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Who is the MEK?

Who is the MEK? Why are they protected in Iraq? (Part one)

The War on Terror. The Iraqi occupation. The neoconservative idealist notion of liberating the Middle East. Regime change in Iran. All of the points reach a nexus with the Mujahideen-e Khalq [MEK], an anti-Iranian regime Foreign Terrorist Organization in Iraq with US backing. In this first entry in a three-part series, I explore the history of the MEK and its protection by American forces in Iraq.

Background and history

Origin

The Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), also known as the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, are a revolutionary political extremist group that dates back some 40 years. The MEK was founded an anti-Islamist rule organization which has sought a ‘people’s revolution’ in the nation of Iran since its inception in 1965. The founders of the MEK were intellectuals at Tehran University who strongly opposed the rule of the Shah in the 70s, espousing a secular, Marxist ideology. The MEK has a military faction called the National Liberation Army (NLA), and is also affiliated with the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). In addition to the MEK, the NLA and the NCRI, numerous front organizations are also led by husband-and-wife Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. During the early 70’s, the MEK were responsible for the following assassinations of Americans:

• June 2, 1973: Lt. Colonel Lewis L. Hawkins

• May 21, 1975: Air Force Colonel Paul Schaeffer

– Air Force Lt. Colonel Jack Turner

• August 28, 1976: Donald G. Smith

– Robert R. Krongrad

– William C. Cottrell

The MEK also assisted and endorsed the occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran and hostage taking.

The Flight to Iraq

The MEK played a role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution . In 1981, the MEK bombed the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, murdering 70 senior Iranian officials. Countless arrests, executions of MEK members and the closure of MEK locations, led the MEK to flee to Iraq in order to enlist in the Iran-Iraq war of the 80’s. In 1986, the MEK established its permanent headquarters in Iraq, with Saddam Hussein as its main source of funding. The [MEK] was used by Hussein to quell internal uprisings, especially the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings in 1991. “They were worse than the Iraqi army, because they weren’t Iraqs,” said Muhsim Ali Akbar, a Kurdish official in Khanaqin, where the MEK sent tanks. “They didn’t care.”

Iranian perception of the MEK

“Though many Iranians take issue with their clerical rules, [MEK] members are widely seen as traitors, as they fought alongside Iraqi troops against Iran in the 1980s.”

“The message of a dozen former militants interviewed…is that the [MEK] is no longer deemed a critical threat by the Iranian regime.”

Inside Iran and throughout the Middle East, the MEK are known by critics as the Monafeqin (hypocrits), a derogatory reference to Mujahideen.

Shortly before the recent presidential elections, 150 protestors demonstrated outside the governor’s office, waving flags and chanting ‘Death to hypocrites.’ “Based on intelligence we’ve received, a network was trying to create problems before the election,” said Ali Aghamohammadi, spokesman for Iran’s National Security Council. Included in the pre-election disruptions were the bombs that killed eight outside of Iranian government offices. “In Tehran, it’s only the MEK who have the operational power to launch something like this.”

Iranians typically see the contradictory ideals of the MEK and its appeal as more of a cult than an organized, coherent political movement. HRW reports, “The level of devotion expected of members was on stark display in 2003 when the French police arrested Maryam Rajavi in Paris. In protest, ten [MEK] members and sympathizers set themselves on fire in various European cities; two of them subsequently died.”

MEK makes the FTO list

In 1997, the State Department included the MEK on its list of FTOs (foreign terrorist organizations). The EU and the UK have also included the MEK in their FTO lists. To this day, the MEK remains on the US FTO list, despite attempts by Congress and neoconservatives to drop their terrorist status. Anthony Cordesman, former national security advisor and Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

“It’s a group that has attacked and murdered Americans…. But it has always been able to persuade people who don’t know about the region that it is more democratic than it really is.”

Recent activities

Recent attacks

In 1998, the assassination of the director of Iran’s prison system, Asadollah Lajevardi. In 1999, the assassination the deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Ali Sayyad Shirazi. More recently, the MEK has carried out a series of mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids against Iranian government buildings in 2000 and 2001, killing the Iranian Chief of Staff. Also in 2000, a mortar attack on President Khatami’s palace in Tehran.

“The notable exception [to recent MEK attacks against the Iranian regime] is the simultaneous attacks conducted by the MEK in April 1992 on Iranian embassies in eleven countries, in retaliation for the bombing of MEK bases in Iraq by the Iranian Air Force just days earlier.”

Arrests & transfers

“Seven Iranians were arrested in 2001 in the US after $400,000 was found to have been transferred to a MEK front organization in the United Arab Emirates, which the FBI claims was ultimately used to buy weapons.”

“Last summer [of 2002], the US State Department outlawed several [MEK]-affiliated groups in the US. In June, France arrested 150 activists, including self-declaring “president-elect” Maryam Rajavi.” More than $1.3 million in MEK funds were seized. President-elect’ Maryam Rajavi remains detained at the MEK’s base in France to this day.

Early depiction in the War on Terror

On September 12, 2002, the Bush administration released its white paper on Iraq. It was similar to his speech to the UN General Assembly on the danger Iraq posed. The only concrete instance of terrorist ties to Iraq was none other than the MEK, “Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the [MEK], which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several US military personnel and US citizens.”

