PARIS — Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Paris on Saturday to protest political executions in Iran, defying an official order prohibiting the gathering. Authorities arrested 20 people during the event, according to rally organizers.
The crowd assembled at Place Vauban, near the Les Invalides monument in the heart of Paris, before police moved in to break up the demonstration. Shahin Gobadi, a spokesperson for the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, confirmed the dispersal and the arrests.
Attempts to reach Paris police for comment were not immediately successful.
French authorities had prohibited the NCRI, an Iranian opposition organization, from holding the rally, citing concerns about possible clashes between groups with opposing viewpoints. The NCRI pushed back on that reasoning, calling it “bogus.”
The group challenged the prohibition in court, but a Paris court upheld the ban on Saturday before the rally got underway.
The original ban was issued on Thursday evening, just hours after France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot spoke by phone with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araqchi. The two officials discussed the latest efforts to bring an end to the Iran war during that call.
France’s foreign ministry denied the NCRI’s claim that the rally ban was connected to that diplomatic conversation.
The NCRI, which serves as the political wing of the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, has a long history of organizing large-scale demonstrations in Paris. Those events have drawn thousands of attendees over the years, including prominent former officials from the United States, Europe, and Arab nations who have been critical of Iran’s Islamic Republic.
