March 2, 2023: Senator Giulio Terzi, the head of the Senate European Union Affairs Committee and former Italian foreign minister, led a delegation of Italian Parliament members to meet with Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
The delegation also included Ms. Stefania Ascari from the Judicial Committee and Mr. Emanuele Pozzolo from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
A transcript of the speech by Senator Terzi at the Meeting of the Ashraf-3 is as follows:
President-elect, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. Thank you. You all, dear, dear friends. Close to our hearts of member of Parliament, honorable Ascari honorable Pozzolo, but close to the hearts of all the other members, all the members of this important committee, parliamentary committee for a free Iran and free and democratic Iran and free and just Iran. A new Iran that must be reborn from the ashes of infamous ignominy that the actual regime of the Ayatollahs in bringing to your country. It is a country of moral ashes, ashes of ethical values, of distraction and shame. And this the engagement of a number of members of Italian parliament, as in other European parliaments and in other parliaments of the world. For instance, the American Congress where such an important resolution was passed a couple of weeks ago, supporting in very clear terms at the large majority of your positions. The program, proposed and defended, brought forward by President-elect Maryam Rajavi. And all of you. All this great movement which is existing in the world in support and the promotion of the Iranian resistance represented by the PMOI, MEK and the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
All this wave which has been generated over the last many years, over the last decades since, in fact since the inception of this heinous regime. This shows that the regime is close to an end, and that must be understood thoroughly by international public opinion. And we are in parliament, in the Italian parliament. As far as the committee I have the honor to promote and to bring forward, it is something that must be rooted deeply not only in the conscience of the people of the public opinion in Europe, but in the deliberation and in the political will of the political leaders all over Europe and all over the world. Entering this Magnificent Realization, which is Ashraf 3, and Visiting Something That I have read about, I have seen I have watched in The Previous City Ashraf Two and In Other Location where displays such as in Villepint, the General convention that I had the honor to attend a number of times thanks to the invitation of President-elect Rajavi. But visiting tonight this hall and the hall of the memory of the genocide which was inflicted upon you by the regime and has been inflicted all over the time and even before by a criminal dictator who was calling himself the King of Iran.
The Shah of Iran. All this long history of fight, belief, faith in freedom must be rooted deeply in our memory, as it is in your memory, and must become a real flame, understood not only by you at the entrance of this marvelous Ashraf three. But it’s a flame which must warm the hearts and clear the minds of those who are talking nowadays about Iran, sometimes without understanding properly what is going on in that country and what is going on among the diasporas, the Iranian political refugees, the Iranian communities of this community which belongs, surely and truly belongs to the resistance. So coming here, it is a very important personal and political experience. And I’m very glad to share this experience with my two important colleagues in the italian parliament because it is something that allows us whatever is our previous history and our political life or personal culture, it is something which enriches each one who crosses that door with the flame depicted, the flame of liberty. And everybody should come here to understand what fighting for liberty truly means. Means You, means that hall, means the sacrifices, the horror which are displayed and documented and witnessed by the survivors and their witnesses, by the families of the survivors.
Like the young lady who I saw in a picture as a young daughter, seven or eight years old, of a hero of the resistance was just about to be murdered because of a fatwa of a crazy Ayatollah Khomeini had obliged his killers to hang 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, and killers who were able to go to Switzerland to kill the brother of Massoud Rajavi, Ambassador Rajavi because it was a danger for the regime. And it was a danger for the regime because he was able to collect true and undisputable evidence that the genocide that being carried on three years before his murder and the united nations could have been able and should have had the duty to denounce it as a genocide. And now, now the satisfaction, thanks to the efforts of your organization of the resistance, of Madame Rajavi and her, all of you, but also the leadership of your movement, thanks to this effort. Justice is coming. International justice is coming. A plot was discovered in Switzerland. Twelve people, twelve killers had been identified already many years ago, but a couple of years ago, there was a decision by the federal prosecutor to change the reason of the prosecution, to change from a terrorist act into attempted genocide.
