Home » Articles » Page 367

Articles

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

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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 

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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.

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.

According to a Guardian story, "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."

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 .

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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/

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
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.

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
The MEK Expulsion from Iraq

MKO Leaders Must be Tried

Iraqi newspaper "Al-Jomhooriah", reflecting the opposition of Iraqi people and media to the presence of terrorist group of Mojahedin-e khalq in Iraq, asked for the trail of the leaders of this group.

"We ask the Iraqi government to bring the leaders of this group to the court of anti-human crimes and try them (as Baath leaders) before the Iraqi people," Al-Jomhooriah wrote on Sunday.

"Iraqi people are waiting for the trial of the leaders of this group in court of justice so that their real nature and face and their ties to Saddam’s regime are revealed."

Stressing the need to expel the elements of the MKO from Iraq, Al-Jomhooriah wrote: "Iraqi government and leaders must take necessary measures to root out remnants of Baath regime, including the Mojahedin-e khalq."

According to this newspaper, after Mr. Jafari’s visit to Iran, Iraq entered a new phase of its history and since the MKO was the agent of former regime, Iraqis want to get rid of it.

"This group found Saddam’s regime a safe haven for expanding terrorism and assisted Baath regime in massacring Iraqi people."

There were also other articles about the MKO in other Iraqi newspapers.

Al-Menar Al-Yaum newspaper has discussed the issue of the MKO in a series of articles, stressing the need for their immediate exit from Iraq.

"The US agrees to consider the MKO a terrorist organization" and "Terrorism and its causes are of Iraqi constitution’s priorities" were the titles of articles published in this newspaper on Saturday and Sunday.

Last week also, on Thursday, Al-Menar Al-Yaum wrote: "Iraqis won’t be influenced by the lies of MKO".

"Despite its so-called nationalist slogans during 1960s, the MKO cooperated with Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran so that former regime considered this group as one of its military units in the war against Iran," the paper wrote.

Al-Menar Al-Yaum stressed: "This terrorist group, which has acted against the people of its country, is very wretched for the Iraqis."

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
Missions of Nejat Society

Iraqi Tribes Vs. MKO

A number of MKO members’ families met a group of Iraqi tribes’ leaders and asked them to help the expulsion of the MKO from that country.

In the meeting, held in Hotel Pars in Shirza, one of the leaders (of Iraqi tribes) said: "Although we were not informed of many issues about this group, we always opposed to their presence in Iraq."

"All Iraqi tribes want this group expelled from Iraq but now the Americans control this group and we have intervention in the issue," Vahab Abd Khashi Al-Salam added.

"We, Iraqi tribes, follow the religious authority and we would do whatever this authority orders."

He pointed to the religious commonalities of the two countries and said: "Iran and Iraq share the love toward Imam Hussein and nothing can create split between the two countries."

Another tribe leader said: "we would do our best in the new government to expel this group from Iraq.

"we, leaders of Iraqi tribes, asked the national assembly of Iraq to expel this group from Iraq because we have suffered a lot from them," said Abdulkarim Abdulhussein Al-Tabatabyee.

"When Saddam was in power, no MKO member entered the shiite-dominated southern Iraq because they didn’t feel safe there."

In the meeting, the sister of a MKO member said: "we ask you to help us meet our loved ones again and ask you to expel them from your country."

"Our relatives are not allowed to leave Iraq and they don’t let us meet them while Islamic Republic has issued public pardon for them."

She cried and added: "we ask you, as our religious brothers, to help us since we can’t ask American, British or Israeli forces."

The meeting was held by Anjoman Nejat (Salvation Association) in Fars Province.

0 comment
FacebookTwitterPinterestWhatsappTelegramSkypeEmail
Newer Posts
Older Posts