Reza Pahlavi said he was accepting the prize only as a 'trustee' until a democratically elected government was in power in Iran. (AFP pic)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.
Greeted by thousands of demonstrators chanting their support and waving pre-revolutionary Iranian flags, Reza Pahlavi took receipt of the prize awarded by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, an activist group close to the liberal FDP party.
Iran "is a country not waiting to be taught democracy, this is a country being prevented from practising it," Pahlavi said at St Paul's Church, famous for hosting Germany's first-ever elected parliament in 1848-1849.