And that is a crime which may not be punished by the federal Swiss justice today or tomorrow. But it is the assurance that the justice will come to punish those people and those who have dispatched them to Geneva in 91 to kill Ambassador Rajavi. Memory to him and a great tribute to the great achievement that your movement, through his heroes at every level, political level, legal level, fighting level, on the ground are rising against this regime for the flame of liberty. So, I’m here with my colleagues bringing to you all not only our greetings and the greetings also of the other member of parliament who will join us in a future event, in a future occasion. We hope to be invited again here in Ashraf 3 or to be able to visit with many more friends. And the reason why we are here today is to bring to all of you in person in person, in a written way, I would like to say, leaving also our mementos in a written form, but to bring you in person, the sense of our unwavering support and commitment, of our friendship and admiration as member of the newly born but thanks to the encouragement of many people who are working with you and they have three at least in front of me, four, five the more I turn around, I see them.
The support of your colleagues who are working from Ashraf three, in Rome, from Brussels and other places in the world to create this parliamentary committee for a free Iran, an unwavering and committed support. Over the last six months, the entire world has witnessed the extremely courageous and widespread and resilient uprising. Madame Rajavi was describing it, but we saw very interesting video clips in the exposition of the truth was what is going on in Iran now? Thanks to the MEK, to the resistance we have seen, what is the extent of the uprising, the enormous courage of those who are attacking or demonstrating or showing on which side of history they are staying in Iran and in the world, in defending their cause and defending your cause. And the number I mean, we are talking about individual stories. We are talking about individual stories of the 750 murders which have been perpetrated by the Basiji, by the Pasdaran, by the security forces, only over the last six months. And we have been listening also the fact that 30,000 people have been arrested in just a few months. Arrested in just a few months. And we know again, watching in that all I am referring, maybe too many times.
But I was sincerely not only impressed but shocked, shocked, as if I have seen in true in the true life, as a true experience, the displays of the torture chambers, of the hanging hall and of the death commission which are displayed there. And we know what we are talking about. Thousand and thousand colleague prisoners is not a figure, it’s a humanity. It’s humanity which is persecuted and tortured and threatened and obliged to denounce, maybe. And they don’t denounce their companions, their brothers. They resist, and they resist until the end, as we have seen, and it has been witnessed. So, the uprising started long ago, and that’s constantly increased, as President Rajavi was saying, and it is increasing, and it will increase and increase and increase until the mullahs will be finished. The current protests are rooted in more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship, a resistance which for years has been led by women, by men, by young people who have endured torture, sexual, gender-based violence and death. It is our duty to never forget and to oblige, let me pass this term, to oblige all the others in the world who are still skeptical or looking the other way to oblige them to remember because, you know, dear friends, passing through this experience tonight and thank you again.
You’ll never be grateful enough to give you this experience. And I hope that there will be many others who will benefit culturally, but let’s say also morally of this experience like the one that our three members of Parliament are doing tonight. When I was passing through the hall and seeing all the incredible, extraordinary documentation that the organization has been able to collect pictures, names, tens of thousands of names of the 1988 massacre. I was quickly going through and maybe saying something too personal, but I have to be honest and to tell it to say that I was thinking what was I doing in that year in 1988, 34 years ago? And it would be a good exercise for people, not only people of my age, but even younger or much younger, to try to recollect what we were doing, what we were knowing, what we were fighting for, 34 years ago, when that genocide was taking place. I was a midranking diplomatic officer in a rather significant position in security matters, on economic matters, but also political matters. But even in my position, while I was reading because of my job, daily dispatches from abroad, from over the world about current affairs, humanitarian issues and so on, on that 1988, almost nothing I knew about what was going on in Iran.
in your country about the genocide, which was destroying so many lives, destroying a population, destroying a generation of people who were just willing to be free. So, I asked myself that we have a responsibility, especially when it happens that we occupy that we hold position in public administration, political environment or even simply as citizens of a free world. We have a responsibility of being better informed, of being a promoter of knowledge of what is going on. And this is so important because today we see madame Rajavi was saying it very openly, very clearly, we see that the knowledge is obfuscated by a strategy of lies, disinformation, censorship, neglect, or simply perhaps is the worst word in the series of words that I’ve just pronounced, perhaps by simple indifference. Indifference is a big crime. It’s a big crime for a human being. It does not even exist in the animal species. Even they have feelings, sense of responsibilities for their peers, and we don’t, or many people don’t. So when there is this obfuscation of knowledge and that attempt to pretend that, yes, Iran is a rich country, rich country is a disaster from the point of view of poverty, but is potentially rich of mineral resources, of young people of a very industrious population on an extremely vital use.
