Habilian, an Iranian GONGO

There is a misleading account of my recent meeting with the Secretary-General of Habilian on their website. I met Mr Javad Hashemi-nejad, because it is my general policy to discuss issues with people from authoritarian regimes. He gave me no idea that he was intending to distort what I said for propaganda purposes, though my long experience of the Iranian government and their agents such as Interlink is that this is their usual practice.

Mr Hashemi-Nejad told me that the People’s Mojahedin of Iran was engaged in terrorist crimes and I asked him to let me have the evidence. I told him that the English courts, as well as the European Court of Justice, had found there was no evidence that the PMOI had committed any such offences. The PMOI had not done anything to justify their designation as a terrorist organisation under English law, and accordingly they had been removed from the list of organisations proscribed by the Terrorism Act.

Mr Hashemi-nejad said he would provide me with evidence, but has not done so. The documents he gave me at our meeting attacked the PMOI in general terms only, and were not evidence.