Under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, it’s a crime to knowingly provide material support to an organization that appears on the State Department’s list. The defendants in the Los Angeles case are accused of soliciting donations for MEK/PMOI in Los Angeles and of wiring at least several hundred thousand dollars to an MEK bank account in Turkey.
An exiled group likes MKO, claiming to be an alternative for the current Iranian ruling system, that has to spend huge sums for its insiders’ expenses, rallies and meetings, sumptuous banquets, lobbying activities and more and more, a look at its media propagandas explains enough, can never be run merely depending on charities and fundraising activities in the streets of Western countries. Once in Iraq under Saddam,
“Leaving the determination of whether a group is a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ to the executive branch … is both a reasonable and a constitutional way to make such determinations,”Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote for a three-judge panel. …. The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was made in a case involving people who raised money in California for Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK,