Page 766 – Nejat Society

US funding anti-Iran terror groups

A report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersch claims Washington has been funding covert operations to destabilize the Iranian government, with full approval from the US Senate.

Writing in the New Yorker magazine, Hersch said the tempo of operations against Iran has escalated in recent months, with cross border raids by US Special Forces, and the funding of indigenous armed oppositon groups such as the Jundallah, which operates in the restive southeastern border region with Pakistan.

Hersch claims Senate and Congressional leaders "quietly" agreed to $400 million (200 million) in funding for clandestine operations against Iran aimed at regime change and disrupting the country’s nuclear energy program.

Another group allegedly benefitting from the fund is the Iraq-based opposition Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) which fought against Tehran in the Iraq-Iran War from 1980-88.

The group was attacked by US forces during the 2003 invasion, but now reportedly benefits from American support.

The Iraqi government has ordered the MKO to lay down its weapons and leave the country.

July 1, 2008 0 comments

Iraq

Nejat Society Letter to the Head of Iraqi Government

Office of the Prime Minister Baghdad Republic of Iraq Date: Honorable Mr. Noori Al-Maliki the Head of Iraqi Government We learned with outmost pleasure that the board of ministers of the Iraqi Mr. Noori Al-Maliki - the head of Iraqi government Government has passed a resolution base on the Iraqi constitutional law which indicates that the Mojahidin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and their base called the Ashraf camp in Iraq must be put under the control of the Iraqi government. We praise this courageous and prudent decision which is most certainly to the best interests of the Iraqi people and its government. We do wish every success for the Iraqi people and government.

The Nejat Society in Iran is formed by former members of the Rajavi’s terrorist cult (MKO) who have managed to free themselves from the captivity of this organization and returned home to their families. These people have experienced the process of brainwashing in this cult themselves and well know how their former colleagues in the Ashraf camp are mentally or even physically captivated and find no way out to the free world. The MKO under the protection of the allied forces in Iraq who have always guarded the Ashraf camp in the past five years has managed to find a safe heaven to carry out its cultic psychological techniques to achieve metal domination over its members and train terrorists in a remote place where unfortunately the Iraqi government has no control over.

We believe that more the Iraqi government’s control is imposed over the Ashraf camp, sooner would these people be freed, sooner would they be released from captivity and wasting their lives, and sooner would they be able to see their families whom in some cases have not seen for over 20 years. In this regards we along with the families of the members of this organization would like to request the following enquiries and thank you in advance for your cooperation:

1. Arrangements are required to be made for the families of the members of the MKO in the Ashraf camp to visit their beloved ones directly, without the presence of the MKO officials, in a place out of the MKO facilities, freely and for sufficient duration as soon as possible.

2. Regarding that cultic relationship is governing the MKO and this organization utilizes a pyramid structure to impose the leadership’s control over the followers, it is essential to dismantle such structure once the control over the Ashraf camp has been gained by the Iraqi government and the contact of leaders and the followers is disconnected. It is also necessary to give these people enough time and opportunity to think and study freely in order to be able to decide and choose their own upcomings.

3. Some mechanisms are requested to be adopted in order to let these people have free contact with the outside world after more than two decades. Past psychological experiences indicate that members involved in a cult need to be mentally recovered once they are rescued form the cult in order to be able to return to the normal life. Therefore it is essential to books and other public relations means be provided for them freely as much as possible. The Nejat society is willing to provide means such as books and films and so forth if desired.

4. Efforts are demanded to be made in order to abolish the thought scrutiny courts called the Current Operations Sessions which are practiced daily in the Ashraf camp for all members; and the free contact of the isolated Ashraf camp be made with the outside world in order to speed up the recovery process of the members. The Current Operation Sessions is the main technique used by the MKO to brainwash the individuals.

5. With the exception of a few leaders of the MKO, the body of the organization and the members must not be looked at as criminals but rather victims. The truth is that the members of a cult are the prime victims of that cult who have lost their life and need to be helped and rescued. The main objective of the Nejat Society is of course to rescue these individuals who are truly captives. Nejat Society Tehran Islamic Republic of Iran

Copy to: Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in Tehran Speaker and deputies of the Iraqi parliament Head of Iraq judiciary system Mass media

June 30, 2008 0 comments

France

Retarded Process in the Terrorist Case of June 17

Now it is five years since Jean-Louis Bruguière, the then the anti-terrorism investigative magistrate, first targeted Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), officially regarded as terrorists by the US and the European Union, 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 surmised that the group would engage in immediate cult-like reactions against the arrest of its she-guru through widespread self-immolations consequently leading to two deaths to perturb the consequent effectiveness of any order and mostly to affect the process of the investigation. Now, on the anniversary of the cult-like self-burnings, the group pays tribute to the burned bodies which explicitly implies glorification of such anti-social feats for similar political accomplishments.

It is said that French justice moves slowly particularly in dealing with terror cases, but it seems that through all these years authorities in charge of investigating terrorist activities have been much inactive. Five years is too lengthy for investigating into the case of the terrorists that are freely roaming the streets of Paris and whose threats might cause greater social shock. Furthermore, the slow-moving process of the case has given the group the impression that French justice system is under legal restriction to issue the final order.

In spite of the delay, anti-terrorism experts have made a determined effort to curb the group’s terrorist threat by keeping the case open. After and beyond the allegations that initiated the case in June 2003, the group has been exposed to new charges that makes the case much more complicated to deal with. Not only has the group failed to present evidences to acquit itself of the charges, dissemination 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, threatening tone of the group against its defectors and reported instances of attacking them, its lobbying efforts to be removed from the terrorist lists, its description as a cult of personality, legal complaints of defectors and families to prosecute the organization for its anti-human activities against the members, the espionage activities to escalate tension in international affairs and between the countries and much more make it hard to believe that it will ever escape a just trial.

But the question still remains that multitude of such undeniable evidences being presented, why the case process is still on a slow-moving path? And on what justice system measures can it be justified? Unfortunately, it is MKO that, through its propaganda machine, is benefiting the most out of the delay. Evident as it is at the present, the June 17 and its aftermath has turned into a juncture for MKO to enjoy a cult-like victorious jubilance over the case and pulling mugs at French government and other concerned judicial and social bodies. Indirectly it says that any final judgment causing a frustration would provoke a bigger mob of human torches to run in the streets of Paris to lacerate public sentiments. In fact, it was in part through utilizing self-immolations of the June 17 that the organization could draw public attention and give rise to a public sympathy that in general may question long-lasted democratic achievements of France.

Incorporated in Massoud Rajavi’s message delivered from his hideout on July 3, 2007, the West and legal bodies as well as the group’s dissidents are unequivocally warned of a violent backlash. Believing himself to be above all laws, he also addresses the French government concerning the June 17 case saying: “The French government and judiciary should suspend the shameful dossier of June 17. This dossier is known to be the blackest smear in the European’s counter-terrorism moves in an attempt to appease the Iranian dictatorial theocracy”. It happened at a time when the group was facing new charges alongside the already met allegations.

It seems that the heavier MKO’s offences and felonies become, the bolder it becomes to get engaged in a vast propaganda blitz to press social and international institutions. Through the past five years MKO has frequently criticized and badmouthed the French authorities as it is typical of the group when it is pinned down and its potentiality for violence is curbed. In fact, although France is known to be the only country in Europe which has centralized the investigation, prosecution and judgment of terrorist related cases, suspension of MKO’s dossier is dearly welcome by the group and the leaders promulgate it as “the Resistance’s great victory over futile June 17 coup” proclaiming that the case is void of reliable evidences and, thus, it has to be put off. For whatever reason the judgment of the case is deferred, however, it fails to be a matter of ongoing forever; it is the final judgment that matters and proves the efficiency of French legal system.

retarded process in the terrorist case of June 17

Mojahedin.ws – June 28, 2008

June 30, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

A Paris Party With the Mujahideen

MKO terrorists hire Polish students for demo

Polish students are going to Paris to support an organisation recognised by the US as terrorist. The students aren’t aware of this, they’re going to have fun

‘A friend called me: a trip to Paris for 20 zlotys. If you decide quickly, we’ll be all together on one coach’, Ania, a sociology student in Poznań, tells us.

Another student: ‘I’m going to have fun! We drop in to Paris and rule For pennies!’.

Several thousand students from all over Poland left for France yesterday. Polish students Twenty five coaches from Poznań alone. Students from other European countries will be there too.

The students were officially told that the trip was sponsored by the Berlin-based Iranian Association, which pays for transportation, lodgings and board through Sunday.

The only condition of participation is to attend a rally Saturday at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The rally is being co-organised by the radical Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mujahideen of Iran. In the US, Canada and Iran, is it on the list of terrorist organisations.

The People’s Mujahideen are responsible for the deaths of Iranian civilians in the 1980s. They fought a relentless struggle for power then against the Shia ayatollahs. They were financed by Saddam Hussein, who took the People’s Mujahideen under his wings following their flight from Iran, helping them to organise across-the-border raids and attacks.

After invading Iraq, the Americans didn’t decide to destroy the People’s Mujahideen base, because they didn’t really know what to do with them, as the Mujahideen could prove useful in fighting Iran’s theocratic regime. The Mujahideen leaders were received by US senators, who are afraid of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Today, the People’s Mujahideen are fighting for rehabilitation in the West’s eyes. They accuse the Polish Students Iranian government of violating human rights, even though at the Mujahideen’s own base in Iraq, members willing to leave are persecuted.

