Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

CIA recruiting PMOI members, reports say

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Media reports suggested Tuesday that officials from the United States and the United Arab Emirates are recruiting Iranian dissidents to spy on Iranians.

Iran’s Entekhab news agency points to accounts in the Arabic-language Nahrainnet news service in the United Arab Emirates that said the CIA has recruited members of the dissident People’s Mujahedin of Iran to spy on Iranian nationals in the region.

The reports said the CIA has brought PMOI members to Dubai from their Camp Ashraf enclave in Iraq’s Diyala province.

The Nahrainnet report specifically mentioned the CIA is looking to the PMOI to serve as agents conducting espionage against the Iranian Embassy and its staff in Dubai.

The PMOI is an Iranian opposition movement seeking regime change in Iran. It is considered a terrorist organization by several nations for its violent action against Iran in the 1980s, but the group claims to have abandoned its militant tactics in 2003.

The group has a notably bitter relationship with certain members of the Iraqi government, raising several objections to its treatment at Camp Ashraf.

Among those are claims that Ashraf residents were denied medical treatment by Iraqi authorities. The Voices of Iraq news agency reported Tuesday, however, that Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie offered health treatment to Ashraf residents at Iraqi hospitals.

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MEK Camp Ashraf

Iranian group in Iraq part of high-stakes politics

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Iraqi government is stepping up efforts to pressure Iranian exiles into leaving the country, pushing an obscure group to the forefront of Baghdad’s relations with Washington and the Obama At stake is whether Iraq can resolve the fate of 3,500 members of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran without damaging its ties to both the U.S. and Iran.administration’s overtures to Iran.

At stake is whether Iraq can resolve the fate of 3,500 members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran without damaging its ties to both the U.S. and Iran. 

In recent weeks, leaders of the People’s Mujahedeen, known by its Farsi initials MEK, claim the Iraqis blockaded their Camp Ashraf north of Baghdad, allowing in only limited food and water shipments.

And earlier this month, they say, the Iraqi guards prevented Iraqi surgeons from entering the camp to treat critically ill patients — although the Iraqis ultimately relented.

To outsiders, the MEK may seem a strange cult-like group that bans sex and family life. But both the U.S. and Iran consider it a terrorist organization.

The Iraqi government makes no secret it wants the MEK out of the country in order to improve relations with Iran.

“Remaining in Iraq is not an option,”said national security adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie.”They have existed in Iraq solely to overthrow the government of a neighbor, Iran. That past permissiveness is over.”

Iran has pressed for years to close the camp, but the issue came to a head after Iraqi forces took over security for Camp Ashraf on Jan. 1, under the Iraq-U.S. security pact. The government gave the Americans assurances they would not force the exiles back to Iran, where some face prosecution.

U.S. officials in Baghdad have declined to comment publicly on the MEK issue.

But the U.S. has a stake in the issue because the U.S. military signed an agreement with the militia after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, promising members would be treated as”protected persons”under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Al-Rubaie says that with Iraqis in control, the MEK is no longer protected by national laws or international conventions and must leave.

He dismisses claims of maltreatment and says Camp Ashraf residents are extremists who have been”brainwashed”by about 15-20 of their most militant leaders. The U.S. has tried to defuse the tensions but without much success.

The MEK has a long history in Iraq.

Founded by Iranian leftists, it opposed Iran’s U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and took part in the 1979 Iranian revolution that brought the Islamic regime to power. Members were implicated in killings of Americans and the U.S. Embassy takeover in Tehran — reasons that put them on the U.S. terror list.

But their blend of Marxism and secular Islamism pitted them against the Ayatollahs and they eventually settled in Iraq, where they fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

During Saddam’s time, MEK members staged military parades at Camp Ashraf, marching in uniforms and flaunting an impressive arsenal, and carried out deadly raids into Iran to attack their sworn enemy — Tehran’s regime.

They transformed Camp Ashraf from a barren desert stretch in the heart of the volatile Diyala province and only 50 miles from the Iranian border into an oasis of well-kept gardens, sprouting water fountains and palm trees along marked-out streets.

The fenced-off 30-square-mile compound houses 3,418 residents, including 900 women. Men and women obey a strict regimen, sleep in segregated, barrack-style quarters, and are said almost to deify their Paris-based leader, Maryam Rajavi. The camp has mostly been off limits and the government rarely allows media visits.

