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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Q&A: what is the MEK and why did the US call it a terrorist organisation?

The MEK cut a ‘swath of terror’ in the Middle East, but leaders have worked hard to convince the west they are peaceful now

Why did the US designate the MEK a terrorist organisation in 1997?
The MEK’s supporters say it was banned as a move by the Clinton administration to appease the what is the MEK and why did the US call it a terrorist organisation? Iranian government. The US state department, which decides which groups to include on the list of designated terrorist organisations, points to a long and bloody history.

The MEK ran a bombing campaign inside Iran against the Shah’s regime the 1970s. The targets were sometimes American, including the US information office, Pepsi Cola, PanAm and General Motors. The group routinely denounced Zionism and "racist Israel", and called for "death to America".

A state department report in 1992 identified the MEK as responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran during the 1970s. They included three military officers and three men working for Rockwell International, a conglomerate specialising in aerospace including weapons, who were murdered in retaliation for the arrest of MEK members over the killings of the US military officers.

The MEK was an enthusiastic supporter of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran following the Iranian revolution. It called the eventual release of the American hostages a "surrender".

After falling out with Iran’s new rulers, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the MEK launched a bomb campaign against the Islamic government. In 1981, it attacked the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, killing 74 senior officials including the party leader and 27 members of parliament. A few months later it bombed a meeting of Iran’s national security council, killing Iran’s president and the prime minister.

The state department described the MEK as cutting a "swath of terror" across the country in the following years and of "violent attacks in Iran that victimise civilians".

"Since 1981 the [MEK] have claimed responsibility for murdering thousands of Iranians they describe as agents of the regime," the report said.

The bombings continued into the 1990s including one at [Ayatollah]Khomeini’s tomb and against oil refineries.

Who supported the MEK?
After the MEK leadership fell out with the Islamic regime it fled first to Paris. France expelled the MEK leader, Masud Rajavi, in 1986. The group then ran into the arms of Iran’s enemy, the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Iraq helped arm the MEK’s thousands of fighters with artillery, guns and tanks and housed them in three camps near Baghdad and along the border with Iran. Baghdad also supplied money.

The MEK’s armed wing, the National Liberation Army (NLA), conducted raids into Iran during the last stages of the Iran-Iraq war. It also became a tool of Saddam Hussein’s campaign of internal oppression.

"The NLA’s last major offensive reportedly was conducted against Iraqi Kurds in 1991 when it joined Saddam Hussein’s brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion," the state department report said.

The last major act of violence committed by the MEK in the west was in 1992 when it stormed Iranian diplomatic missions in the US, Britain, Canada, Germany, France and Switzerland. The assault was in response to an Iranian air force bombing raid on an MEK base in Iraq.

Wouldn’t the killing of Americans, calls for the destruction of Israel and supporting Saddam Hussein be enough to scare off any American politician from ever supporting the MEK?
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 changed everything for the MEK. Its fighters at Camp Ashraf, near the Iranian border, and other sites near Baghdad were disarmed by the Americans. The MEK leadership moved swiftly to distance itself from Saddam Hussein, emphasising its opposition to the Islamic government in Tehran and casting its supporters as selfless and long suffering supporters of freedom and democracy. From then on the MEK reinvented itself in American eyes.

Until the 1990s it was known as the People’s Holy Warriors of Iran, but that’s not the kind of name to win support in the west these days so it tweaked the name.

Two decades ago, the state department identified the MEK as running what it called "a determined lobbying effort among western parliamentarians".

"To conduct its propaganda campaign the group has established offices through western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and the Middle East," it said. "Through such efforts, the (MEK) attempt to transform western opprobrium for the government of Iran into expressions of support for themselves".

The MEK leadership has played on opposition to the present Iranian leadership, which is in part bound up with concerns among US politicians over Tehran’s nuclear programme and fears for Israel’s security, to bury its past by portraying itself as a democratic and popular alternative to the Islamic regime.

"Exploiting western opprobrium of the behaviour of the current government of Iran, the (MEK) posit themselves as the alternative. To achieve that goal, they claim they have the support of a majority of Iranians. This claim is much disputed by academics and other specialists on Iran, who assert that in fact the MEK have little support among Iranians," it said.

The state department report quotes an American journalist as saying of the MEK: "They hope to transform their public image in America from terrorists to freedom fighters".

It appears to have been largely successful in that. Few of the MEK’s American backers appear to know the detail of its past, particularly the scale of its killing and the depth of its hostility to the US and Israel. Instead it described as a loyal and useful ally. Supporters say that it was the MEK that first provided the US with information about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Has the MEK changed?
It has certainly abandoned violence, at least for now. But that is in part because it was forcibly disarmed by the US army in Iraq. It also recognises that since 9/11, bombing attacks by a mostly Muslim organisation are not likely to win it friends in the west.

In exile, the MEK leadership established the National Council of Resistance which has evolved into what the group calls a parliament in exile.

But the MEK is far from democratic. It is autocratically run by a husband and wife, Masud and Maryam Rajavi, who the state department say have "fostered a cult of personality".

In its 1992 report on the MEK, the state department said the group’s leadership "never practices democracy within their organisation".