American protection post-Iraq invasion

“The MEK claimed neutrality in the recent Iraq war, but it in fact took active measures against invading Americans and British forces. As of March 2003, the Mujahideen maintained 16 bases in the southern central and north-central areas of Iraq. Virtually all of these came under attack during the war. The first attack took place on March 28, when RAF warplanes attacked the Habib base, situated 82 kilometers north of Basra. The base was also attacked on the following day and subsequently abandoned by the [MEK]. The Americans bombed the massive Ashraf camp (72 kilometers northeast of Baghdad) more akin to a garrison town serving as the [MEK]’s global headquarters, on March 29. Ashraf was bombed again on April 4, April 12 and April 14.”

Shortly after the airstrikes, the MEK and the US reached a cease-fire agreement. “By one count, after the recent invasion of Iraq, the [MEK] surrendered to US troops 300 tanks, 250 armored personnel carriers, 250 artillery pieces, and 10,000 small arms. Still, the group is reported to be able to continue anti-regime broadcasts into Iran.” The Iraqi army uses some of this equipment to this day.

The MEK has been a central piece in the neoconservative push for regime change in Iran. So central that the administration has refused to turn over members to Iran in exchange for five senior Al Qaeda figures, including Saad bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, and Saif al Adl, intelligence chief. More about this scrapped exchange later.

“Apart from the obvious short-term benefit of securing protection from an armed rebel group allied with the Iraqi regime, the long-term objective of the US Government is believed to have been an attempt to preserve the only major armed opposition to the Iranian regime.”

“On April 15, 2003, the US Army signed a cease-fire permitting the MEK to keep its weapons and use them against Iranian regime infiltrators in Iraq. This deal infuriated the State Department, which then convinced the president to undo it, leading to the strange sight of US troops surrounding MEK camps on May 9, disarming [MEK] fighters and taking up positions to protect them.”

Despite frequent denials of prisoner-of-war status and eligibilty under Geneva Conventions, the US granted the MEK full coverage under the Geneva Conventions. “How is it that [the MEK] get the Geneva Convention, and the people in Guantanamo Bay don’t get it? It’s a huge contradiction,” says Ali Ansari, a British expert on Iran. “This will be interpreted in Iran as another link in the chain of the US determination to move onto Iran next.”

“We already knew that America was not serious in fighting terrorism,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, adding that the US had now created a new category of ‘good terrorists.’ “The American resort to the Geneva Conventions to support the terrorist hypocrites is naïve and unacceptable.” On top of protections under the Geneva Convention, the US concluded that “there was no basis to charge any of them with terrorist actions” or past murders.

“But the [MEK]’s fate in unclear. While the Iraqis want it disbanded, the politically-savvy group still has support among some congressmen and Pentagon officials, who see it as a potential tool against Iran.”

August of 2003 brought the closure of MEK-affiliated offices in Washington by the State Department and the freezing of its assets. Before this, Attorney General Ashcroft had been a staunch supporter of the MEK. From October 2001 until mid-August of 2003, Ashcroft made no moves to shut down MEK-affiliated front organizations, despite a widely-publicized MEK lobbying presence in Washington. Earlier in September 2000, Newsweek reports that Ashcroft, as a Senator, sent a letter of support to the MEK which was read aloud to a cheering crowd at a MEK/NCRI rally at the UN during a protest of President Khatami. NRCI spokesman Alireza Jafarzadeh recalls that he “had several meetings with Ashcroft aides” and that he considers Ashcroft “a supporter of his group.” Also in 2000, Ashcroft would write Attorney General Janet Reno, advising her to release Mahnaz Samadi, leading spokesman for the National Council of Resistsance of Iran. Ashcroft wasn’t alone in his support for the MEK. In part two, I’ll cover the widespread support and misinformation rampant among Congressmen and neoconservatives focused on toppling the Iranian regime.

In October of 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to remind him that the MEK were US ‘captives, not allies.’

In November 13, 2003, Condoleezza Rice clarified the US’ role as protector and regulator of the MEK, “I just want to be very clear that the US remains committed to preventing the MEK, which is now contained in Iraq, from engaging in terrorist activities, including activities in Iran, and its reconstitution inside Iraq as a terrorist organization.”

A month later, Paul Bremer stated, “We want to involve the UN High Commission for Refugees in settling the [MEK] in three countries,” which the Iraqi government would determine. On December 9, the Governing Council ruled to deport the MEK. Two days later, members Nurredin Dara suggested sending them back to Iran, a move the MEK said would amount to a war crime.

Also towards the end of 2003, the Iraqi Governing Council orders the MEK to leave Iraq by the end of the year and end its ‘black history’ in Iraq. Pentagon officials do not want the MEK to disband and keep the MEK in Iraq.

In early 2005, some 250 members of MEK return to Iran from Camp Ashraf under custody, receiving amnesty by the Iranian government. The over 3,500 MEK members that remain in Camp Ashraf call those who leave ‘quitters.’

In June of 2005, Scott Ritter revealed that the MEK had already begun CIA-backed actions against the Iranian regime. Ritter points to increased US concentration in Azerbaijan in order to conduct short air strikes and pilot-less drones flying over Iran on recon missions. Iran has, of course, not shot down these crafts so as not to give the US a reason for an attack.

If war with Iran is inevitable due to the pressure of the neoconservative faction, it will begin as a covert war. A covert war that will possibly instigate something much more severe.

In part two, I delve into the stateside support of the MEK. Some members of Congress and many neoconservatives have rallied behind the MEK as a force for toppling the Iran regime. Similarly, I address the role of various MEK front organizations in recent media disinformation campaigns. Lastly, I conclude with the pursued deal with Iran to receive Al Qaeda members for members of MEK.

