More than 200 Mujahedeen supporters held since ban: Paris police

Paris police have detained more than 200 people since a ban on demonstrations by the Iranian opposition movement the People's Mujahedeen (MEK).

The vast majority of those arrested have been freed, but nine remain in custody and risk charges, while nine women are receiving medical attention after showing "suicidal intentions," the prefecture said Friday.

Six people have been served with extradition orders to other European countries, where they are resident, it said.

The prohibition was ordered Wednesday after three demonstrators set themselves alight in protest against a crackdown on the People's Mujahedeen and its political front the National Council for Iranian Resistance (NCRI) carried out the day before. One woman died overnight Thursday of her burns.

An MEK spokesman said several hundred people took part in a new demonstration Friday at Cergy, not far from the movement's headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise northwest of the capital. The town lies outside the jurisdiction of the Paris police.

More than 20 people detained in Tuesday's raids remain in custody, including the movement's figurehead Maryam Rajavi. Her period in provisional detention ends Saturday, when she must be released or placed under formal investigation.

The head of France's internal security service DST, Pierre de Bousquet, said Friday that the MEK had "since a long time slipped into the logic of terrorism."

"It was the indirect consequences of the US intervention in Iraq which made us hasten our action," he told Le Figaro newspaper.

"On the one hand activists and trained militants were heading to Auvers-sur-Oise and on the other we had intelligence from various sources which convinced us of the MEK's intention to make France a new world headquarters after losing its bases in Iraq," he said.

Bousquet said the organisation had "an extraordinarily autocratic character, ruled by an exaggerated personality cult," centred on Maryam Rajavi and her husband Massoud.