Umayya Center for Research & Strategic Studies in collaboration with the Institute of Strategic Thinking (SDE)
MINORITY RIGHTS IN IRANIAN SOCIETY
Human Rights Abuse & EU Reaction
Human Rights Abuse & EU Reaction
Saturday 17th- Sunday 18th October 2015, Istanbul, Turkey
When I was President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq I was informed that the Foreign Affairs Committee had invited the Iranian Foreign Minister to come to Brussels to make a speech. It was June 2010 and the Iranian Foreign Minister at that time was the infamous Manouchehr Mottaki, a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a listed terrorist organisation. He had been appointed to that post by Ahmadinejad, despite the fact that he had previously been expelled from Turkey when he was Iran’s Ambassador, following the discovery of a prisoner trussed and gagged in the trunk of an Iranian Embassy car trying to cross the border from Turkey to Iran. Alert Turkish Border Guards heard thumping in the car trunk and demanded it should be opened. When the prisoner was released he said he was one of several Mojahedin e Khalq (MEK) dissidents who had been kidnapped from the streets of towns and cities in Turkey, then held in a dungeon beneath the Iranian Embassy in Ankara, where they were severely tortured before being sent back to Iran for execution.
I was outraged that this murderer had been invited to address a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee, so I organised a little welcoming party for him. When he arrived outside the committee room on 1st June 2010, I stood with a group of MEPs holding placards showing photographs of Neda Agha Soltan, the young student killed in the 2009 demonstrations against the fraudulent re-election of Ahmadinejad. Mottaki and a large entourage of henchmen and bodyguards came down the corridor, pursued by a huge phalanx of camera crews and photographers. He momentarily paused when he saw the placards and I stepped forward and shouted in his face: “You are a murderer and you are not welcome in the European Parliament.” Other MEPs joined in the shouts and catcalls and Mottaki’s bodyguards immediately started to scuffle with us, trying to manhandle us out of the way, shouting “Don’t touch” to anyone who got too close to their boss. I yelled “Get your hands off me! Do not dare to lay your hands on an elected Member of this House. This is not Iran. We do not tolerate thugs here!” All of this was caught on film, much to the embarrassment of Mottaki.
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