TEHRAN — Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri has asked his Romanian counterpart to launch a serious investigation into the death of fugitive Iranian judge Gholamreza Mansouri in that country.

In his letter which was published on Monday, Montazeri explained that Mansouri was wanted by Iran’s Judiciary, which pursued his case through Interpol and got him arrested.

But he was announced dead by the Romanian government, he added. 

Tehran on Friday confirmed the death of Mansouri, who was accused of corruption and taking more than $500,000 in bribes, in Romania.

“We are awaiting the official report of the cause of this incident and we ask Romanian authorities to officially inform us of the precise cause of this incident,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Friday.

Mansouri was found dead of apparent suicide on Friday at a hotel in Romania where he had been staying.

He was a co-defendant in a major financial corruption trial involving several senior judges accused of embezzlement and bribery.

Iran’s chief of international policing, Hadi Shirzad, said on Friday that Mansouri had jumped out of a hotel window to his death, citing information Iran had received from Interpol in Bucharest.

Iranian authorities had issued an alert for Mansouri’s arrest through Interpol and had requested he be extradited to Iran to face trial.

Mansouri was arrested in Romania last week but was residing at the Duke Hotel in Bucharest, the capital, while the police monitored him. He had been forbidden from leaving the country.

MH/PA