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Iraq warns EU not to support Tareq al-Hashemi and MKO terrorists

Iraq warns EU not to support Tareq al-Hashemi and Mojahedin Khalq terrorist organization (Rajavi cult)

The chairman of Iraq’s Foreign Relations Committee in Parliament, Sheikh Hamoudi, warned EU Iraq warns EU not to support Tareq al-Hashemi and MKO terrorists member states to deal with convicted terrorists such as the fugitive Tareq al-Hashemi and the Mojahedin Khalq terrorist organization.

Ashraf News in Baghdad reported that Sheikh Hamoudi, chaired a meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, with the ambassadors of EU member states.

The correspondent said that the parliamentary committee officially informed the ambassadors that Iraq will not deal with the Committee for relations with Iraq in the European Union if the president continues to deal with the likes of Tariq al-Hashemi, and the Mojahedin Khalq terrorist organization. The two sides also stressed the need for cooperation between the two parliaments of Iraqi and the EU.

A statement by the office of Sheikh Hamoudi said, “The committee today received the ambassadors of the European Union at its headquarters, where they were discussing the overall relations and ways of developing them”.

He added that “the committee informed the ambassadors of EU countries of Iraq’s refusal to deal with the Iraq Delegation in the European Parliament after its recent positions and hosting the convicted Tareq al-Hashemi and the Mojahedin Khalq terrorists.”

Ashraf News, Translated by Iran Interlink

November 9, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

European Citizens and the panic of the MKO terror Cult

Terrorism is an intentional act of violence which causes fear in the target audience or society; it’s a political act, the goal of which is to make a change. The terrorist is not driven by personal desires or ambitions but what if the terrorist group is also characterized as a cult of personality? A terrorist cult of personality is driven by personal desires and ambitions of its leader. The Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) is known as a cult of personality around the wife-husband guru Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

Assuming that the MKO is not engaged in acts of violence any more, precautionary steps should be taken when dealing with this cult because of its past violence. In the late October, the British Secretary of State for the Home Department was asked by the UK Parliament member Menzier Campbell about the current immigration status of the 52 Liberty residents who are seeking resettlement in the UK. The answer was that none of the 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty who were previously settled in the UK have any current immigration status in the UK. He said," We have agreed to consider, exceptionally, their re-admission as refugees, subject to a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assessment of each individual to ensure that none have been complicit in acts of terrorism or other activities incompatible with refugee status."[1] No decision has yet been made on the status of the 17 MKO members whose assessments have been submitted to the Home Office, according to Mark Harper. Similar to most European countries the UK seems to be unwilling to receive members of this cult.

Chris McGreal of the Guardian concludes in his article on the MKO as a sponsored terror group that the group has not changed at all . ”It has certainly abandoned violence, at least for now,” writes Mc Greal. “But that is in part because it was forcibly disarmed by the US army in Iraq.” The Guardian correspondent describes the MKO as “far from democratic” referring to the US State Department report on the group. "It is autocratically run by a husband and wife, Masud and Maryam Rajavi, who the state department say have “fostered a cult of personality”, Mc Greal states. [2]

In November 2007 the Proscribed Organizations Appeal commission (POAC) ruled that the British government’s decision to keep the MKO in the list of terrorist organizations was” perverse” and must be set aside. The ruling was backed by a number of well-paid parliament members. However, the UK government argued that the MKO had only temporarily ceased terrorism for “pragmatic reasons”. [3]

A Home Office spokesman told the Guardian in February 2008,”We believe there is a risk of the PMOI returning to terrorism in the future that warrants its continuing proscription in this country”.[4] Nonetheless, the United Kingdom was the first country to delist the MKO in 2008. The move was denounced by many peace activists and journalists who warned about the risk of supporting a terror cult with a track record of violence and cult-like practices. In 2011, the US was going on the same path the UK had gone: delisting the MKO. A Large number of former US high profiles were running the MKO’s lobby in the Congress in order to remove it from the FTO list. A guardian piece authored by Matthew Partridge was published under the title "Britain and America should beware supporting the Mujahideen-e- Khalq”. [5]

Partridge notifies the MKO’s unpredictable behavior as an opportunist organization:"Ironically, before its split with Ayatollah Khomeini, its leaders worked closely with Iran’s theocratic government, directly participating in the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran. This raises the obvious risk that if Britain and America covertly, or overtly, supports MEK, it could then cut a deal with Tehran and turn its guns on Europe and America." [6] Although Partridge assertion is not precisely accurate – Iranian nation will never forget the MKO’s atrocities and treasons against its own country fellowmen so no deal will be reached – the warning about the MKO’s substance is truly stated.

