Good afternoon, everyone.
I am going to call this meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human rights to order. Because of some happenings last week in committee, we are still going to continue with our Iran Accountability Week—or week and a half—testimony.
We have on the line Pariya Kohandel, who is going to be providing testimony before the subcommittee.
I'll just give her a little bit of an introduction.
Ms. Kohandel is an Iranian human rights activist based in Berlin, Germany. Her father is Saleh Kohandel, a key figure in the principal Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. In 2006, he was arrested and eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison for refusing to publicly denounce PMOI. Her aunt and uncle, also members of PMOI, were killed in an Iraqi army raid on Camp Ashraf, PMOI headquarters in Iraq.
In an opinion piece for The Washington Times, Ms. Kohandel stated that the Iraqi raid on Camp Ashraf was carried out at the behest of Tehran. With the help of the PMOI network inside and outside Iran, she fled the country for Europe following graduation from high school in the summer of 2015. She continues to advocate for the respect of human rights in Iran, particularly with regard to Iranian youth and political prisoners, such as her father.
Ms. Kohandel, can you hear me?