Escaped Iranian dissident: The mullahs’ regime is founded on repression of women

International Asharq Alawsat Daily, June 28: “A female political prisoner and opponent of Tehran succeeded in fleeing Iran to Europe a few days before her imprisonment order went into effect. She is Mahin Saremi, wife of Iran’s most prominent political prisoner who was executed 6 months ago despite international legal organizations’ interventions.
In an email to Asharq Alawsat after her successful escape from Iran, she explained: “I have come to Paris to expose atrocities of the Iranian regime and to let the world hear the voice of the political prisoners in Tehran…”
 
About her escape from Iran she said: “I was working in Iran with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and its Social Headquarters inside Iran and I was active in that field when I was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. My husband, the late Ali Saremi, had told his friends to take the necessary steps for transferring me outside Iran. One of my husband’s friends came to his memorial ceremonies and a short while later, the process for my departure started.”
 
She added: “Initially, I wanted to go to Camp Ashraf, where PMOI members are residing in Iraq, because I wanted to be with my son who is there. But Camp Ashraf has been under siege for the last 2 years and it is not possible to enter that camp, so I came to France…”
 
About recent divisions between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Saremi said: “Since its outset, the Iranian regime has been consistently executing and destroying many of its competitors and major clerics; this is the regime’s norm and routine practice, because Khamenei, as the supreme leader, is not capable of approving another person, unless that person is 100% obedient to him, as Ahmadinejad used to be. So, we can say that this [major division between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad] is an indicator of the ending era of the rule of religious dictatorship in Iran.”