Today the UK is now authentically facing the risk of receiving a number of fanatic cult members with dark background in violence. It seems that the UK’s decision to delist the MKO in 2008 was a political act – whether to put pressure on Islamic Republic or to appease the enemy of UK’s enemy. However, the danger that is facing now cannot be ignored. Today, the safety and security of British citizens matter. An example of such a risk took place, in June 2003, after the arrest of Maryam Rajavi by the French Police. Radical behavior of cult followers who set themselves on fire in European capitals to protest their leader’s arrest, illustrated an image of the undemocratic, extremist nature of the MKO.

Moreover, the residents of camp Liberty who are held as hostages by the group officials have no way out except to be checked and received by third countries. The UK Government that is acting so cautiously to admit 17 people should have been more cautious when it first lifted ban on the group. This coin has two sides. A terrorist cult of personality does jeopardize both friends and enemies.

By Mazda Parsi

Sources:

[1]UK Parliament, Britain may admit 17 Liberty residents with no links to terrorism, October 30, 2013

[2]Mc Greal, Chris, Q&A what is the MEK and why did the US call it a terrorist organization? The Guardian, September21, 2012

[3]Dyer, Clare, British Government fights to keep ban on main Iranian Opposition group, the Guardian, February 23, 2008

[4]ibid

[5] Partridge, Matthew, Britain and America should beware supporting the Mujahiddin-e-Khalq, the Guardian, January9, 2011

[6]ibid

November 7, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

America reluctant to let “Made in USA” MEK terrorists in

Sight of the protestors waving flags and toting signs and the sea of MKO flags and pictures and lines of Drummers marching in front of the White House on Friday to protest Obama’s meeting with Iraqi prime Minister Al-Maliki and the image of high profile advocates of the group Who according to Yochi Dreazen ,FP columnist have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the group to tout its cause reminds us of the United Nations Trust Fund which is tasked with covering the costs of resettlement processes of the Mujahdin-e Khalq members who are currently residing in Camp Liberty as a temporary location. [1]

It also reminds us of the United States’ plan to contribute $1 million to the trust fund. In a statement on the State Department’s Web site, Marie Harf, a spokeswoman, said resettling Camp Liberty residents in other countries was “the only lasting means of guaranteeing the safety and well-being of those residing in Camp Hurriya.” [2]

The US administration and State department know better than everybody else that the MKO spends much more money than the 1 million dollars on donations to prominent political figures.

The group paid Washington lobby groups and hired influential politicians and officials, as speakers to press the state department into removing the group from the list of terrorist organizations. Chris Mc Greal states based on the research by the Centre for Responsive Politics, a group tracking the impact of money in US politics.[3]

The steady flow of funds continued even after the delisting. The group reopened its Washington office and hired former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) to lobby on its behalf.[4]

Flushes with cash, the group day to day puts on events hiring political figures to give speech. The group also hires asylum seekers and refugees from different nations to participate. [5]

So a glance at the group’s propaganda campaigns proves that money is the last thing the MEK needs, as stated by Mr. Arash Pirooz ,MKO former member.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in an interview with Foreign Policy said “What keeps them in the news are their deep pockets,” Many outside experts believe the MEK is still drawing from the pools of money it received from the former Iraqi leader.[6]

The US State Department statement reiterates that the resettlement has become an ever more urgent humanitarian imperative in the aftermath of deadly attacks on Camps Ashraf and Liberty. [7]

So why doesn’t the US pick up more practical step.

Addressing the protesters, Mr. Gingrich urged Mr. Obama to instruct the State Department to “cut the red tape” and issue U.S. visas to more than 3,000 Iranian refugees who remain in Iraq.[8]

Why doesn’t the US move the relocation process forward by letting the MKO members in?

A glance at the past would provide the answer. The US doesn’t want to let its handmade terrorists to reside safely on its land.

The US administration provided MEK operatives terror training at secret facilities in Nevada starting in 2005 and received U.S. intelligence that the group used to carry out the assassinations of Iranian scientists, According to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. Quoting a senior Pentagon consultant Hersh reported:

“The M.E.K. was a total joke,…and now it’s a real network inside Iran… MEK now has a capacity for efficient operations that it never had before.” [9]

NBC News’ Richard Engel and Robert Windrem reported in February 2012, that the MEK colluded with Israel to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.[10]

Mujahedin Khalq are the United States proxy on waging war in Iran, Iraq, Syria and wherever the US decides while the group is a bargaining chip at US hands in dealing with Iran.

Yet, being absolutely aware of the terror potentiality and the unpredictable nature of the Mujahedin Khalq as a terror cult, the US wants them to exist but somewhere out of its own territory. The United States doesn’t risk its nation’s security by housing members of a terrorist cult.

By: A. Sepinoud

References:

[1] Dreazen, Yochi, Meet the weird well-connected ex-terrorists threatening our relationship with Iraq, Foreign Policy, October 30,2013

[2] U.S. Department of State, Press Statement, U.S. Pledges Support to UN Trust Fund for Resettlement of Camp Hurriya Residents, Marie Harf, Deputy Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC, October 24, 2013

[3] McGreal, Chris, Iranian exiles, DC lobbyists and the campaign to delist the MEK, the guardian.com, September21, 2012

[4]Pecquet, Julian, Delisted Iranian terror group MEK registers to lobby, the Hill May 24, 2013

[5] Kane, Alex, Former us officials blast diplomacy with rouhani at mek rally outside un Mondoweiss.net, september24, 2013

[6] Dreazen, Yochi, Meet the weird well-connected ex-terrorists threatening our relationship with Iraq, Foreign Policy, October 30,2013

[7] U.S. Department of State, Press Statement, U.S. Pledges Support to UN Trust Fund for Resettlement of Camp Hurriya Residents, Marie Harf, Deputy Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC, October 24, 2013

[8] Wall Street Journal, Loud Protests as Obama Hosts Iraqi Leader, November1, 2013

[9]Hersh,Seymour, Our Men in Iran, the New Yorker, April6, 2012

[10] Engel, Richard & Windrem, Robert, Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News, NBC News, Feb 9,2012

November 6, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Rajavi and Netanyahu scuttling Iran deal in the same manner

MKO, Bibi scuttling Iran deal in the same manner

The fact is that the terrorist MKO group is not only fruitful to the US, but it is detrimental to this country. They are just the Zionist regime and the American neocons benefiting enormously from alliance with a group like MKO. An alliance which will lead to their possible further cooperation, just as they did in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq or MKO, the weird terrorist cult with bottomless pools of money which was founded in 1963 as a guerrilla group to oppose the US-backed Shah of Iran, targeted Americans in its early years. Between 1972 and 1975, it waged a bombing campaign against American companies and diplomatic officers as a step to “free Iran of US imperialism”.

When President Nixon visited Iran in 1972, the MEK detonated time bombs at over a dozen sites throughout Tehran, hitting the Iran-American Society, the U.S. information office, and the offices of Pepsi Cola and General Motors. American military and civilian personnel also became targets of MEK terror. In May 1975, MEK guerillas stopped the car of U.S. Air Force Col. Paul Schaeffer and U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jack Turner, as they drove to work on a military base near Tehran. The officers, both unarmed, were gunned down in cold blood. At least four other Americans were assassinated by the MEK between 1973 and 1976.

Describing US President Richard Nixon as “the supporter of the most reactionary and the most criminal dictatorship in the world, Mohammadreza Shah’s regime,” MKO issued a statement in its publication, Mujahid, and proudly took responsibility for the bombs they set off on May 31, 1972, in opposition to the Nixon’s visit to Iran which ran partly as follows:

1. A firm response to “the regime’s brutal crimes” against the Iranian people;

2. “Annihilation of U.S conspirators and trespassers along with over 6000 military advisors”;

3. “Declaring support for the liberation movements around the world to spread the front of anti-imperialist struggles”

4. “Expressing outrage and revulsion at the criminal Nixon who has blood of oppressed people around the world on his hands.”

