France admits plans to shelter Iran rioters

As Iran has been prosecuting hundreds of ‘rioters’ over presidential election unrest, France says its embassy in Tehran was ready to give refuge to Iranian rioters fleeing police.

“What was said Saturday was true. If protestors, who were being chased had sought refuge in the French Embassy, the instruction was to open the door,” Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the Le Parisien/Aujourd’hui en France newspapers on Monday.

“This is a European order. This is in our humanitarian and democratic tradition,” he added.

Iran on Saturday held the second mass trial of people allegedly involved in post-vote riots including local British Embassy staff member Hossein Rassam, and Nazak Afshar – a French Embassy employee. Also present in the court was Clotilde Reiss, a female French lecturer charged with ‘acting against Iran’s national security’ in the follow up of the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Reiss, 24, who was working in Iran as a lecturer at the Isfahan Technical University, admitted to the court that she had written about Iran’s nuclear power program as well as the post-vote developments for the French Embassy and asked for clemency.

Afshar also admitted on Saturday that she had taken part in post-election demonstrations, sent emails containing information on the riots, and let rioters into the embassy based on orders given by her employers.

However, Kouchner rejected the confessions and said, “These ‘confessions’ were probably elicited under pressure.”

Iran’s capital witnessed widespread violent protests which claimed the lives of at least 20 as supporters of presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi took to the streets after the defeated candidates rejected the official result of the June 12 election as “fraudulent”.

After the controversial re-election of Ahmadinejad, Kouchner said that Paris would be ready to recognize him as president only if his presidency meets the approval of every Iranian.

“If everybody in Iran acknowledges the election of a president, it would be unnecessary and futile to go alone in the opposite direction,” he said.

On Sunday, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Washington was trying ‘behind the scenes’ to empower post-vote protesters.

In an interview with CNN, Clinton also said the US was trying ‘behind the scenes’ to empower protesters disputing Iran’s presidential election but did not openly support the demonstrators since it did not want to act in a way that would allow the Iranian leadership to use the US support to unify the Iranian nation against the protesters.