Dr Mandana Alijani, 32, director of the Anglo-Iranian Community in Greater London, was herself a lung cancer surgeon. She campaigned for the government-in-exile (the National Council of Resistance of Iran) and the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), regularly writing about Iran in the British media, as well as being interviewed on radio and television.
When she fell ill three years ago, doctors at first thought Dr Alijani had tuberculosis. But six weeks later she was rediagnosed with a form of lung cancer contracted by one in 14 million people, and she was given just two months to live.
Dr Alijani, who was an only child, came to the UK with her mother when she was ten, after her father died of a heart attack. She attended Mill Hill County School before qualifying as a surgeon at King’s College London at the age of 26.
Her funeral, at Hendon Cemetery on Saturday, was attended by more than 500 people.
Dr Alijani’s close friend Laila Jazayeri, director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, said: "Mandana was a bright, lovely, hardworking and courageous young woman who fought tooth and nail for women’s and human rights. Even in her last few weeks she was propped up in bed reading the news, sending emails, talking to people and giving people information, working on behalf of the Iranian people. She was an inspiration."
On Tuesday, representatives from Barnet’s Anglo-Iranian community, now in the fourth week of a protest outside the Foreign Office, lit candles and held up pictures of Dr Alijani, and her mother, Susan Baghdadchi, gave a speech.
The protesters are calling for the UK Government to stop its policy of appeasement towards Iran, and to remove the PMOI from the EU’s list of terrorist organisations.