The US Department State also confirmed that MKO “staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran”.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, MKO lost the opportunity to attract the public opinion. Hence, It took arms against the Iranians and killed thousands of religious figures, government officials, and innocent civilians.

Although it took the lives of hundreds of Iranian people, MKO lost the armed struggle and a majority of its members as well as the leadership of the group fled to Paris in 1981. The group left Paris for Iraq in 1986 where it enjoyed the full support of former Iraqi dictator. There, they helped Saddam in his war against Iran by providing the Ba’ath army with information on Iranian sites.

With the perception that after 8 years of an unequal war Iranian army is worn out, the MKO gathered all its from around the world in Iraq and conducted a military offensive on the western Iranian borders. In short, the group suffered a blow and lost the battle with the Iranian counteroffensive.

The US invaded Iraq in 2003 and the time was over for the Iraqi dictator. He lost his grip on power. Saddam’s downfall was a turning point for the MKO. It soon changed its anti-imperialist face and became a true friend of the US.

Now, MKO with this long black anti-US history found its way in the US Congress and the European Parliaments. It holds rallies on the streets of Washington, DC and New York warning the US administration of peace negotiations with Iran and spreading a fear of Iran much like what the Zionist regime is doing.

MKO has left no stone unturned in persuading the United States and European countries that they shouldn’t pursue a peace deal with Iran and there are myriad examples in which the leadership of the group states that the negotiations with Iran do not bring about results.

Earlier in March 2010, Maryam Rajavi, speaking to the UPI, urged the west to “step up the pressure on Tehran” and highlighted that the US and Europe should “no longer call for negotiations with” Iran.

In another occasion, the ringleader of the group said Iran “will never abandon it drive to acquire nuclear weapons,” adding “this explains the futility of negotiation with” Iran.

Addressing a number of German parliamentarians, Rajavi said the policy of west and EU towards Iran through negotiations “has proven to be mistaken and counterproductive”.

All these assertions remind me of another person who is steadfastly opposed to any kind of deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister, who a few weeks ago called on the US to step up pressure on Iran.

“I think that in this situation as long as we do not see actions instead of words, the international pressure must continue to be applied and even increased,” Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday. “The greater the pressure, the greater the chance that there will be a genuine dismantling of the Iranian military nuclear program.”

November 5, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

Mojahedin Khalq offer bribe to the UN

MEK has proposed the UN an offer of $ 100m if the UN permits sale of Camp Liberty.

Mehr News quoted a statement by Brussels-based International Fact-Finding Committee, who acts as a pro-MEK association in Europe. “The MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq) has committed itself to allocate $ 100m to the UN Development Program if the UN permits the organization to sell Camp Liberty property and assets,” reads the statement.

The news website Al-Iraq al-Jamii (United Iraq) reported that the Committee chairman Alejo Cuadras said that MEK would sign an agreement to sell the Camp Ashraf with a British company, and if the Iraqi government agreed, it would allocate $ 100m to UN Development Program, with the pretext that the MEK had rebuilt the camp investing $ 20m of its own assets.

Camp Ashraf and property and assets are part of Iraqi pubic resources, which were granted to MEK by Saddam Hussein when they entered Iraq.

November 4, 2013 0 comments

UK Hesitant about Admitting MKO Terrorists as Refugees

UK Immigration Minister Mark Harper said the country has not yet made any decision on giving asylum to the members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI and PMOI).

“None of the 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty who were previously settled in the UK have any current immigration status here,” Harper said according to a report by the Habilian Association.

“We have agreed to consider, exceptionally, their re-admission as refugees, subject to a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assessment of each individual to ensure that none has been complicit in acts of terrorism or other activities incompatible with refugee status,” he added.

Harper also said that the UNHCR has submitted 17 assessments to the Home Office, adding that “no decision has yet been reached”.

Earlier in July 2013, a British life peer said in an interview with Habilian Association that western European states are not at all wishful of receiving MKO members “because of their recent past history”.

“Albania has agreed to take several hundred in theory, but in practice has only accepted seventy two,” Baroness Emma Nicholson added.

