NCRI – Following Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, trip to Italy, the mullahs' regime frantically attacked the Italian lawmakers for inviting her.
Revolutionary Guards' commander, Hossein Shariatmadari, mullahs' Supreme leader Ali Khamenei's representative in the official daily Kayhan showed the most hysterical reaction when he called the members of the Italian parliament "Mafioso Italian regime." The Italian news agency Adnkronos International (AKI) published some of the Italian MPs' reaction to Kayhan's insults.
Following is a complete text of the AKI's report:
Iran: Dissident leader visit sparks row with Italian politicians
Tehran, 28 July (AKI) – Italian politicians across the spectrum have responded strongly to a hostile attack by an Iranian newspaper that described the government and its institutions as a "Mafioso Italian regime".
Iranian newspaper, Kayhan, closely linked to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, attacked the Italian government and institutions for hosting leading dissident Maryam Rajavi last week.
It called the government a "Mafioso Italian regime", in an article entitled "A cadaver in the Parliament of the Mafia".
Italian Muslim MP, Souad Sbai from the conservative People of Freedom party responded to the editorial in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).
"Italy and its government are not Mafioso at all," Sbai said.
"Ours is a democratic country where the rule of law is enforced, and the Parliament is doing well by listening to all the voices, above all the dissenting ones that come from Iranian civil society."
"Our government strongly defends the sanctity of life and human rights, and cannot receive lessons from someone who carries out the death penalty."
The dissenting voice to which Sbai referred was Rajavi, leader of the National Resistance Council of Iran, the political arm of the armed opposition People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran.
She spoke at a media conference at Italy's lower house of Parliament on 23 July, to garner support so the PMOI is no longer listed in Europe as a terrorist organisation. The Iranian was invited by Italian MPs to make her remarks in Parliament.
During her speech, Rajavi criticized Britain, China, France, Russia and the US – the five permanent UN Security Council members – plus Germany who have been negotiating with Iran.
The Iranian newspaper was quick to attack Rajavi in the editorial, by saying "The Italian Mafioso regime, on the pretext of defending liberal and democratic movements, supports a terrorist group, that not even the United States, which supports this group covertly, has the courage to take off the list of criminal organisations."
However, another Italian politician called the provocative Iranian attack an "aggressive reaction".
"It's an aggressive reaction that expresses the difficulty and worry of this (Iranian) regime, that being illiberal and totalitarian, does not find other ways of reacting than those of smearing and aggression," said Elisabetta Zamparutti, and MP from the centre-left Democratic Party, in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).
