Dear Supporters of our Campaign,
We have three updates to share with you:
(1) More Support Needed: Thanks to your support, our campaign now has more than 30,000 signatures, demanding the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) of the EU to put the IRGC on the EU terror list. We aim to reach 50,000 signatures by Feb. 20th, when the next FAC meeting takes place [1]. So, we have two requests from you:
- Could you please send this petition to at least five people you know and ask them to share it in their online groups? Anyone, whether Iranian or non-Iranian, can sign this petition. More signatures from EU citizens are actually appreciated.
- Could you please make sure that you have verified your signature? If signature verification is required for you, Change.org sends you an email containing a verification link. Don't forget to check your spam folder.
(2) Feb. 20th Rally in Brussels: As you may have heard, Darya Safai [2] and Alireza Akhondi [3] have planned a rally for Feb. 20th, 2023, in front of the Council of Europe in Brussels. We will be there and we invite all of you who live within the EU to plan and join this rally so that we can have a strong presence like that in Strasbourg, France.
(3) Ample Legal Basis for the EU: As we shared with you last time, Josep Borrell used the lack of an EU court ruling to delay designating the IRGC as a terrorist group in the EU. Our research shows that such a court ruling already exists in several cases. For example, in 1997, a German court announced that in the assassination act in a Berlin restaurant in 1992, top members of the Islamic Republic, including Khamenei, who was and is the Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, were involved [4]. Moreover, according to instructions by the EU Council itself, putting a group on the terror list can be based on the court ruling of a third country [5]. Such a ruling also exists, for example, in the USA [6] against the IRGC assassination plot in 2021-2. If we put these rulings alongside at least 33 documented terrorist plots by the IRGC within the EU in the past five years alone [7], there is no doubt that the legal basis for designating the IRGC as a terrorist group is well substantiated (Refer to [7] to read a full and documented legal argument).
So we just need to convince the EU authorities to put aside excuses and act based on evidence and the democratic demand of us, the people.
ترجمۀ فارسی این متن را اینجا بخوانید.
Sincerely,
Women-Life-Freedom
References
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/fac/2023/02/20/
[2] https://twitter.com/SafaiDarya/status/1619323195156475904
[3] https://twitter.com/AlirezaAkhondi/status/1620475022459674624
[4] http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9704/10/germany.iran/
[5] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/fight-against-terrorism/terrorist-list/#procedure
[7] https://www.lawfareblog.com/eu-can-and-should-designate-irgc-terrorist-group