Al-Rubaie says hundreds of the residents hold documents linking them to a third country. There are five U.S. citizens, 11 Canadians and some European and Australian dual nationals.

Baghdad has tried to get those countries to accept them, and promises MEK members Iranian passports, a one-way ticket to a third country and $1,000 in pocket money, al-Rubaie said.

But Camp Ashraf residents refuse to go.

“It’s like somebody comes and tells you to leave the only home you’ve known for the past 20 years,”said Mohammad Mohaddessin, a senior official at MEK’s political wing in Paris.

The camp, he says, is a modern”city,”with a museum, a cemetery, and a bakery— even an”Ashraf Cola”factory. As for sex and family life, Ashraf residents”left this behind them voluntarily,”Mohaddessin said.

MEK is now turning to supporters in Europe, where the European Parliament in January removed the organization from its terror list after a British court backed the group’s claim to have renounced violence.

If all else fails, the MEK says it may take the Camp Ashraf case to an international tribunal at The Hague.

The Iraqi government says 261 residents were returned to Iran over the last two years and reported no persecution. Spokeswoman Dibeh Fakhr of Iraq’s office of the International Red Cross — which visited the camp four times last year — says the last returnee went back to Iran in April 2008.

Although the MEK is no longer a military threat,”symbolically, it’s very important for Iran that they are expelled,”said Iranian analyst Saeed Leilaz. Washington’s acquiescence would be an overture to Tehran and a”good start”for Iran and the U.S., he said.

For now, Iraq’s stranglehold of Camp Ashraf has created a shortage of some commodities, including toothpaste, chlorine for water purification and generator fuel, said camp physician Hamid Gazaeri.

The camp’s modest clinic is serviced by a few general practitioners, all Iranians living in Ashraf, and depends on regular visits by Iraqi specialists.

Cancer sufferer Fatemeh Alizadeh, one of five patients who waited for a week for surgery until Iraqi doctors were allowed back last Friday, can’t imagine the camp closing.

“It would be a catastrophe,”she said in a frail voice on the phone, speaking from her hospital bed.”I am not going anywhere.”

By KATARINA KRATOVAC

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Iraq

Iraq Plans to Start Expulsion of MKO in Weeks

TEHRAN – Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration Abd al-Samad Sultan said Baghdad would most likely start practical measures for the expulsion of thousands of anti-Iranian terrorists from the country within the next few weeks.

The required coordination has been done for the expulsion of 3,000 members of the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), from the Ashraf camp near Baghdad, but due to certain problems in Iraq, the issue has not been finalized yet, the visiting Iraqi minister added in a meeting with Iranian Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli here in Tehran on Monday.

The MKO, whose main stronghold has been in Iraq’s Diyala province since the 1980s, is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.

Iraq originally announced that it would evict the camp and expel the MKO terrorists from the country in 2008.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who also argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.

Elsewhere in the meeting between the Iranian and Iraqi ministers, Sultan appreciated the Iranian nation’s hospitality to Iraqi immigrants, and said,”The Islamic Republic has provided extensive aids for the Iraqi nation in grounds of health and sanitation, education and service-providing.”

Referring to the repatriation of Iraqi emigrants who fled the country due to prevailing insecurities under and after Saddam’s rule over the nation, he announced that Iran and Iraq have formed a committee to prepare the required ground for their return.

Mahsouli, for his part, referred to the problems of the Iraqi immigrant and reiterated,”Many Iraqi people came to Iran after insecurities, war and Saddam’s dominance over the country and today more studies and surveys are needed to gradually resolve the problems of these immigrants.”

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Maryam Rajavi

Open letter of Mohammad Sobhani to Maryam Rajavi

About the attacks against him by the terrorists and henchmen of the Mojahedin Khalq Cult in Cologne, Germany

Mr. Sobhani in the European Parliament

(Mr. Sobhani in the European Parliament)

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi,

With regards.

Without the usual introductions, let me get to the point concerning the attack I suffered from your cult’s henchmen and terrorists in the city of Cologne.