Daily KOS Website

September 8, 2005 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

In the Shade of Saddam and Bush

"The police surrounded us. As my weapon jammed, I swallowed the cyanide capsule, but the poison had perhaps expired since it had no effect", remembers Arash Sametipour. The instructions were clear: "That they do not take you alive".

The terrorist, who was then 25 years old, released the safety lock of his last grenade and exploded it. Five years later and after several operations, Sametipour now has an artificial arm, but he is content with being alive and talks of brainwashing by a group that took to him close to death, the Mujahidin-e khalq.

He is not the only one who talks. The disappearance of Saddam Hussein’s regime has led to the discovery of horror hidden behind the walls of this Iranian armed opposition group.

In its report “No Exit”, published in May, Human Rights Watch revealed the abuses and violations of human rights in the camps of this organization during the last two decades. The testimonies gathered by Human Rights Watch in Iran corroborate the descriptions of solitary confinement, forced confessions, execution threats, beatings and torture of those who tried to leave the group.

To Iran’s surprise and disappointment, Iraqi occupation by the US didn’t lead to dismantling of this military group, considered terrorist by Iran, the US and the EU. Members of this group (3,534, according to data gathered last March) remain disarmed in Camp Ashraf (a hundred kilometers to the northeast of Baghdad), since April of 2003.

Washington has granted them the status of “protected people under the Fourth Geneva Convention”. This agreement brought up the distrust of the Iranian regime – which issued a public pardon last year for all members of this group.

Since then, at least 273 militants have returned to Iran. Ali Moradi, 45, is one of them. He has returned to Iran five months ago. "Iraqi captured me as prisoner at the beginning of the war and I spent nine years in their jails", he says. There he was caught by the Mujahidin. "They visited us with very negative information on what happened in Iran and offered us freedom from jail only if we joined them; we were under heavy pressure given the circumstances. Eventually, about 150 of us joined them”, he adds.

Bad years

“Our joining the Organization was immediately made public by them and it made it impossible for us to return to Iran", remembers Moradi, convinced that the 15 years that followed were as bad as the nine previous ones. “I was married and I was in touch with my wife through the Red Cross when I was in jail, but after joining the Mujahidin I could no longer do it. My family thought that I had died and my wife married another man. That isolation was part of the ideological revolution promoted by the leaders of the group.”

"They didn’t let us have feelings towards women, mothers, children, or even to speak about it with friends. We had to write daily reports on the weaknesses of our friends. According to Moradi, there were two meetings of that type: “Current, daily critical meeting which tortured the spirit, and the weekly. In weekly meetings, we were forced to write down our feelings towards the women we had imagined during the week, and we had to talk about it in public, and this is really difficult regarding our Iranian culture”.

Moradi had Marxist ideas and paid for it. “They separated me from the rest and did not let me participate in their meetings and religious ceremonies because the ideology of Mujahidin was based, at least initially, on an interpretation of Islam as a revolutionary message. I felt to be under pressure”.

Finally, five years ago he was expelled from the Organization, and according to HRW’s report, was put into internal jail of the MKO (iskan). “We were 13; a Christian, a member of an ethnic minority, and the rest were all Marxists”.

Without documentation, without contact with the outside world, the only alternative was Abu Ghraib, the notorious Iraqi prison. The most prominent MKO dissidents finished there. They were the first ones to reveal the techniques of brainwashing and arresting dissidents inside the organization. Even the arrival of the US Army couldn’t halt the leaders of the group.

"They neither had arms nor could they maintain the pressure in their prisons, so I requested to leave them; after several meetings – in which they threatened me like a prisoner – one of my friends helped me pass a message to an American officer and explain the situation for him. They transferred me to their camp and I was able to return to Iran with the assistance of the Red Cross.”

Mujahidin-e Khalq was formed 1965 as an anti-Shah group. Nevertheless, after the Islamic revolution, it did not find a place in the new order and continued to fight against the clergymen who led the revolution. A rebellion 1981 ended with its ringleaders in jail and many of its members in exile. They settled in France until 1986, when the French Government started to improve its relations with Tehran and the leadership of the group – controlled by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi – was transferred to Iraq. In the war against Iran which started in 1980, the regime of Saddam provided the group with all types of facilities, including camps and training the military forces.

Since 1988 (when the war ended) their activities were reduced, although they continued to count on the help of Baghdad for infiltration in Iran and attempting to assassinate senior Iranian authorities or official buildings. On the eve of the presidential elections in 2001, several commandos crossed the (Iraqi) border and entered Iran and tried to create chaos and also to prevent the re-election of Mohamed Khatami. For instance, they fired mortars at Police Headquarters in Vozara street. There were no dead, but it angered the authorities.

The Story of Babak Amin

The person in charge of the attacks on Vosarat street, Babak Amin, now 40, has returned to continue his studies in the field of communication that he had left in 80s. "I studied at the University of Vienna and there I made contact with the members of the group (hypocrites); I was looking for an organization which fought to bring democracy and freedom to my country, and this group’s propaganda on Iranian regime’s human rights violation attracted me.” Along with some friends, without informing their families , they went to Iraq. They received two months of military training in Jalilieh Camp in Iraq’s Kurdistan and then became members of the Organization.

