Iran’s Envoy to the UN Human Rights Council Seyed Mohammad Reza Sajjadi requested the Council to launch a probe into the relations between certain western countries and the anti-Iran terrorist groups, including the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), PJAK and Jundollah.
Sajjadi raised the issue during a meeting of the UNHRC in Geneva, elaborating on the criminal actions taken by the terrorist groups in Iran in recent years, including hostage-taking, massacre of the people and bomb blasts, specially by the terrorist Jundollah group.
He also blasted the EU for striking off the name of the MKO from the list of the terrorist groups and sheltering its members, and said the West should account for the blood of those innocent people spilled by these terrorist groups.
After Iran’s security forces arrested Jundollah’s No 1 and 2 and its other high-ranking and influential leaders in the last few months, an increasing number of Jundollah members surrendered themselves to the Iranian authorities, but western spy agencies took several measures to reorganize and revitalize the group.
The Pakistani based Jundollah terrorist group, directly sponsored and supported by Washington, is responsible for several terrorist operations which have killed tens of citizens, officials and security forces in Southeastern Iran.
Abdolmalek Rigi, the ringleader of the terrorist group, confessed after his arrest in February 2010 that his group was assisted and supported by the US and disclosed that he was on route to Bishkek to meet a high-ranking US official at a nearby military base when he was arrested by Iranian security forces.
Rigi also said that he and the US official were going to discuss new terrorist attacks on Iranian territory.
Rigi on June 2 admitted receiving assistance from the MKO, but relations between the two anti-Iran terrorist groups had surfaced a long time ago when US started plans to coordinate anti-Islamic Republic moves.
In August 2009, the Jundollah terrorist group warned the Baghdad government that it would retaliate against the closure of a main camp of MKO by the Iraqi forces.
"…the Iraqi government should know that its hostile measures against the residents of Camp Ashraf who are Iranian immigrants in this city are not and will not be in the interest of the Iraqi government," Jundollah warned in a statement issued in Iraq last August.
The MKO, whose main stronghold is in Iraq, has been in the country’s Diyala province since the 1980s.
Six years after toppling Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003, the country’s security forces took control of the training base of the MKO at Camp Ashraf – about 60km (37 miles) north of Baghdad and changed the name of the military center from Camp Ashraf to the Camp of New Iraq.
The Iraqi government and parliament have both voiced strong determination for expelling the group from the country.
The MKO started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.
The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).
Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.
A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.
According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.
The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.
The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.
Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.