"Many Iranians who have dealt with MEK members assert that the [MEK] suppress dissent, often with force, and do not tolerate different viewpoints. The [MEK’s] credibility is also undermined by the fact that they deny or distort sections of their history, such as the use of violence or opposition to Zionism. It is difficult to accept at face value promises of future conduct when an organisation fails to acknowledge its past," the report said.

So what is the likelihood of the MEK being unbanned?
As part of their campaign, the MEK’s supporters have won a federal court order requiring the state department to make a decision on whether the group should remain on the designated terrorist list by October 1.

Some pro-MEK activists have interpreted that as a foregone conclusion that the state department will have to delist the organisation. They have been bolstered by its unbanning in Europe.

The MEK’s well financed and organised lobbying campaign has placed enormous pressure on the state department to delist the group. But the state department has warned the MEKthat its status will in part be decided over whether it obeys a demand to leave its main camp in Iraq. Its refusal, so far, to move remaining supporters from Camp Ashraf – where it used to train its paramilitary fighters – to a former US military base near Baghdad is said by the state department to be a significant obstacle to delisting the group.

The MEK has moved 2,000 of the 3,200 people who were living in Camp Ashraf but refuses to shift the rest. The MEK has portrayed the issue as a humanitarian one to its sympathisers in Washington, saying that all that remains in Camp Ashraf are families and that conditions in the Baghdad camp are inadequate. They say it is effectively a prison – even going so far as to call it a concentration camp – and alleged they will be vulnerable to violence from the Iraqi government and forces.

Some US officials say that those refusing to leave shows that the MEK has not really abandoned its past.

By Chris McGreal in Washington

November 8, 2012 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Rajavi cult victim set himself alight in Camp Liberty

As preparations get underway to deport all Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK), one Rajavi cult victim set himself alight in Camp Liberty

According to a security official in charge of the protection of Camp Liberty near Baghdad, a Rajavi cult victim set himself alight in Camp Liberty veteran member of the Mojahedin Khalq terrorist organisation (known as the Rajavi cult) set fire to himself at dawn this morning.

The official reported that a man named Shahram Mohseni set fire to himself in protest at dawn today (Sunday), adding that although Mohseni suffered serious burns to his legs and back it had been possible to save his life.

Officials at Camp Liberty report that many MEK members are suffering from mental illness because of the pressures they have been under for the past three decades.

During a visit to Camp Ashraf which was the former base of the MEK, Iraq’s National Security Advisor, Faleh al-Fayad, said that all members of this organisation will be deported and found alternative locations over the next few weeks in coordination with the UN mission in Baghdad.

He emphasised that irrelevant to what the Americans have announced by removing them from their terrorism list, the Government of Iraq continues to regard the MEK as a terrorist and criminal organisation.

Fayad said that the MEK were condemned by the Iraqi people because of their participation in the suppression of the uprising in 1991 in the suppression of the Kurdish uprising in the north of Iraq under the command of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

November 6, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Wilkerson: Delisting Mojahedin Khalq a terrible move by US

Obama’s or Romney’s Foreign Policy: Does it Matter Who Wins ?

Larry Wilkerson: All US administrations have similar foreign policy, but the neo-con group around Bush/Cheney was more dangerous and many of the same characters are advising Romney

Bio

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

A lot of people have suggested that the Obama foreign policy is not that much different than Bush term two’s foreign policy, that Bush term one, invasion of Iraq, was somewhat of an aberration, and in fact it really doesn’t make that much difference who’s president, because you get the Pentagon, you have the military-industrial-security complex, a whole whack of foreign-policy professionals, and the presidents kind of go along with their opinion. So does it really matter whether it’s President Obama, a President Romney, when it comes to the next four years and U.S. foreign policy?

Now joining us to talk about all of this is Lawrence Wilkerson. Larry is a retired colonel. He was the former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. He’s currently an adjunct professor of government at the College of William & Mary. He’s a regular contributor to The Real News Network. Thanks for joining us.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: So does it matter whether it’s Obama or Romney? We haven’t seen a heck of a lot of difference, I think, between Obama and Bush term two, as I said.

WILKERSON: There was a marvellous consistency to U.S. security and foreign policy over the period from, say, 1947 to the present, aberration being George W. Bush in 2001. But to say as I’ve said before—and you know this, Paul—that there would be no difference, really, in terms of that policy, regardless of who’s elected, has begun to take on a new tone and tint, if you will, of late.

And there are basically two reasons for that. One is the fact that I don’t know what Mitt Romney thinks. I simply do not know what he thinks, because he said everything from A to Z from the primaries to now, the general election. And while that’s explicable in terms of the extremism in the Republican Party and what one has to do to cater to that extremism in the primaries in order to get to the general election, it’s not entirely explicable. I really do not know where Mitt Romney stands.

Then the second issue is the people he’s arrayed around him. Many of these people are the neoconservatives, like John Bolton, for example, whom I have seen before. And I see them singing off essentially the same sheet of music they sang from in 2002 and early 2003 when they essentially took an inexperienced president and marched him into war with Iraq—one of the most disastrous decisions the U.S. has made in the post-World War II era. So I see these same people around him, and I see an inexperienced man in terms of security and foreign policy, and I see them being able to manipulate him much the same way these neoconservatives—indeed, many of them the same people—manipulated George W. Bush.

