A fight for freedom

Outside the impassive American Embassy, wedged between clumsy anti-terrorist concrete blocks and the pavement, demonstrators act out a macabre play.

Men dressed in huge fake beards, turbans and robes, and brandishing signs depicting nuclear and biological weapons, grab a woman from the 80-strong crowd who was not covering her hair.

The pantomime mullahs then hang her, before being chased away by children representing the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) an organisation described by its supporters as the Iranian resistance within Iran. Unfortunately for them, it is also on America's list of proscribed terrorist groups.

It is that tag of terrorist that the demonstrators outside the embassy in Mayfair want to challenge.

Many of the protesters come from Barnet, which has a 5,000-strong Iranian population the biggest in London. Some have suffered terribly at the hands of the Iranian regime and many have friends and relatives who have been imprisoned or executed. They say the real terrorists are the mullahs who run Iran. The demontration is organised by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which had now reached its 25th day.

America has suggested it may seek to destabilise Iran's Islamic regime, which it suspects of harbouring al-Qaeda suspects. The protesters want the US to take the PMOI off their list of proscribed terrorist groups so it can foment an uprising.

Dr Mandana Alijani the hanged woman in the protest play is president of the Anglo-Iranian Community of Greater London, based in Hendon. She came to the UK in 1986 after her father was arrested. She has never seen him since.

"We are fighting for the ballot box," she said. "We are not about power. We want to free our people.

"The true global threat of fundamentalism is in Iran. Their goal is expansionism it's their ideology. They can't live without it. If they are not stopped, the fundamentalists will spread to other Islamic countries," she said.

Two weeks ago, the NCRI revealed what it claimed to be detailed information about Iran's bio-weapons programme. The group warned that Iranian clerics were crossing into Iraq to take over the mosques and raise support for an Islamic republic in Iraq.

"Why do the mullahs have public hangings and stonings? It's to create terror among the people. Everything has got worse, not better. And in order to stay in power, they can only increase the suppression," said Dr Alijani.

"President Mohammed Khatami is not part of the solution, he is part of the problem. Khatami is lengthening the life of the regime.

"In the past, the Ayatollah was strong and could denounce the West. Now the country is in crisis and so the regime has put in Khatami to make it seem like they are reforming in order to get aid.

"He says he wants to reform, but he can't because it means giving freedom to the people and if he does that, the mullahs will be kicked out of government."

Dr Alijani added that the organisation did use violence, but it was targeted at members of what many see as an oppressive regime.

"Our fight from the first day was, is and will be with the mullahs' regime," she said. "We do not hurt civilians that is our red line. If we did, we would be in Iran by now.

"What makes people respect the PMOI is that they stand up for other people of other religions and those who do not think like them. The PMOI supports a tolerant and democratic Islam," she said.

Chipping Barnet MP Sir Sydney Chapman is sympathetic.

"There's no proof these people are terrorists. There's nothing to indicate that they use terror. Myself and one or two MPs made the most vigorous protestations," he said.

"There's a disgraceful abuse of human rights in Iran, if not quite to the same degree as with Saddam Hussein. But some countries are taking at face value the belief that things are improving in Iran when there's nothing to suggest that they are.

"Understandably, our Government is trying to improve relations with every country. But the Iranians in this country feel that that's giving the go-ahead to this regime to go on with the executions. I've a lot of sympathy with that. You get the impression that a blind eye is being turned."

Back in Grosvenor Square, Jahani Shah, an engineer, told a typical tale. He said he was just a supporter of the PMOI and had no direct involvement with the group. Despite this, he spent the five years from 1982 to 1987 in prison, before smuggling himself and his family out of Iran in 1998.

"I was in a very small cell so that I couldn't lie down and I had to sit. They would wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me I was going to be executed. I was iron when I went into torture. When I came out, I was steel," he said.

"I am 46 years old and I never followed the PMOI blindly. I would give my life for this resistance. They are not terrorists they are freedom fighters.

"I believe the US administration has not recognised the real nature of the resistance. They are not violent they are after peace, freedom and democracy. They are fighting to release their people from tyranny."

May 29, 2003 11:00