WHAT TO DO website, April 15, 2010 –
IRANIANS from across Barnet gathered Cricklewood to pay tribute to the life of one of Britain’s greatest legal minds a year after he passed away.
The Iranians, some of who have relatives among the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin (PMOI) in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, said they were “forever indebted” to Lord Slynn of Hadley.
He was renowned in the community for his work in gaining international protection for Ashraf residents and winning legal battles in Britain and Europe to get the PMOI taken from terrorist blacklists.
His wife Lady Odile Slynn told the gathering in an Edgware Road community centre on Saturday: “When Gordon came back the first time from his visit to Camp Ashraf after the Iraq war, he was a changed person.
“When he went, he took up your case as a lawyer. When he came back, he took up your case as a human being with a strong conviction”.
Renowned European lawyer David Vaughan QC, who successfully fought the PMOI’s legal battle at the EU Court, told the memorial: “It was Gordon, not the lawyers, who was the backbone of your victories.
“In the years to come, your children will talk about this Englishman who fought for you at times single-handedly to achieve justice for the Iranian opposition movement”.
London lawyer Massoud Zabeti described Lord Slynn as a “hero, tutor and a friend” who was a “flag bearer of justice and the rule of law” and who “bought pride for Britain and the British people”.
Mehrafrouz Peykernegar of the National Council of Resistance of Iran said: “In gratitude of Lord Slynn’s tireless efforts, the Ashraf residents set up a faculty of law at Ashraf’s University and they named it: The Lord Slynn of Hadley Faculty of Law.
“Many of the residents and even Iraqis have studied inside that law faculty”.
Last summer a dozen Iranians, many from Barnet, went on hunger strike outside the US embassy for 72 days urging the American and British governments to intervene in Camp Ashraf following raids there.
The strike ended after Iraq was forced to release 36 camp residents it had been holding.