The head of the Jundullah gang, Abdulmalik Rigi, has admitted receiving assistance from the terrorist group Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).
The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jundullah is a sectarian Sunni organization that occasionally launches terrorist attacks against Shias in the southeastern Iranian province of Baluchestan from across the border in Pakistan.
The PMOI’s Maryam Rajavi (L) and Jundullah’s Abdulmalik Rigi (R)
Their latest outrage was a suicide bombing in a Shia mosque in Zahedan, the provincial capital. Last Thursday’s bombing killed 25 worshippers and injured more than a hundred.
There have been persistent intelligence reports of collaborations between the MKO and Jundullah in the past. But, in a significant admission, Rigi told a US-based satellite TV station, monitored by the ISNA news agency on June 2,”They (MKO) have had good intelligence collaborations with us and have provided us with much information about the activities of the Iranian regime.”
Rigi, who was described as a man who”used to fight with the Taliban and is part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist,”by Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members, told the station,”They (MKO) inform us about the regime’s activities in our areas of operations and let us know of the regime’s forces in these districts and send us most of the intelligence of our interest by email and messages.”
Rigi, who like his fellow al-Qaeda fanatics, has a penchant for videotaped decapitation of hostages, boasted in the interview,”We have treaties of friendship with all groups who act against Iran, and, among these, the MKO can do some things for us and we too can transit their members. But, I guess that they have certain limitations and are in countries where they cannot carry out their intended actions the way they want.”
This was an apparent reference to the presence of MKO co-leader Maryam Rajavi in France, where the group has recently been taken off the terrorist list on the pretext of having forsworn violence.
Rigi’s revelations undermine the MKO’s claimed transformation.
The MKO, which killed thousands of people in their campaign of terrorism in Iran, mainly in the 1980s, later were sheltered and armed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They are led by the husband-and-wife team of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. While the whereabouts of Massoud are not clear following the US invasion of Iraq, Maryam is based in France and openly solicits for support and funds from certain European politicians.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by Iran, Iraq, Canada, and the US, but was recently removed from the list in the European Union.