Son of Iran’s ousted shah takes controversial prize

FRANKFURT: The son of the ousted shah of Iran on Saturday received a “Freedom Prize” in Frankfurt awarded to the Iranian people in a ceremony that critics said was illegitimate.

Some 18,000 demonstrators, many chanting support and waving pre-revolutionary Iranian flags, greeted Reza Pahlavi as he turned up in the German city to be handed the honor, according to a police estimate.

The prize was awarded by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, an activist group close to Germany’s liberal FDP party.

Iran “is a country not waiting to be taught democracy, this is a country being prevented from practicing it,” Pahlavi said at St. Paul’s Church, famous for hosting Germany’s first-ever elected parliament in 1848-1849.