Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, better known as former Erdington MP Robin, bemoans the forthcoming visit to Britain of an old foe
The Birmingham Post,October 30 – That wily cleric Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran, is up to his old tricks again. For more than eight years he played the lead role in a carefully choreographed public relations campaign by the Ayatollahs to dupe the international community into believing the contradiction in terms "moderate mullahs", with whom the world could do business. While Khatami had the world dancing to his tune, the Ayatollahs made huge strides towards achieving their nuclear weapons ambitions. Now, when the regime in Tehran is, because of its nuclear duplicity, facing the real prospect of UN Security Council imposed sanctions, whose face pops up again, but that of the smiling cleric, Mohammad Khatami.
In a recent US trip, whilst defending the Iranian regime’s nuclear programmes and sponsorship of terrorism, Khatami told the United States how they had got the Ayatollahs all wrong and lectured them on the need for a dialogue of civilisations. Translated into Khatami speak, that means the need of the Ayatollahs for the international community to keep talking, whilst they keep advancing their nuclear programmes. The next leg of the ‘great con game’ will see Khatami travel to the University of St Andrews, where on October 31, Sir Menzies Campbell, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and Chancellor of Scotland’s oldest university, is to confer on Khatami the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws for "his efforts to encourage interfaith dialogue".
So who is this smiling cleric who talks about a dialogue of civilisations? He is the same cleric who told an Iranian newspaper how he is "fundamentally and profoundly opposed to Western civilisation and culture". This progressive cleric who speaks of tolerance and understanding said about the author Salman Rushdie that he "must be executed in accordance with the religious fatwa issued by His Eminence Imam Khomeini. He has no escape from this fatwa". It was also during Khatami’s Presidency that 27 women were stoned to death in Iran.
The real Khatami has the blood of the Iranian people on his hands. For many years he has been a central pillar of the brutal regime in Iran, which is responsible for the execution of more than 120,000 Iranians and the incarceration and torture of many more. During the eight-year war with Iraq, Khatami was responsible for mobilising tens of thousands of school children to perform as human wave attacks across minefields. Khatami has also committed crimes against humanity and was involved in the decision-making process that led to a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, which resulted in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mainly from the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, at the end of 1988.
Khatami opposed those who expressed concern about the social and international backlash of the massacre and strongly defended Khomeini’s fatwa. It is ironic that this individual should be invited to a university to be conferred with an Honorary Degree, when it was during his presidency that the most vicious crackdowns against university students took place. In one such episode in July 1999, the mullahs responded to student demands for freedom and democracy by sending their henchmen armed with knives, chains and batons to attack students in their university dormitories in the early hours. Many students were severely beaten and some were even thrown out of upper floor windows. One student was killed, hundreds were severely wounded and thousands arrested. These attacks led to days of peaceful street protests by thousands of students who burnt photographs of the regime’s leadership. The mullahs responded with yet further brutal attacks. Khatami responded by appearing on Iranian television to denounce the students as acting "against the interests of the nation" and threatening that they would be dealt with "severely".
Amnesty International has said that many of the thousands of students who were arrested in 1999 remain incarcerated to this day. They include Ahmad Batebi, the former Honorary Vice-President of the National Union of Students, who at the time appeared on the front page of The Economist holding a bloodied t-shirt of a fellow student. He is reportedly in poor physical and mental health, as a result of being tortured and ill-treated in prison. On July 31 of this year, another one of these students, Akbar Mohammadi, died in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after spending years in prison. Amnesty International stated: "Akbar Mohammadi and other students were sentenced to death in September 1999 following a manifestly unfair trial. He was brutally tortured while in incommunicado detention, denied the right of legal representation and access to family."
On the last few occasions on which Khatami has appeared at universities in Iran, he has been heckled by students who condemned him and his dishonesty. The planned visit to the University of St Andrews at the end of this month will do no more than to pour salt on the wounds of the many prisoners of conscience, including students, who languish under appalling conditions in Iran’s prisons and the more than 95 per cent of Iranians who despise their theocratic oppressors. It will also no doubt leave a dark stain on the proud history of Scotland’s oldest university.
