ISJ welcomes decision by French Judiciary vindicating the Iranian Resistance

                   

"NCRI as the alternative to the religious dictatorship, should be recognized by the West"

ISJ Press release, 22 September 2014:
The International Committee In Search of Justice (ISJ) warmly congratulates Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and all members and supporters of this resistance for the decision by the French Judiciary to drop all charges against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and the NCRI. 

It further deems necessary to remind the following:

1. Although the recent ruling by the French Judiciary is commendable, impartiality and justice demanded that this decision should have been adopted in the very first months of the prosecution and in 2003. From the outset, all evidence substantiated the fact that the extrajudicial and violent raid of June 17 was conducted solely at the behest of the Iranian regime and was the by-product of a despicable deal between Tehran and the French Government.

In the days following June 17, when the French authorities were questioned on the contradiction that no weapons, ammunition or evidence of terrorism have been discovered in the Iranian opposition centers, unashamedly they stated that the objective was to annihilate this “terrorist organization”. At the time, the French press unveiled that this objective had been handed down to the French Government by the Iranian regime and that the attack of June 17 had been organized as part of the negotiations between the French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and his counterpart Kamal Kharrazi in Tehran in April 2003. Subsequently, the documents published by the NCRI demonstrated that the Iranian Intelligence had been working on the raid with one of the French intelligence services for a long time.

2. The decision by the French Judiciary has evidenced that what we had been emphasizing from day one, namely the legitimacy of the Iranian opposition, is utterly true and that the PMOI has never been involved in terrorism. Judges have underscored that the PMOI, the National Liberation Army (NLA) and the NCRI have never resorted to terrorism in their activities to bring down the clerical dictatorship and that the NLA operated in the framework of a classical army and that the operations carried out by PMOI in Iran solely aimed military targets and thus cannot be considered terrorism.

3. The French services had no justified charges against the Iranian Resistance and going through the eavesdropped communications of the NCRI offices and its members, as well as piles of documents confiscated on June 17 from the NCRI centers and the houses of members and supporters of this movement, they uncovered no evidence against PMOI. Moreover, the French Government requested information against the PMOI from European countries, the United States, Turkey and Arabic countries, but they found nothing to incriminate the PMOI.

In the absence of any founded accusations, the Iranian regime’s Intelligence Ministry came to the rescue and dispatched some of its elements as “former members of PMOI” to offer false testimonies and fabricated information to the French police and to the counterterrorism prosecutor to save their French colleagues from ridicule and justify all those arrests, battering and imposition of restrictions against the Iranian Resistance.

From the outset we were familiar with the nature of these witnesses and repeatedly warned the French officials about this filthy plot. This whole fiasco can serve as quite an instructive lesson on the abuse of the French judicial system by its politicians and the executive branch of that country.

4. This infamous file has cost the Iranian Resistance millions of euros and wasted vast energy of many members and supporters in the past 11 years due to the imposition of cruel restrictions and the obligation to pay for legal advice and judicial actions. Most importantly, the self-immolations to protest the June 17 raid resulted in great human loss by those who sacrificed their lives or suffered much agonizing injury.

These protest acts, however, stopped the next stages of this shameful conspiracy, which were the extradition of those arrested, as well as the imposition of further pressures on other refugees. The perpetrators of the June 17 assault should be held accountable for these damages and obliged to face justice.

All these financial and human resources should have been used in the campaign against the religious dictatorship ruling Iran and to disclose its human rights violations and atrocities inside Iran and abroad. Regrettably, the then French government offered the best services to Tehran by wasting these resources.

5. And now, 11 years after the June 17 outrage, the world, including France, is facing the nightmare of Islamic fundamentalism. It is at least a quarter of a century that the PMOI is underlining for us in the West that if the Iranian regime as the epicenter of fundamentalism is not confronted, the fundamentalist terrorists will come to the doors of our houses.

Regrettably, Europe and USA moved in the diagonally opposite direction and suppressed the premier whistleblowers on terrorism and fundamentalism by placing them in various terrorist lists, bombing them, raiding their offices and fabricating a legal file against them. As a consequence of repeated overtures and appeasement of the mullahs, today the ominous phenomenon of terrorism and extremist fundamentalism is no longer just a matter of foreign policy, but has become an internal menace for the West. We can firmly say that enchaining advocates of democratic and tolerant Islam will inevitably pave the way for the victory of extremism.

6. The June 17 and its ensuing developments and the closing of this file by the French judiciary leave bare a few facts that we should take note of:
− Firstly, the foremost opposition to the Iranian regime is the NCRI and the PMOI which the regime considers as its sole existential threat.
− Secondly, during this tedious and long investigation, and despite the fabricated and misleading information, it became more evident than ever that the Iranian opposition is not blameworthy, that their activities outside Iran are completely within the framework of law, and that their activities inside Iran are in the framework of international conventions, laws and standards.
− Thirdly, it was proved that the Iranian opposition has deep roots as it did not bend or crumble in the face of the most severe storms, including labeling them as a terrorist organization, bombing their bases in the 2003 Gulf war, the 6-year criminal siege on Ashraf and Camp Liberty, the repetitive massacres, and the June 17 scandal.
− Fourth and finally, following all these events, it is quite clear that the NCRI led by President Mrs. Maryam Rajavi is the true and most reliable alternative to the mullahs’ dictatorship in Iran. By acknowledging this reality, the West should correct its past mistakes vis-à-vis Iran, distance itself from Islamic fundamentalism, and set the Middle East region on the right course by helping bring about a democratic change to this country.

Alejo Vidal-Quadras
Vice-President of the European Parliament (1999-2014)
President of the International Committee In Search of Justice