountable for their disappearance and incarceration.

Musavi, who is also the chairman of the committee pursuing the case of the four Iranian citizens, dismissed the recent remarks of Geagea, who has claimed that the four missing men had been killed by militiamen, and stated, “This is not the first time that we have heard such remarks.”

He went on to say that Geagea should understand that such remarks will not get him off the hook because he and his group of Phalangist forces are deemed responsible for the disappearance of the four Iranians.

Noting that there is no documentation proving the four missing men were martyred, Musavi said that if Geagea is certain that they were killed, he should reveal the location of their graves.

He pointed to his recent visit to regional countries to pursue the case of the kidnapped Iranians and promised to step up efforts to determine the fate of the missing men.

The four Iranian nationals, charge d’affaires Mohsen Musavi, military attaché of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ahmad Motevasellian, Taghi Rastegar, a diplomat from the embassy, and Kazem Akhavan, a reporter and photographer from the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), were detained by Phalangist forces and then handed over to Zionist troops while traveling to southern Lebanon in 1982 and then transferred to a prison in occupied Palestine. They have been missing since then, with no word of their fate.