The Rt. Hon. Lord Slynn of Hadley
former British Law Lord and European Court of Justice judge
The Rt. Hon. Lord Slynn of Hadley
Former British Law Lord and European Court of Justice judge
A document was produced recently by a body called Human Rights Watch that makes the strongest possible allegations against the PMOI and the National Council of Resistance of Iran – quite outrageous allegations of fact against them, of torture, of imprisonment, of expulsion and so on.
Well if people are able to find facts which can be put forward and justified then free speech requires that they should be allowed to do so. But lawyers everywhere have been shocked that this report was published on the basis it seems of twelve telephone conversations between the United States and people in Germany. I wrote to ask whether this was limited to that, whether there had been any face-to-face interrogation to investigate these allegations, and nobody in reply has suggested that there was any more than this telephonic communications.
What shocked human rights lawyers even more was the fact that this publication came out with no opportunity for the PMOI or the NCRI to comment on the allegations before this document was published. It seems to me something which lawyers will rebel against, and they should be heard to say so, as many already have done. This is not a denial of free speech. It’s a requirement of those who wish to speak and criticize [that they] must themselves observe the basic tenets of human rights law. And so this seems to be yet another aspect where the lawyer has a role to play. I think lawyers too are entitled to question the validity, the desirability, of an agreement which we are told has been made by certain states with the Iranian government, or at least an understanding if not an agreement, that if you don’t pursue your nuclear weapon activities or don’t go on with the investigation of nuclear power, then we will continue to regard members of the PMOI and the NCRI as terrorist. How can it be justified to say that if you will do, or will not do, that we will or we will not continue to regard people as terrorist? Whether they are terrorists or not must be judged upon its own basis. I think that lawyers should make this very clear, and we should make it firm, that lawyers who take the sort of view I have indicated on these matters are not supporting terrorism. The suggestion that everyone at this meeting is supporting a terrorist organisation is utterly without basis or merit. It is very important that lawyers should be heard to say that very strongly. We must watch out for counterattacks which in law are wholly unjustified or are put forward in an unjustified way.
I think that the position of Mrs Rajavi has been made very clear many times before this meeting. She has always stressed that what the NCRI and the PMOI are out to do is to achieve democracy, to achieve free elections. And as she said to me on a number of occasions, if we had free elections, we will of course accept the result of those elections and therefore the allegation now made against the PMOI are to be investigated scrupulously.
I have been to Ashraf in order to talk to American lawyers that I’d hoped in the early days of our consideration of their status under the Geneva Convention. There was no sign, on either of my visits, of the kind of hostility and antagonism of which this recent document sets out to establish. So let us be very careful when we look at the criticisms that are made against not only this, but other bodies outside Iran who are seeking to establish democracy in Iran.