Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, First Vice President of the EP chaired a panel which included Paulo Casaca, co-chair of the FOFI, Erik Meijer, member of the EP Foreign Affairs Committee and Firouz Mahvi, member of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
Before introducing the main speaker, Casaca condemned Mottaki’s visit to the EP and then pointed at Abolhassan Mojtahedzadeh, member of the Iranian Resistance sitting next to him in the panel, who was victim to a terrorist operation in Turkey in 1988 when Mottaki was the clerical regime’s ambassador in that country. Mojtahedzadeh was asked to speak about his ordeal while he was kept in captivity in mullahs’ consular office in Istanbul.
In a detailed account of his experience in the hands of terrorist agents of Iranian regime, Mojtahedzadeh explained how he was kidnapped on his way from work and the way he was tortured by the terrorists. "After a few days of captivity I was taken to the regime’s consulate in Istanbul and put in a very small iron cage. I was put under various forms of torture," said Mojtahedzadeh. "One day Mottaki, regime’s ambassador to Turkey at the time, came to me and among other things said ‘do you want to see your wife and little son who are kept in the next room?’ and finally told me that it was my last day."
He told the conference about some of his best friends and colleagues who had been murdered by the Intelligence Ministry’s agents in Turkey including Ali-Akbar Qorbani whose mutilated body was found in a forest near Istanbul.
Mojtahedzadeh’s accounts of mullahs’ terrorism and Mottaki’s role in terrorism shocked the audience in the conference.
Other speakers regretted that Mottaki was allowed to the EP with such a horrific background and Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuanian MEP and former president of that county, called for an inquiry to find out how Mottaki was given the opportunity to participate EP’s foreign affaires committee.