The leader of the organisation’s political wing, Marjam Radjavi, will deliver the key speech at the Saturday rally. A French resident for years, the organisation wants her to become the president of a democratic, secular Iran.

Most of the students aren’t aware they’ll participate in a People’s Mujahideen rally. ‘I’ve heard it was to be a protest against the stoning of women in Iran’, Bartek sounds surprised.

Iza, a 22-year-old politics and law student at the Adam Mickiewicz University: ‘I’m going to have some good fun in Paris. I don’t really know what it’s all about with this rally. I’ve heard the organisation is on the terrorist list and that is opposes human rights violations’.

Kinga, her fellow student: ‘Terrorist organisation? Yasser Arafat was also perceived like that, and then he got the Nobel Peace Prize’.

A list of attendance will be checked at the rally. Those absent will have to reimburse the full cost of the trip. Before entering the airport terminal, each attendant will be searched by security guards. Photo cameras and mobiles phones won’t be allowed.

The students will be taken care of by coordinators, the same ones who recruited the participants and to whose bank accounts the fees were paid. Above them are two persons who are personally in touch with the Iranian Association. Yesterday neither of those returned phone calls.

Natalia, a coordinator, about the controversies surrounding the rally’s organisers: ‘Compared with, for instance, what the Home Army did during WWII, the People’s Mujahideen are innocents’.

Anna Potyrała, PhD, an international relations expert at the Adam Mickiewicz University’s Faculty of Political Studies and Journalism, warns: ‘The students should be aware they may be pawns in the political game that the People’s Mujahideen are playing’. She adds than in 2002 the EU recognised the organisation as terrorist, but in 2006 the European Court of Justice and national courts dropped it from the list.

translated by Marcin Wawrzyńczak

Źródło: Gazeta Wyborcza

June 30, 2008 0 comments

Raymond Tanter

IPC: Terrorist Financial Involvement

Rajavi cult Lobbyist exposed In a video posted online, Professor Raymond Tanter has denied that the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) is a lobbyist for the Iranian Communist MEK (MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran) terrorists. The MEK is a communist terrorist organization responsible for killing large numbers of Iranians and Iraqis. The MEK has murdered American military officers and Rockwell International employees. In 2003, American and coalition forces attacked the communist terrorists at Camp Ashraf , Iraq . Now, the American military is protecting these terrorists. In June 2003, some members of the Rajavi Cult burned themselves in France and elsewhere to protest the arrest of a cult leader in France . However, published financial disclosures of the IPC show that Professor Tanter claims to work 20 hours per week for the IPC and receive only $5,000 per year in compensation. A September 2, 2007 meeting in France with NCRI leaders to negotiate an American divorce settlement provides a lead as to the financial arrangements between the IPC and the NCRI. On September 2, 2007, Professor Raymond Tanter and his wife, Constance Andresen-Tanter, met in France to discuss a proposed divorce settlement for a divorce case in America with Mohammad Mohaddessin and Sarvenaz (“Sarvi”) Chitsaz. Clare Lopez, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee and the former Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), testified in support of Constance Andresen-Tanter at a hearing before Associate Judge Michael Ryan about her involvement in this meeting: Tanter vs. Tanter, Superior Court of the District of Columbia , Family Division, Docket Number CPO3612-07, March 6, 2008.

Mohammad Mohaddessin is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political front for the Iranian Communist MEK terrorists. http://www.ncr-iran.org/

He is the author of a book, Enemies of the Ayatollahs. See also an interview with him:

Mohammad Mohaddessin:”There Is No Such Thing as a Moderate Fundamentalist”

Middle East Quarterly

September 1995

http://www.meforum.org/article/267

Sarvenaz (“Sarvi”) Chitsaz is the Chairwoman of the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). She speaks and writes about the plight of women in Iran . Her failure to defend Constance Andresen-Tanter in the divorce case provides additional evidence of the lies of the Rajavi Cultists about caring about women. For truthful accounts about mandatory divorces, assigned marriages, and other bizarre cult practices of the communist terrorists, read: Anne Singleton’s Saddam’s Private Army and Masoud Banisadr’s Masoud.