I was walking down a street in Cologne, Germany, where I reside, when one of your henchmen – or rather a victim of your cult – started swearing at me and physically attacking me. It was evident that some other henchmen of yours were encouraging him while still others were engaged in surveillance of the situation from distance. He approached me and started kicking me while swearing and using words which could only be descriptions of you and your husband. He was, as you usually used to call it, trying to “punish” me or as Massoud Rajavi used to call it, trying to “eliminate” me. He was demanding that I stop writing and stop talking about what is going on inside your cult. He said that I should not have been talking against the Mojahedin Cult in the European Parliament or in other international communities and was adamant and emphatic that if I either write or talk publicly one more time, then the biggest part of my body would be my ear.

I tried my best to keep calm and remind myself that the henchman you have sent is himself a victim of your cult. I managed to stop myself from giving any reaction to your terrorist agent who had been sent by you to Germany. This henchman of yours was, of course, trying the same route that your other terrorists took in FIAP in June 2007 where they attacked me and severely injured me. Of course he tried his best to stop me calling the police on my mobile phone and took it from me. He then started swearing at me and my family when I appealed to the people in the street to call the police, saying, “I will get you where and when you will not be able to ask anyone for help or try to find witnesses and…”

I have of course reported the incident to the relevant authorities who have promised to follow this attack by your terrorists thoroughly. Therefore I am not going to get into detail for the time being.

Mrs. Rajavi,

The word with you and your husband as the joint commanders of the terrorist cult of Mojahedin Khalq and the ones who are desperately bringing the violent, trained terrorists of Saddam’s private army to the streets of European countries is this:

You remember of course when I wrote on the walls of my solitary confinement cell that “your armed struggle will not work” and do you now see that it did not work? You did not have the ear to listen that day did you?

And do you remember when I wrote to you from prison that cooperation with Saddam the Iraqi dictator is an historical act of treachery? And now who is the one who is left desperate in Iraq? What do you want in Iraq? What is the point of more and more imprisonment of the victims of the cult there? Are you not responsible for the lives of the men and women who gave everything they had for you and your husbands’ sick ambitions?

And now you are sending your henchmen to stop people talking about it, whether in June 2007 in Paris, or today in Cologne?

I finish this letter with a clear announcement to the authorities of Germany where I live. The responsibility for my life and the life of my family against such terrorist actions anywhere in Europe is with the leadership of the Mojahedin Khalq Cult (Maryam Rajavi and Massoud Rajavi) and the trained henchmen who they employ for such attacks.

Mohammad Hossein Sobhani

14.09.2009

Postfach 90 06 63

51116 Köln – Deutschland

Telefon: +49 (0) 1774829905

Email: sobhani_m_h@hotmail.com 

Cc:

The Interior Ministers of European Union countries

The Foreign Ministers of European Union countries

Mohammad Hossein Sobhani, Iran Ghalam, Cologne, April 14, 2009

http://www.iran-ghalam.de/2Haupt/3650-Tahajom%20be%20Sobhani-Koln-Deutschland13.04.09.HTM

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MEK Spy
Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MKO members in UAE to spy on Iranians

About one hundred Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) members have entered the United Arab Emirates to spy on Iranian nationals, a report says.

The MKO members have arrived in the country and are working closely with the UAE Security Forces and the US Central intelligence Agency (CIA), Nahrainnet news website quoted informed sources.

The terrorist agents are stationed inside the UAE in a bid to carry espionage operations against the Iranian embassy staff, Iranian businessmen, laborers and tourists, Nahrainnet added.

MEK Spy

Based on the report, the CIA officers who have already set up a regional center in Dubai have collaborated with UAE security forces to bring in the MKO agents.

It is not known when the MKO members launched the operation in the UAE, but it is understood that they have moved to the country from Iraq, Jordan and some European countries.

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s.

The terror group was exiled twenty years later for carrying out numerous acts of terrorism in the country and targeting Iranian government officials and civilians within the country and abroad.

Outlawed in Iran, the group was relocated in France before being expelled at the order of the then-prime minister Jacques Chirac. The organization, eventually, moved to Iraq, where it allegedly assisted former dictator Saddam Hussein in the massacre of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the 1990s.

Many countries including the US have blacklisted the MKO as a”terrorist”organization. The US State Department says that the MKO assassinated at least six US citizens in Iran, prior to the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

This is while earlier in January, the 27-nation European Union ruled against the MKO’s seven-year inclusion in the blacklist. The ruling is widely believed to be politically motivated and the result of legal developments combined with intense lobbying by the terrorist group.

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization is blacklisted by many countries, including the United States as a terrorist organization. It relocated to Camp Ashraf from Iran after the Islamic Revolution.

