The U.S. wants the MeK leadership to “accept the government of Albania’s humanitarian offer immediately, and urges the residents of Camp [Liberty] to resume participation in resettlement interviews to ensure that individuals avail themselves of safe and secure relocation opportunities outside Iraq,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has not moved any closer to removing an Iranian dissident group from the U.S. list of terror organizations, senior Obama administration officials said on Monday.Speaking on background with reporters, a senior official said members of the Iraq-based Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) seem to “think that de-listing is now imminent.”..
The Treasury Department’s counterterrorism arm is investigating speaking fees paid to a long-time Democratic Party leader who is among the most vocal advocates of an Iranian opposition group[MKO/MEK/PMOI] designated as a terrorist group by the State Department…David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, noted that “any group that’s on the list is also, by definition, on the Treasury Department’s list for specially designated global terrorists.”
The MEK has a long record of carrying out violent attacks inside Iran. During the period leading up to the 1979 revolution, the group proudly murdered U.S. military officers and civilians working in Iran…More recently, MEK operatives inside Iran have carried out hit-and-run terrorist attacks on regime officials and have planted bombs in urban areas that have randomly killed civilians. The MEK and its supporters call these attacks acts of”resistance”against the regime…
The United States is quietly pressing Iraq not to close a camp that holds more than 3,000 members of an Iranian opposition group that served as Saddam Hussein’s shock troops in 1991 when he crushed rebellions after the Gulf War and now is vulnerable to Iraqi and Iranian reprisals..Iraqi media have reported that the government plans to close Camp Ashraf and disperse its residents to other locations in Iraq. Such a move could make the dissidents more vulnerable to Iranian intelligence and angry Iraqi Shi’ites who lost family members in 1991.
The faith of this State Department-listed terrorist organization of Mujahedin Khalq aka PMOI has been unclear. Hated by Iraqis for its involvement in Saddam’s crimes against the Iraqi people, the Baghdad government wants to expel the Mujahedin group. But no country is willing to take them..The European governments have little interest in taking in 3,000 battle-hardened militants of MKO/MEK, fearing that they will use Europe as a base to plan and execute further terrorist attacks ..Rather than debating where to expel the Mujahedin (MKO) terrorists, help should be provided to the rank and file to break with the cult and make free choices about their future. It’s the only humanitarian solution to this dilemma