The beginning of their work in MKO coincided with the arrival of the Rajavis in Baghdad and the formation of the National Liberation Army, the guerilla army and the military arm of the organization. “Camp Ashraf was established and we began to receive professional military training from Saddam’s Republican Guard", remembers Amin. Then he points to several operations against his country in which he participated, while he adds that heavy military trainings came after the end of the war.

"In 1990, the organization initiated another ideological revolution: “the married members had to divorce; the fiancÃ©s had to break up, and all members had to accept the supreme leadership of Rajavi and his wife.

Amin relates these stories while his hands are empty; he lost the best years of his life in a useless persistence. His leaders allowed their members to act as the soldiers of Saddam and during the Iraqi invasion to Kuwait, Mujahidin were sent to Khanequin to suppress the Kurds. As the situation worsened, the Rajavis deepened their ideological revolution. In 1993, the turn came for â€œthe positive discrimination, a step in which the army took the nickname of a character of American novels.

“The military leaders had to yield their posts to women, and thus I became number two in my company”, explains Amin. Amin was also the director of attacking Tehran, which led to his arrest.

In 2000, Maryam Rajavi, new leader of the militants, deployed several operational teams to Iran to foment chaos before the presidential elections of 2001. But military commanders never crossed the Iranian borders. “10 operations directed by me in Tehran were successful. Soon, the arrival of provisions from Iraq came to a halt and we had to interrupt the work. Khatami won the elections and we received orders to return, but the janitor of the house where we lived exposed us”, Amin recalls.

After settling accounts with the Iranian judiciary, Amin has returned to university and counts on the support of his parents to live, although he has resorted to the aid of a psychologist in order to start a normal life.

Moradi is also trying to remake his life in his hometown, Khorramabad. But he’s unemployed. “After 25 years of life, I have nothing except these clothes”.

the young Sametipour, has not forgotten Elham yet, the young daughter of a MKO activist. He had fallen in love with her but he never saw her again after joining MKO Iraqi camps in 1999. Now, he dedicates himself and his time to an NGO [Nejat Society] which supports the families of those MKO militants who have not returned yet.

EL PAIS

September 8, 2005 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

MEK;a terror group;a cult or a source of intelligence ?

‘ font-size: 10pt”>The State Department says MEK is a terror group. Human Rights Watch says it’s a cult. For the White House, MEK is a source of intelligence on Iran.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>May 18 – A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by Human Rights Watch.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>In a document scheduled for public release this week, Human Rights Watch alleges that the Iranian exile group known as Mujahedine Khalq (MEK) has a history of cultlike practices that include forcing members to divorce their spouses and to engage in extended self-criticism sessions.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>More dramatically, the report states, former MEK members told Human Rights Watch that when they protested MEK policies or tried to leave the organization, they were arrested, in some cases violently abused and in other instances imprisoned. Two former recruits told the human-rights group that they were held in solitary confinement for years in a camp operated by MEK in Iraq under the protection of Saddam Hussein. MEK representatives in the United States and France, where MEK is headquartered, did not immediately respond to NEWSWEEK phone calls and an e-mail requesting comment.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>MEK has long been controversial because of its history of violent attacks in Iran, its relationship with Saddam’s regime and its background as a quasi-religious, quasi-Marxist radical resistance group founded in the era of the late Iranian shah. In 1997, the Clinton administration put MEK on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups. MEK’s U.S. supporters, among whom at one point numbered dozens of members of Congress, charged that the Clinton administration only labeled MEK as a terrorist group as part of an ill-conceived attempt to improve relations with the ayatollahs who currently run Iran. However, the Bush administration added two alleged MEK front organizations to the State Department’s terrorist list in 2003.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>Despite the group’s notoriety, Bush himself cited purported intelligence gathered by MEK as evidence of the Iranian regime’s rapidly accelerating nuclear ambitions. At a March 16 press conference, Bush said Iran’s hidden nuclear program had been discovered not because of international inspections but "because a dissident group pointed it out to the world." White House aides acknowledged later that the dissident group cited by the president is the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the MEK front groups added to the State Department list two years ago.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>In an appearance before a House International Relations Subcommittee a year ago, John Bolton, the controversial State Department undersecretary who Bush has nominated to become US ambassador to the United Nations, was questioned by a Congressman sympathetic to MEK about whether it was appropriate for the U.S. government to pay attention to allegations about Iran supplied by the group. Bolton said he believed that MEK "qualifies as a terrorist organization according to our criteria." But he added that he did not think the official label had "prohibited us from getting information from them. And I certainly don’t have any inhibition about getting information about what’s going on in Iran from whatever source we can find that we deem reliable."

‘ font-size: 10pt”>However, current and former senior U.S. national-security officials, who asked not to be named because they are not supposed to talk about intelligence-gathering activities, say that all the major revelations MEK publicly claims to have made regarding nuclear advances in Iran were reported in classified form and from other sources to U.S. policymakers before MEK made them public. A Western diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations component that has been monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, said that while the MEK has occasionally come up with accurate information about Iran’s nukes, the group has come up with a similar number of other tips that have not checked out.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>According to Human Rights Watch, several members of Congress, including both Republicans and Democrats, only last month attended a Washington meeting of a legal "MKO-backed" group called the National Convention for a Democratic, Secular Republic in Iran. In February, the group says, a think tank co-chaired by retired U.S. military officers called for MEK to be dropped from the State Department terrorist list and recommended that the U.S. government actively support MEK in its campaign to bring down the Iranian theocracy.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>According to administration officials, some Pentagon officials want to recruit former MEK members as U.S. secret agents who would infiltrate Iran on intelligence missions. The Pentagon has emphatically insisted that it has no plans to work with the MEK or any of the group’s members.

