Iran slams West for granting immunity to MKO

Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of the country’s High Council for Human Rights, made the remarks in a letter addressed to the United Nations secretary-general, the UN high commissioner for human rights, and the UN Human Rights Council as well as the heads of the European Council, Commission, and Parliament.

The group, he wrote, is responsible for carrying out most of the assassinations that have targeted the Iranian people since the 1979 victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

“In order to introduce the MKO, it suffices to say that their top priority and the main basis of performance [relies on] assassination and murdering the individuals, who do not adhere to the same ideas as they [themselves],” the letter read.

The MKO has a dark history of assassinations and bombings against the Iranian government and nation. It notoriously sided with Saddam Hussein in the former Iraqi dictator’s 1980-88 war against the Islamic Republic.

Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist assaults since the Revolution’s victory, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the MKO’s acts of terror.

Western countries, topped by the United States, have, however, taken the group out of their terror blacklists.

The group throws lavish conferences every year in Paris, with certain American, Western, and Saudi Arabian officials as its guests of honor. These have included former US national security advisor John Bolton, former US president Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, and former Saudi Arabian spy chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal.

Gharibabadi reprimanded some European countries for providing “safe havens” for the group, allowing it to set up its offices there, and even letting its members to address their government and parliament sessions.

The support, he regretted, had emboldened “the murderous and dangerous organization’s ringleaders to [even] introduce themselves as human rights supporters.”

“This dual perspective of the issue of human rights” and support for a group, which has the blood of thousands of Iranians on its hands “is not acceptable under any circumstances,” the letter said.

It finally urged the United Nations and the European Union to prevent the free movement of the MKO’s members across the European countries and elsewhere and hold them accountable for their atrocities.