So I have to revise my views about whether or not I believe Barack Obama, now with four years of experience, or Mitt Romney would be the same, roughly, with regard to foreign and security policy. I do think Barack Obama would probably promise a better decision-maker in that regard.

JAY: Now, it’s not to say that Barack Obama hasn’t carried on and even extended some of Bush’s policies, his drone attacks and other such things if anything are setting all new precedents for the kind of behavior that the U.S. does abroad. Doesn’t that concern you?

WILKERSON: It does. And I think you put your finger on what is the most concerning aspect of his security policy overseas, and that is the drone attacks. We are creating far more terrorists, potentially, in the future than we are killing with those drone attacks, not to mention the fact that we were crossing whole chasms of international law, even of domestic law, as we do this and do it rather cavalierly.

But the other aspects of his security policy domestically bother me too, everything from the Patriot Act to the FISA Amendments Act to the national security letters, to his unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers. All of that bothers me. But when it comes to Mitt Romney, I don’t see a relaxation of any of those things. Indeed, from his rhetoric [inaud.] is an even more ardent pursuer of those things.

JAY: So you’re not a great admirer of President Obama’s foreign policy, but your point is you think Romney and the kind of people around him would be significantly worse.

WILKERSON: There are people who are—as I understand it, they range the gamut. Now, there’s a gentleman who is president of Washington College over in Chesterton, Maryland, and he was the second director of policy planning for Colin Powell when I was there. So I know Mitchell Reiss quite well. Mitchell is a moderate in the sense that he takes the middle road, usually, in U.S. national security and foreign policy. But Mitchell was an advocate for the delisting of the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the terrorist group—still a terrorist group, in my mind—from Iran. So you take someone like Mitchell Reiss, who normally is a person with whom I find a great deal of agreement with regard to security and foreign policy, and here he is advocating for the delisting of the MEK, which I think was a terrible move in all respects, because terrible move in the way the Iranians perceived it, and a terrible move because it basically acknowledged a terrorist group is now not a terrorist group anymore, and they clearly certainly still are.

So, I mean, you actually see people like that who you would normally cheer being in an administration, who’ve taken on a tone and tint that’s very different from what I consider to be sound and rational national security policy.

JAY: And to what extent do you think people like Karl Rove, even Cheney, Kyl, some of the—Senator Kyl—some of those people that were very much part of that foreign-policy cabal, how much are they going to have to say if there’s a Romney administration?

WILKERSON: I don’t know, Paul. That—I’m concerned about that, as I said before. But my biggest concern stems from at least I don’t—my lack of knowledge. I simply don’t know who’s going to influence Mitt Romney, because I don’t know who Mitt Romney is.

I think you’ve heard me say this before. I was searching for a Republican candidate for whom I could vote. I would vote for Mitt Romney at the drop of a hat, and therefore feel good about my political party’s candidate once again, if I thought I knew where he stood and I had a reasonable approximation of that stand being [roughly congruent]. I don’t even know where Mitt Romney stands, so how can I make a decision to vote for Mitt Romney? I can’t.

JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Larry.

WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

The Real News,

November 6, 2012 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Will the victims of MKO Cult be forgotten?

Notes on removing the name of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO)

The US State Department has recently come to the conclusion that the MEK is no longer a terrorist organization. The reason given is that the group has apparently not committed any terrorist act for more than a decade and has seemingly abandoned the use of violence to reach its political goals. The question this raises is, according to the US administration and the US judicial system, how many years are needed to consider the crimes of a terrorist group whitewashed? Certainly in a different international political situation with different interests, conditions would have differed. No doubt the US government would not adopt the same policy towards Al-Qaeda and would consider them terrorists for good.

But despite the claims made by the State Department, the leader of the group Massoud Rajavi has said again in the past week that armed struggle will never be removed from the ideology and strategy of the MEK, and the group has never even in theory distanced its thoughts from using violence. As far as the Iranian people are concerned they consider the group as terrorists and traitors and do not care what the US thinks about them. Removing the name of the MEK from the FTO does not give the group any credit in public opinion; on the contrary it discredits the list and brings discredit to the US administration and the State Department.

There is no doubt that the Rajavi cult has committed widespread acts of terrorism and claimed the lives of many civilians. The group also co-operated with the invading enemy and killed the defenders of Iran’s borders. This is the clearest betrayal of the nation according to any standards. The organization has also taken part in suppressing the Iraqi people along with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and more importantly the cult has violated the most basic rights of its own members and subjected them to mind manipulation.

The victims of the group are the people of Iran, the people of Iraq, and the very members of the cult. The families of these victims have a common demand. That justice should be served on the totalitarian leader of the cult in an international criminal court.

Although the State Department has tried to whitewash the criminal past of the group and its leader, the report admits that the basic human rights of the followers are systematically violated. It is understandable that the list of FTO is modified according to the US international interests, but it is worth bearing in mind that trying to give credit to the most hatred group in Iran’s history and working hard to save it from being demolished does not help restore the image of the US government in the eyes of the Iranian people who have always witnessed a hostile attitude.