The last group of MKO terrorists at Camp Ashraf, now called Camp New Iraq, was evicted by the Iraqi government on September 11 to join other members of the terrorist group in the former US-held Camp Liberty, now called Camp Hurriya, near Baghdad International Airport where they are awaiting relocation to other countries.

The MKO, 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.

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 the 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.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who argued for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under the US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with the American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

November 3, 2013 0 comments

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – 27

++ This week many people have been predicting the end of Rajavi’s cult. For example, Nejat Association talks about the pathetic situation of the cult and, going through the various setbacks the MEK faces, warns that they will kill more of their own people. Other writers refer to Massoud Rajavi’s mentality which is to never give anything up, but when anything is taken from him, like Camp Ashraf, to pretend it was his idea and claim he did it. The general conclusion is that Rajavi doesn’t respond to anything but force.

++ Mohammad Karami and Jaafar Ebrahimi from Paris were guests on Mardom TV. Karami expanded on the history of the hunger strike in the MEK, starting with the first one in London in 1989 over the UN visit to Iran, followed by Gabon and the current event. He explained how the MEK fake the actual hunger strikes, but choose some people who are ill or have other problems to place at the front to show to journalists. This is not to say they won’ t kill one just to prove the strike to the media, just as they got people to burn themselves following Maryam Rajavi’s arrest in Paris. Karami pointed out that some of the residents in Camp Liberty are undergoing a forced hunger strike as food is being denied them, while others are simply faking.

++ Behzad Alishahi has begun a weekly media report in Farsi of which the first two have been published. The reports cover what the MEK say and write. He dissects their media with explanations, for example how much of their media is now devoted to Syria, Iraq, the Neocons, etc. At times this reporting becomes very funny.

++ Mohammad Razaghi wrote an article titled ‘Another gathering of the Rajavi-made NCR’. He reminds us that for twenty years now Maryam has been calling herself the elected president of Iran. Razaghi is disgusted by the leaders of the MEK who are promoting a hunger strike while drinking and eating and having an easy time themselves. As usual, he points out, they sit around and dictate what others should and shouldn’t do, including the US and Israel, but never seem to come up with any actual description of what they themselves are supposed to do.

++ Many have written in Farsi about Rajavi’s continued insistence on the hunger strike and his false claims against the government of Iraq. They conclude that this is to divert attention away from his own culpability for the deaths of those killed in Camp Ashraf, because these could so clearly have been avoided.

++ Personal testimonies abound from those who knew and worked with Ali Mansouri (the MEK member arrested in Israel). It is now clear that he was an active MEK intelligence operative working in Iran, Turkey and Europe. For some time he had been the official MEK contact with Turkey’s secret service. Now, many believe that his arrest is most likely the result of his going rogue or trying to defect from the MEK who have set him up to stop him talking by putting him in the hands of Mossad.

++ The MEK came out in praise of the killing of 14 Iranian border guards by Jaish al-Adl last week. But although many neocons and others tried to present the group as some kind of religious or ethnic minority opposition, the officials of the group itself say it is affiliated with Al Qaida and supported by Saudi Wahhabi fundamentalists. After this was exposed the MEK stopped talking and tried to water down their support.

++ A lot of articles and comments focus on the hunger strike – which is approaching its second month – by pointing out that the strikers actually look fatter than before. In particular criticism is aimed at one of the MEK’s most verbally vicious agents called Rahmani who was shown on the MEK’s TV claiming to be on hunger strike. Apparently after six weeks his cheeks are still pink and he hasn’t slowed down in swearing at everyone. Many writers point out that it is actually Massoud Rajavi’s job to kill people and then use them for publicity. He can no longer do this with guns and weapons and so, for example in 2003 he organised self-immolations to keep himself and the MEK going. His personal survival therefore depends on killing and taking pictures for advertisement.

++ Massoud Jaabani published a short article titled ‘This time they have tied their future to anti-Syrian groups’. He reminds the MEK that whatever they touch seems to be destined for collapse whether Saddam or any other side.

++ Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that the UN Is committed to resolving the situation of the residents of Camp Liberty and that a Trust Fund has been set up to cover costs relating to the relocation process. The US administration has pledged $1m to the fund but says the Administration will continue to work with the U.S. Congress regarding these funds. Many Farsi commentators have interpreted this as ‘we will give the funds to Rajavi’.

