Who is the German police actually protecting – Iran's henchmen or members of the opposition?

Because he shouted “Khamenei is a murderer” at a rally in front of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic in Berlin on October 25, 2022, an Iranian activist received a criminal complaint for defamation or defamation of political figures.

Ali Khamenei, religious leader of the Islamic Republic and commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, is responsible for the execution of thousands of political prisoners and the murder of thousands of protesters in Iran over the years of his tenure.

A Berlin court has even established his involvement in the so-called Mykonos assassination, in which four members of the opposition were murdered in Berlin in September 1992. The statement that Khamenei is a murderer is therefore not only factually correct, but is also covered by the right to freedom of expression.

One would think that the complaint could only have been made by a layperson who is not familiar with the Basic Law. But a press inquiry revealed that the criminal complaint had been filed ex officio, i.e. by the police themselves. A scandal that joins a list of examples of how few Iranian activists who came out of German exile against the Iranian regimes that can count on the protection of the authorities.

For years, Iranian activists have been warning of the long arm of the Islamic Republic, which reaches as far as Germany. Here, too, opponents of the regime are threatened, attacked and, in the case of the Mykonos attack, even murdered. At every demonstration, it is to be expected that regime informers will photograph the participants in order to identify and report them. But when this is reported to the responsible police officers, often nothing is done.

“You can take photos at a public event,” it says. The participants in the demonstrations are forced to take measures themselves and ask such conspicuous people to leave the assembly. The police often do not seem to be aware of the acute threat. Activists report, for example, that the police are not present, despite prior notification of the demonstration.

But the danger is not just limited to photographing at events. The regime's henchmen even go so far as to attack Iranian members of the opposition. There were three attacks within three consecutive weekends in Germany. In the night from October 29 to 30, 2022, three strangers attacked the protesters in their protest camp with knives in front of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic in Berlin.

A week later, two well-known activists were attacked in Hamburg, and the following weekend the protest camp was attacked by the group Feminista. These are just some of the many proofs that the Islamic Republic is quite willing to silence loud dissenting voices in Germany as well. So when activists are often not protected, but instead criminal charges are filed for statements made against Khamenei, one wonders who the police are actually protecting here.

The interior ministries of the 16 federal states are responsible for raising the awareness of the security authorities and ensuring increased protective measures at events and meetings of Iranian opposition figures. It can no longer be tolerated that Iranians are restricted in their right to freedom of expression, in their right to freedom of assembly, in their democratic rights, because the Islamic Republic also has a great deal of influence in this country. Don't the democratic principles of the Basic Law also apply to them?

A key player in the espionage and terror of the Islamic Republic in Germany is the so-called Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH). It is the "ideological, organizational and personal outpost of the Islamic Republic" in Germany, as the constitutional protection also determined, which is why the IZH is under surveillance. The head of the center is personally appointed by Khamenei and reports directly to him. "As an extended arm of the Tehran revolutionary leadership, the IZH is consistently pursuing the goal of spreading Islamist ideas in Germany based on the model at home," warns the Hamburg Interior Authority.

For a long time, the Islamic Center also organized the anti-Semitic Quds Day, and members of the terrorist organization Hezbollah could count on the hospitality of the IZH. So it is well known that the Islamic Republic has an outpost in the middle of Germany with the IZH, but harboring representatives of a terrorist state does not seem to be a problem for German domestic politics. Instead, the spy center is tolerated and, until a few days ago, was also a member of the Shura, the Council of Islamic Communities. The IZH must finally be closed so that the Islamic Republic in Germany can no longer act freely and threaten, pressure, spy on and attack Iranian opposition figures.

The protection of Iranians in Germany is not only a police problem, it is above all a political problem. It is a result of the failure of the federal governments to deal with the Islamic Republic over the past decades.

Daniela Sepehri works as a social media manager and is active in the Iranian opposition movement.