(The last paragraph has been petitioned on the WHITE HOUSE for signatures – please go to the link below and sign it)

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/will-mek-victims-be-forgotten
/jR2RRqPC?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl

November 6, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Beyond Double Standards–and Hypocrisy

Double standards have always been with us, but I wonder if they haven’t reached new heights, along with hypocrisy, in the age of the “war on terrorism,” “humanitarian intervention,” and the proclaimed “responsibility to protect” (R2P), to be implemented by global interventionists who have institutionalized torture (or made it one de facto legitimate policy option), “extraordinary renditions” to torture regimes, the intensive use of drone bombings, including “double-tap” actions, and who have declared the entire earth a U.S. “free fire zone”?

These same drone organizers and apologists also speak almost daily about “our values” as they terrorize and kill, but see themselves as defending human rights and democracy and engaging in “self defense.” George W. Bush attacked Iraq in alleged (but completely contrived) fear of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” but as soon as it became inescapably evident that this was a fraud, and that many thousands had already been killed based on this lie, Bush was allowed to be striving for freedom and democracy in Iraq, but for unknown reasons neglecting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and shrinking it in the homeland!

But his opening war-gambit-lie was salable to the New York Times and its colleagues, and to the intellectuals and pundits with influence. For example, on October 9, 2002, the saintly Elie Wiesel said on the Oprah Winfrey Show that “Anything is better than war. I am not for war. But we have to disarm that assassin”—namely Saddam Hussein, who, according to Bush, Cheney and Judith Miller, and hence Wiesel and Winfrey, possessed these WMD. Thus “War is the Only Option,” in the title of Wiesel’s subsequent commentary in The Observer (December. 22, 2002). It helps being a saint to be able to get away with such a blatant contradiction based on a lie.

After the WMD gambit was exhausted we had the gang quickly accepting the new “democracy promotion” objective in Iraq, because Bush said that was so, and was “risking all” in pressing on with it, as asserted by Michael Ignatieff in his New York Times classic, “Who Are the American People to Think That Freedom is Theirs to Spread” (October. 7, 2005). George Packer, writing in the New Yorker back in 2004, agreed with Ignatieff that “it’s clear that, however clumsy and selective the execution, Bush wants democratization to be his legacy. So when his critics, here and abroad, claim that his rhetoric merely provides cynical cover for an American power grab, they misjudge his sincerity and tend to sound like defenders of the status quo.” (“Invasion versus Persuasion, “ New Yorker, December 20, 2004.). So Packer, like Ignatieff, knows that Bush was sincere, but he is not a defender of the status quo and does suggest that we should “hold him to his own talk.”

The “terrorism” double standard has long been institutionalized, with establishment spokespersons internalizing the propaganda rule that we and the Israelis only “retaliate” to the terrorism of enemies and targets. The establishment pundits have been able to swallow a lot, and play dumb on a large scale, to stay with this usage. Thus Luis Posada Carriles, a member in high-standing of the Cuban refugee terror network, guilty of numerous terrorist acts, including the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 with 73 resultant deaths, walks the streets of Miami today and is beyond extradition, whereas the United States is working hard to get Julian Assange extradited to this country for prosecution for whistleblowing on U.S. diplomacy and terrorist-war criminal acts. (His most notorious disclosure was of a U.S. helicopter team in Iraq remorselessly killing civilians and journalists on the ground, a revelation that clearly threatened U.S. national security.)

It should also be noted that while killer Posada is free, the Cuban Five infiltrators of Cuban terrorist groups in Florida who were seized in the United States in 1998 while trying to gain information on terrorist plots against Cuba, and shared some of this information with the FBI, have been imprisoned since 1998, their counter-terrorism efforts transformed into espionage.

These manifestations of a gross double standard, hypocrisy, and serious injustice, are ignored by the mainstream media and don’t interfere with the rule that the United States is fighting a “war on terror.”

The most recent display of the terrorism double standard is the State Department’s September 2012 removal of the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), from its list of designated terrorist organizations. The MEK worked earlier on behalf of Saddam Hussein and sometimes killed Americans, and reportedly has collaborated with the Israelis in assassinating Iranian scientists, but with the escalated U.S.-Israel low-level warfare against Iran, MEK can be moved into a new, more positive “freedom fighter” category. This has other amusing features. For one thing, MEK has very large amounts of money that it has spent in organizing protests and lobbying in Europe and the United States, the funding suspected to come from the freedom-loving Saudis and other governments hostile to Iran. Even while on the terrorist list, MEK was able to organize, propagandize and lobby in the United States and elsewhere in the West. It has also paid large sums to U.S. notables like Howard Dean, Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Ed Rendell to write and speak on their behalf. No prosecutions are in prospect for “material aid” to terrorists in this case.

One of the wonders of the war on terror is its massive use of airpower, increasingly drone warfare, and the U.S.’s ability to get this accepted in the West as a response to terror and not a case of terrorism itself. This has, of course, been accompanied by complementary apologetics: notably, that military targets are carefully chosen so that any “innocent” civilian deaths are not deliberate but unintended “collateral damage.” But if civilian deaths are predictable even if the specific victims are not known, the killings are deliberate and war crimes. Furthermore, the claims of care in targeting, and concern, and denials that civilian killings are sometimes quite acceptable, are false, but are taken as true by patriotic pundits and intellectuals (see my “Tragic Errors In U.S. Military Policy: Targeting the civilian population,” Z Magazine, September, 2002).