‘ font-size: 10pt”> According to the report, MEK, formed in 1965 by three political activists, originally was an "urban guerilla group" which participated in the struggle against the shah that resulted in the 1979 Iranian revolution and produced the current theocratic regime in Tehran.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>In an early schism following the revolution, the MEK and Abolhassan Bani Sadr, briefly Iran’s president during the 1980 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis, split away from the main revolutionary movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini and went into exile. Later, Bani Sadr in turn split from MEK after a disagreement with Massoud Rajavi, who, with his wife, Maryam, subsequently became the movement’s unchallenged leader. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam allowed MEK to set up several military camps in Iraq with a headquarters encampment near Baghdad known as Camp Ashraf and the group proceeded to conduct paramilitary operations against the Tehran regime, the largest of which was mounted unsuccessfully shortly after Iran agreed to a U.N.-brokered ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War. MEK reportedly lost more than 1,000 fighters in this attack.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>According to Human Rights Watch, following this 1988 military defeat, the Rajavi’s leadership of MEK became increasingly authoritarian and cultlike. According to an MEK defector’s memoir, Rajavi claimed to have a mystical relationship with a prophet known as Imam Zaman, who is Shia Islam’s version of the long-awaited Messiah. In order to better cement their relationship with their leader, and hence ultimately their Messiah, Rajavi then instructed his followers to divorce their spouses. The group had already established a practice of "self criticism," under which members were asked to undergo their own personal "ideological revolution" by confessing personal inadequacies in cultlike confession sessions.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>Paranoid about defectors and possible infiltrators from the Tehran regime’s intelligence apparatus, in the l990s, according to Human Rights Watch, MEK leadership ordered a series of stringent "security clearances" in which "many" members were arrested by group organizers and interrogated and even imprisoned in special buildings inside the boundaries of MEK camps in Saddam-ruled Iraq. Human Rights Watch says the testimony of former MEK prisoners paints "a grim picture of how the organization treated its members, particularly those who held dissenting opinions or expressed an intent to leave the organization."

‘ font-size: 10pt”>Witnesses contacted by Human Rights Watch reported two deaths during the course of MEK internal interrogations and other cases of lengthy imprisonment. One MEK detainee interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, claimed to have spent eight and a half years in solitary confinement in MEK detention facilities after he started raising questions about the leadership’s policies. He said he was beaten on 11 occasions with wooden sticks and leather belts. Another former MEK member interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Farhad Javaheri-Yar, claimed to have been imprisoned in solitary confinement by the group for five years.

‘ font-size: 10pt”>Other witnesses told Human Rights Watch claimed it was the practice of MEK interrogators to tie thick ropes around prisoners’ necks and drag them along the ground. One witness told investigators: "Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks ”their head and neck as big as a pillow." In a statement accompanying its investigative report, Joe Stork, a Human Rights Watch expert on the Middle East, commented: "The Iranian government has a dreadful record on human rights. But it would be a mistake to promote an opposition group that is responsible for serious human rights abuses.”

‘ font-size: 10pt”>By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

September 8, 2005 0 comment

Duplicity of the MEK nature

ALL MKO SAY ARE PURE LIES

LONDON, 20 Aug. (IPS) “All the information the Mojahedeen provides the western media is pure lies and fabricated to discredit the Iranian regime and help the United States and Israel to put more pressures on Iran”, a former senior member of the outlawed, Baghdad-based Mojahedeen Khalq Organisation (MKO) told Iran Press Service.

Referring to recent press conferences held by the MKO spokesmen in various capitals, including Paris, Vienna, London, Berlin and Washington “revealing” secret nuclear sites or the number of centrifuges undeclared to the international nuclear watchdog, the source who asked for anonymity said the MKO has no information about Iran’s sensitive military projects and what they tell the media is what the CIA feeds them.

“Iranian military-oriented installations are kept very secret, with very limited people except the technicians and scientists having access to them

An Iranian Stalinist-Islamist organization financed, equipped, trained and supported by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his war against Iran and after, the MKO (a.k.a, MEK, National Council of Resistance of Iran, NCRI, People’s Mojaheedin of Iran, PMOI), is now playing the same role at the hands of the American so-called neo-cons at the Pentagon as an instrument of both political and military pressures on the ruling ayatollahs, analysts said.

“Iranian military-oriented installations are kept very secret, with very limited people except the technicians and scientists having access to them, people that are under regular control by experts. Considering the activities of the Mojahedeens as spies and infiltrators, anyone suspected of the smallest and remote links with them is immediately arrested”, the source, a former high-ranking intelligence and security officer with the group added.

The group, now under US protection in their camps in Iraq, is on the American and European lists of terrorist organizations, but its political branch, the Council of Resistance, is active in major capitals of the world and became a darling of the Western press after it revealed the existence of a heavy water reactor in Arak and the uranium enriching installations in Natanz, both situated in central Iran.

However, the satellite images of the sites put on internet by an American specialized firm a day after confirmed that the information was provided to the group by some Pentagon sources keen to get the MKO out of the terrorist list, giving it the image of a group that has reliable sources inside Iran.

