Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel cancelled a speech to the Council of Europe in protest at an invitation to the head of the outlawed Iranian opposition. Haddad Adel scrapped the planned speech in Strasbourg after Maryam Rajavi, president of the banned National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), met with European lawmakers on Monday.
Hadad Adel had been due to speak to the council’s parliamentary assembly on Thursday in his capacity as the current head of the Asian Parliaments Assembly (APA).
The parliament speaker cancelled his visit to Strasbourg due to the meeting between certain officials from the Council of Europe and the chief of the terrorist group of hypocrites.
The NCRI is the political arm of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), the banned armed opposition to Iran’s authorities. It claimed bomb attacks and shootings on political leaders inside Iran in the 1980s and 1990s.
Its members are labeled as “the hypocrites” (Monafeghin) by Tehran.
Thursday is the penultimate day of the five-day parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, which groups MPs from national parliaments of the 47-member pan-European rights body.
Rajavi had held a meeting with a group of right-wing MPs who belong to the parliamentary assembly.