A former member of the Islamic Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has welcomed the European Union’s decision to take the MKO off the EU’s list of terrorist organizations.
Massud Khodabandeh said the ruling will give thousands of MKO members "the right to return to their families," RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.
Khodabandeh said the ruling will "save some of those individuals from the situation they’re facing in Iraq," where they number some 3,000.
The MKO seeks the overthrow of the Iranian government, and the EU decision has prompted sharp words from Tehran.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch have accused the MKO of subjecting dissident members to torture.
It is still considered a terrorist group by the United States.
At its monthly meeting of foreign ministers, the European Union has decided to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from its list of terrorist organizations. 
The decision marks the first time the EU has "de-listed" an organization from its terrorist index, and could free the MKO, also known as the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, to expand its activities in Europe. It is also likely to further strain Tehran’s already damaged relations with the West.
Formed in the 1960s to fight the shah’s regime, the Islamic-socialist MKO joined the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew him, but later fell out with the new clerical regime and fought with Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran. Major attacks by the MKO against Tehran ceased by the early 1990s and the group renounced violence in 2001, but Tehran continues to seek MKO members’ extradition.
Maryam Rajavi, the France-based leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political branch of the MKO that has been active in Europe in recent years, characterized the EU move as a "stinging defeat for Europe’s policy of appeasement" of Tehran.
And Said Mahmudi, a professor of international law at the University of Stockholm, says it will end the MKO’s difficulties in raising funds in Europe.
"Even though they had the possibility to contact different political organizations, there were some groups and bodies — particularly some individuals — who, because of the terrorist branding of the group, avoided it and didn’t give it public backing," Mahmudi says.
"Now that the MKO has been removed from the EU terror list, all the groups that are sympathetic to the MKO will be able to support them publicly and help them without any problem," he adds.
Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the group, says that $9 million had been frozen in France alone, with "tens of millions of dollars" worth of assets also locked away in other EU countries.
History Of Opposition
The development marks a striking turnaround for an organization that remains on the United States’ terrorism list, while remaining a fierce enemy of Tehran.
After its founding in 1965, members of the group took up arms against the Iranian shah and were involved in the killings of several U.S. citizens working in Iran in the 1970s. The group initially supported the 1979 revolution, but then went underground when an uprising against the newly established Islamic regime went awry.
Iranian protesting the decision outside the French Embassy in Tehran Within years of the revolution, many MKO members were jailed, some were executed, and others fled Iran and went into exile.
The MKO later helped orchestrate a number of attacks against Iran’s leaders, including a 1981 bombing in which Iran’s prime minister and president were killed. In 1986, in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, the organization’s leaders and members relocated to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein granted them refuge.
The MKO’s support for Iraq in the 1980-88 war is today seen by observers as the main reason for its limited support among Iranians. It is also accused by critics of collaborating with Saddam during his bloody campaign against the Kurds, charges that the MKO denies.
But the militant group renounced violence in 2001 and has not kept arms since 2003. It has also long sought to be removed from the EU and U.S. terror lists as Tehran continued its efforts to oust the group from Iraq.
Renouncing Violence
Iran’s largest opposition group in exile, the MKO follows an ideology that combines Islam and Marxism and says it is the best hope for establishing democracy in Iran. In 2002, the MKO exposed Iran’s covert nuclear activities.
But critics cast doubt on its effectiveness in opposing the Iranian regime, while organizations such as Human Rights Watch (in a 2005 report) have accused it of subjecting dissident members to torture and prolonged solitary confinement.
Massoud Khodabandeh, a former MKO member who currently works as an analyst with the French Center for the Study of Terrorism and an adviser to Iraq’s government, describes the MKO as a personality cult obsessed with celibacy.
"I witnessed forced divorces amid cries and shouts. I witnessed how 150 children under the age of 7 — the youngest was only two months old — were separated from their mothers and sent to other countries because the MKO leader had said [the children] are disrupting my relations with you," Khodabandeh says.
