While the Middle East is currently engulfed in crises and disasters due to the warmongering of the clerical regime in Iran, the primary victims of this regime are the Iranian people, who have faced its brutal crimes for more than four decades.
Repression and mass killings are the pillars of this regime. Anti-national wars, the export of reactionary ideology, and warmongering have also been the regime’s guarantees for survival. This regime would not survive a day without executions, oppression, war, or crime.
Thus, whenever the regime’s criminal role in repression, torture, and executions in cities and prisons is discussed, its other side—warmongering and terrorism—also comes to light.
On October 10, at a conference in Berlin titled “No to Executions in Iran – Accountability for the Regime’s Leaders,” Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of resistance of Iran (NCRI), said, “Today, after one year, there remains no doubt that the Iranian regime is the main instigator of the tragic conflict in the Middle East and a principal party in this war. The regime ignites these flames to evade the uprising of the Iranian people. For the past four decades, exporting war, terrorism, and fundamentalism abroad, parallel to domestic repression, has been integral to the regime’s survival strategy.
“For 40 years, the Leader of the Iranian Resistance, Massoud Rajavi, has consistently stated that the head of the snake of warmongering and terrorism in this region is the Iranian regime. We reiterated this principled stance on October 7, 2023, yet it fell on the deaf ears of appeasement and was disregarded. Of course, the price has been paid by millions of innocent lives—those killed, injured, and displaced across the Middle East over the years.”
Mrs. Rajavi emphasized the need to hold the regime’s leaders accountable for genocide, saying, “We have risen up for an Iran free from torture, repression, discrimination, inequality, and all forms of dictatorship of both the shah and the mullahs—a republic founded on the separation of religion and state, and a non-nuclear Iran.”
At the Berlin conference, several German political figures and lawmakers participated and gave speeches. Leo Dautzenberg, head of the German Committee for a Free Iran, said, “When it comes to the death penalty, the ruling theocracy in Iran immediately comes into focus. The mullah regime alone is responsible for almost three-quarters of all executions worldwide.”
Dautzenberg also emphasized the importance of the report by Professor Javaid Rehman, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, which underlines the demand for legal accountability of the Iranian regime’s leaders for repeated crimes against humanity and genocide.
Concluding his speech, he called on the international community, particularly Europe, to take decisive action against the crimes of the Iranian regime and to support the democratic alternative.
Professor Rita Süssmuth, former president of the German Bundestag, said, “From the people in Iran, I have learned that the worst thing you can do is to give up on something you believe in.” She underscored the necessity of maintaining pressure on the regime while keeping hope alive: “We must believe that the day will come when the Iranian people will be liberated. The fight may seem hopeless, but it has always been worth continuing.”
Martin Patzelt, former Bundestag member and board member of the German Solidarity Committee for a Free Iran, emphasized the importance of international efforts for a free Iran and the support of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). He stressed the need to support the NCRI and stand in solidarity with the Iranian people, who have endured decades of repression.
Patzelt recalled the 1988 massacre, where 30,000 political prisoners, including members of the PMOI, were brutally executed.
He condemned the regime’s ongoing crimes and pointed out that the disinformation campaigns against the PMOI are a strategy to discredit the legitimate opposition and said, “The Iranian regime’s disinformation campaign is so cunning that even some friends are misled by it. Our goal is to expose these myths and slanders.”