Reza Pahlavi receives disputed Iran freedom prize

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's ousted shah, received a Freedom Prize in Frankfurt on Saturday on behalf of the Iranian people, at a ceremony backed by large street demonstrations but criticised by opponents who said he was not a legitimate representative.

Police estimated that about 25,000 demonstrators greeted Pahlavi in the German city, many waving pre-revolutionary Iranian flags and chanting support.

The Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is close to Germany's liberal FDP party, presented the prize at St Paul's Church. Pahlavi said Iran was not waiting to be taught democracy but was being prevented from practising it.

He said he was accepting the prize only as a trustee until a democratically elected government was in power in Iran. “One day I will place it in the hands of its rightful owners, not on foreign soil but in the capital, Tehran,” he said.

Pahlavi's father, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was Iran's last shah. He fled into exile in 1979 before a revolution overthrew the monarchy and later became consolidated under Islamist clerical rule.

Critics object to Pahlavi's links to Iran's former monarchy, his support for Israel and what they describe as insufficient distance from his father's autocratic rule. Sahar Sanaie, spokeswoman for the Society for German-Iranians in Hesse, said about 200 prisoners held in Iran had signed a letter opposing Pahlavi's receipt of the prize and describing him as a symbol of a “bygone dictatorship”.

The Frankfurt branches of the SPD and Greens boycotted the event, saying Pahlavi could not be considered a legitimate representative of the Iranian people. Frankfurt's Die Linke branch said the church should not host the ceremony because of city rules against political events there.