MKO leaders have in the past rejected similar charges, but the reputation that precedes the group has opened questions about whether Brussels’s move fits with its efforts to promote human rights and to fight terrorism.
"If a group makes a pronouncement that it is abandoning violence, then I think we should be able to give them the chance to prove the case, so I think that’s what the European policy on these matters should be," says professor John Wilkinson, chairman of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews.
"Let us find political pathways away from violence where we can," he continues. "If a group proves that it has not lived up to its claim to abandon violence then, of course, we must revert to using the instruments of criminal justice and law enforcement to deal with it."
Future Of The People’s Mujahedin
Some 3,000 MKO members are currently based at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Their presence there has led to increased concern over their fate since the Iraqi government took over responsibility for the camp from U.S. forces earlier this month.
Washington, while keeping the MKO on its list of terrorist organizations, has given members of the group who stay at Ashraf the status of "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions.
Iraqi officials have made it clear that the group "is not wanted" on Iraqi territory, and have called on MKO members to leave voluntarily.
Khodabandeh believes that the EU decision could mean a way out for those MKO members who are willing to leave Ashraf, including a number of his "friends."
"I hope that the removal of MKO from the EU terror list will enable some of those individuals to be saved from the situation they’re facing in Iraq," he says. "About 1,000 of them were based in [Europe] before; they should be given the right to return to their families."
It’s not clear whether the EU decision will have an impact on Washington’s designation of the group as a foreign terrorist organization. The NCRI’s Rajavi, for one, urges the United States to follow the EU’s example.
The former U.S. administration reaffirmed its designation of the MKO as a foreign terrorist organization on January 7.
But Iran, which has said that nothing has changed "in the terrorist nature" of the group, can be expected to take some sort of action against the EU ruling.
In a possible hint at what might come, the head of the National Security Committee of the Iranian parliament on January 25 warned the EU against making a "mistake."
"There is no reason for Iran to continue tens of billions of euros in economic and trade ties with the EU in this case," Alaeddin Borujerdi said, adding that Iran has "many options" for new partners.
The Iranian parliament is expected on January 27 to discuss a draft bill "to authorize the government and the judiciary to bring those MKO members who have committed crimes to justice."
By Golnaz Esfandiari
http://www.rferl.org/content/
EU_Takes_Iranian_Group_Off_Terror_List_But_Status_Still_Disputed/1374990.html
EU removes Iranian group from terrorism list
The new status of the Mujahedin Khalq organization, which seeks to overthrow the Iranian government, is likely to complicate international diplomacy with
Tehran.
Reporting from Paris and Beirut — The European Union on Monday announced the removal of a high-profile Iranian opposition group from its list of terrorists, a victory for a movement that European governments have described as a dangerous sect and prosecuted on terrorism charges.
The change in the status of the Mujahedin Khalq organization, or MKO, which seeks to overthrow the Iranian government, is likely to complicate attempts by the international community to reach a diplomatic settlement with Tehran over a range of issues.
The decision, announced at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, results from recent legal and diplomatic developments combined with intense lobbying by the group, whose leader, Maryam Rajavi, lives in France.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement decrying the ruling as a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, which requires governments to freeze the funds and halt the activities of those involved in acts of terrorism.
"The MKO’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands of innocent Iranians and non-Iranians," said the statement, according to the Iranian Students News Agency. "The delisting is invalid and condemned."
Analysts said European leaders probably acted out of diplomatic expediency because of the impending expulsion from Iraq of nearly 3,000 members of the opposition group’s military wing, who once fought against their homeland on behalf of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Europe may find itself providing refuge for some of those fighters, and could not do so if the terrorist label persisted.
Iran quickly signaled that the move could complicate deliberations with the West, which wants Tehran to curtail sensitive aspects of its nuclear program and rein in support for militant groups opposed to Israel.