Tanter’s Denial

US Intelligence on Iran & the MEK

Friday, 30 March 2007

This investigative report produced by the Dateline programme probes into the role of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (the MEK) in providing intelligence related to the Iranian nuclear programme to the US . The MEK is a listed terrorist organisation, which is amongst the world’s most equipped and well armed, having under its control a functional military capability. Following the historic and infamous Iraq intelligence failures, this report questions once again the credibility of US intelligence sources.

http://www.aimislam.com/aim-tv/videos/us-intelligence-on-iran–the-mek

Form 990 Financial Disclosures

Unfortunately, the interviewer did not ask Professor Tanter who is funding the Iran Policy Committee (IPC). The current list of IPC Scholars and Fellows is:

James Akins, Ambassador (fmr.), IPC Advisory Council

Lt. Col. Bill Cowan, IPC Military Committee

R. Bruce McColm, IPC Empowerment Committee Chairman

Lt. General Thomas McInerney, USAF (ret.), IPC Advisory Council Chairman

Captain Charles T. Chuck Nash, USN (ret.) IPC Military Committee Cochairman

Lt. General Edward Rowny, IPC Military Committee

Raymond Tanter, IPC Cofounder

Major General Paul E. Vallely, USA (ret.), IPC Military Committee Cochairman

http://www.iranpolicy.org/

Viewers of the Fox News Channel will be familiar with some of these names.

The Iran Policy Committee, started in February 2005, has disclosed its not-for-profit status:

Not-for-Profit Status

Contributions payable to the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. The Committee is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization and is publicly supported as described in 509(a)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Committee’s IRS identification number is 20-2883425

http://www.iranpolicy.org/mission.php

The Iran Policy Committee

Alban Towers , Suite L-34

3700 Massachusetts Ave. NW

Washington , DC 20016

Office: (202)249-1142

Fax: (202)249-1143

Email: info@iranpolicy.org

http://www.iranpolicy.org/contact.php

Currently, Guide Star shows that only an amended 2005 Form 990 has been filed.

http://www.guidestar.org/pqShowGsReport.do?partner=guidestar&npoId=100790851

Margaret Bartel, Bartel & Associates, 911 Duke Street , Alexandria , Virginia 22314 , Employer Identification Number 56-2581708, telephone (703) 548-4250, signed as the preparer the 2005 amended Form 990 on August 10, 2007.

Raymond Tanter signed, as IPC President, the 2005 amended Form 990 on August 14, 2007.

The IPC claimed to have received $115,000 of direct public support in 2005. Claimed compensation of officers and directors was $15,416.61:

Raymond Tanter, President, working 20 hours per week, received $5,000.00 for the entire year.

Bruce McColm, Co-Chair, working 6 hours per week, received $5,208.30 for the entire year.

Chuck Nash, Co-Chair, working 6 hours per week, received $5,208.30 for the entire year.

Claimed other salaries and wages were $26,557.65.

In Part VI-B of the 2005 amended Form 990, the IPC claimed not to be involved in lobbying activities to influence legislation at the national, state, or at the local levels, including no publications, mailings, direct contact with legislators or their staffs, and no rallies, demonstrations, seminars, conventions, speeches, or lectures. In Part III (page 3) of the 2005 amended Form 990, the IPC disclosed $101,686.85 of expenditures for:

“The Iran Policy Committee produced 3 major white papers on Iran and U.S. policy options. It also participated in five briefings on Iran to the U.S. Congress and conducted nine major presentations to audiences across the US , Canada and in Europe .”

There are no other postings of Form 990 for the IPC for the years since 2005 at Guide Star.

Divorce Settlement in France

There has been a divorce case (07 DRB 102) in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia , Family Court, Domestic Relations Branch, before Associate Judge Michael Ryan. However, on September 2, 2007, Raymond Tanter and Constance Andresen-Tanter met in France with NCRI leaders to negotiate a divorce settlement. Raymond Tanter offered to withdraw his petition for divorce and to pursue a non-contested divorce if Constance Andresen-Tanter would accept the return of her personal property in Apartment 507 of Alban Towers in Washington , DC plus a payment schedule for payments of $30,000 for bills and of $150,000 for her new life. At a hearing on March 5, 2008, Associate Judge J. Michael Ryan reviewed this settlement offer.

Defend Constance Andresen-Tanter

While Professor Raymond Tanter and the NCRI can pay large sums of money to attorneys, Constance Andresen-Tanter has no access to enough money to defend herself in court. Lawyers, political leaders, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), members of the media, literary agents, anti-war activists, women’s organizations, anti-communists, and opponents of the neo-conservatives (neo-Trotskyites) should come to the defense of Constance Andresen-Tanter and learn what is really happening at the Iran Policy Committee. Her contact information is: (212) 920-7748 mobile telephone Email: cwa_temp@yahoo.com Paul Sheldon Foote, June 27, 2008 http://360.yahoo.com/paulsheldonfoote

June 30, 2008 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

Rajavi’s Authority on MKO Echelon

To extend his hegemonic leadership over the whole organizational echelon, Rajavi first needed to subjugate high-ranking members hitting upon their personal weaknesses, threatening to dispossess them of organizational positions, fabricating stories about the first founders with himself playing a connection, and more.

