Iran Focus: London, May 22 A Conservative MP attacked a U.S.-based rights group for publishing a report on the Iranian opposition on the basis of interviews with Iranian intelligence agents. David Amess, MP released a statement saying, I recently learned of a dire report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). The fabricated stories of ‘former members’ of the PMOI interviewed by HRW contained nothing new and are stories that have been told by the same individuals for many years to whomever will listen. Iran Focus
London, May 22 A Conservative MP attacked a U.S.-based rights group for publishing a report on the Iranian opposition on the basis of interviews with Iranian intelligence agents.
David Amess, MP released a statement saying, I recently learned of a dire report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). The fabricated stories of ‘former members’ of the PMOI interviewed by HRW contained nothing new and are stories that have been told by the same individuals for many years to whomever will listen.
Regarding the 12 individuals interviewed on the telephone by HRW, Amess said, These individuals work with the Iranian government’s intelligence services and are simply part of the Iranian regime’s long running and well-financed campaign to tarnish the image of its main opposition, the PMOI.
The PMOI whose members and sympathisers have been the primary victims of the Iranian regime’s barbarity over the past quarter of a century, and who have sacrificed everything to struggle for the liberation of their people, are not in the business of mistreating their members, sympathisers or anyone else for that matter, he added.
Amess said that he was shocked at the readiness of a human rights organisation such as Human Rights Watch to discredit itself by repeating, as fact, the fabricated stories of individuals who have been proven to be working with the Iranian government’s intelligence services. This is especially so, when they sought no corroboration of the information published, and worst still, did not even give the accused organisation an opportunity to respond to the very serious allegations made against it, before such allegations were published.
He called on HRW to accept its mistake and withdraw the report, adding, I am afraid that by the publication of this report, HRW has not won itself any favours from the long suffering people of Iran or those around the world that care about the fait of the Iranian people. If HRW are genuinely concerned about any allegations of mistreatment by the PMOI in Iraq, they should make the effort to travel to Iraq and properly investigate such allegations. Open invitations have been provided by the PMOI to all human rights organisations for many years and yet these invitations have been ignored.
HRW would be better placed concentrating its efforts on exposing real human rights abuses by the mullahs in Tehran, rather than fictitious claims of human rights abuses made against the PMOI by those working with the Iranian government’s intelligence services, the statement added.
