Iran slams French support for MKO

Days after France permitted the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) to stage a demonstration in a Paris suburb, the Iranian envoy to France criticizes the country for supporting the terrorist group.

In an interview with Radio Courtoisie of France, Iran’s Ambassador to Paris Mehdi Mir-Aboutalebi questioned the French government’s claim of support for human rights.

“While it claims to be an advocate of human rights, France supports MKO members who have appalling criminal records,” IRIB qouted Mir-Aboutalebi as saying in the interview on Friday.

The Iranian ambassador called on France to provide an explanation as to why it allowed members of the MKO to celebrate on the 29th anniversary of a bombing attack in Iran, in which over 70 people were killed.

The decision by Paris to allow the MKO to hold the gathering came while the Iraq-based group is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and is responsible for numerous acts of terror and violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.

The attacks include the assassination of judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti and more than seventy members of the Islamic Republic Party who lost their lives in a bombing on June 28, 1981.

The MKO is also known to have cooperated with Iraq’s notorious dictator Saddam Hussein in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.