This was confirmed latter by the CIA after President George W. Bush personally praised the MKO for the information it provides to the international community about Iranian military-orientated nuclear activities “hidden” by Tehran.

“We had all these information and have reported them to the Administration”, the CIA source had said, frustrated at the leak of sensitive intelligence documents to the terrorist group.

In fact, while Iran had defaulted by not reporting the construction of the installations to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but they were quite visible since the construction in both Arak and Natanz were on the ground and not under ground.

“Except the information on Natanz and Arak the group disclosed, documents that were given to them by the Americans, all other material the Mojahedeen gave to the media are open secret, most of them from the Iranian press, like the name of companies and firms that works for the Defence Ministry and are known to the IAEA”, pointed out Mr. Mas’oud Khodabandeh, a former senior officer of the group.

Actually, Iranian nuclear negotiators, including Hojjatoleslam Hasan Rohani, the former most senior supervisor and coordinator of Iranian nuclear projects explained that under the Iranian safeguards agreement as it then existed, the Iranians were not obligated to tell the IAEA about any of that activity until they began processing "source or special nuclear materials" for introduction into those gas centrifuges.

The other reason Iran started to build some of the sites secretly was of fear of facing sanctions by the IAEA and the international community.

Hence, American, Israeli and some European nations’ accusations that Iran is secretly making atomic weapons by diverting nuclear technologies aimed at peaceful and civilian purposes.

“Every time the IAEA had a meeting of its Board of Governors debating Iranian nuclear issue or Iranian and European negotiators met, some unidentified European diplomats revealed new, hidden Iranian activities and at exactly the same time, MKO spokesmen organized press conferences to repeat the same information”, one senior Iranian negotiator told Iran Press Service.

The Mojaheedin collaborated with Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the former Shah of Iran. As part of that struggle, they assassinated at least six American citizens, supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy, and opposed the release of American hostages.

After being expelled from France in June 1986, the group, assisted by Saddam Hussein, formed the National Liberation Army and launched its most significant incursion in June and July 1988, when they coordinated an advance into Iran with Iraqi forces. During the same offensive, Iraqi units in other sectors of the front used chemical weapons against Iran.

“On 17 June 1992, Mas’oud Rajavi, the egocentric supreme leader of the organisation and a Mojaheedin delegation visited Saddam Hussein. In his statement, Rajavi said, "Iranian national movements and their masses strongly denounce the Iranian regime’s alliance with U.S imperialism, world Zionism, and regional reactionaries to launch aggression against Iraq, participate in the blockade on it, and interfere in the domestic affairs of this safe, steadfast country in the interests of colonial schemes and conspiracies”, according to a State Department report on 1994.

Except the information on Natanz and Arak the group disclosed, all other material the MKO give to the media are open secret.

Not only the group engaged in Iraq’s war against Iran and killed thousands of innocent Iranians, not only the group collaborated actively with Iraq’s secret services in the slaughter of Iraq Kurds and Shi’ites and took part in Iraq’s attack on neighbouring Kuwait, but is also killed many of its own members, as reported by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“Human rights abuses carried out by MKO leaders against dissident members ranged from prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death”, the HRW said in one report published last year.

Surprisingly, however, the MKO has some supporters in Congress and this is evidently the result of a long lobbying effort. The effect of this lobbying effort is primarily seen in the repeated claims that some large number of members of Congress have signed on to some statement endorsing the MKO.

In 1990, the Council of Resistance, made of several grouplets most of them existing on letter heads, “elected” Mrs Maryam Rajavi, the third wife of Mas’oud as Iran’s president and started a new wave of terrorist operations inside the country.

“If some one in Iran has reliable information about the regime’s secrets on nuclear or military activities and for whatever reason he wants to pass them to outside world, he would certainly not give them to a completely discredited group like the Mojahedeen, but would give, or sell them to Western intelligence agencies”, added Mr. Khodabandeh, who deserted from the MKO some years ago and is now active in exposing the true face and nature of the Organisation on his internet site “Iran-interlink.org”. ENDS MKO LIES 20805

By Safa Haeri

August 23, 2005 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Oh where, O where have the terrorists gone?

Remember those terrorists Iraq was accused of harboring and training before the war? They’re on Washington’s side now.

One of the terrorist organizations that the U.S. accused Iraq of supporting during the run-up to the war, the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK) or the "People’s Combatants", has been lobbying House Republicans and Democrats.

More than 300 U.S. legislators from both parties have at one time or other signed petitions in support of the MEK since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and MEK spokesmen say they have offered the sect’s services to the United States in case of war with Iran.

According to a Guardian story last week, "Now US ponders attack on Iran (1/18/2005) "the Pentagon was recently contemplating the infiltration of members of the Iranian rebel group, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) over the Iraq-Iran border, to collect intelligence. The group, based at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad, was under the protection of Saddam Hussein, and is under US guard while Washington decides on its strategy. The MEK has been declared a terrorist group by the state department, but a former Farsi-speaking CIA officer said he had been asked by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon to travel to Iraq to oversee ‘MEK cross-border operations’.

The MEK started in Iran as an Islamic-Marxist group, and was expelled in 1979 by the Iranian Islamic Fundamentalist Party that took power. They fled to France where the French foreign minister, Claude Cheysson, convinced the MEK leader Massoud Rajavi to work with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and the Iraqi government during the Iraq-Iran War during the 1980s.