The presence of Mujahedin Khalq Organization members at Camp Ashraf was not only due to the approval and support of Saddam; it was also welcomed by some leading Arab states, according to Nahrainnet.

The Iraqi parliament has called on the government to block the MKO’s main headquarter known as Camp Ashraf and expel its members from the Iraqi soil, but some members evade leaving the camp.

The Iraqi government says the MKO has played a significant role in destabilizing the war-torn country, blaming the group for terrorist attacks within Iraq.

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Maryam Rajavi

MARYAM AZDANLO leads a very dangerous cult

I was thinking about the years which I spent in this so called organization, the PMOI. Actually I had better say I wasted all those years of my life spent inI was thinking about the years which I spent in this so called organization, the PMOI. Actually I had better say I wasted all those years of my life spent in that inhumane cult. that inhumane cult.

I was thinking about all those men and women who trusted the leaders of this cult and joined them to bring peace and democracy back to our motherland, Iran. Now as a result of the wrong and mistaken strategy which is a production of the medieval ideology and lack of brain of MASSOUD RAJAVI, all those men and women are in a terrible situation in Iraq right now.

The leaders of this cult put all kind of obstacles and hurdles so as not to allow Iraqi officials to enter that notorious garrison. The Iraqi officials who are in charge of their motherland, Iraq, after overthrowing the dictatorship of SADDAM HUSSEIN, want to help the stranded and hopeless captives of this cult to be released and rescued from this barbaric and inhumane cult after many decades. But the PMOI’s officials and its leader MARYAM RAJAVI are totally against such a humanitarian act and even threaten that in case of pressure, human catastrophe will occur in their Iraqi garrison called ASHRAF.

MARYAM RAJAVI sees her cultic survival in the remaining of the obscure and notorious ASHRAF GARRISON with all those men and women captives in it.

She is a very cruel tyrant, because she wants to keep all those men and women captive in that garrison just because she wants to keep the cult and the cultic ideology alive, why?

Why is she so dedicated and loyal to this cult?

Why is she trying her best to deny the right of freedom and right of having access to a normal life for all those people who have been stranded in that organization for a long period of time?

The only answer I can think about is, because she wants to continue her barbaric cult no matter of its cost and consequences. The lives of all those people are worthless for her.

She has been in Paris/France for a long time and she controls all the cultish ideology directly and exactly from Paris. She has made and established a deadly organization in Paris to export her cultish ideology to European countries and throughout the world, and this is the dangerous part, because MARYAM RAJAVI is taking advantage of the freedom and democracy in European countries cunningly to propagandize her cultic ideology.

This is the cultic ideology which, in complicity with the dictator of Iraq, massacred Iraqi people during the popular uprising of Iraqi people, and suppressed and oppressed the cult’s dissidents inside of the cult as well.

The French people have experienced the catastrophic burning to death of desperate members of this cult in Paris in 2003, who were ideologically forced to set themselves on fire.

These kind of violent and inhuman acts are the least that this ideology and cultish thoughts can do, especially while their cultish benefits are in danger.

All those inhumane and violent orders are declared directly from MARYAM’s cultish castle in Paris. The French Government should be aware of the real character and personality of this cult. The cult leaders in Paris pretend to be freedom lovers, peace and democracy advocates, but they are not.

I am one of their victims. I spent more than twenty years of my life there, so when I say something about this cult, it is based on facts and realities. Whether you believe or not, this cult is very dangerous and carries a very obscure and grim past.

I am fully ready to participate in any court of law to testify about the crimes which the leaders of this organization have done against the people of Iraq and the members of this cult.

Best Regards

HASSAN PIRANSAR

Iran Payvand, Paris, April 13, 2009

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Nejat Publications

Pars Brief – Issue No.45

·         Talabani: Iraq wants Iranian opposition camp out

·         MKO imminent expulsion from Iraq

·         MKO still being monitored by Germany’s intelligence agency

·         Mojahedin Khalq had taken over a building belonging to the Iraqi army

·         Iran summons Czech charge d’affairs Service: Foreign Policy

·         Office of Iraq’s National security: camp Ashraf leaders prevent the entry of survey team

·         US-Protected Iran Exile Group in Line for Huge Cash Windfall

Download Pars Brief – Issue No.45
Download Pars Brief – Issue No.45

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Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

CIA to relocate Mojahedin Khalq HQ to UAE

Informed sources familiar with the Gulf, said that about 100 elements of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization, working in the UAE to spy on the Iranian nationals, including members of the Iranian embassy, merchants, workers and 100 of the elements of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization, working in the UAE to spy on the Iranian community, including members of the Iranian embassy, merchants, workers and tourists.tourists.

The sources did not identify the date of arrival of these elements to the UAE. However their presence is based on the agreement between the leadership of this organization and the security services in the UAE.

According to the sources, these elements came from Iraq, Jordan and Europe.

The information circulating in diplomatic circles in Abu Dhabi indicates that the MKO members’ presence in UAE has been coordinated by the cooperation of the UAE security forces and American forces.

Setting up a regional center in the city of Dubai, the American officers responsible for the US Central Intelligence Organization “CIA “,became active in the UAE cooperated on the issue with the UAE intelligence forces.

The Iraqi parliament approved last year that the Mujahedin Khalq is a terrorist organization, and called on authorities to close their camp called Ashraf Camp, and to expel the group out if Iraqi soil.

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MEK Camp Ashraf

An Anti-Iranian Enclave in Iraq Fights to Stay

The dozens of middle-aged Iranians standing in six neat, gender-segregated rows stare straight ahead from behind the chain-link fence close to the entrance of Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala near the Iranian border. "Ashraf is our home, Ashraf is our home," they robotically chant in Iranian-accented Arabic, as they jab their right fists into the air in unison.

Some of the women, who are all dressed in pantsuits with long jackets and colorful headscarves tied under the chin, carry placards in Persian. A bright yellow banner shimmers in the mid-morning sun. "Ashraf is the city of peace," it says in Arabic.

Most of the time there’s nobody outside Camp Ashraf to hear the members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a fiercely anti-Tehran group who have been based here for the past two decades. That is, unless you count the Iraqi security forces who took over control of the perimeter of the 19-sq.-mile camp in February from U.S troops. The Americans had protected it since the 2003 invasion. But the Iraqi soldiers, like their government in Baghdad, don’t appear keen to listen to the chanting. The MEK should "understand that their days in Iraq are numbered," National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said recently. "We are literally counting them."

Saddam Hussein’s regime — no friend of the ayatollahs of Iran — welcomed the MEK in the mid-’80s, inviting them to set up a military camp and supplying them with hundreds of armored vehicles and other forms of support. Although in recent months Camp Ashraf’s residents have swapped their once-mandatory olive green military fatigues for civilian garb, both Iraq and the U.S State Department consider the MEK a terrorist group. In 2003, the U.S military disarmed Ashraf. (After a legal battle, the European Union removed the organization from its terrorist list in January; the United Kingdom did so in 2008).

The camp, which is more like a sprawling village with flower-filled parks and tree-lined avenues dotted with old-fashioned white lampposts, is home to 3,418 people, about a 1,000 of whom are dual citizens with non-Iranian travel documents issued by Western governments including the U.S, Canada, Australia, and the European Union. It has become an irritant to Baghdad’s increasingly close ties to Tehran. Iraq wants to close it, on the grounds that its residents are "terrorists" and "illegal foreigners." Still, deadlines for doing so have come and gone (the most recent was in late March). The stalemate continues: The MEK refuses to leave, and the Iraqi government has said it will not force them out.

"They want to physically purge everybody here," says Hossein Madani, an MEK spokesman and liaison to the Iraqi government. "There is an Iranian agenda that wants Ashraf residents out of Iraq." That may be, but government officials say the camp’s closure is also in Iraq’s national interest. "We do not want any friction with our neighbors," Rubaie says. The days when Iraq was used as a base to launch attacks against its neighbors, whether by the MEK along the eastern border with Iran, or by the Kurdish separatist PKK along the northern border with Turkey, are over, he says.
 
While the Iraqi government has made it clear it’s withdrawing the welcome mat extended to the MEK by Saddam Hussein, it has stopped short of saying how it will get them to leave. Despite its assurances against forced repatriation, especially if individuals may be harmed in their home country, MEK members fear they will be deported to Iran, where they say they will face imprisonment or execution. MEK representatives talk loudly of a potential humanitarian catastrophe.

