AFP: The Iranian ambassador to the Netherlands was summoned to the foreign ministry here Tuesday after a Dutch member of parliament of Iranian descent charged that she had been harassed while on a trip to Teheran. “The minister has summoned the Iranian ambassador to the ministry and he will write a letter to his Iranian counterpart to demand information about what happend,” Foreign Minister Ben Bot’s spokesman Bart Jochems said.
AFP
THE HAGUE – The Iranian ambassador to the Netherlands was summoned to the foreign ministry here Tuesday after a Dutch member of parliament of Iranian descent charged that she had been harassed while on a trip to Teheran.
“The minister has summoned the Iranian ambassador to the ministry and he will write a letter to his Iranian counterpart to demand information about what happend,” Foreign Minister Ben Bot’s spokesman Bart Jochems said.
It was not clear when Iranian ambassador Bozorgmehr Ziaran would actually show up at the foreign ministry.
Farah Karimi, a Dutch Green Left member of parliament told Dutch media Tuesday that she had been harassed by soldiers at Teheran airport late Monday as she prepared to fly back to the Netherlands after a 10-day visit.
Karimi said she had been “threatened and intimidated” by Iranian soldiers. She was questioned and threatened about her contacts with human rights activists and her papers, address book and agenda were confiscated for a short time and probably copied, she told the ANP news agency here.
“The way I was treated was extremely intimidating and I fear fo my contacts (in Iran). If the authorities treat a Dutch lawmaker like this what will they do to their own people,” Karimi said.
Karimi was born in Iran but fled to the Netherlands as a student to escape Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s secret police in 1982.
In recent years she visited Iran five times without incident.
According to Karimi the Iranian authorities targetted her because she recently championed a plan to set up a satellite news channel directed at Iran to provide Iranians with independent news.
Her plan got the support of the Dutch parliament which pushed the Dutch foreign ministry to invest 15 million euros (20 million dollars) in the channel.