Special U.S. Middle East Envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, frequently met with Tariq Aziz in the ’80s and sent biological and chemical weapons to Iraq to be used against the Iranians. Later, again with the knowledge and acceptance of the Bush government, these weapons were used by the Iraqi military against the the Iranian Army with logistical support from the CIA.

The MEK helped the revolutionary Khomeini regime to take power in 1979. Part of their assistance consisted in burning down restaurants and cinemas. The MEK initiated the idea of taking over the U.S. embassy and holding Americans hostage. Yet within a year, MEK leaders decided that the Khomeini regime wasn’t behaving in a "revolutionary" fashion and soon they were plotting to overthrow Khomeini and the Islamic Fundamentalist leaders of Iran.

In 1987, Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister of France, allowed the MEK to operate outside Paris by signing an agreement with them that they would not kill any Iranians on French soil.

France intentionally dismantled the group in 2002 several months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.

Linaelin

August 23, 2005 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK sleazy terrorists

Remember those terrorists Iraq was accused of harboring and training before the war? They’re on Washington’s side now.

According to a Guardian story, "Now US ponders attack on Iranâ€ (1/18/2005) "the Pentagon was recently contemplating the infiltration of members of the Iranian rebel group, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) over the Iraq-Iran border, to collect intelligence. The group, based at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad, was under the protection of Saddam Hussein, and is under US guard while Washington decides on its strategy. The MEK has been declared a terrorist group by the state department, but a former Farsi-speaking CIA officer said he had been asked by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon to travel to Iraq to oversee ‘MEK cross-border operations’.â€

In 1987, Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister of France, allowed the MEK to operate outside Paris by signing an agreement with them that they would not kill any Iranians on French soil.

France intentionally dismantled the group in 2002 several months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March of 2003."

These sleazy terrorists held a fundraiser for victims of Iran’s devastating December 26 earthquake in January 2004!! Members of congress were invited and many attended. They support a group that kills women and children .

August 23, 2005 0 comment

USA

Americans’ Positive Stance in Fighting Terrorism

Pentagon has announced that it will repatriate guantanamo prisoners to their homelands in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russian, France, Saudi Arabia and other European and Asian countries. In this regard, the US has signed an agreement with Afghanistan according to which Afghan prisoners would be taken back to their country in a planned process.

The US treats all terrorist groups and prisoners in the same manner. For instance, after the US invasion on Iraq, the US took the control of the MKO which has been listed as a terrorist organization since 1997. The US disarmed the group and restricted its members into Camp Ashraf near Baghdad. But the responsibility for standing against this terrorist group was left for Iraqi new government, Iran and the Red Cross. If we look carefully at other terrorist groups, we’d be assured that the US has treated them in a similar way. The US authorities try to encourage European countries to participate actively in the field of fighting terrorism.

Some of human rights activists have expressed concerns over the repatriation of terrorists and prisoners to their own nations and believe that their governments violate prisoners’ rights but it should be noted that the Red Cross is responsible for fate of these people after they’re repatriated.

Terrorist attacks around the world have created international unity in the field of fighting terrorism and have forced the nations to cooperate and exchange intelligence and information. The threat is serious so that the US has even asked its old enemy, Iran, for help and active presence on the issue. In addition, US forces have interrogated the members of terrorist MKO and have paved the way for repentant terrorists to return to their country. To date, more than 350 former members of MKO have returned to Iran.

This unprecedented positive step and stance from the US indicates that the US needs the cooperation of all other countries in the war against terrorism.

Al-Asadi

August 18, 2005 0 comment

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

Yesterday’s Allies, Today’s Traitors

After some scenes of Saddam being interrogated were broadcast by Al-Arabia new channel, Judge Raed Johi- the head of Saddam’s trial court- announced that Tariq Aziz, deputy Iraqi prime minister, and Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother, and Ali Hassan Al-Majid (aka Chemical Ali) have testified in the court.

These traitors have blamed Saddam Hussein for the operation Al-Anfal and the massacre of 1991 and didn’t accept any responsibility for these crimes.

Besides these people, some terrorist groups helped Saddam Hussein in these operations, the most important of which is the MKO (Mojahedin-e khalq). The MKO, an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq takes advantage of Iraq’s resources and is protected by Americans. This organization also, like the mentioned traitors, has denied its role in the massacre of Iraqi innocent people.

Former Iraqi officials and supporters of Baath regime can’t wash their bloody hands with just claiming that they had not been involved. They should stand before justice court and should account for their criminal acts.

Today, Iraqi innocent people follow carefully the process of the court and are testing the judgment and justice. The court should quit double treatment and try all former authorities and all those involved in suppressing Kurds, Shiites and Iraqis. These traitors should experience the bitter taste of murder, massacre and violence and it would be lesson for terrorists and criminals.

Hassan Al-Asadi/

August 6, 2005 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US Openly Supports Iranian Terrorists

The U.S. Government is now openly supporting the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian resistance movement designated as terrorist organization by the US State Department. On June 20th of this year, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq held a conference at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which is where many foreign journalists stay and is under the full protection of the U.S. Army. I was in the area of the hotel that day, and saw at least 10 U.S. tanks heading in the direction of the hotel to provide additional security. I knew of the conference in advance, because of a report issued to all NGO’s working in Iraq, which mentioned that the conference would take place. The report warned of an increased danger of attacks against the hotel, as anti- U.S. insurgents were likely to attempt to disrupt the conference [1].

The Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) is a Marxist oriented Iranian resistance organization founded in the 1960’s to topple the pro- western regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Since that time, MEK has carried out scores of attacks and assassinated a number of Iranian government officials. MEK killed several American military and civilian personnel in Iran during the 1970’s, and assisted in the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 where American civilians were held hostage. Though MEK participated in the 1979 revolution, which toppled the Shah, once the Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated power in Iran, MEK moved their headquarters to Paris and continued resistance activities against the Islamic Republic. In 1981, MEK bombed the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, killing 70 high-ranking Iranian officials. MEK established its military headquarters in Iraq in 1986, where Saddam Hussein became their main source of funding and protection. In return, the MEK fought alongside Iraqi forces during the war against Iran in the 1980’s, and assisted Saddam’s security forces in putting down the Kurdish and Shiite revolts after the first Gulf War in 1991. The majority of Saddam’s recently discovered mass graves are filled with the Shiite and Kurdish dead from this uprising. MEK military operations against Iranian targets continued through the 1990’s. The U.S. Department of State added the MEK to its official list of terrorist organizations in 1997, and shut down the organization’s Washington, DC office in 2003 [2].

During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, MEK forces in Iraq surrendered to U.S. forces and turned over their military hard ware, including several thousand tanks, armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft guns, and other vehicles. Despite denying suspected terrorists from Afghanistan and elsewhere prisoner of war status under the Geneva conventions, the US granted this status to detained members of MEK in Iraq [3].

Support for the MEK reveals one of the advantages the U.S. has acquired by occupying Iraq. The country can now be used as a staging post for carrying out attacks against regimes hostile to U.S. interests in the region, whether through proxy organizations such as MEK, or by attacking such countries directly by dispatching U.S. forces based on Iraqi soil. U.S. planners are currently somewhat constrained from using the latter option due to the difficulty they face in pacifying Iraq, so the first option, namely supporting terrorist organizations that are trying to destabilize the Iranian regime, will likely be their preferred course of action until U.S. control of Iraq is fully consolidated.

So when Paul Wolfowitz promised Iraqis in 2003 that the US would hunt down the "monsters" that assisted Saddam in digging the mass graves in 1991 [4], the Bush administration was in fact just beginning its support for some of the direct perpetrators of these crimes. Also revealing is U.S. criticism of the new Iranian president elect, due to his alleged involvement in holding U.S. embassy personnel hostage in 1979. Though the U.S. admits the MEK was involved in the same incident, White House support for this terrorist organization continues. This kind of hypocrisy reveals much about what the global "war on terror" is really about. It’s not a war against terror as such, but rather a war of terror to subdue resistance to the US designs in the region.

Sources:

[1] The organization which provides these security reports does not allow them to be cited publicly, and thus I cannot indicate the name of the source. The report for June 19th, 2005 stated the following: "A large conference involving the mujahadeen kalk and sponsored by the Iraqi Government is scheduled to take place in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad 20th June, this may lead to insurgent attempts to disrupt the conference, HOM are advised to advise their staff to avoid this area."

[2] US State Department, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2002 (pdf). See specifically Appendix B: Background Information on designated foreign terrorist organizations, pg. 115 for information on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq

See also this description of the group from Globalsecurity.org.

[3] Why the US granted ‘protected’ status to Iranian terrorists, The Christian Science Monitor, 07/29/2004.

[4] New York Times, July 20th, 2003.

August 6, 2005 0 comment

Iraq

Iraq Should Stop Sheltering Terrorists

In response to Turkey’s positive stance, Jafari’s government should cooperate with it in resolving the issue of Kurdistan.

The outcome of the meeting of Iraqi neighbors’ interior ministers in Istanbul was in favor of Iraqi government and was conducted for fighting terrorism and preventing terrorist elements from penetrating the region. What can be viewed easily in the meeting was the clarity of the decisions. Turkey’s positive position attracted the attention of all attendants. Turkey’s interior minister called the survivors of the former regime, and their associates and affiliates, terrorist and stressed that they think of nothing except instability and blood shedding in Iraq.

This positive stance was also reflected in the final statement of the conference. Iraqi neighbors announced their preparedness to help Iraq fight terrorism by giving training services and security equipments.

In response to this positive stance, Turkey should cooperate with Iraq in eradicating PKK in Iraq. This armed group has established military bases in northern Iraq and enjoys the assistance of different groups.

If Iraq wants its neighbors to tighten up security at their borders with Iraq and stop the terrorists entering that country, it should work to guarantee the security of the neighbors. Sheltering terrorists in Iraq should not be justified using ideological reasoning by Jafari’s government. As Iraq neighbors try to secure the region, Iraq should also play its role. In this regard, Iraq should stop PKK’s activities in the north.

Armed groups such as PKK, Ansar Al-Islam, Al-Qaeda and Mojahedin-e khalq and have chosen Iraq as a terrorist land for themselves and use religious, Islamic and Jihadi slogans to hide their own terrorism, violence, kidnapping, trafficking drugs and weapons and humans in the region. All these groups, despite the difference in ideology and resources, have one purpose and that is "close cooperation". The reason for this is the close cooperation of Baath party with Al-Qaeda and Al-Zarqawi. Riot and murder in Iraq is the result of the cooperation of these groups.

Keeping these terrorist groups, and justifying their presence for security and religious reasons, doesn’t benefit Iraq.

Zohair Al-Dojaili/Kuwait

August 6, 2005 0 comment

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