Alejo Vidal-Quadras , the best friend of the Mojahedin Khalq
The President of Vox admits to 13-years working for an astonishing cause: remove the Iranian Mojahedin Khalq from the terrorism list and rehabilitate the group. He says Spanish politicians should support this organization, which is an ” ally ” of the CIA.
Alejo Vidal- Quadras is the key man in Spanish political relations with the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen. The ‘ ex-popular ‘ and current president of Vox was the first Spanish politician to begin having a liking for the “Iranian democratic opposition in exile.” This is how he defines it: “The year was 2000 and I had just been elected to the European Parliament. I was soon to be in Brussels when I met a socialist Portuguese MEP, Paulo Casaca. He had spent a few years working with the Iranian democratic opposition and asked me to receive some representatives of this movement. We had a long conversation and I was provided with documents and they explained to me the circumstances of Iran and the Mojahedin’s history. Here began our relationship…
Since then, he gave his full support to this cause. Since being in the European Parliament, he has “13 years” working for the Iranian National Resistance Council – according to many experts, the political arm of the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen – to achieve its objectives. First, get them off the list of terrorist organizations, in which the group was included in 1997 in the U.S. and 2002 in the EU, being accused of the murder of several Americans in the 1970s and the attempted attack in 1992 against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York. And second, to have it recognized as the “legitimate alternative” opposition in the eyes of the international community. To do this, the ‘lobbying activity’ performed for more than 20 years by the organization has been fundamental. And the support of the Spanish politician – a leading member of the group Friends of Free Iran, consisting of around 70 MEPs – has been essential to take the message into international institutions.
The first objective has already been met. In 2009 the Council of the European Union withdrew the terrorist designation. “But it was a strictly judicial procedure,” Vidal-Quadras quickly justified . “It’s been the courts that have ruled that they are not terrorists,” insists the ex-popular, referring to the judgment issued in 2008 by the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, claiming that no evidence was found of the MEK terrorist threat. After this victory in the EU, the Mojahedin also began their specific crusade in Washington. “I lived very close to this process. I had a long meeting with lawyers to raise the issue in the U.S.. We explained how the dispute had been worked out in Europe”. The result? In 2012, the U.S. State Department also stopped considering them terrorists.
What could motivate the U.S. to take them off the blacklist?
Academic researchers, however, rule out that the only reason to get them out of the blacklist was legal. Hillary Clinton warned that the department she headed would not “ignore” or “forget ” past events ” including the MEK’s involvement in the murder of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992 “, but in the opinion of the experts we consulted there are several reasons that led the U.S. government to take this decision.
First, in 2002 the Iranian People’s Mojahedin allegedly discovered Iran ‘s nuclear program and enabled the U.S. to declare ‘war’ on the regime of the ayatollahs. Second, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, after the Mojahedin were captured as prisoners of war, the U.S. granted them the status of “protected persons”. According to official versions, the MEK was “voluntarily disarmed”. According to the unofficial version, the CIA and the Israeli Mossad is training the Mojahedin for their own benefit. So much so, that in January 2012, Ilan Mizrahi, former head of the secret Israeli intelligence service, disclosed the involvement of the Mojahedin in the “secret war” against Iran that had already cost the lives of four Iranian nuclear scientists. And thirdly, for years, U.S. politicians supported the Mojahedin cause as an instrument of pressure against the Iranian regime. “They speak Farsi and still maintain important contacts within the regime. Useful for the USA, justify the experts we consulted.
Of course what these experts do not believe is that this support is selfless. In the U.S. there are precedents. The New York Times reported years ago on the Mojahedin’s alleged bribery of influential politicians to support its cause. Then there was talk of fees of between 15,000 and 30,000 dollars; and even the former governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell, had to face an investigation by the Department of Treasury of the United States for having taken more than 150,000 dollars from this group which was still included in the terrorism list at the time. And in the case of the European Union it is the same. DIGITAL STAR has unveiled two Spanish presidents attended meetings in Paris annually in June to take payments. “But other politicians who support them do not charge a euro”, Alejo Vidal- Quadras hastens to clarify. “In the world there are still regimes that crush human rights, such as Cuba , North Korea and Iran. I believe it is the duty of any democrat to help transform Iran into a democracy”, concludes the current president of Vox.
Who funds the Mojahedin?
The question still remains unresolved and the experts bring to the fore the question of where does the MEK get all the money it costs to maintain this important network of contacts and support . According to Vidal-Quadras, solely from the Iranians in the diaspora, “some of them are very wealthy”. Although other politicians we consulted doubt this. “I am not so naive to think that the contributions of all Iranians in exile are sufficient to maintain that infrastructure. I do not rule out that there may be powers that are instrumental in acting in their favor”, admits Gari Duran Sen. PP Baleares, and one of the Mojahedin’s greatest defenders in Spain. The USA , Israel and Saudi Arabia are among the possible hidden funders. Duran, however, says she does not care about that; “I have seen people on hunger strike, I have seen the pictures of the dead and have heard their mothers talk, and unless you have to conclude that this is a giant deception, to me it is real.”
The deaths of 40,000 Iranians during the Iraq- Iran war are attributed to the Mojahedin, as are the assassination of the Iranian president Ali Rajaei and Prime Minister Javad Bohanar and many Kurds, and the Mojahedin is now active in supporting the Syrian opposition. And in some reports by the UNHCR it confirms that this is a movement which does not respect human rights. But Vidal- Quadras does not give credence to any of these charges and insists it is Iranian propaganda. A message that its leader, Maryam Rajavi, constantly repeats in all the parliaments that she visits. She does so in Europe two times a year when she visits and has done so in Spain in December 2012 during a flying visit to Madrid where she also took the opportunity to meet with the mayor, Ana Botella – interestingly the wife of one of the politicians the Mojahedin paid in exchange for public support.
Elsa S. Vejo Destrella Digital (Digital Star), Translated by Iran Interlink