"The EU plans to use the MKO as leverage against Iran in the nuclear talks," said an editorial Monday in the conservative daily Politics of the Day. "The EU should tell the world why it blacklists Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups fighting Israeli aggression but clears the MKO, which has committed countless crimes in Iran and Iraq."
Protesters in Tehran gathered around the French and German embassies to denounce the decision, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, demanding the "extradition" of MKO members "who have killed many of our children and families."
Opposition leader Rajavi in turn described the decision as a "stinging defeat for the European policy of complacency" toward the Iranian regime. "The inscription of the Iranian resistance on the blacklist has helped prolong the regime of religious fascism in Iran," she said, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.
The MKO remains on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, a designation it acquired in 1997. European leaders made it clear Monday that they do not view the organization as fully rehabilitated. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and several colleagues warned that the MKO could be again designated as a terrorist group depending on its activities and on a French appeal of a Dec. 4 decision by an EU court to unfreeze nearly $9 million of the group’s assets.
The MKO was founded in the 1960s as a radical and often violent guerrilla group opposed to the U.S.-backed monarchy of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi. It took part in the 1979 revolution that ousted him.
But the group quickly fell out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the rest of the country’s clerical leadership. Many of its supporters were jailed, and the MKO launched a campaign of bombings against leaders of the revolutionary government.
During the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, the group fought alongside Hussein’s troops against the Islamic Republic, a move that earned it the anger of many Iranians. Iraqi Kurds allege that the MKO helped crush an uprising against Hussein after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Several thousand members live in Camp Ashraf, a desolate patch of desert and tumbleweed near Baqubah, Iraq. A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch said the camp was rife with abuse, citing evidence of "prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement" as well as "beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture" against members who don’t conform to the group’s sometimes bizarre rules and rituals.
Its blend of Islamist and Marxist ideologies alienates both supporters and opponents of the Islamic Republic. Iran watchers in Europe and the U.S. say the organization has little public appeal. But it mounted an all-out lobbying campaign that won over legislators, especially in Britain, according to Farhad Khosrokhavar, an Iranian French expert on Islamic extremism.
"They have been very successful at giving a positive picture of themselves in Europe," Khosrokhavar said in a telephone interview. "I think many people have been duped by them, especially in the British Parliament."
Khosrokhavar predicted that the EU decision would only increase Iran’s animosity toward the West.
"The Islamic Republic will be stronger in its suspicion of the West and European Union," he said. "My guess is they will be angry, and the one issue where they will be even more inflexible is the nuclear issue."
Rajavi and other leaders were arrested in 2003, when more than 1,000 police officers raided their compound outside Paris. France’s top anti-terrorism judge charged that they were involved in terrorism in Iran and plotting violence in Europe as well.
The investigation, which was assisted by the FBI in the United States, did not turn up powerful proof. A lawyer for the group said Monday that prosecutors should throw out the still-pending case.
"One finds oneself confronting a judicial dossier that is empty of substance after the removal from the list," said the lawyer, Patrick Badouin, according to French reports.
daragahi@latimes.com
Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Madrid contributed to this report.
By Achrene Sicakyuz and Borzou Daragahi
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-opposition27-2009jan27,0,1790285.story
Never accept Iranian Ben Ladan in the European parliament to batter the popular legitimacy of the European nation’s House. Undoubtedly, Maryam Rajavi
(Iranian Ben Ladan) the leader of the People Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) is more dangerous and vicious than Afghan Ben Lad an. The west should be on a high alert not to be decoyed by her new sham guise as an advertisement released via her recently under the title of “the ten- point platform for future Iran” in US daily news paper, the Washington Times in January 14 issue. Mr. President, please pay attention to my reasons as a live witness and her victim during last twenty years who has been under her authority and cage in Ashraf garrison situated in Iraq. Meanwhile, I have been separated from Mojahedin cult a year ago and came to France.
In her advertisement, she tries to express her dreams and illusions for “future Iran” with the ill-usage of the international norms and conventions. But, fortunately, she has even no place in her former Ashraf garrison, so, how she intends to make the history of Iran!?!