Masud Rajavi- leader of the destructive cult

The mass execution of the founder leaders of Mojahedin following SAVAK’s mass arrests in 1970s paved the way for Rajavi to take a different methodology to steer the organization. Although the later ideological schism of the organization could procure a good opportunity to deeply reexamine its ideological infrastructures to restructure it anew, Massoud Rajavi’s insist to lead the organization on the ruins of the past on one hand, and his gaping demarcation with faithful members on the other hand, totally changed the destiny of the organization. Rajavi’s hegemony is the second round of a past totalitarian leadership phase that ended and was remodeled in the ousted Pahlavi’s prisons.

The Iranian Islamic revolution was at its climax when Rajavi was released from the prison but he had managed to win over the majority of high-rankings to be identified as the leader. In fact, the opponents had been already purged inside the prison under the pretexts of being ultra-rightists or reactionaries and much more names and who were known to have jeopardized the organizational entity: there was not a single rival to challenge him then. Pointing out the widespread purgation by Rajavi while in prison, Bijan Nyabati, a left member of the NCRI, states:

Unlike normal procedures, Massoud Rajavi, by the effective aid of the brave martyred commander Musa Khyabani, disregarded many existing potentialities and started reorganization by purging all reactionary inclinations in an attempt to accomplish Hanif’s unfulfilled plan of bringing together a versatile cadre. He suspended all previous memberships and started a new recruitment out of the imprisoned Mojahedin. 1

Nobody doubts that Rajavi opportunistically took advantage of the created gap due to a power vacuum and his personal potentialities following the execution of the founder leaders to secure a status among the cadres. Majority of those who got separated in the course of the first ideological revolution that led to the ideological schism of the organization strongly criticized Rajavi’s opportunistic and power-seeking ambitions to succeed an autocratic leadership. Lotfollah Meisami is one the long detached members of the organization that is fully acquainted with Rajavi’s personal profile and ambitions and how he managed to expose as chosen leader even when his activities were limited in the prison:

Another issue concerning Rajavi was the ostentation he carried. For instance, when he arranged to meet others in a different section of the prison, there were escorts of some kind that came to prepare before his arrival. In fact, they made others wait on him as a man of high dignity. It was the same case with high-ranking official when they happened to visit the prison. 2

Rajavi being self-appointed as the autocratic political and ideological leadership following the internal ideological schism, he could see that he had guaranteed a permanent leadership with the potential rivals taking their portion of leading ambitions away with the split branch. He emerged out of prison while he was accompanied with a number of loyalists to start a new autocratic leadership that has continued for three decades promoting him to the status of a guru.

Refrences:

1. Niyabati, Bijan; A Different Look at the Ideological Revolution within MKO, Khavaran Publication, 7.

2. Meisami, L.; The moral decline of a Mojahed. Raah-e Mojahed journal, 1985.

Research Bureau – Mojahedin.ws – May 30, 2008

June 30, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Looking for a few good spies

Washington calls the Iranian MEK a terrorist group. But some administration hawks think its members could be useful

This is a terrorist cultleader? Maryam Rajavi is dressed in a Chanel-style suit with her skirt at mid calf, lilac colored pumps and a matching headscarf. Over a dinner of kebab, rice and French pastries, Rajavi smiles often and laughs easily. She’s at once colorful and demure, like many an educated woman in the Middle East. Indeed if George W. Bush — who relies on powerful females for counsel — were pressed to identify a Muslim model of womanhood, this 51-year-old Iranian would look very much the part.

But of course that’s exactly the impression Rajavi seeks to give. Behind her smile is a saleswoman’s savvy — and a revolutionary’s zeal to prove that she and her mysterious husband, Massoud Rajavi, are neither cultists nor terrorists. Maryam Rajavi is demanding that the exile groups they lead together, centered on the Mujahedin-e Khalq (People’s Holy Warriors) or MEK for short, should be taken off the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, their assets unfrozen and their energies unleashed. The MEK, Rajavi says, is the answer to American prayers as Tehran continues to dabble defiantly in both terrorism and nuclear arms. "I believe increasingly the Americans have come to realize that the solution is an Iranian force that is able to get rid of the Islamic fundamentalists in power in Iran," she told NEWSWEEK in a rare interview at her organization’s compound in the quiet French village of Auvers sur Oise. The group’s own former role in terrorist attacks dating back to its support for the U.S. Embassy takeover in 1979, Rajavi insists, is ancient history. And the MEK is not a Jim Jones-like cult as critics allege, with forced separation between men and women and indoctrination for children, all overseen by the Rajavis’ autocratic style. Instead, she insists, it is "a democratic force."

Whatever Rajavi’s true colors, NEWSWEEK has learned that her role may be growing in the calculations of Bush administration hard-liners. At a camp south of Baghdad — it’s called Ashraf, after Massoud Rajavi’s assassinated first wife — 3,850 MEK members have been confined but gently treated by U.S. forces since the invasion of Iraq (once they were allies of Saddam against their own country in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war). Now the administration is seeking to cull useful MEK members as operatives for use against Tehran, all while insisting that it does not deal with the MEK as a group, American government sources say.