While the MEK may question the veracity of Baghdad’s concerns, in recent years the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has helped more than 250 members enter Iran from across the Iranian border with little fanfare. "We are there as witnesses to make sure everything goes well," says Dorothea Krimitsas, ICRC spokesperson for the Middle East, adding that if allegations of ill treatment arose, the ICRC, would take them up with the authorities. Krimitsas says the ICRC hasn’t received any new requests for voluntary repatriation. But that’s only one way to leave. There are reports that in recent months defections from the camp have increased, although Ashraf leaders deny that anyone has left since January.

In the increasingly acrimonious debate about the future of Camp Ashraf, especially between Rubaie and MEK leaders, the quest for straight answers sometimes seems like a fool’s errand. It’s made more so by each side’s well-oiled PR machines that are adept at periodically sliding slippery claims and counter-claims into the media. For example, the MEK claims that Iraqis are withholding food and medical supplies and preventing doctors from entering the camp. That’s "baseless, it’s a pack of lies," Rubaie says. Similarly, Rubaie insists that the MEK is a cult, whose "brainwashed" members need to be separated from the 25 or so leaders and "detoxified" so they can resume normal lives. "Sheer lies," says Madani, the MEK spokesman.

Nevertheless, former members claim that the MEK is a cult, one that isolates adherents from their families, seeks to control them by limiting access to outside information, and prevents them from having sex. Indeed, there are no children at Camp Ashraf. The youngest residents are in their 20s, something MEK legal advisor Behzad Saffari says is because "military camps are not places for family life."

Yet when pressed for reasons why they should remain in Ashraf, given that they are not Iraqis and the new regime doesn’t want them, Saffari, Madani and several other MEK leaders as well as a number of residents, all bring up fervent, personal feelings. "We are not talking about different regimes, we are talking about personal lives," says Madani. "We have made a home here." He goes further. "We are not trying to have any impact on the Iranian regime. What does the Iranian regime want from us?"

The misunderstandings don’t stop there. An inter-agency task force including the CIA, FBI and other U.S bodies screened the residents of Ashraf in 2004 to determine if any were prosecutable under U.S law for alleged terrorist activities. The MEK insists that its members were all cleared. "The U.S. does not officially consider Ashraf residents as terrorists," says Madani. "MEK is something else." However, a U.S. official says that the residents of Ashraf who are members of the MEK are considered part of a terrorist organization. The official adds that non-member residents may also be considered to have provided material support to the organization. An MEK spokesman says all of the camp’s 3,418 residents are members of the group.

The MEK also insist its members still have the "protected persons status" issued by the U.S after the 2003 invasion. Madani pulls a photo ID out of his wallet that indicates that he is a protected person. "This is a permanent card," he says. "It has no time of expiration." The obligation to treat the MEK as protected persons under the law of war ended when the Coalition Provisional Authority handed over responsibility for governing Iraq to the Iraqi interim government in June 2004 which ended the occupation of Iraq. "Protected person status is never a permanent status as it applies only during circumstances of armed conflict or occupation," a Western official says.

The claims and counterclaims will no doubt continue to ricochet between Baghdad, Tehran, Washington and of course, Camp Ashraf. As two journalists head out of the camp in the early evening, past the segregated, one-story barracks-style dormitories and canteens, along paved streets lined by eucalyptus and palm trees and dotted with orange and yellow daisies, the faint echo of chanting protesters gradually gets louder. The people with the placards are still standing near the entrance, still staring out beyond the camp, still chanting. And there’s still nobody there to listen.  

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890590,00.html 

Rania Abouzeid / Camp Ashraf

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Massoud Rajavi

People’s court; Rajavi’s favored form of impeachment

Introduction

In the article “Who are the targets of Rajavi’s retaliation?” a brief look was taken on the connotation and meaning of the terms “trial” and “retaliation” as well as their structural contradiction compared to democratic views, and Masoud Rajavi was asked to elaborate more on this words and clarify what he meat by them. It is evident that Masoud Rajavi never clarify his statements; however, those familiar with the cultic literature of Mojahedin and those who have understood the ideological revolution by heart need no further explanation. Yet there are some who want to know what is the meaning and definition of terms like trial, retaliation, court, punishment, defendant, prosecutor from the viewpoint of Rajavi and his ideological revolution and how they are opposite to the culture and literature of democratic societies.