Let me explain an Iranian maxim which is appropriate for her conditions to make everybody snicker for a while. “A villager person was not allowed to enter the village, but she asked the address of the village bailiff home”. No doubt, Maryam Rajavi has the same story of the villager with her perpetrated crimes and deceits. So that, she has no permission to settle down in any state either USA or Europe, however, she has been indicted by international and local tribunals as such France and Iraq.
To know and understand her serial fobs and illusions, let’s focus on her contradictions in practical fields and her ten- point platform. To save time, let me compare only two of these articles of her platform with her present and past activities and thoughts. In the article 7 of her platform, she claims, ‘we are committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and…’, but, the question arises how she interprets and replies the articles 12 and 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in comparison with her inhuman activities e.g. forceful ideological divorces of thousands impeccable men and women as well as wrecking and shattering the family foundation and….
Article 12: “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, or to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
Article 16: “(1) men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.” “(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.” “(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state.”
Mr. Mirek topolank, please ask Maryam Rajavi to answer the human conscience and the public opinion of the West regarding forceful and dictated divorces and illegal marriages in her cult by her husband Masood Rajavi who is the lifetime leader of the PMOI. I think a particle of her above mentioned crimes regarding dictated divorces and marriage is enough to prove high contradictions between her false platform and her practical activities.
Mr. President, please let’s check the article 9 of her platform to discern her mock intentions and goals regarding international problems and disasters, “our foreign policy will be based on peaceful coexistence…” as a matter of fact, as a live witness, I got shock of observing such a scene at the time of the occurring of “the September 11 disaster” when Masood rajavi made such speeches, “this is reactionary Islam did such an action, thus, we, the revolutionary Islam can do much better than them. And worse than such a sentence which exposes the nature of the Mojahedin cult’s ideology and thought, was that Maryam Rajavi confirmed his speeches with nodding and smiling.
Now, the question is that is it fair and justice and a just decision to stain the scene of parliament via her presence in the nation’s house?
Yours truly
Hamid Siah Mansouri, Paris, January 25, 2009
During his speech on New Year’s Day to celebrate the official transfer of Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone to Iraqi control, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared Jan. 1 the “day of sovereignty” and congratulated his
compatriots for having waited so long. He also warned that an Iranian resistance group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), would no longer be able to have a base on Iraqi territory.
To some Western observers in Baghdad, it seemed like an odd thing for al-Maliki to mention, given the more momentous theme of the day. The MEK is an obscure group known for launching attacks on Iran in the 1980s and ’90s, when Iraq and Iran were bitter, warring enemies. But since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the MEK has been stripped of its weapons, confined to its base at Camp Ashraf about 80 miles north of Baghdad and guarded by U.S. troops. The group is hardly an immediate threat to Iraqi security, or even particularly relevant to the challenges Iraq faces under the new U.S.-Iraq security pact.
But when the U.S. military formally transferred control of Camp Ashraf back to the Iraqi government on Jan. 1, the MEK’s fate suddenly became an issue. The group is a source of contention for Iran and the U.S., Iraq’s two biggest allies, who are increasingly vying for influence as Baghdad’s post–Saddam Hussein Shi’ite government asserts its independence. All three countries label the MEK a terrorist organization. Iran wants the group handed over for prosecution. But the U.S. has pledged to ensure the group’s rights under international law.
The question now isn’t just what to do with the 3,500 Iranians at Camp Ashraf — it’s also who decides their future. Past U.S. ties to the group suggest that the Geneva Convention isn’t the only reason Washington might not want to throw the MEK to the wolves just yet. But how deeply is Washington invested? The answer may lie in how Baghdad chooses to deal with the group.
Founded in Iran in the 1960s on an ideological platform merging Marxism and Islamism, the MEK worked alongside followers of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini to overthrow the shah in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and assisted in the ensuing U.S. embassy hostage crisis. But they clashed with Khomeini in the years that followed, leading to the killing, imprisonment and exile of thousands of the group’s members. In 1986 the MEK set up a base at Camp Ashraf, located in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province, and began receiving funding and protection from Saddam to launch attacks over the border into Iran.
