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Two years after June 17, 2003, Justice for the National Council of Resistance of Iran |
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Tuesday, 10 May 2005 |
An international seminar of legal experts and prominent political
personalities entitled, "Two years after June 17, 2003, Justice for the
National Council of Resistance of Iran" was held in Paris on May 10.
European lawmakers and jurists called on French authorities to drop
charges against officials of the opposition National Council of
Resistance of Iran and put an end to what they described as harassment
of opponents of Iran’s clerical regime in France.
The call came from hundreds of parliamentary, legal and political
figures who attended a seminar in Paris on Tuesday entitled, "Two years
after June 17, 2003, Justice for the National Council of Resistance of
Iran".
Speaker after speaker condemned the massive crackdown by French police
on the NCRI in June 2003 and noted that two years of intensive
investigations had not substantiated a single charge against the NCRI.
On June 17, 2003, some 1,300 French anti-terrorism police raided the
offices of the NCRI and the homes of Iranian opposition activists and
French authorities claimed that the group was planning a series of
terrorist attacks in Europe. An extensive search of NCRI offices
revealed no evidence to substantiate any of the allegations. French
judges, in an unprecedented move, released all the 165 Iranian
dissidents within days, but 17 NCRI officials were placed under
investigation.
NCRI foreign affairs chief Mohammad Mohaddessin told the seminar that
his group had documented evidence over the past two years which showed
that the French security service, DST, had acted at the behest of
Iranian leaders in conducting the raid.
Prominent French lawyer Henri Leclerc; the Rt. Hon. Lord Slynn of
Hadley, a former British Law Lord and European Court of Justice judge;
Prof. Jean-Yves de Cara, president of the International Law Institute
in Paris; Lord Russell-Johnston, former Chairman of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe; Jean-Pierre Michel, French Senator;
prominent French lawyer William Bourdon,; Christophe Pettiti, lawyer
and secretary general of the Human Rights Institute of European
Lawyers; Professor Bernard Bouloc, professor at Sorbonne University;
Mario Stasi, lawyer and former head of Paris Bar Association; Sid Ahmed
Ghozali, former Algerian Prime Minister; Andrew MacKinlay, British
parliamentarian and member of the House of Commons' Foreign Relations
Committee; Dr. Rudi Vis, British parliamentarian; and a representative
of the Human Rights League in France, were among the speakers.
NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi told the seminar via a video link
that no evidence had been found to support allegations of
money-laundering against the Iranian opposition. Rajavi said certain
French agencies were deliberately propping up false charges to justify
the June 2003 raids on Iranian refugees.
Several members of the European Parliament also addressed the
conference via a live satellite link from Strasbourg. Alejo Vidal
Quadras, Spanish Euro-MP and First vice-President of the European
Parliament; Paulo Casaca, Portuguese Euro-MP and head of the European
Parliamentary delegation to NATO; Struan Stevenson, British Euro-MP;
Helmut Markov, head of Germany's PDS group at the European Parliament;
and Astrid Lulling, senior Euro-MP from Luxemburg, addressed the
conference from the European Parliament, saying that the terrorism
allegations against the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) were baseless
and urging French officials to discontinue undue pressure on the
Mojahedin and the Iranian Resistance.
The PMOI is a member organisation of the National Council of Resistance
of Iran and was listed as a terrorist organisation by the European
Union in mid-2002, in what the European Union’s then-Spanish leadership
called “a goodwill gesture to Tehran”. |
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