Or maybe some think that Masoud Rajavi might forget about his ideological past and look at the world from a different angle. However, as seen in his messages and statements, this matter is unlikely to happen. There have already some questions and paradoxes found in his message about threatening to trial and retaliation been elaborated on yet they never suffice for understanding the real intention of Rajavi behind these words. I acknowledge that no one but Mojahedin themselves can expound on the intended meaning of these terms. Therefore, it is necessary to return to three decades ago when after the fall of Pahlavi’s regime in Iran some courts were formed to investigate the crimes of its agents. The position taken by Mojahedin at that time, and one of them in particular, may represent a typical instance of justice and tribunal from their viewpoint.

In this instance, what Mojahedin mean by court, defendant, crime, judge, ruling and its credits, defendant and its rights, and everything on this issue is referred to and elaborated on. This is an ideological article titled “People’s court; a step toward masses governing their own destiny” published in the journal of Mojahed No.3, dated August 1979, less than 7 months after the victory of Iranian revolution, in complaint to the formed legal tribunals. Mojahedin strongly stressed that the courts had to be harsh and relentless when trying the criminal agents and figures of the collapsed regime and acted much revolutionary in the rulings rather than paying humanistic aspects. It was not actually a suggestion but rater enforcing their own revolutionary view they strictly believe, and still believe, in. even in some cases they threatened to be executors of the rules they deemed justifiable. Their preferred form of the court was a revolutionary court apart from the legally adopted civil laws where some self-appointed representatives of people, of course presiding or supervised and attended by Mojahedin, could freely try the adversaries therein with nobody holding them accountable for the rulings.

The following is Mojahedin’s general idea of such courts published in the form of an article. It has to be noted that the introductory part of the article has been omitted since it is irrelevant to the discussion.

****

Quoted from the Journal of Mojahed No. 3, dated August 1979

People’s court relies on the masses

People’s court as its title impels is a tribunal whose judges are representatives of different strata of the society and the issues investigated therein are related to all peoples and their destiny. The function of these tribunals relies on the revolutionary conscience of the masses and their judgment rather than following codified legal and statutory rules. Consequently, the judges of these courts are not only experts of legal and statutory affairs but also a combination of people’s representatives some of whom lack even the required skill and expertise in jurisdiction since in these courts more attention is paid to investigating the political and social responsibility of the trend to which the defendant is related to than the legal trial. The orders issued in these tribunals take the revolutionary interests of the society into consideration and it is likely that they fail to correspond with the compiled legal and statutory disciplines and rules. It happens that people’s courts sentence a convict to execution whereas the civil law issues a much lenient verdict when a crime has the punishment of execution; it may happen that according to the interests of people or political and ideological issues the people’s court refrains to be lenient and acts much harsher. It can be said that in people’s court, the angel of justice determines her votes according to people’s interests rather than predetermined inflexible disciplines.

The function of people’s court

Giving some instances may help us to clarify the above statements. These instances are seen in all revolutions and we have selected them from Palestinian revolution:

During the internal wars of Lebanon, Palestinian guerillas took part in wars actively beside Lebanese. In this war, all intellectual and leftist Muslims confronted with reactionary rightists. Once in a mission, a Palestinian guerilla fighter arrested a Christian family and raped their daughter. Subsequently, the leader of Palestinian revolution formed a people’s court, tried him at the site of his crime and sentenced him to death and immediately executed the order.

Another example is the revolutionary tribunal of Abu-Nazzal, a high ranking of Al-Fatah. Despite his definite and unquestionable betrayal that led to a hindrance in Palestinian revolution and the fact that the court sentenced him to execution, the vote was not pursued and executed. Why? Since enforcement of the issued order might result in spreading the perverted and non-revolutionary fabricated trend of Abu-Nazzal. The study of the above instances of revolutionary tribunals may give us a deep understanding of the real content and function of people’s courts.

If we look at the above instances with regard to the interests of Palestinian people, we can find out some significant points. In the first case, if we take into consideration the conditions like the singlehood of the felon, his tough living conditions and a life full of deprivation, his wicked past full of defeats and ethnical and family problems, and tens of internal and external factors that intermingled with his strong lust and in a lunatic mood made him commit this action, we can find out that he did not deserve execution. However, what is insisted by the revolutionary tribunal is the political repute of the revolution of Palestinian people. This action done by one of the soldiers of the revolution may turn to a danger polluting the revolutionary honor of this movement. The reason behind the determination of the people’’ court to order and put it into execution was thus well justified.