Despite its position on the U.S. terrorist list since 1997, and reports by former members of abusive and cultlike practices at Ashraf, the MEK has gathered support from some surprising places abroad — especially since the U.S. invasion — by pitching itself as a viable opposition to the mullahs in Tehran. “They have been extremely clever and very, very effective in their propaganda and lobbying of members of Congress,” says Gary Sick, a Persian Gulf expert at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute and the author of All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter With Iran. “They get all sorts of people to sign their petitions. Many times the Congressmen don’t know what they’re signing.” But others, Sick adds, “are quite aware of the fact that this is a designated terrorist organization, and they are quite willing to look the other way for a group that they think is a democratic alternative to the Iranian regime.”
The group’s Paris-based umbrella organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has held fundraisers in Washington. One of the group’s former spokesmen, Alireza Jafarzadeh, now serves as a Fox News foreign affairs analyst. From Paris, the group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, has waged an effective p.r. campaign, gathering a following of European MPs to support removal of the group from the E.U.’s terrorist list and to oppose Ashraf’s closure.
Even some Iraqis see value in keeping the camp intact. “We have many differences with Iran, and Iran is very deeply involved in Iraq, so I don’t think it’s wise to end the Iranian resistance,” said Salah al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of parliament from the Iraqi National Dialogue Front. “For the Americans, surrendering the Mujahedin-e Khalq file to the Iraqi government is a big mistake.”
For the most part, however, the MEK is no more popular with the Iraqi population than it is with the central government. In his speech from the Green Zone on New Year’s Day, al-Maliki made it clear that the MEK would lose its protected status. “This group has been labeled a terrorist organization,” al-Maliki said. “It can no longer operate in Iraq after today because it has caused a political crisis that contradicts the constitution … We will never force any of these people to go back to their country … but Iraq cannot be a base for these people.”
The move to oust the MEK was anticipated, but the promise not to deport them to Iran was a welcome relief for the group’s supporters and human rights organizations. For months, the National Council of Resistance of Iran has led demonstrations in New York, Paris, Geneva and Washington to protest the possible transfer of Camp Ashraf’s residents to Iran. Al-Maliki’s decision not to hand them over may indicate a small U.S. victory.
While the U.S. government has remained relatively quiet on the Ashraf issue lately, Washington’s approach isn’t entirely passive. In a Jan. 1 press release, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said an unspecified number of U.S. troops have remained at the camp since the formal handover of control to Iraq. “U.S. forces will maintain a presence at Camp Ashraf and will continue to assist the government of Iraq in carrying out its assurances of humane treatment of the residents of Camp Ashraf,” the release stated. The Iraqi government provided written assurances that the group would be treated in accordance with Iraqi law, and the U.S. government would remain involved in resolving the group’s future, according to the release. U.S. embassy officials declined to comment on what that future might look like.
Just two days after making his declaration to the MEK, al-Maliki left for a scheduled diplomatic visit to Iran — his fourth since taking office. The Iraqi Prime Minister was expected to try to ease fears that Iraq might be used as a base to attack Iran. He has pledged that won’t happen. But it remains uncertain as to what is in store for the MEK.
— With reporting by Mazin Ezzat / Baghdad
By Abigail Hauslohner – time.com
Europe: Safe Haven For Terrorists
The European Union routinely accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism for their support of the military wings of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, forgetting to mention that these are the armed wings of legitimate and democratically elected political parties, who have a legal right to resist Israeli occupation under internationalal law, and are only designated as terrorists organisation by the EU for political reasons – i.e. the EU supports Israel. But what is rarely reported is the extent to which the EU supports terrorist groups. It has reportedly been agreed by EU states to remove the anti-Iranian Mujahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO) from the designated terrorist organisation list in the near future, which makes an absolute mockery of the EU supposed objection to terrorism.