++ A Nejat Association article titled ‘What are the practical ways to help the residents of Camp Liberty’ examines the MEK’s past ten years and concludes that whatever the problem is, it is not a shortage of money. Every entity involved in sorting out the MEK is clear it is the MEK leaders who do not let help reach the individuals in the camp and nothing else.

++ Following a statement in the British parliament that the UK is considering allowing 17 Camp Liberty residents to return to the country, reaction has come from various organisations criticising Britain for not doing more to take these people. Bahar Irani refers to what the UK government has said, that it must check whether they have been involved in terrorist acts. He points out that when these people were previously living in London, the MEK was known to be a terrorist entity and yet their papers were valid then. Now, he says, the MEK has been removed from the UK terrorism list but these people’s papers are no longer valid. Other writers highlight the hypocrisy behind the freedoms given to MEK leaders in the UK to visit parliament and use the UK banking system for money laundry; the British government is helping the MEK in so many ways they say, and yet is not willing to help the individuals who want to leave Iraq.

++ An article by Iraj Mesdaghi exposes an MEK operative who issues verbal abuse on the internet called Fariba Hadikhanlou. He explains her past history and how she would apparently work for anyone who would pay her. He includes pictures and documents in his expose and says it is sad that the MEK use this woman to demonise MEK critics.

++ Another article by Bahar Irani talks about the UN and the Rajavi cult. He explains the possible scenarios that face Rajavi now that the UN has a clear mandate from the international community to evict the MEK from Iraq. Irani interprets this as ‘either cooperate or we will force you out’.

++ Nader Naderi has blogged to say that he knows Ali Mansouri from Turkey and adds documents and links to times when he has been in the open; for example a picture of Mansouri in the Turkish media, along with other documents. He ridicules the MEK for panicking and claiming he wasn’t a member. He says Rajavi has again tried to paint a frog to sell it as a canary.

++Saeed Jamali (real name Hadi Afshar) published the seventh part of his memories. He was an MEK activist from the time of the Shah who later became one of the top operational intelligence leaders of the MEK. With every part he publishes, the attacks by the MEK get stronger. This week has come to the point that the MEK published pages and pages of attacks from people using different names swearing at him. Zanan Iran website has published its reaction titled ‘Can personality terror stop the voice of freedom?’ The site includes a link to one of the more vicious of the Rajavi cult’s attacks in the Iran Efshagar site. Zanan’s article includes a link to a video made in 2009 while Hadi Afshar was in the American run TIPF, five years after he escaped the MEK. In it he talks about and shows what the MEK did to him and the suffering he has undergone, including being taken to Abu Ghraib prison. He details how the Americans helped the MEK in suppressing dissident members by mistreating them.

++ Amir Movasaghi reminds us that at this time of year the MEK used to hold a week of celebrations called the ‘Phoenix Week’ in the camp and in Europe etc. This year they have not done so but claim it is out of respect for the people who were killed in Ashraf. Addressing Rajavi, Movasaghi says, ‘if you were really worried about the people who got killed, you knew and everyone else knows that you could have saved them. Both Massoud and Maryam Rajavi claim now that this was a necessary price to pay for keeping Camp Ashraf open for as long as they could. The article lists the MEK’s support for the terrorist killing of Iranian border guards, the hunger strike, the support for Syrian fighters and says the real problem behind not celebrating Phoenix Week is that both Massoud and Maryam Rajavi have been forced to hide because they cannot face the inevitable questions of their closest supporters and even the members.

++ Some people have written about the connection between the MEK and Israel, which is now open, and the situation of Camp Liberty. Some Iranians are now writing directly to Netanyahu saying that instead of saying ridiculous things like ‘Iranians don’t wear jeans’, if he wants Iranians to listen to him then he should tell Rajavi to open the doors of Camp Liberty. It is acknowledged that the Israelis have leverage in Camp Liberty because they own Rajavi.

