Iran Envoy Is Assaulted by Protesters Near the U.N.
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Version 0 of 1. Iranian exiles and the Iranian government can make for a combustible combination, as a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry discovered after an address by the country’s president to the United Nations during this week’s General Assembly. Not long after the speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, the spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, was shoved and shouted at by a small group of protesters as he tried to cross the street near Second Avenue and East 48th Street. Police officers stepped in quickly to protect him, ordering the protesters back. Video of the incident, obtained by The Associated Press from a documentary filmmaker, showed that the protesters included a man wrapped in an old Iranian flag; another man in a yellow vest worn by supporters of the Mujahedeen Khalq, a powerful Iranian exile group known as the M.E.K. or M.K.O.; and a woman wearing a T-shirt for Ma Hastim, a rights group associated with the Iranian exile community in Los Angeles and whose name is Persian for “We Are.” Iran’s state-run satellite news channel, Press TV, placed blame for the assault on supporters of the M.E.K., identifying them as “anti-Iran M.K.O. terrorists.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently decided to remove the M.E.K. from the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations after an intense lobbying campaign on behalf of the group. Alireza Miryousefi, the press attaché for Iran’s Mission to the United Nations, said the episode resulted from “aggression by M.E.K. sect members” against Mr. Mehmanparast, who, he said, was not hurt. Mr. Miryousefi warned that removing the “terrorist sect” from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations “would be another wrong step by the U.S. administration.” Another video clip, apparently recorded by the cellphone of a man shouting threats at Mr. Mehmanparast from very close range, showed police officers escorting the spokesman from protesters screaming “terrorist.” The episode occurred after Iranian exiles rallied outside the United Nations to protest Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech. Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the M.E.K., which is described as a cult by some former members, addressed the rally from France by satellite. Patrick J. Kennedy, a former congressman from Rhode Island, who said last year that he had been paid $25,000 to voice his support for the M.E.K. at a rally in Washington, also addressed the protest on Wednesday. An M.E.K. organizer, Homeira Hesami, an Iranian expatriate who is a medical technician in Texas, said that a group of Iranian officials being escorted by police officers had been walking west on East 47th Street from the United Nations campus toward Second Avenue around 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday when a number of protesters recognized Mr. Mehmanparast. “I saw him walking by, and of course we started chanting ‘Get lost!’ in Farsi,” said Ms. Hesami, who was across the street. “People were angry at him and surrounded him. The presence of Ahmadinejad at the U.N. made people very emotional.” She said the M.E.K. protesters had been with Syrians protesting the government of President Bashar al-Assad. “We suffer from the same pain,” she said. “We were side by side. It wasn’t like they had their own thing and we had our own thing.” A man who identified himself as Gregory Nelson boasted to The Daily News that he managed to punch Mr. Mehmanparast in the stomach during the melee. Mr. Nelson, who identified himself as a former member of the Army National Guard, said that he flew to New York from his home in Fayetteville, Ark., to attend the anti-Ahmadinejad protest. After a rally in favor of the M.E.K. in Washington last year, Zaid Jilani and Ali Gharib of the liberal Web site ThinkProgress interviewed several non-Iranians who attended but seemed to know little about the group’s involvement in terrorist attacks. All of them, including three men from Fayetteville, said they had been provided with all-expenses-paid trips to Washington for the event. Mr. Nelson’s Facebook page describes him as a “partner in small documentary production company,” and says he has been working on a film about the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the M.E.K., “and their struggles to be recognized” for the past 10 years. |