Following the regime's decision to open a case against the leadership of both the Iranian opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) and the broader opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and try them in absentia on bogus and made-up charges at a trial that began on 7 March, Professor Lord Alton of Liverpool, said:

The real aim of this show trial is to sustain the atmosphere of fear in the country as the popular protests against the regime grow and continue across Iran, which regime officials and state media admit are organised by the opposition coalition, the NCRI and the PMOI.

The theocratic leaders in Tehran also hope to divert attention from the growing international calls and consensus to hold the regime to account for its state terrorism and systematic human rights violations, especially in the aftermath of the trial and conviction of an Iranian diplomat in Belgium on terrorism charges for planning to bomb the annual gathering of NCRI in Paris in 2018 in support of a free and democratic Iran.

The British Committee for Iran Freedom (BCFIF) knows from experience that the regime's evidence and charges against the PMOI and NCRI are bogus and will be dismissed by any independent court as perverse as it was in the UK when the highest court ordered the UK Government to de-proscribe the PMOI.

The BCFIF supports NCRI's call on the regime in Iran to bring as soon as possible its case and evidence against the pro-democracy opposition before an independent and internationally recognised court.

The BCFIF also backs NCRI's challenge to Iran's Supreme Leader Khamanei, President Hassan Rouhani, Head of Judiciary Ebrahim Raisi, and Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi to appear before this internationally recognised court to defend their bogus claims and face the indisputable evidence of the involvement of Iran's theocratic dictatorship in systematic human rights violations and abuses for the last four decades.

British Committee for Iran Freedom

12 March 2021