November 1, 2013

November 2, 2013 0 comments

Members of the MEK

Meet The Weird, Well-Connected Ex-Terrorists

Meet The Weird, Super-Connected Group That’s Mucking Up U.S. Talks With Iraq

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki begins a three day official visit to Washington today, he’ll face predictable questions about Iran, Syria, and Iraq’s own political instability and soaring violence. Top lawmakers, however, will press him on a very different issue: the recent killings of dozens of members of a former terrorist group that the Iraqi government had promised — and failed — to protect.

The Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK, is the most powerful lobby you’ve never heard of, and probably the most unusual. It has used a combination of political savvy and seemingly bottomless pools of money to persuade many prominent lawmakers and former officials from the Bush and Obama administrations that it has broad support within Iran and could help turn the country into a democracy. Along the way, it’s gone from being as seen as a group responsible for the deaths of at least six Americans to one that is a vital partner in the effort to overthrow Iran’s theocratic regime.

MEK supporters like New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say they want to punish the Maliki government for an attack on an MEK compound called Camp Ashraf last month that left that killed at least 50 of its members. During an October 3rd hearing, Menendez told Wendy Sherman, the number three official at the State Department, that he would suspend U.S. weapons sales to Iraq until more was done to protect the MEK members at the base.

Vice President Biden discussed the MEK issue when he spoke with Maliki Wednesday morning, according to a senior administration official. The official said Baghdad wanted the MEK to leave Iraq, but said the U.S. government had no credible information that the Iraqi government was involved in the September attack on Camp Ashraf. Still, the official said that Washington worried that the group’s roughly 2,900 members would be in danger until they could be moved to new homes in other countries. The problem, he said, was that Albania and Germany were the only nations that have so far been willing to take in even small numbers of MEK followers.

Menendez aides say the senator, for his part, plans to specifically raise the Iraqi government’s treatment of the MEK members, along with his concern that Baghdad is allowing Iran to use its airspace to fly weapons and fighters to Syria, when he sits down with Maliki later Wednesday.

“It is unacceptable to lose one more life when American commanders gave these individuals a written guarantee toward their safety and it sends a message to others in the world that when we say that we are going to do that and we do not, that they should not trust us,” he said at the time. “I doubt very much that we are going to see any approval of any weapons sales to Iraq until we get this situation in a place in which people’s lives are saved.”

The MEK has also enlisted prominent retired officials to tout its cause in public speeches and private meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill. Its long list of supporters includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Mike Mukasey, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, retired Marine General Jim Jones, Obama’s first national security advisor, and retired Army General Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

MEK advocates like Rendell receive up to $30,000 per speech, which means many have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the group. Rendell, in an interview, said he genuinely believed in the group’s cause and wasn’t in it for the money. He said that he and MEK advocates like Jones and former FBI Director Louis Freeh have spent hundreds of hours personally lobbying the State Department and members of Congress on behalf of the group and had done so pro bono. Rendell said he bills $1,000 per hour as a lawyer, which meant that had foregone significant amounts of money to aid the group.

“The U.S. had promised to guarantee their safety and then just stood aside when they were massacred, gangster style,” he said in the interview. “It’s disgusting.”

Rendell helped draft a letter to Obama last week that demanded U.S. assistance for the MEK members still stuck at Camp Ashraf. In the letter, obtained by FP, MEK’s advocates said the killings at Camp Ashraf was a “premeditated mass murder planned at the highest level and executed by Iraqi forces and agents, using equipment and training provided by U.S. forces.”

“We urge you to allow all of the Camp Liberty residents to be evacuated immediately from Iraq, using United States forces, and brought to safety in a United States Government supported facility,” the letter read. Until that happened, the group argued, the Obama administration should “suspend any aid or sale of arms to Iraq.”

For the moment, that’s not a step the White House is prepared to take. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said the administration was “deeply concerned” about the safety of the MEK members at Camp Ashraf and consistently pressed the the Iraqi government to do as much as possible to protect them. Still, she said that delaying weapons sales to Iraq could do more harm than good.

“U.S. security assistance, and foreign military sales in particular, are tools that we use for building and shaping Iraq’s defense capabilities and integrating Iraqi security forces with our security forces and regional partners,” Meehan said. “Withholding security assistance may well serve to decrease our influence in Baghdad, our ability to seed relationships, and provide leverage for strategic competitors who will fill the vacuum and could conceivably damage our long-term interests.”