In respect to the latter case, the people’s court refrained to enforce the execution sentence of Abu-Nazzal. His execution seemed to be performing justice for a betrayer; however, the consequent would not be in any way helping the long-term interests of people; rather, his execution not only failed to annihilate his fabricated trend but also it was very likely that it turned him to a saint and hero that would increase the longevity of this trend and thus threatening the future interests of Palestinian revolutionary masses.

When the people’s court is formed and who are its members?

As it was said, people’s court is a court whose judges are representatives of people. To this definition it has to be added that: According to circumstances, the way of forming these courts may vary. It means that in the reign of a dictator, these tribunals are hidden and qualified members of a revolutionary organization constitute its members since such an organization is the upshot of the demands of the masses and aims to hear miserable people’s problems. In a democratic environment and particularly after the victory of [Iranian] revolution, people’s court is formed with the presence of different strata of the society and representatives of revolutionary-leading organizations. What are of interest in people’s court are the political and social aspects of crimes and less attention is paid to their legal and statutory aspect. Jurisdiction in penal code and law observes predetermined issues and has the same reaction to various instances of the same crime. The process of common trials is also based on a pre-made trend whereas people’s court aims to preserve and guarantee the interests of people and shows much dynamism and flexibility in this regard, therefore its members are representatives of different strata and classes of the society and the issue of juridiciary expertise and skill is replaced by the qualification in recognizing and understanding the interests of the masses that can only be done by their real and true representatives.

What are the crimes investigated in people’s court?

In people’s courts, the plaintiff is people; the crime is the injustice committed against people. The crimes investigated in this tribunal are various depending on the features of that phase of the revolution. However, their commonality is the political and social aspects of the committed action that has polluted the honor and political repute of the revolutionary society disregarding whether the mentioned action in the compiled laws has the title of crime or guilt. It means that the political significance of the committed action is so high that it affects other aspects of that crime and even an action that is not considered a crime in normal circumstances, may be regarded a crime due to its negative consequences and may sentence the criminal even to death to eradicate those negative consequences. Likewise, the person who leads ideologically to the creation of a perverted trend in the society and debar the original and natural movement of the society or slows its movement is to be tried for that perverted trend and the judgment of the tribunal is more concerned with the political and social effects of this trend rather than the individual penal conviction of the committed person. Execution of the tribunal’s order is not for revenging a certain person yet it is the enforcement of the penal conviction of that perverted trend. The rulling of the tribunal is the inevitable ruling of people who can recognize their own interests in any period of time and enforce it through their most trusted and faithful representatives.

Contemporary revolutionary experiences

The history of the revolutions in China, Algeria, Vietnam, Libya, and Palestine proves the necessity of forming a people’s court after the victory of the revolution to prevent any disagreement, disunity and split and has shown its efficiency since in people’s court it is the representatives of all strata of the society that try a perverted trend and agents of that trend not the ruling system that may constitute the representatives of a certain stratum. Moreover, if condemnation of a perverted trend is carried out through the representatives of all strata of people, the possibility of its survival and revival is negated; whereas, the same order on the part of the ruling system and its juridiciary may fail to annihilate the perverted trend and also it may result in arising of doubts and pessimism that may finally led to split and disintegration of the united lines of peoples. Taking this fact into consideration may confirm the necessity of the forming an open people’s court in this phase of our revolution.

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Conclusion

What was mentioned above, clearly represents the ideas and viewpoints of Masoud Rajavi and MKO on the issue of trial, court, crime, criminal, judge, legal qualification, the right of plaintiff, law, punishment, etc. Surprisingly enough, Masoud Rajavi as the ideological leader of Mojahedin has been reminded of his past ideas calling international bodies and his audience to form people’s courts under the title of trial and retaliation in less than one month after the removal of MKO from the EU terrorist list. Furthermore, Maryam Azdanlu, the false pro-democratic leader of MKO in her recent speech on the 30th anniversary of Iranian anti-monarchy revolution uses the same words and expressions of Masoud Rajavi for threatening the global society despite the fact that she has repeatedly promised the Iranians to remove the sentence of execution from the judicial system of Iran in case of coming to power. Now, the judgment is on the clear conscience of international bodies and all those concerned with the destiny of MKO. 

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