The long U.S. use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs is testimony to an anti-civilian bias in military operations, as is the long tradition of “we don’t make body counts.” The Iraq war of 2003 was begun with a “shock and awe” bombing program that was openly designed to terrorize the leaders and population and encourage surrender. The same was true of the 1999 escalation of the bombing of Serbia and increased orientation to attacking civilian facilities. But no matter: The United States does not terrorize, by patriotic and power definition.

It is also notable that studies which focus intensively on terrorism from the air are ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media. The fine book by Beau Grosscup on Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethnics of Aerial Bombardment (Zed Books, 2006) was not reviewed in any mainstream source in the United States. The mainstream may be preoccupied with “terrorism,” but writings on the subject have to stay within the party-line orbit to get a hearing,

A real problem has been presented to the media by the September 2012 report produced jointly by a Stanford Law School and New York University School of Law team entitled Living Under Drones, and based on over 130 interviews carried out in Pakistan. The authors claim that the vast majority of victims of the drone war attacks are civilians, not “militants”—only 2 percent of those killed were identified as known “militants.” The Stanford-NYU authors explicitly deny the official claims of precise surgical strikes by the drones: “This narrative is false.” They also report that an important feature of the drone war is the regular use of a second missile strike shortly after the first strike—the combination euphemistically labelled a ”double tap”—killing many local onlookers and rescue workers coming to the aid of the first-strike’s victims. These secondary strikes “have discouraged average civilians from coming to one another’s rescue, and even inhibited the provision of emergency medical assistance from humanitarian workers.” The Director of the charitable organization Reprieve is quoted in the report as saying:

An entire region is being terrorized by the constant threat of death from the skies…. Their way of life is collapsing… kids are too terrified to go to school, adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals, business meeting or anything that involves gathering in groups.

This sounds like a really dirty war OF terrorism, but while this is suggested in the London Independent (Jerome Taylor, “Outrage at CIA’s deadly ‘double tap’ drone strikes,” September 25, 2012), the New York Times had not yet mentioned the existence of the Living Under Drones document at the time of writing (September 30, 2012). This is not news fit-to-print rapidly and with prominence, as happens when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserts that the government of Bashir Al-Assad would have ”blood on its hands” if it “refuses to allow this life-saving aid [that Clinton promises] to reach civilians” (Steven Lee Myers, “Nations Rebuke Leader of Syria as Assault Rages,” NYT, February 25, 2012. p 1; see also the long NYT article of March 3, 2012 on “Syria Blocks Red Cross From Taking Aid to Devastated Rebel Enclave in Homs”).

This brings us to some other double standard marvels. Iran is under steady attack and threat because of its alleged non-cooperation with the West and its UN instrument, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in their efforts to get Iran to terminate its nuclear program. Meanwhile, the United States can refuse to carry out its NPT promise to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, and Israel can build up a sizeable nuclear weapons arsenal with Western collusion outside of any IAEA jurisdiction, and both can threaten Iran on a daily basis, in a double standard that would be hard to surpass.

Similarly, Israel can ethnically cleanse Palestinians on a systematic basis for decades without any penalty from the “international community” which, in fact, gives consistent support to this immoral and illegal process. Only when a U.S. and Western target is accused of ethnic cleansing, as with Serbia in the 1990s, do the Western moralists, officials and their UN agents get aroused and move into action.

The hegemony of the double standard, and its partner, hypocrisy, flows from concentrated power, and their joint success in this modern age that, according to Steven Pinker, is one of the “Long Peace,” “recivilization” and the rise of our “better angels” after an unfortunate period like the 1960s. It is a marvelous illustration of the human capacity for self-deception.

• First published in Z Magazine, November 2012

Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media.

by Edward S. Herman

November 4, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Washington backed MEK terrorist group demands delisting in Australia

AN Iranian group with a history of violent clashes with authority is fighting to be delisted as a terrorist organisation in Australia and it has the backing of several federal politicians.
Washington backed MEK terrorist group demands delisting in Australia
For half a century the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mujahideen of Iran, has fought to topple what it calls the "oppressive" Iranian government.

Listed as a terrorist group in Australia since 2001, it is seen by some as a modernising democratic force, and others as a mystical terror-cult.

Its logo, in use since the 1970s, features a Marxist clenched fist holding a sickle, crossed over a gun and bayonet.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told AAP the MEK was listed because it satisfied, on reasonable grounds, the definition that it was either "a person who commits, or attempts to commit, terrorist acts or participates in or facilitates the commission of terrorist acts; an entity owned or controlled directly or indirectly by such persons; or a person or an entity acting on behalf of, or at the direction of such persons and entities."

Now the MEK is lobbying to be removed from the list, saying it has cleaned up its act.

But it’s unclear whether the outfit will be able to shake off its past.

In 1992, about 15 MEK members trashed the Iranian embassy in Australia and assaulted staff, an event filmed by an SBS camera crew which had been tipped off by local MEK supporters.

Federal police raided about 10 homes of suspected MEK members in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in 2003.

No one was charged or arrested, and the AFP still won’t comment on the raids.

The organisation has a far more troubled record overseas.