Administration officials said the president would discuss a range of regional and security issues with Maliki when the Iraqi leader visits the White House Friday but declined to say whether the president planned to specifically raise the MEK issue.

Either way, the MEK’s prominent role in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship represents a remarkable turnaround for a group that was once held responsible for a string of bombings and assassinations inside Iran that killed at least six Americans, including the deputy chief of the U.S. military mission to Iran and a senior Texaco executive. It was also linked to the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In 1997, the State Department designated the group a “foreign terrorist organization,” a move that imposed strict financial sanctions against the MEK. The MEK’s current leadership has long denied any involvement in the killings or the seizure of the embassy.

The group’s relationship with Washington improved dramatically after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The MEK group gave up its weapons and formed a warm relationship with senior American commanders, who gave the group formal promises of protection. Last month, however, masked gunmen with military-quality weapons swept into an MEK compound outside Baghdad, killed roughly 50 of its members and abducted seven others. Grisly videos released by the MEK showed the corpses of men who were shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs. The group’s supporters here at home immediately accused Maliki’s government of orchestrating the attack, something Baghdad denies, and called for it to be sanctioned in response.

The MEK’s power in Washington surprises many experts on the group, who describe it as a cult that exerts tremendous power over the daily lives of its followers.

Jeremiah Goulka, a former RAND researcher who has made repeated visits to Camp Ashraf, said MEK leaders physical cut their members off from the outside world, limit their access to outside newspapers or TV stations, and enforce gender segregation and celibacy. He said the MEK required its followers to attend regular sessions where they were forced to admit whether they had sexual thoughts. Those that admitted to them were publicly humiliated, while those that denied having them were derided as liars and criticized anyway.

“That’s the definition of how a cult works,” he said.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the group had little support back home because ordinary Iranians were nationalists troubled by both the MEK’s vaguely socialist ideology and its past relationship with Saddam Hussein, which funded the group’s operations for decades. Many outside experts believe the MEK is still drawing from the pools of money it received from the former Iraqi leader.

“What keeps them in the news are their deep pockets,” Sadjadpour said. “Once those deep pockets run out they’re basically going to be rendered irrelevant.”

By Yochi Dreazen

November 2, 2013 0 comments

Britain may admit 17 Liberty residents with no links to terrorism

Menzies Campbell (North East Fife, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 10 June 2013, Official Report, column 84W, on Iraq: Iran, what the current immigration status is of the 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty who are seeking resettlement in the UK.

Mark Harper (Forest of Dean, Conservative)

None of the 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty who were previously settled in the UK have any current immigration status here. We have agreed to consider, exceptionally, their re-admission as refugees, subject to a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assessment of each individual to ensure that none have been complicit in acts of terrorism or other activities incompatible with refugee status. Thus far, UNHCR have submitted 17 assessments to the Home Office. No decisions have yet been reached.

October 31, 2013 0 comments

USA

US donates $1mn for resettlement of Mojahedin Khalq in Iraq

The United States plans to provide 1-million dollars for the UN Trust Fund. The fund is tasked with re-settling elements of Mujahedin-e Khalq organization -the M-K-O- who are currently residing at Camp Liberty in Iraq.

The U-S state Department says America hopes other countries will also support the effort. But the Iraqi government as well as many other countries that consider MKO as a terrorist group, say there are no legal grounds for the presence of the M-K-O in Iraq.

Several attacks on Ashraf camp where about 100 members of the anti-Iran terrorist group still live, left 52 dead in September.

The Iraqi government is currently providing protection to the Camp Liberty in Baghdad. The camp hosts some 3,000 of MKO members who were forced to leave camp Ashraf last year.

The Mojahedin-e-Khalq is a terrorist group which was founded in 1960s in Iran. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the MKO took up arms against the Iranian government. The group is responsible for thousands of acts of terrorism and sabotage against Iran. The group also aided former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.Albania has so far received more than 100 of the MKO members, and Germany is planning to accept about 100 of them. The Iraqi government meanwhile, has called on other countries to contribute for the resettlement program in order to end MKO presence in Iraq.

October 29, 2013 0 comments

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