Hundreds of members of an Iranian opposition militant group exiled [MKO/PMOI/MEK] in Iraq defied yesterday’s deadline to vacate their camp ..The MEK members who are holding out say conditions at Camp Hurriya are inhumane and refuse to be relocated. But Iraq’s government, the United Nations and the US State Department say the claims are just stalling tactics.
It is a bizarre, exiled Iranian opposition group that has existed mostly on the fringes of history. But the cultish Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or”people’s holy warriors”, will seize the international spotlight if the US State Department decides in coming weeks to remove the group from its list of foreign terrorist organisations.The well-funded organisation, once allied to Saddam Hussein, has friends in high places in Washington.Removing the MEK from the US’s terrorism blacklist would make already frosty relations between Tehran and Washington even icier.It also”would allow the Mujahedin to receive US funding…
We have documented serious human rights abuses that the MKO was inflicting on its own members in their camp in Iraq,” said Tom Porteous, the London director of Human Rights Watch. “The organisation … has shown that criticism of leadership is certainly not tolerated..When the European Union removed a militant Iranian opposition group from its blacklist of terrorist organisations last month, it drew not only protestations from Iran but also the contempt of a former member who claims the group is little more than a cult.