Posted on 06/23/2003 4:02:59 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Five Iranian opposition hunger strikers hospitalized in France
Mon Jun 23, 3:41 AM ET Add Mideast - AFP to My Yahoo!
AUVERS-SUR-OISE, France (AFP) - Five hunger strikers close to the Iranian opposition People's Mujahedeen have been hospitalized in Cergy-Pontoise near their base in this town northwest of Paris, police said.
Forty-eight people started a hunger strike on Thursday after a crackdown by French police on the People's Mujahedeen with some of them, including the five hospitalized, also refusing water.
Three people were evacuated after feeling ill on Sunday and two women were taken out on Sunday evening, AFP reporters said.
Most of the hunger strikers started taking water again on Sunday at the suggestion of Saleh Rajavi, brother of the movement's founder Massoud Rajavi, after the latter's wife Maryam said she did not want to see her supporters die.
However the hunger strikers' spokesman Aladin Turan told AFP that two people were still refusing to drink early Monday.
He also said about 100 more people had joined the hunger strikers on Sunday, although police here denied this.
Some 400 people, members or sympathizers of the People's Mujahedeen, held a vigil on Sunday night in front of the organization's European headquarters here in protest against the detention of Maryam Rajavi.
She was one of 17 Iranian exiles placed under judicial investigation -- the first step before possible formal charges -- early on Sunday by anti-terrorist judges.
Eleven of them, including Rajavi, were also remanded in custody.
I am trying to turn it into a standard FR lingo.:) Somebody used Froggistani in another thread to refer to French. I thought that was a good idea after a slight modification, one g instead two g's. Let us spread this.
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