Tehran has cast doubt on the Belgian government’s seriousness in fighting terrorism after the ringleader of the terrorist cult Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) was given a platform to deliver an anti-Iran speech in the Western European country.
“Given serious crimes and assassinations committed by the MKO terrorist group against Iranian people and their deceitful nature, acknowledged by institutions like the European Parliament, how can the Belgian government, claiming to fight terror, give tribune to the leader of the sect on its soil?” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani wrote in a post published on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday.
This file photo shows families of victims of terror at a national conference held in Tehran to commemorate 17,000 Iranian martyrs of terrorist attacks. (By IRNA)
The post came on the same day MKO leader Maryam Rajavi addressed a group of demonstrators in the Belgian capital of Brussels on the occasion of foreign-backed riots in Iran that broke out last September, when 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini died in a hospital in the capital Tehran, three days after she collapsed at a police station.
Last week, the Branch 1 of Tehran’s criminal court announced that 104 fugitive members of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) terrorist group must introduce their attorneys to the court to represent the cases of their clients.
The MKO has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks over the past four decades, about 12,000 have fallen victim to the MKO’s acts of terror.
The European Union, Canada, the United States and Japan had previously listed the MKO as a “terrorist organization.”
In 2012, the group was taken off the US list of terrorist organizations. The EU followed suit, removing the group from its list of terrorist organizations.