When we think that all that exists, there are people say, well, forget the MEK, forget the resistance, forget the genocide, forget the freedom, just make money talking to the mullahs and striking business making this and business with them. So, let’s go on. Who cares? This is criminals. And when, if we want to approach that dark side of the moon, we have to engage. And that’s why we are here. I fully understand and support and we have discussed together also in other instances also, Madam Rajavi, with your advisors and your people, let me say so, in your government we have discussed many times these issues of what the international community should do, what Europe should do. And the first one is not to make any discount to the Iranian regime and to the Iranian mullahs. The European Union must change in debt. It’s falling in security policy visa-a-vis Iran, which means to change its foreign security policy on Iran. Because Iran, not only because all the things that we have tried to alight tonight need to be resolved in a different way, indifference is a crime, I repeat. But because the Iranian threat is not only any threat and that is big enough as a threat is a tragedy big enough to be countered in different ways.
Not only a threat to its own people, to its own population is a genocidal threat against everyone’s life in Iran and outside Iran. But Iran is a global threat. It’s a terrible global threat which now is engaged in a war, in a war against the resistance, but it is a war against Europe. Iran is providing large supplies of weapon to the Russian army, but is not providing only supplies and resources, smuggling Russian oil to provide financial resources to Moscow, but is dispatching paramilitary militias or even military personnel recruited in Afghanistan, in Yemen, in Syria and in other places. And personnel which goes along it’s not a proxy personnel. It’s a personnel which works in the Wagner group, which works in the Russian army and so on, and which has been recruited by the IRGC, by the Hezbollah and so on. So Iran is a global threat. The nuclear program is running free hands. It is completely out of control because of that false belief, that dream, that a JCPOA agreement, that nuclear agreement could have ever been negotiated with a criminal regime. You cannot negotiate anything with criminals. They just must be countered and opposed and dislodged by force.
That’s the only thing that can be done. But Iran is also pursuing its goals, its foreign policy. What is the Iranian foreign policy? Who are the diplomatic agents of Iran, they are terrorists! Can I speak about just a second about the case of Assadi, a diplomat, secretary,… the secretary is already an important rank. It’s a full-fledged diplomat in the diplomatic area of the Iranian embassy in Vienna. and he tried to bring a huge bomb in Villepint five years ago trying to create probably the biggest terrorist attack comparable only to the Twin Towers in New York. And as big as this one may be bigger in Villepint where there were assembled, 50, 60,000 people from abroad, all of you and some of us. And Mr. Assadi was caught thanks to European intelligence services, thanks to the Belgian police and was tried in Antwerp and sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. But still the European governments, especially one European government had the nerve to engage in a negotiation with the Iranian regime for exchanging this guy, this criminal, this terrorist with some European with dual nationality which had been arrested and kept in Tehran exactly to foresee a possible exchange.
And all this didn’t happen until now. But why didn’t happen? Because of you. Because the action that in the judiciary and the political, the uproar that the National Council of Resistance of Iran was able to rise all across Europe and was able to bring and to keep that criminal, the terrible criminal terrorist diplomat in jail. And that shows that another proposal on which Madam Rajavi is insisting, and the organization is very much has in the agenda, the fact that the terrorist diplomatic network in Europe must be dismantled, must be dismantled without compromise. No compromise is possible there. They must go home, be arrested if they are caught and the embassies must be closed, must be closed as soon as possible.
Now, for instance, what is the Iranian embassy in Vienna still doing? Opening in normal affairs and being there, pretending that the ambassador is a normal ambassador already staff is still there. They must go and all the accreditations must be withdrawn. And my last point is the question of understanding, knowledge, not being fooled by a fake resistance. Madame Rajavi has mentioned exactly the names I have already mentioned that at the beginning. It is something that must be clarified to public opinion the more often and the faster, the better it is.
And we cannot be fooled by prompt conversion to the idea of freedom by a party which was a party of a dictatorship 50 years ago, which used the same procedures, the same tortures, the same chambers, the same hanging that the regime does and that was involved in the same kind of repression of whatever position that existed. The people who believe that the monarchy of the shah is still something that is viable and that could be accepted and decently presented as an option to the Iranian people and to the international community. That is something that must disappear from the political discourse and must disappear, the sooner, the better.
Thank you very much, freedom for your country, and thanks for the support to the Parliamentary Committee for Freedom in Iran. Thank you.
