Saudi royal joins Iranian opposition meeting in Paris

By Murat Unlu

PARIS

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki al-Faisal has joined a giant meeting held by a Paris-based Iranian opposition movement, Free Iran.

Faisal is a former director general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency and head of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies.

Speaking on Saturday, he blamed the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution – Ayatollah Khomeini – and the Iranian government which followed him of spreading revolution to other parts of the world.

Claiming that Iran followed an isolationist policy after the revolution, Faisal said that not only political activists but also ethnic and religious minorities were against authoritarianism and totalitarian ideology.

“Khomeini’s first victims were the Iranian people,” Faisal said, adding that Arabs had always been respectful of Iran's people.

Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group in exile, also spoke at the gathering.

Rajavi said that the effect and the number of people resisting the Iranian regime were increasing every day.