Some Pentagon civilians and intelligence planners are hoping a corps of informants can be picked from among the MEK prisoners, then split away from the movement and given training as spies, U.S. officials say. After that, the thinking goes, they will be sent back to their native Iran to gather intelligence on the Iranian clerical regime, particularly its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Some hawks also hope they could help to reawaken the democratic reform movement in Iran. "They [want] to make us mercenaries," one MEK official told NEWSWEEK.

Yet the administration’s new engagement with MEK members has, so far, done little to clarify its still-murky approach to Iran. That is worrisome to many critics at home and abroad — especially since Vice President Dick Cheney said in recent weeks that Iran was now at the "top" of the president’s national-security agenda. Last week, on her first trip abroad as secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice sought to play both hawk and diplomat, reviving the old role she negotiated so often as Bush’s national-security adviser. Pressed by reporters, Rice declined to deny that Bush’s policy toward Iran is regime change, and she even hinted broadly that it was. Rice said that Iranians "should be no different than the Palestinians or the Iraqis or the Afghans or peoples around the world — the Ukrainians — who are determining their own future." All these places have elected new governments under different degrees of U.S. pressure.

At the same time, however, Rice reassured her European counterparts in London, Paris and Berlin that, like them, the administration is putting diplomacy first. That mainly means continuing Washington’s lukewarm support of a European effort to win a permanent freeze on Tehran’s covert nuclear program, along with new rights for inspectors to verify the pact. Rice is also mulling over some new proposals from her own staff that call for Washington to wedge open a new relationship with the Iranian regime by striking "little deals" on areas of overlapping interest, such as Iraq, the Afghan border and the Gulf.

Confused? So are the Europeans. Rice, in fact, privately acknowledged to her European colleagues last week that the administration is still unable to agree on an Iran policy. She also indicated it will take months more to figure one out. One reason is that none of the options is very good. Many inside the administration believe the diplomatic efforts of the so-called European Three — Britain, France and Germany — are mere Band-Aids and will only delay Tehran’s unstinting efforts to build a nuclear bomb, which intel analysts say is about five years off. But even most hawks agree that U.S. military options in Iran are just as unpalatable. What’s left? Bush hopes that his rhetoric of freedom will inspire dissidents within Iran. But some hard-liners in the Defense Department want a more "forward leaning" policy: quietly pushing for regime change by making use of exiles like former MEK members.

Still, Rice and other top State officials remain leery of the MEK, despite renewed efforts to back and fund the group on Capitol Hill. In a conversation with one European counterpart last week, Rice seemed to belittle the Defense Department’s recruitment efforts, saying "the Pentagon is playing at the margins" of the administration’s Iran policy. Sources tell NEWSWEEK that the CIA is also resisting the recruitment of agents from the MEK because senior officers regard them as unreliable cultists under the sway of Rajavi and her husband. A Defense Department spokesman denied there is any "cooperation agreement" with the MEK and said the Pentagon has no plans to utilize MEK members in any capacity.

Rajavi, for her part, is adamant that her organization will never be broken up. "There have been efforts to recruit individuals, or to dismantle parts of the movement," she says. "These have failed." Supporters of the MEK on Capitol Hill, where at least one bill is aimed at restoring the organization to State’s good graces, say that some of its intelligence has already proved very accurate. (It was the MEK last year that revealed Iran’s secret nuclear facilities at Natanz.) It is also clear that Tehran deeply fears the group’s influence. "The Defense Department is thinking of them as buddies and the State Department sees them as terrorists. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle," says Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California. "Maybe they should get time off for good behavior." Perhaps. But that would require a coherent policy first.

By Christopher Dickey, Mark Hosenball and Michael Hirsh

June 28, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Iranian Opposition Group Seeks Legitimacy In US

WASHINGTON (AP)–A cult to some and freedom fighters to others, the National Council of Resistance of Iran and its affiliate groups typify the gray areas in the often black-and-white world of the war on terror. While they’ve been designated foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department, the groups’ members still maneuver between the restrictions aimed at disabling them.

The organization’s former U.S. representative freely walks the streets and has a contract with Fox News as a foreign affairs analyst. Lawmakers write letters on the group’s behalf. And former intelligence officials say the group maintains contacts in defense circles, although the Pentagon denies it.

The former U.S. representative for the council, Alireza Jafarzadeh, says the U.S. government listed his organization as terrorists to appease moderate elements within the Iranian government. He’s hoping the Bush administration will lift the terrorist designation…

The mission of the National Council and its military wing – the Mujahedin-e-Khalq or MEK – is to overthrow the Iranian regime, an aim increasingly in line with the Bush administration. Yet the administration has stopped short of calling for regime change.