The MKO cult is notorious for committing countless atrocities in Iran and Iraq. In Iran alone, their terrorist attacks have claimed over 12,000 deaths and in Iraq, as well as committing war crimes against the Kurds under the Saddam Hussein regime, they are accused by the current Iraqi government of carrying out terrorist attacks and destabilising the country, despite supposedly being in US custody. The Cult also stands accused of assassinating and torturing dissidence and human trafficking. They have also used self-immolation (suicide bombing!) as a tactic to protest against their designation as terrorist organisation in Europe.
This is why America, Canada and the EU have previously refused to remove the MKO from their terror lists, and as recently as the 12 of this month, Condoleezza Rice announced that the MKO group would remain on the US terror list. So why the change in the EU position now?
Since 2003, Camp Ashraf, the MKO HQ, which is located in Iraq’s Diyala province, along with its 3,400 inhabitants have been under American military control – the Bush regime wanted to protect the 3,400 known anti-Iranian terrorists from being taken into Iraqi custody, so granted them protected status – but since beginning of January control of the base and its inhabitants legally passed to the Iraq government, who have ordered the base closed and all MKO cult members to either return to Iran or select a third country to be deported to.
Obviously it would be politically difficult, if not impossible, for any EU state to open up its borders and welcome 3,400 designated terrorists cult members with open arms, and Obama defintely isn’t going to do it. So quietly the EU has been dropping its resistance to MKO under the pretense that the cult has been disarmed. And the group has one a series of barely contested legal cases. Now that they no longer have a presence in Iraq, it will be easy to argue that they pose no threat to Iraq or Iran, and that might well be true, but this terror cult will be a much bigger threat to Europe than al-Qaeda ever was.
The MKO is committed to the violent overthrow of the Iranian government and enforcing their own brand of fascism, despite the fact that Iranian government was democratically elected (a point often forgotten) and the MKO is universally loathed in Iran and has a long history of anti-western violence as well.
stephiblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/europe-safe-haven-for-terrorists
The Iraqi government this week accused an Iranian opposition group of planning a suicide attack against Iraqi troops, a possible prelude to decisive government action to close the group’s camp in Iraq and expel its members.
The Mujaheddin-e Khalq, or MEK, on Tuesday denied Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie’s allegation that it was planning an attack. Rubaie, who made the charge Monday during a visit to Tehran, offered no evidence to back up his assertion.
The fate of the MEK has long been an irritant in relations between the government of Iraq, which has built close ties with Iran, and the U.S. government. The MEK received support from Saddam Hussein’s government and has been designated a terrorist organization by the State Department, but the U.S. military has protected the group’s base in Iraq, known as Camp Ashraf, since the 2003 invasion. U.S. officials credit the MEK with providing information about Iran’s nuclear program.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants to expel the MEK. Iraqi officials have said the group’s continued presence has a destabilizing effect and hinders relations between Iran and Iraq.
The United States handed nominal control of the outer perimeter of the camp to the Iraqi government Jan. 1, when a new security agreement between the United States and Iraq came into effect. The agreement gives Iraq greater say in security matters, but U.S. officials said they intend to keep a military contingent at the camp to help the Iraqi government honor its commitments to treat the group’s members humanely.
In 2003, the U.S. military reached an agreement with the group that offered its members protection in exchange for their disarmament.
Rubaie told reporters Monday in the Iranian capital that”the Iraqi government has made a serious decision to expel”the 3,500 MEK members who remain at Camp Ashraf, according to a report on the Tehran Times Web site.
Rubaie’s statement said a member of the organization had turned himself in to Iraqi security forces and told them that group leaders had instructed him to detonate explosives at the headquarters of the Iraqi security forces. The goal of the reported attack was to embarrass the Iraqi government, the statement said.
Maj. Neal Fisher, a spokesman for the U.S. command that has soldiers stationed at Ashraf, referred questions about the alleged plot to the Iraqi government.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the MEK’s political wing, called the allegation a”blatant fabrication”that was part of a”conspiracy”between the Iranian and Iraqi governments to build a stronger case for the expulsion of the group.
Maliki reiterated his intension to shut down Camp Ashraf during a speech Jan. 1, saying the group’s continued presence is a violation of the Iraqi constitution and troubles Iraq’s neighbors.
The MEK was formed in the 1960s to oppose Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the autocratic ruler who fled a 1979 revolution led by Shiite clerics. In the 1980s, many MEK leaders moved to Iraq, where they were welcomed by Hussein, who mobilized them in his war with Iran.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, three Iraqis were killed and two U.S. soldiers wounded in an explosion in Mansour, a district in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. An Iraqi police official said the explosion was caused by a car bomb that was detonated as U.S. soldiers were leaving a meeting at a government building. The U.S. military, citing”intelligence sources,”accused the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq of carrying out the attack.
Earlier in the day, two Iraqis were killed in Karrada, in southern Baghdad, after a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy transporting officials from the Education Ministry.
By Ernesto Londoño
Iraqi security forces are in charge of the MKO training center at Camp Ashraf.
Details of an attempted attack on the Iraqi security center have been brought to light after the would-be perpetrator surrendered himself.
A member of the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO), who was to carry out the attack, turned himself in to Iraqi security forces and disclosed the details of the suicide attack, Mehr news agency reported.
The would-be suicide bomber is one of the residents of Camp Ashraf, the MKO training center and headquarters in Iraq.
The main objectives of the attack were targeting Iraqi security forces who took over the camp’s security on January 1, 2009 and dissuading the members of the terrorist group from leaving the compound or surrendering to Iraqi forces.
The Iraqi government has been seeking the expulsion or relocation of MKO, as it believes the group to be responsible for attempting to destabilize the country by carrying out terror attacks.
Earlier in January, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to expel the members of the terrorist cell from Iraqi soil.
The MKO "is a terrorist organization and thus cannot operate in Iraq because it will create a political crisis in contradiction with the (Iraqi) constitution," Maliki said, adding that the group will be dealt with "based on the international laws".
The MKO has been blacklisted as a terrorist organization by many international organizations and countries including the United States.
The terrorist group targeted Iranian government officials and civilians in Iran and abroad in the early 1980s. The group also attempted an unsuccessful invasion of Iran in the last days of the Iraq-Iran war in 1988.
The MKO was also involved in the massacre of Iraqis under the Ba’athist regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
PressTV – Tue, 20 Jan 2009
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=83055§ionid=351020201
In a letter released in POAC’s ruling on November 2007, the UK Secretary of State is quoted saying “Mere cessation of terrorist acts do not amount to
renunciation of terrorism. Without a clear and publicly available renunciation of terrorism by the PMOI, I am entitled to fear that terrorist activity that has been suspended for pragmatic reasons will be resumed in the future”. And he is right since just on 17 June 2003, two years after the claimed date that MKO had conducted no military activity of any kind since August 2001, the group’s members launch a series of most appalling self-suicide operations.
It began when Jean-Louis Bruguière, France’s anti-terrorism investigative magistrate at the time, first targeted the terrorist cult of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO, MEK, NCRI, PMOI, NLA), officially designated as terrorists organization by the US and the European Union, in a European country since its settlement there and issued warrant for the arrest of Maryam Rajavi and a number of her accomplices for a multitude of terrorist charges. The officials in DST, French counter-intelligence, were well aware of the group’s terrorist nature when its HQs were raided. But hardly anybody expected that the group would engage in immediate cult-like reactions against the arrest of its she-guru.
Although the case is still under investigation by French justice system for a final judgment, those who are familiar with the nature of cults and their techniques of brainwashing were neither shocked nor surprised by the widespread self-burnings of MKO’s members, male and female, that left two deaths and others deformed. It was all done as a cult order to protest the arrest of the she-guru Maryam Rajavi who is steering the cult in the absence of her husband whose whereabouts is still unknown. And it worked well, since soon the French police surrendered to the wills of the protesters and set the leader free.
Not only has the group failed to present evidences to acquit itself of terrorist charges, distribution of new evidences such as reports of abusing its own insiders, repeated assertion of its re-designation in the US and the EU terror lists, its failed lobbying efforts to be removed from the terrorist lists, legal complaints of defectors and families to prosecute the organization for its anti-human activities against the members, and its glorification of terrorism are all proven facts that convince any country, where its members are settled, to take precautionary measures against any possible terrorist plots.
Intrinsically a terrorist organization, MKO has never denounced violence and terrorism publicly. In fact the group’s glorification of violence and terrorism remains as a major security threat and an appropriate means of accomplishing its cultic ends and safeguarding its HQs. In a few messages delivered from his hideout in the past recent years, Massoud Rajavi has particularly provoked continuation of suicidal operations as an emergency exit from the raised crisis. The self elected leader of Mojahedin has mainly focused on the preservation of two cult dynamics as the strategic guidelines in his messages, namely, Maryam Rajavi and Camp Ashraf. Rajavi in his message of March 25 stated:
At the present, it is a national duty on any Iranian and especially on our victorious opposition forces throughout the world to preserve two things which have turned to be two sides of the same coin. On one side rests a portrait of Maryam and on the other side, a perspective of Ashraf. I urge you one by one to struggle like Maryam and along with her day and night to mint the coin and achieve the end. 1
The expulsion of MKO from the Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki’s reiteration that the group is no longer welcome in Iraq following the expiration of the UN mandate for the international forces is of the greatest crisis the group has ever faced. It has to do something to come out and as usual, application of violence seems to be the best choice for the organization. In the past there came the order for the members to self-immolate for Maryam. Now it is Camp Ashraf that is under threat of being closed down and they already have the orders what to do.
According to an issued statement by the Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, MKO sent one of its members on a mission of suicide operation to target Iraqi national security forces in charge of the camp. The operation came to absolute failure when the attacker turned himself in to Iraqi security forces and disclosed the details of his mission.
As it is typical of MKO, it denied claims stated by Iraqi officials that a member of the group was planning a suicide operation. But one thing is right for certain that the group has to leave willingly or unwillingly. It can no more beguile Iraqi government as it did with France through the push of its suicidal operations. For sure it is good news for the camp residents who have long been looking forward to being released from the bonds of the abusive cult.
The office of Mr. Movafagh Al Rabiee, Iraq’s National Security Advisor, has issued a statement. 
The security forces of Iraq have arrested a member of Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (aka: MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi cult) after he failed to carry out his suicide mission inside an Iraqi security base.
According to the source this resident of Ashraf camp (MKO base) gave himself up and is now being kept in secure and safe conditions.
According to the statement this member of Mojahedin Khalq has now complained about the severe exercise of torture and brainwashing techniques employed by the heads of the organisation.
According to his written statements, he claims that: “I was sent with a clear and precise plan to perform a suicide mission in this Iraqi base”.
According to the statement of the office of Iraq’s National Security Advisor, “the aim of this suicide attack has been to put pressure on the security forces of Iraq, to entangle them in this because it is this new force that has taken over the security of Ashraf camp from January 01, 2009”
The statement says it is believed that this was to be used in the media in the Arab world as well as the western media by MKO and its supporters. It also has the aim of making the disaffected members inside the camp afraid of giving themselves up to the Iraqi forces.
The statement adds that every effort is being made to either repatriate him voluntarily or find another country to transfer him. The Iraqi government wishes to announce that while the government of Iraq is committed to all its international obligations, including any promises made to the United State administration, that: “the security forces of Iraq are aware and conscious of the fruitless activities of Mojahedin Khalq Organisation in creating disturbances in Iraqi society and have been briefed to be able to carry out their duties”.
Buratha News in Baghdad, January 19, 2009
http://burathanews.net/news_article_58139.html