Maryam Rajavi calls on France to take initiative to protect Ashraf residents, prevent further killings

NCRI - Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran spoke at a press conference in Paris on Friday.

The speakers, including a number of prominent French lawyers and a former head of the French counter-intelligence service (DST), discussed Thursday’s ruling by French magistrates dismissing terrorism charges against members and supporters of the Iranian Resistance.

In the press conference, which was chaired by Mr. William Bourdon, a celebrated French lawyer, Mrs. Rajavi pointed out that from its outset the investigation was opened to destroy the Iranian Resistance at the behest of the Iranian regime. She added that those who had pledged in Tehran to attack the Iranian Resistance must be held accountable. She said I accuse them of collaborating with the Iranian regime in suppressing the Iranian Resistance, a legitimate resistance that seeks freedom of speech and free elections and whose only crime is saying no to dictatorship.

Mrs. Rajavi added that the Iranian regime executes members of Ashraf residents’ families in Tehran with this same terrorist stigma and designation and al-Maliki in Iraq used the same excuse to attack Ashraf on 8 April during which 22 residents were crushed by armored vehicles, 35 killed, 225 shot by direct fire from snipers. Crimes against humanity and massacre continue in Ashraf.

Thus I make a specific request today to President Sarkozy who has taken a brave initiative in Libya, to take up an international initiative within the humanitarian and human rights framework, to protect the defenseless residents of Ashraf and to present this case at the United Nations Security Council. I only seek to prevent the slaughter and further bloodshed of the Ashraf residents, who have suffered enormously due to the terror tag from these cases. We do not want to linger in the past and we are looking to build the future.

William Burdon stated that the investigative magistrates have now confirmed what we repeated during the past eight years by admitting that the Iranian opposition acted within the framework of the legitimate right to resist against dictatorship, because international law acknowledges the right of every individual to resist for freedom. It would have been a great dishonor for France to prosecute the Iranian resistance instead of State terrorism that is the Iranian regime’s terrorism. Therefore, the decision of the investigative magistrates only restores France’s honor.