Yet the MEK is far from a U.S. ally.

As soon as the State Department created a list of terror organizations in 1997, it named the MEK, putting it in a club that includes al-Qaida and barring anyone in the United States from providing material support. By 1999, the department designated the MEK’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance, and related affiliates.

The State Department says the MEK groups were funded by Saddam Hussein, supported the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and are responsible for the deaths of Americans in the 1970s.

Despite the listing, the council and a related offshoot continued to file foreign agent registration documents with the Justice Department, cataloging meetings with dozens of members of Congress, media interviews, rallies and speeches.

It saw successes. In 2002, 150 members of Congress wrote a letter to the State Department advocating the organization be removed from the terror list.

But 2003 was a rocky year. After Saddam was toppled, the administration struggled with how to handle MEK fighters detained at training camps in eastern Iraq. They were eventually disarmed, but remain in limbo today at the camps.

In August of that year, the State and Treasury departments also froze the council’s assets and shut down their Washington offices, blocks from the White House.

A State Department official said U.S. policy toward the MEK and its affiliates has not changed. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group is still considered a threat because of its history of launching terrorist attacks.

But others find the sometimes soft approach to the MEK alarming. Further complicating the issue, the report from the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq said the group received oil as part of the scandal-tainted oil-for-food program, earning it millions of dollars in profits.

The MEK calls the appearance of its name in seized documents a smear campaign.

As U.S. focus on Iran increases, some wonder whether the MEK will play a role. A former senior intelligence official said some in the Pentagon see the MEK as a potential ally in their efforts against the Iranian regime.

But a defense official denied contacts with the MEK are occurring. Michael Rubin, who used to handle Iran issues at the Pentagon, said those he knew there hated the group.

"Even if they are not terrorists, although I believe they are, any group that tells its members who to marry and when to divorce, the United States should not be doing business with. They are very cult-like," Rubin said.

Rubin notes that, while council officials revealed the existence of two secret Iranian nuclear sites in 2002, they nevertheless have an inconsistent intelligence record, often getting information "dead wrong."

Yet the council’s former U.S. representative, Jafarzadeh, highlights the intelligence successes as evidence that the U.S. should support the Iranian opposition and advocate a policy of regime change in Iran. In an hour-long presentation this month, he laid out details of Iran’s nuclear program at an intellgence conference in Northern Virginia.

"There is a lot of serious searching, to find the best options in dealing with Iran," he said. "I can sense it in different government agencies. I can sense it among the think tanks. I sense it among the U.S. Congress."

June 28, 2008 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Neocon’s Pet Iranian Revolutionaries Accused of Torture

An Iranian rebel group that is aggressively campaigning for Washington’s support as part of a "regime change" strategy in its homeland has committed serious abuses, including torture and prolonged isolation, against dissident members, according to a leading human rights watchdog.

The group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), insists that it should lead a U.S.-backed effort to bring what it has termed democratic rule to Iran. Last month, it organized a rally, attended by several powerful Republican lawmakers and billed as the "2005 National Convention for a Democratic, Secular Republic in Iran," at Washington’s historic Constitution Hall.

But MEK’s own human-rights record during its almost 20 years as an armed group sheltered and supported by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein belies its professed commitment to democratic rule, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a 28-page report, "No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MEK Camps," released Thursday.

"The Iranian government has a dreadful record on human rights," said Joe Stork, Washington director of HRW’s Middle East division. "But it would be a huge mistake to promote an opposition group that is responsible for serious human rights abuses."

The report comes amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran focused primarily on U.S. charges that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, a development that President George W. Bush has described as "unacceptable."

The U.S. administration has not yet explicitly endorsed "regime change" in Iran, but hardliners based primarily in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and at the Defense Department have made little secret of their belief that such a policy should be adopted. Their only question is how best to achieve that goal.

Since the March, 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, where the MEK had been based since 1986, the group has tried to persuade Washington that it holds the key to overthrowing the Islamic Republic next door.

It has been backed in this quest by right-wing lawmakers, a group of hardline neoconservatives and retired military officers called the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), and some U.S. officials â€“ particularly in the Pentagon â€“ who believe that the MEK could be used to help destabilize the Iranian regime, if not eventually overthrow it in conjunction with U.S. military strikes against selected targets.

While the group’s supporters in the Pentagon so far have succeeded in protecting the several thousand MEK militants based at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border from being dispersed or deported, they have failed to persuade the U.S. State Department to take the group off its terrorist list, to which it was added in 1997 based on its attacks during the 1970s against U.S. military contractors and its participation in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The European Union (EU) also cites the MEK as a terrorist organization.

