TEHRAN — Iranian victims of terrorism and their families have written a letter to the Judiciary and the Foreign Ministry calling for legal proceedings against the management of the Iran International TV.

“We, the signatories of this letter and request, are part of the big family of 17,000 victims of terror in Iran, who lost our fathers or children in the terror attacks of groups such as Monafeqin,” the letter read, Mehr reported on Saturday.

Earlier, the London-based TV channel was strongly criticized for its live coverage of a gathering of the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) terrorist group, which is also known as “Monafeqin” (hypocrites) in Iran.

“Unfortunately, we saw in recent days that one of the satellite channels named Iran International, which is broadcast by Saudi money from London, has given live coverage of the gathering of the Mujahedin-e Khalq,” the signatories said.

They also condemned the coverage as “unacceptable”, citing the group’s long record of resorting to violence and terrorism against Iranian citizens.

Last week, Iran’s Ambassador to the UK Hamid Baeidinjad reacted to the live broadcast, saying the Saudi-funded channel showed its utter obscenity and indecency by the act.

After they had an interview with a spokesman for the Al-Ahvazieh terrorist group, the live broadcast of this gathering was commissioned by the Saudi owners of the channel, Baeidinjad wrote in a tweet on July 18.

The MEK was established in the 1960s to express a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. It launched bombing campaigns against the Shah, continuing after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, against the Islamic Republic. Iran accuses the group of being responsible for 17,000 deaths.

Based in Iraq at the time, MEK members were armed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to fight against Iran during a war that lasted for 8 years in the 1980s.

In 2012, the U.S. State Department removed the MEK from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated with Saudi Arabia and other regimes opposed to Iran.

A few years ago, the MEK operatives were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former U.S. military base in Baghdad, and were later relocated to Albania.

MH/PA