London-Jack Straw, the British Justice Secretary, says the outlawed Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is a terrorist group from the viewpoint of his government. Straw told IRNA the MKO is a terrorist organisation and the British government is at the same position that the government of the Islamic Republic is.
Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Urdan Popov Wednesday called the anti-Iran group, Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization, a terrorist group despite European Union’s recent decision to strike the MKO off its terror list… The remark by popov whose country is an EU member came after a controversial decision by the 27- nation bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels to drop the MKO from the blacklist. The MKO had been blacklisted as a terror organization by the EU since 2002.
Downing Street still considers the anti-Iran Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) as a terrorist group, says the British justice secretary. ..Straw said he sorely regrets the British court ruling which de-proscribed the grouplet from the country’s terror blacklist. “When I was the home secretary, I said it was a terrorist group and the parliament agreed. The difficulty is that there is an independent kind of court which can make the final decisions out of the law.
The recent annual report of the Department of State might not have anything new on the status of the Iranian Mujahedin Khalq Organization/MKO/PMOI/MEK which has been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization since years ago. But the speech made by Condoleeza Rice following the publication of the new list, which called the group as substantially terrorist, should be taken as serious.
The MKO, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, has carried out acts of terror against Iranian nationals and officials. Outlawed in Iran, the group was relocated to Iraq and allegedly assisted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the massacre of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the 1990s…Baghdad seeks to expel the members of the terrorist group from the country. MKO leaders, meanwhile, are scrambling to woo regional countries to establish a foothold in the region.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has stated that Baghdad intends to host talks between Iran and United States over the security situation in Iraq and called for maintaining “Iraq-Iraq-U.S. triangle”. ….. The foreign minister also dismissed reports that Iraq is showing leniency in expelling Mojahedin Khalgh Organization (MKO/PMOI/MEK), saying the Iraqi government has taken its decision on the group and the expulsion will be strictly monitored by a “special committee”…
..There are reports that 1,031 MKO members have so far decided to leave Iraq either by acquiring citizenship or by obtaining passport and so they will leave the country or those countries that have granted them citizenship will have to take them out of the Iraqi soil, he pointed out.. Those Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) leaders who masterminded terror operations inside Iran must be extradited to the country to stand trial, Iranian Ambassador to Baghdad Hassan Kazemi Qomi has said
Iran has condemned the removal of the MKO/PMOI terrorist group from the European Union’s terror list. Earlier today, Iran’s Ambassador to Azerbaijan Naser Hamidi Zare’ said that exclusion of the group from the list was a new Western trap for the Islamic state, accusing the West of operating a policy of double-standards in dealing with terrorist groups.
A Russian scholar said the European Union (EU) manipulated such issues as terrorism and human rights for its own political purposes. Talking to IRNA here on Saturday, Ludmila Kulagina, as a top researcher in the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, criticized the recent EU move in removing the terrorist Mojahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) form its terrorism list.
we remain mindful of the MeK’s[PMOI/MKO] history as an organisation responsible for a number of serious terrorist attacks—it claimed responsibility for large numbers of violent attacks inside Iran for a number of years, including 96 in a three-month period in early 2001. We do not agree with its claim that it represents a credible democratic opposition in exile.