Defectors speak of a Marxist-Islamist cult centred for 40 years on its leaders; husband and wife team Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

US government-funded think tank RAND Corporation, which produces analysis for the armed forces, listed the group’s cult-like characteristics in a 2009 report.

"(Massoud) Rajavi instituted what he termed an ‘ideological revolution’ in 1985, which, over time, imbued the MEK with many of the typical characteristics of a cult," the RAND report states.

It lists tactics including authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labour, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options.

"Recruits were brought into Iraq illegally and then required to hand over their identity documents for ‘safekeeping’. They were effectively trapped," the report said.

The findings of the RAND report are largely replicated in a 2005 Human Right Watch (HRW) report.

It states that during the ideological revolution in Iraq, married couples were forced to divorce and families were broken up, with children sent to live in safe houses run by the MEK.

The HRW document says many were told their families had died, only to find out years later they had been alive all along.

Likewise the families had been told their loved ones in the camp had died.

The report claims members were also forced to undergo daily self-deprecation sessions where they would be marched out in front of hundreds of other members and asked to chastise themselves.

Those who tried to get out of the MEK were beaten, tortured, held in solitary confinement and even killed, it says.

But last month the US delisted the MEK as a terrorist group after a well-funded lobbying campaign.

Australian Federal MPs who support the group, including Labor Senator Claire Moore, and Nationals Senator John Williams, hope this country will follow suit.

"I think it’s worth giving them a go," Senator Williams said.

"Are they a threat to our society if they come here, are they a threat to the rest of the world?" he asked.

"A lot of countries have delisted them, saying they aren’t."

Co-Secretary of Australian Supporters of Democracy in Iran, Peter Murphy, isn’t surprised the US delisted the MEK, calling the group "a peaceful, democratic, constitutionalist force for change".

But University of NSW Middle East expert Dr Anthony John Billingsley claims that’s a fantasy.

"It’s a dark illusion and a shameful demonstration of the power of lobbyists," Dr Billingsley told AAP.

"I wouldn’t call them a force for democracy in Iran, quite the opposite.

"They’re a group of weird, quite nasty terrorists, guilty of killing a fairly large number of Iranians including leading members of the regime, but also a large number of Americans and other westerners as well."

Upon delisting the MEK, US State Department officials released a statement saying it "does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of US citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on US soil in 1992.

"The department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organisation, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members," it said.

"The secretary’s decision today took into account the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade."

Dr Billingsley said some members are giving up their lives for the group.

MEK observer Mohammed Sadeghpour explained that last year a Brisbane based supporter sold his home and donated all the money to the group before moving to France to become a full member.

"He is a good supporter, whole-hearted," he said.

"He sold it for about $300,000 or $400,000.

"But these are individual decisions; they make them on their own."

A report produced later in 2005 by a group known as Friends of a Free Iran (FOFI), comprising four European Parliament MPs, found no evidence of the RAND and HRW claims.

Mr Murphy said HRW’s report was "a spray job, but useful slander" for the MEK’s opponents.

"There are obviously HRW staff that are very pro-Iranian regime," he said.

"It’s a shame HRW let itself go down that path."

But HRW says its critics haven’t provided any evidence to back up claims the organisation is pro-Iranian.

Mr Murphy bristles at any suggestion the MEK has operated as a cult, including instances of self-immolation.

When MEK leader Maryam Rajavi was detained and questioned by French police in 2003, 10 members set themselves on fire in Paris – three died.

Hunger strikes also occurred in Australia, and Ms Rajavi was released without charge after a few weeks.

When asked about these events, Mr Murphy’s frustration becomes apparent.

"There’s absolutely no evidence anyone asked them to do that," he said.

"What you are suggesting is just absurd, ridiculous."

After the interview with AAP Mr Murphy took to Twitter to say this author was a pawn of the Iranian government.

"AAP journalist Martin Silk is unethically entrapping torture victims, ultimately for the misogynist Iranian regime," he Tweeted.

AAP rejects this notion as absurd and ridiculous.

Mr Murphy denies the MEK was ever anything but a pro-democracy group or has used any terrorist tactics in its war with the Iranian government.

"One of the MEK’s cultic characteristics is a focus on suicide," the RAND report states.

"Although it had not used suicide as a tactical weapon in terrorist attacks since 1981, the MEK has frequently used the threat of suicide as a negotiating tactic or to frustrate investigations," the document says.

Labor Senator Claire Moore admits it seems odd a democratic group has only had one leader in 40 years.

But she blames the terrorist listing for stopping the MEK telling governments its side of the story.

She says she understands the group has been at war with the Iranian government in the past, and employed tactics including bombings and assassinations.

"But they deny they’ve been careless, and they haven’t been involved in terrorist activities against Australia, the US or any European countries," she said.

But Dr Billingsley insists any portrayal of the MEK as a peaceful organisation is flawed.

Some people think the MEK isn’t so nasty after all, he said, because "they’re blowing up our enemies rather than us".

"The fact is they’re killing civilians," he said.

"It’s terrorism by any definition."

By Martin Silk, AAP

November 1, 2012 0 comment

Saudi Arabia

Riyadh Funds Satellite Channel for MKO Terrorist Group

Riyadh is financing the launch of a satellite channel for the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as the MEK, NCR and PMOI), an informed Iraqi diplomat said. Riyadh Funds Satellite Channel for MKO Terrorist Group

"Our information shows that Saudi officials are behind the financial backings for the launch of a satellite TV network for the MKO terrorist group with the aim of propaganda against the ruling system in Iran," he told Ashraf News Website.

"MKO members living in Europe have met Saudi ambassador to London Mohammed bin Nawaf al-Saud and asked him to support the channel," the source said, adding that the Saudi official has accepted to provide financial backup for the project if the channel’s policies are set by Riyadh.

The channel named "Raha" will work in line with the policies of the al-Arabiya News Channel’s editorial policy. At least 45 people are currently working in the office of the TV channel in London.

The MKO terrorist group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.

Leaders of the group have been fighting to shed its terrorist tag after a series of bloody anti-Western attacks in the 1970s, and nearly 33 years of violent struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The group 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 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.

October 30, 2012 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Fakharzadeh, MKO members left the group after 20 years

Mehdi Fakharzadeh escaped Temporary Transit Location (Camp Liberty) and surrendered himself to Iraqi forces. Fakharzadeh, MKO members left the group after 20 years

After twenty years of membership in the Cult of Rajavi, Mr. Fakharzadeh stated at UN mission office in Iraq that he has defected the group and did not intend to stay in the MKO anymore.

He was handed to Iraqi authorities after he passed legal process in UNAMI and UNHCR. It is worth to mention that MKO leaders usually hold 3 to 4 hours meetings to manipulate members before they go to UN office to fill out asylum seeking forms and then they will let them go there, because they fear their defection.

Mr. Fakhar Zadeh is the second person who has escaped the Cult since last week. The other defector was Mr. Houshang Mirzaqorbani who last week escaped the Cult after two decades.

Translated by Nejat Society

October 30, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Mujahadin-e Khalq: America’s protected terrorists gearing up against Iran

Unsatisfied in "crippling" Iran with sanctions, the US looks to be set for active operations there – and already has an in: a group called the Mujahadin-e Khalq, which in the near future could become the Persian equivalent of the Free Syrian Army. Mujahadin-e Khalq: America’s protected terrorists gearing up against Iran

On September 21, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton passed Public Notice 8050, de-listing the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, effective September 28.

What is MEK? Mujahadin-e Khalq is an Iranian Islamic militant organization in exile that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since its inception in 1965 in Iran, the group conducted assassinations of US military personnel and civilians working in Iran in the 1970s, jubilantly supported the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and opposed the release of American personnel, calling for their execution instead, fought against the Islamic Republic together with Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988) and set up headquarters in Iraq at Camp Ashraf.

In recent years, according to various sources including NBC, MEK teamed up with the Israeli secret service to kill Iranian nuclear scientists. NBC reported that US officials confirmed that “the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement”.

In 1994, the State Department sent a damning 41-page report to Congress on why the MEK is a terrorist organization; that designation was enacted in 1997. The report concluded: “It is no coincidence that the only government in the world that supports the Mujahadin politically and financially is the totalitarian regime of Saddam Hussein.” Well, the MEK’s mission to overthrow Iran’s leadership has not changed since, but the US agenda has: In a vertiginous about-face, Washington became the powerful protector of the Mujahadin-e Khalq.

Over the past few years, a formidable fundraising operation and campaign to de-list MEK from the Specially Designated Global Terrorist register gathered some high-caliber US supporters including General James Jones, President Obama’s National Security Advisor from 2009 to 2010; Bill Richardson, Energy Secretary and UN ambassador in the Clinton administration and Obama’s Special Envoy to North Korea; Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security; General Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO; Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI; three former directors of the CIA – Michael Hayden, James Woolsey and Porter Goss; Rudolph Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City; former UN Ambassador John Bolton; General Hugh Shelton, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002; and many others.

Top Washington lawyers and lobbyists made the case for the terrorist group as well: Akin Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld, Patton Boggs and others. Robert Strauss, of the firm of the same name, was US Ambassador to the Soviet Union during the critical months of August 2, 1991, through December 26, 1991. A senior member of the firm Tobi Gati was also head of the intelligence branch of the US State Department.

When speaking about terrorist groups, one might think of MEK as a ragtag bunch of cutthroats in shreds and tatters, confined to an unsanitary tent city. The truth is nothing of the sort. Watch this report by CNN’s Michael Ware dating back to 2007: You will see a marching army in crisp brand-new white-and-blue and khaki uniforms, entering a spacious parade ground framed by sculptures of lions. Camp Ashraf itself is one of the best-kept military facilities in Iraq and a sprawling city of 4,000 people, with shopping centers and hospitals, gardens, monuments, fountains and illuminations quite unexpected in the war-torn deserts of Iraq. The MEK is also armed with more than 2,000 well-maintained tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and armored personnel carriers. Its supplies are guarded by US military police, and the camp itself is guarded by the American military.

Indeed, “The coalition remains deeply committed to the security and rights of protected people of Ashraf,” US Major General Gardner said, according to a Headquarters Multinational Force Iraq document dated March 11, 2006. Michael Ware calls the MEK “the US’ officially protected terrorists.” Another film of Australian origin shows Camp Ashraf’s own parliament and hundreds of tanks on the camp’s parade ground.

Well-versed in American political mores, the MEK’s leadership says the group is ‘pro-democracy.’ However, even the New York Times disagrees: In the middle of the 2011 de-listing campaign, it described MEK as “a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.”

‘Totalitarian cult’ is indeed the most frequent label applied to the MEK by people who come in contact with the group. And American support for MEK is not limited to military protection. Seymour Hersh, in his New Yorker piece“Our Men in Iran?” revealed that beginning in 2005, MEK fighters were trained in Nevada by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

Why is Washington backing the MEK? As General Shelton said at a conference in February 2011, “When you look at what the MEK stands for, when they are antinuclear, separation of church and state, individual rights, MEK is obviously the way Iran needs to go. … By placing the MEK on the FTO [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] list we have weakened the support of the best organized internal resistance group to the most terrorist-oriented anti-Western world, anti-democratic regime in the region.”

In an interview with Germany’s WDR TV back in 2005, ex-CIA operative Ray McGovern explained the logic: “Why the U.S. cooperates with organizations like the Mujahadin, I think, is because that they are local, and because they are ready to work for us. Previously, we considered them a terrorist organization. And they exactly are. But they are now our terrorists and we now don’t hesitate to send them into Iran …. for the usual secret service activities: attacking sensors, in order to supervise the Iranian nuclear program, mark targets for air attacks, and perhaps establishing secret camps to control the military locations in Iran. And also a little sabotage.”

Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly with the Department of Defense, makes a long story short for WDR TV: “MEK is ready to do things over which we would be ashamed, and over which we try to keep silent. But for such tasks we’ll use them.”

Now is the time for Russia and the world community to take active political measures preventing the United States from launching another proxy war in the Middle East. The MEK is much better trained and prepared for war than the Syrian rebels were at the beginning of the conflict, or even today. The MEK has all the necessary capabilities to become the military arm of an American attack against Iran. This time – unlike in Syria – the world should not ignore the march to war, and must take steps to prevent it from happening again.

By eronika Krasheninnikova, Director General of the Institute for Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives in Moscow, for RT

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

October 27, 2012 0 comment

Auver-sur-Oise

Rajavis’ Cult and the Risk of Terrorism in France

In the neighborhood of Islamic Radicals in Northern Paris, a large area of French territory is under the unofficial mandate of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization. About one month ago, few Rajavis’ Cult and the Risk of Terrorism in France people could imagine that members of Muslim Rap band would bomb a Jewish super market, just a few kilometers further.

Besides, a radical Muslim, Muhammad Marah, from Toulouse, cruelly murdered a Jewish Rabi and his two children. Since last month, French news agencies have several times reported of the arrest of terrorist radicals in cities including Niece, Marseille, Toulouse, Paris and Strasbourg – according to the reports, arrested suspects are mostly France-born youngsters who have joined terrorist networks, or Christians who have converted to Salafi Islam. In other words, the origin of this terrorism pattern is undefined stemming from a spontaneous generation.

Some believe that such phenomenon is the outcome of Arabic Spring and Anarchistic tendencies running in Northern and Central Africa. Some others think of ancient reasons that are found in families and their not-so-adapted cultures. Anyway, today French people are facing the increasing threat of internal terrorism of terrorists who see themselves as Muslims like Ben Laden and their belief is very similar to that of religious people of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Al-Qaida.

But Salafis, whether related to Al-Qaida or Saudi- are not the only violent group in France. Mujahedin Khalq also consider themselves true Muslims and real opposition against Iranian government. They have the very volatile potential and motivation, according to those who lived with them. They have been living in large region in the North of Paris, running large scale propaganda to influence French community and personalities.

Iranians see the cult of Rajavi (the MKO) much more radical than Salafis of France and Europe. A look at the MKO activities indicates dangers threating European society’s particularly French Society.

In 1965 the main core of the MKO was formed by a number of religious people who advocated armed struggle against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, America and Israel. Their major operations were the killing of 6 American citizens in which Massoud Rajavi, currently disappeared leader of the group, was direct instructor and theoricain of terror teams!

The group’s first terrorist acts were launched in the 1970’s eventually; a large majority of members and leaders of the cult were arrested. Founders and central members of the group were executed and Massoud Rajavi, the only survivor of core members, was sentenced to long-life imprisonment.

According to the recently-published memoirs of Parviz Sabeti, a high-ranking official of Shah’s Savak (Shah’s security and intelligence Service), Rajavi’s death sentence was abated to life imprisonment because of Sabeti’s interference, not because of his brother’s efforts in Europe. Sabeti reveals that Massoud’s brother Kazem Rajavi was Savak’s spy in Switzerland and directly in connection with him, he was working for shah’s Intelligence and Security organization. In the book, he reveals that Massoud Rajavi betrayed founders and central members of the group and he widely cooperated with Savak when he was imprisoned so his punishment was reduced.

A few years later, Massoud Raajvi, Mehdi Abrishamchi [ex-husband of Maryam Rajavi] and other leaders of the group who are now living in Ouver Sur d’Oise, Paris, were released following the Iranian people’s Revolution[in 1978].

The group found a new success thanks to huge waves of the revolution. It started organizing itself in Tehran and other cities of Iran ….

To be continued

By Mohammad Alavi,Translated by Nejat Society

October 23, 2012 0 comment

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