After a year-long tug-of-war between the two U.S. agencies, a truce between State and the Pentagon was apparently worked out. MEK members at Camp Ashraf were designated "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions.

Since then, the Pentagon has recruited individual members of the MEK to infiltrate Iran as part of an effort to locate secret nuclear installations, according to recent articles published in The New Yorker and Newsweek magazines. At the same time, nearly 300 members have taken advantage of an amnesty in Iran to return home, leaving a total of 3,534 MEK members inside Camp Ashraf as of mid-March, according to the HRW report.

In this context, the MEK and its supporters have been campaigning hard for the group to be "de-listed" by the State Department as a terrorist group. That appeared to be the principal demand of last month’s rally, which was addressed via video-conference by MEK’s co-president, Maryam Rajavi.

In another column published by the International Herald Tribune in January, Rajavi, who also heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a MEK front group, stressed that she was "committed to holding free and fair elections within six months of regime change, to electing a constituent assembly and handing over affairs to the people’s elected representatives."

Those claims are likely to invite greater skepticism in light of the new HRW report, which is based on a series interviews between February and May 2005 with 12 former MEK members currently living in Europe.

They testified to a pattern of torture, beatings, and prolonged detention in solitary confinement at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group’s policies and what they called its undemocratic practices, or indicated that they planned to leave the organization. Two of the interviewees said they had personally witnessed the deaths of two prisoners under interrogation.

Those who wished to leave the organization were held incommunicado in special units in the camps, they said. If they held a high rank in the MEK, they were held for years; one of the interviewees reportedly was held for a total of eight and a half years; another for five years.

The most brutal treatment was meted out to suspected dissidents in secret prisons located within the MEK camps, according to the report. Four of the witnesses, who were suspected of dissident views, testified that they had all been severely tortured and forced to sign false confessions asserting that they had links to Iranian intelligence agents.

Three of them witnessed the death of Parviz Ahmadi, a former unit commander, in February 1995, shortly after a particularly severe beating. His death was reported three years later in the MEK’s publication, Mojahed, which described him as a "martyr" killed by Iranian intelligence agents.

Five of the witnesses were eventually transferred to Abu Ghraib prison during the 1990s and released by Saddam Hussein’s government in 2001 or 2002.

The testimonies included in the report also lend weight to the view that the MEK is more of a cult than a political movement. They suggest that the group’s exile in the early 1980s, followed by the marriage of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi in 1985, set off a series of phases in what the husband-and-wife team declared was a permanent "ideological revolution" that the couple embodied.

These included compulsory divorce of married couples, regular self-criticism sessions, renunciation of sexuality, and absolute mental and physical dedication to the leadership. "The level of devotion expected of members was on stark display in 2003 when the French police arrested Maryam Rajavi in Paris," HRW said. "In protest, 10 MEK members and sympathizers set themselves on fire in various European cities; two of them subsequently died."

by Jim Lobe

June 28, 2008 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

USEFUL IDIOT?

USEFUL IDIOT? ISN’T that the phrase we use for well-meaning enthusiasts who get duped into supporting front-groups for bad-acting causes?

As you’ve probably seen already, The Washington Post today has a piece about how Richard Perle gave a speech last weekend to a group that US law enforcement and intelligence suspects is actually a front for a terrorist group, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). According to the Post, US law enforcement had debated whether they had the authority to shut the fundraiser down. And on Monday the Treasury Department froze the assets of the event’s main sponsor, Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia.

Perle told the Post that he wasn’t aware of the MEK’s involvement in the event, believing instead that it was intended to help the victims of the Bam earthquake. He also said his speaking fee was going to the Red Cross. When the Post reporter told him that the Red Cross had already ruled out receiving any monies from the event, he said he didn’t know that either.

Perle says he didn’t know about any of this. But, as this fella points out, the capitol hill newspaper The Hill reported last Wednesday (“Terrorists plan D.C. fundraiser,” Jan.21st) that House Administration Chairman Robert Ney (R-Ohio) asked John Ashcroft to investigate the fundraiser for its ties to terrorists.

Now, as it happens, I’m not sure that Perle was just another in that long line of wide-eyed do-gooders whose humanitarian impulses are darkly preyed upon by the dregs of the world’s dustbin-bound ideologies.

The MEK is a terrorist organization (recognized as such by the US government since 1997) fighting the Iranian government. For years it’s worked out of an enclave in Iraq with most of its support coming from Saddam Hussein. Other than these facts the group is best known for violence and its mÃ©lange of bizarre beliefs.

Since the war there’s been an-going battle within the administration over whether to root out the MEK or, if not quite sponsor them, then at least tolerate their continued battle against the regime of Iran.

Perle and his faction, not surprisingly, have been on the side pushing for sorta-kinda sponsorship.

June 28, 2008 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts