Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

IRAQ’S MYSTERY TERRORISTS

Are the Mujahideen-e-Khalq behind the Najaf massacre?

Who was responsible for the Najaf bombing, in which 125 people were killed  including the leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)?

As of this writing, there are at least six versions of the truth to choose from: one fingers two Iraqis and two Saudis, another blames "two Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime and two Arab nationals, categorized as Sunni Muslim radicals." An Australian report has two Saudis arrested in Najaf on account of an email in which they triumphantly wrote "The dog is dead," while the Gulf Daily News cites Haidar Al Mayyali, the governor of the Najaf area, as saying:

"There are several suspects, none of whom has citizenship other than Iraqi. The number of those now arrested is not greater than the number of fingers on one hand."

CNN avers that 12 suspects are being held in connection with the bombing, while ABC News is reporting 19 in the hoosegow, citing an anonymous police official who claims they’re mostly foreigners, and that "all belong to the Wahhabi sect (of Sunni Islam), and they are all connected to al-Qaeda."

That anonymous police official – cited in several of the above reports – sure gets around. The problem is that he dished out several different versions of his story. Arab nationals, former officials of the regime, Saudis, Al Qaeda terrorists: at one time or another all are named by him – or someone who sounds very much like him “ as being among the culprits. So far, only Reuters and the New York Times are going with what seems to be the official police explanation, which denies any proven link to the former regime or foreign involvement:

"Four suspects were detained, the police said, but they rejected reports quoting anonymous police sources that the suspects had been carrying identification cards from the former intelligence services or were foreigners."

So, pick your favorite culprits, according to your political prejudices or by just guessing.

As for me, I tend to believe the Times-Reuters version, if only because they don’t rely on that anonymous and oddly omnipresent police official. But there are other reasons to doubt the Al Qaeda-did-it scenario. To begin with, the idea that Osama bin Laden and Ba’athist remnants hooked up to attack a mosque is just as implausible as the Bush administration’s pre-war claims of Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda. If this is how the administration is seeking to retroactively justify the war, it won’t work.

The political goal of the Najaf mosque bombing was to limit Iranian influence in Iraq. The Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, killed in the blast, and his SCIRI organization were harbored for years in Iran, and received direct military and financial aid from Tehran. SCIRI’s goal is to set up an Iranian-style Islamic republic, and institute a legal system based on Sharia law.

Contrary to all the guff being written about how al-Hakim was a "moderate" somehow allied with the U.S., SCIRI was unique among Iraqi opposition groups”  indeed, unique on the planet Earth, as far as I can tell “ in firmly rejecting U.S. offers of a subsidy. They agreed to sit on the U.S.-sponsored Governing Council, but this hardly makes the group either moderate or pro-American. SCIRI announced their opposition to the occupation before the shooting ever started, and the Ayatollah was always quite clear about his own position:

"Coalition forces are welcome in Iraq as long as they help the Iraqi people get rid of Saddam’s dictatorship, but Iraqis will resist if they seek to occupy or colonize our country”. Such resistance, the Shiite leader told a news conference in Tehran, would include ‘the use of force and arms.’"

As the dust settles, the political meaning of this horrific terrorist act could not be clearer. Iran loses big, and, with the main challenge to U.S. dominance out of the picture, the Americans win. Ignore the caterwauling about "chaos" and the U.S. supposedly losing control: they never had control to begin with. The Shi’ites comprise some 65 percent of the population, but politically the opposition is fragmented, weak, and leaderless: militarily, it is no match for the occupation forces.

Given all this, the hard-line faction of the Iranian regime is floating a not entirely implausible theory, which, for all its vituperative predictability, may contain a grain of truth. The Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami avers:

"The plot to assassinate Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim… was undoubtedly planned by the US and implemented by local mercenaries under US control. As far as local US mercenaries are concerned, one should not forget the role of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation -As they are Shia Iranians, the mujahedin can easily infiltrate Iraqi Shia circles."

That the U.S. government is sowing chaos where it is supposed to be keeping order is indisputable. That it is doing so intentionally seems highly improbable. But it is undeniable that the one group most opposed to the extension of SCIRI’s influence throughout Iraq is the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK).The history of this weird authoritarian socialist grouplet “ including its apparent sponsorship by the neoconservative faction in the U.S. government “ implicates it as a prime suspect in the Najaf blast.

Ideologically, the MEK  Marxist, militantly feminist, and linked by an umbilical cord of financial and political support to the old Ba’athist regime – is the antipode of SCIRI, which is Islamist, militantly anti-modernist, and for all intents and purposes an agent of the Iranian regime. If the Ayatollah al-Hakim had lived to establish an Islamic Republic of Iraq, there would have been no place in it for the MEK.

Otherwise known as the Peoples Mujahideen, or the Iranian National Liberation Army (INLA), the MEK started out as a "left" faction of the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah and installed the Ayatollah Khomeini as the supreme power in Tehran. The U.S., as the Shah’s sponsor and chief ally, became the principal target of MEK terrorism. A State Department report notes:

"Bombs were the Mojahedin’s weapon of choice, which they frequently employed against American targets. On the occasion of President Nixon’s visit to Iran in 1972, for example, the MKO exploded time bombs at more than a dozen sites throughout Tehran, including the Iran-American Society, the U.S. information office, and the offices of Pepsi Cola and General Motors. From 1972-75 … the Mojahedin continued their campaign of bombings, damaging such targets as the offices of Pan-American Airlines, Shell Oil Company, and British organizations."

The MEK also participated in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. After the fall of the Shah, the MEK fell out with the orthodox Shia clergy, and was attacked by the Revolutionary Guards. They began to launch terrorist attacks against the Iranian government, in which civilians were targeted. During the Iran-Iraq war, they made an alliance with Saddam Hussein, who funded them and gave them sanctuary on Iraqi territory, a tactic that succeeded in completely isolating them from the Iranian people.

Their pact with Saddam also made them plenty of enemies inside Iraq. The MEK were used to put down the Kurdish rebellions in the north, and they were also sent to help crush the 1991 Shi’ite uprising in the south  where they faced what is today the SCIRI on the battlefield, and drove them over the border into Iran. After Saddam’s fall, the SCIRI returned, with Ayatollah al-Hakim at their head. But his moment in the sun didn’t last too long….

When the U.S. invaded Iraq, there was a big debate within the administration over what to do about the MEK. The neoconservatives in the Pentagon and around Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans want to use the Marxist terrorists as a club to bash Iran in the next phase of their war to "democratize" the Middle East. Leading neocons such as Daniel Pipes and Arnold Beichman tout the MEK as a U.S. ally, the latter hailing it as "a legitimate force for democracy and regime change in the Middle East." That’s an odd way to characterize a totalitarian cult whose commitment to "democracy" consists of having unilaterally proclaimed Maryam Rajavi “ wife of the group’s military leader, Masoud Rajavi  "President Elect"of Iran.

This is the only terrorist outfit that I know of with a huge constituency on Capitol Hill: 150 members of Congress signed on to a letter in response to the banning of MEK and its front groups from the U.S.

Its bank accounts closed, the MEK public relations machine still managed to put out a full-page ad in the New York Times protesting the crackdown. The Mujahideen e-Khalq has become a symbolic issue in Washington, a rallying point for the radical neocons and their congressional amen corner.

The State Department, having designated MEK a terrorist organization, opposed utilizing the group against Tehran. U.S. diplomats were trying to convince the Iranians to hand over Al Qaeda operatives reportedly on their territory, but Tehran wouldn’t agree unless MEK was disbanded. The regime in Iran was furious because a formal agreement was signed with MEK leaders, enabling the group to "remain fully armed, but nevertheless effectively quarantined," as one analyst put it.

Back channel negotiations between Iran and the U.S. over Al Qaeda members held in Iran are opposed by the neocons, who see more "regime change" as the logical next step in the war on terrorism. They have gone so far as to meet with Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, a discredited arms merchant, in order to derail U.S.-Iranian cooperation.

The cabal that lied us into the Iraq war is not above using the MEK terrorist cult to provoke Tehran and trigger a new conflict. The news that the U.S. is now reviving the Mukhabarat, Iraq’s hated secret police, in order to boost the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the occupation government is more than a case of strange bedfellows. It points directly to the prospect of a rapid escalation of the war, with the U.S. clearly preparing to expand operations into Iran. As the New York Times recently reported:

 [Sabi al-] Hamed, a Mukhabarat officer since 1976, said he refused to join the revived unit when former co-workers told him that it would be cooperating with the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, an Iranian opposition group that is on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Mr. Hamed said he had worked with the group during the Iran-Iraq war and called them butchers, adding that he had seen bodies of people they had executed."

In characterizing the MEK as "mercenaries under U.S. control," Jomhuri-ye Eslami may not be too far off the mark. That is, if by "under U.S. control" they mean under the control of the parallel intelligence service set up by the neocons to carry out their own private foreign policy.

As American troops disarmed MEK, "President Elect" Maryam Rajavi fled to France, where her group was raided by the police and now faces expulsion from the country. The French charged the MEK compound was a terrorist nerve center, where acts of violence were being planned against Iranian targets and dissident members throughout Europe. Masoud Rajavi, husband of the "President Elect" and commander of the group’s armed wing, remained in Iraq, where he had been living in the home of Iraqi Gen. Ali-Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali."

The Rajavi Islamo-commies may be banned in the U.S., but in Iraq they will doubtless carry on their 35-year battle in another form. We may have seen the first results already. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time MEK has carried out terrorist activities in and around Najaf.

"Can the Mujahideen be useful?" asks Daniel Pipes, recently appointed to the board of the "U.S. Institute of Peace," a government-run think-tank. His answer:

"Yes. Western spy agencies are short on ‘human intelligence’ meaning spies on the ground in Iran, as distinct from eyes in the sky. Coalition military commanders should seek out the Mujahideen for information on the Iranian regime agents in Iraq."

Interestingly, the possibility that the MEK might be doing more than merely gathering information in post-Saddam Iraq was prefigured in an interesting piece in the Beirut Daily Star [June 6, 2003]. Ed Blanche observed the "alarm" of the Americans at the appearance of the 15,000-strong Badr Brigades, the military wing of the SCIRI, and noted:

"SCIRI leader Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, whose family was decimated by Saddam’s secret police, announced May 31 that his movement had given up its heavy weapons although it doesn’t seem to have handed them over to the Americans to focus on the political struggle. But the Badr Brigades and the INLA are mortal enemies, and the Americans may just find it useful to use the Mujahideen as a counterweight to the Iranian-backed Shiites in the stormy days ahead. The Mujahideen face final collapse if they are subdued in Iraq, or forced to disband. But given the power of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon right now, they could live to fight their enemies another day, under one guise or another."

The Mystery Terrorists of Iraq, masters of a thousand guises  who knows what they’ll morph into next? The war is young, and we have a lot to look forward to: the Zoroastrian Liberation Front, the Turkmen Freedom Fighters, the Assyrian Assassins. Iraq is teeming with disgruntled grouplets  for sale, cheap.

As our old friend, the anonymous "police official" cited above, spreads confusion about the Najaf massacre story throughout the Western media, his Iranian doppelganger, described by the Tehran Times as "an Iraqi analyst," adds his own spin to the mix, claiming that "traces of Mossad agents were found at the Najaf blast site." As to whether they left a calling card, this "analyst" does not say. He merely passes along rumors that the Mossad has lately made a point of "infiltrating" certain unnamed "organizations in southern Iraq." He does, however, name the MEK as having "helped Zionist operatives in this mission." In any case, he speaks with as much ersatz authority as his Western cousins, who attribute the massacre to Al Qaeda, Ba’athists, or both:

"While not ruling out the hand of the extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in the massive blast in Najaf, he noted, ‘Of course I think the massive propaganda by some Western-minded media and an emphasis on blaming al-Qaeda or remnants of the Baath party is to be considered a conscious effort to hide the role of Zionist and occupying forces in this abominable atrocity.’"

Hiding beneath the thin veneer of anonymity, competing interests spin rival versions of the same story. Adding to the cacophony and the confusion is the news that Saddam, or a voice purporting to be him, denies having anything to do with the Najaf atrocity. Anyone who scoffs at the idea that we’re in a quagmire just isn’t paying attention: we’re stuck in a news quagmire, sunk in the yawning abyss between truth and fiction.

Iran is next in the neocons’ crosshairs: make no mistake about that. And they are moving quickly. It’s the perfect diversion from the disaster unfolding in Iraq. The weapons of mass destruction Saddam never had have migrated eastward, or so we’re told, and the logic of intervention is carrying along the Bush administration  and us — like a leaf in a torrent. Weather forecast for the rest of the year: stormy, with darkening war clouds punctuated by thunderbolts of warmongering rhetoric. If Israel doesn’t bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities  and they’re putting out broad hints that they just might — then don’t expect George W. Bush to be deterred by an election year.

by Justin Raimondo  

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Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Rights group cites Iran exiles MKO for abuses

A human rights group Thursday leveled charges of torture, psychological abuse and even murder against an Iranian dissident organization that some members of Congress and other influential figures in Washington view as potential allies against the Islamic government in Tehran.

Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy group, made the charges in a report based on people who describe themselves as dissidents and defectors from the group, the Mujahedin al-Khalq or MEK. Former members, interviewed by human rights watch, ?reported abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members,? Human Rights Watch said.

Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, reached by telephone by MSNBC.com, confirmed that he was held in solitary confinement for eight-and-a-half years inside the group’s encampment in Iraq, from 1992 until 2001, when Saddam Hussein’s government was sheltering and arming the MEK.

I was beaten severely for disagreeing with them, but I thought it would not last. It lasted for years,? Sobhani said.

Sobhari eventually was turned over to Saddam’s government, then repatriated to Iran with a group of Iran-Iraq war POWs. He says he escaped from Iranian detention and made his way to Europe.

The MEK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups. However, it also is credited in 2002 and 2003 with providing information on Iran’s nuclear weapons program that revealed the existence of far more sophisticated efforts to enrich uranium than were previously known.

Can ‘terrorists’ be turned into allies?

The group began as a Marxist organization opposed to the Shah of Iran in the 1970s and took part in his overthrow in 1979. But they later broke with the Islamic regime and fled Iran, finding shelter and support from Saddam Hussein during the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

The MEK mutated into something of a cult of personality, led by the husband and wife team of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi, and U.S. officials says under their leadership it carried out dozens of terrorist attacks inside Iran and elsewhere in the past two decades. The MEK was still in Iraq when U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam in 2003 and is currently under ?protected persons status? ? a special category of the Geneva Convention — in their encampment outside Baghdad.

Nonetheless, the MEK has support in Congress from both the Republican and Democratic side among lawmakers who want the State Department to remove the group’s terrorist label and allow the U.S. to openly cooperate with their efforts to undermine the regime in Tehran. Among those who have called publicly for rehabilitating the MEK are Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. and Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

Raymond Tanter, a former White House national security aide and Iran specialist at Georgetown University, is among those lobbying for the MEK’s status to be changed. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," he says.

Tanter, who co-founded a group called the Iran Policy Committee, says that Human Rights Watch has been duped by agents sent by Iran’s government to discredit the MEK.

?It is a humongous mistake for a human rights organization to promote the agenda of a rogue regime by taking at face value the claims of its intelligence agents,? he says. ?Most of the individuals cited in the Human Rights Watch report are agents of the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, including Mohammad-Hossein Sobhani," he said.

Sobhani, in the telephone interview from his exile in Europe, denied that charge.

Good Banking Deals

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

NOOSE TIGHTENS ON TERRORISTS

Tehran frequently complains that Western states accuse it of terrorism, but at the same time they allegedly shelter the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) and even encourage its activities, which include mortar attacks and bombings in Iranian cities and assassinations of Iranian officials. Recent moves by the U.S., U.K., and Germany against the MKO may be a signal to Tehran of sensitivity to its complaints. In the U.S. case, the actual arrest of MKO fund-raisers may be a call for reciprocity in the investigation of the 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia.

Seven people were arrested at Los Angeles’ international airport on 27 February on charges of raising over $1 million for the MKO. In a tactic common to MKO operatives, they posed as charity workers and solicited funds for orphans while displaying photos of alleged Iranian atrocities. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent James DeSarno explained at a 28 February press conference that "[t]his cell of the MEK raised funds on behalf of a charity front known as the Committee for Human Rights or the CHR in Iran. The CHR purported to use the money for humanitarian aid. This investigation has revealed that the money was really used to support terrorist actions"

DeSarno explained that the funds were transferred to bank accounts in Turkey. From there, in at least one case, the money was transferred to a used auto parts store in Dubai. Eventually, DeSarno said, "It is believed that the money was used to buy arms such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs."

The operation was initiated by the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), which informed the FBI that MKO members in Los Angeles were involved in money laundering.

In the U.K., meanwhile, the MKO was identified in a list of 21 terrorist groups under a new anti-terrorism law that aims to curtail their funding and support in Great Britain. The list, lumps the MKO with Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, Lebanese Hizballah, HAMAS, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Abu Nidal, and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, as well as Algerian, Basque, Egyptian, Kashmiri, Sikh, and Sri Lankan groups.

he MKO, which operates under a variety of cover names (National Liberation Army of Iran, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, Organization of the People’s Holy Warriors of Iran, National Council of Resistance, Muslim Iranian Student’s Society), is designated as a terrorist organization in the State Department’s annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report. In May 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to change the MKO’s terrorist designation. MKO operatives disrupted an April 2000 conference in Berlin, and two of them attempted to disrupt the November 2000 conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Orlando. Many Iranians view the MKO, under all its guises, with revulsion because it fought on the side of Iraq during the 1980-1988 war. During the 1970s, the group assassinated American officials and it conducted terrorist activities against the shah’s regime.

Bill Samii 

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USA

US shuts down Iran opposition group

The United States shut down the offices of the political wing of the Iranian opposition People’s Mujahedeen, closing a loophole that had allowed the group to operate despite being designated “terrorist” organisation.

State, Treasury and Justice departments closed the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on Friday, placing notices on its doors declaring that it was now banned, officials said.

US federal agents acted after Secretary of State Colin Powell clarified earlier “terrorist” designations of the NCRI’s parent organisation, the People’s Mujahedeen or Mujahedeen e Khalq (MEK), they said.

No one was in the office when agents arrived, according to one official.

Telephone calls to the group’s representatives were not answered.

The order also freezes the group’s US assets and bars US citizens from making contributions to it, the officials said.

In addition, they said suspected members of the group in the United States had been notified that their continued affiliation was now illegal.

"Any continued material support for the MEK or use of its facilities or property under any of its aliases and any unauthorized dealing in property in which the MEK has an interest is a violation of US law," one official said.

Clampdown

"Its history is studded with anti-Western attacks as well as terrorist attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad."

-The US State Department  in the latest edition of its "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report Powell’s clarification, published in the Federal Register, said the MEK under all of its aliases – including the NCRI, the National Council of Resistance and the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) – are now considered "foreign terrorist organizations."

The designation includes "its US representative office and all other offices worldwide," Powell said.

His decision was "based on information from a variety of sources that those entities functioned as part of the MEK and have supported the MEK’s acts of terrorism," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman.

In a separate notice, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control declared the NCRI under all of its aliases "including its US press office" to be a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" group.

Friend or foe?

The People’s Mujahedeen was first named a "terrorist" organisation in 1997, when the administration of President Bill Clinton took the step as a conciliatory gesture to Iran.

Iran welcomed the decision at the time but until Friday the Washington office of the NCRI remained open while it fought the ban in US courts.

Amid the uncertainty over its status, the NCRI gave frequent news conferences at its office in the National Press Building, just blocks from the White House, and at Washington hotels to denounce the Iranian government.

At times, the United States used information provided by the NCRI to highlight its concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme, which Washington believes is a cover for atomic weapons development.

Confusion over the group’s status was a complicating factor during the Iraq war as US troops were forced to confront armed elements of the People’s Mujahedeen to which former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had given shelter.

Asked to address the apparent contradiction, State Department spokesmen had repeatedly demurred, referring reporters to the Justice Department which enforces US federal laws.

Exiled revolutionaries

The group – which is also considered a “terrorist” organisation by the European Union and Iran – denies all wrongdoing and maintains that it represents legitimate opponents to Tehran’s religious leadership.

With a programme that blends left-wing and Islamic ideology, it took part in the 1979 revolution in Iran, but the movement was suppressed in the years that followed and its members fled abroad with the military wing taking refuge in Iraq in 1986.

The State Department has accused the group of conducting "internal security operations in support of the government of Iraq" during Saddam’s time in power.

French crackdown

The US move against the People’s Mujahedeen follows a similar crackdown on the group in France, where police raided their headquarters in a Paris suburb in June, arresting scores of people.

The group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, was one of more than 160 people detained in the raids and her arrest outraged her followers, with a spate of self-immolation protests across Europe that left two women dead.

Rajavi and 16 others who were then placed under investigation were granted conditional release in early July after two weeks in detention, although that does not preclude charges being brought against them.

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

International Arrest Warrant for MKO Members

Swiss-based newspaper of "Le Temp" revealed in a report that six MKO members who commuted in UN Commissions were banned according to an international arrest warrant which was issued by Interpol.

Le Temp wrote: "It’s about six opponents of regime in Tehran, who lobbied in the UN Commissions. A year ago, they were banned from entering UN buildings due to prosecution by Iranian officials. In March 2003, Libyan head of Human Rights Commission at that time, replied to Iranian officials’ letter that for preventing people from entering these buildings there should be convincing reasons, such as an international arrest warrant. In the next year, 2004, the warrant had been issued by Interpol. So, the doors of the UN were automatically closed on these dangerous terrorists."

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

A Cult is Trying to Hijack Our Iran Policy

These fanatics seek to replace Tehran’s religious tyranny with their own.

About 15,000 people, most of them Iranian Americans or exiles, recently flocked to Washington to denounce the fundamentalist Islamic government of Iran. The crowd shouted slogans against Iran’s reviled clerical regime and hoisted placards encouraging President Bush to take whatever action necessary – including preemptive military strikes – to ensure that Iran did not develop nuclear weapons.

By all appearances, the march seemed like a protest by concerned Iranians who supported regime change in Iran. In reality, it was a meticulously orchestrated political rally in support of a violent, pseudo-Marxist Iranian religious cult – the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK) – an organization that has been on U.S. and European Union terrorist watch lists for years.

Ever since the invasion of Iraq, the MEK (and its Paris-based political front, the National Council of Resistance in Iran) has tried to establish itself as the Iranian equivalent of Ahmad Chalabi’s "government in exile," the Iraqi National Congress – and not without success. Like the INC before the war, the MEK has advocates in the highest levels of government. And like the INC, the MEK has been inundating the U.S. intelligence community with uncorroborated and, according to some intelligence officials, highly suspect information meant to encourage the White House to carry out the same policy of regime change in Iran that it did in Iraq. But the United States will probably discover that the MEK – just like the INC – can’t be trusted.

The MEK, formed in the 1960s as one of several anti-imperialist organizations struggling to overthrow the oppressive and corrupt regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, gained widespread fame by killing dozens of the shah’s political cronies, as well as several U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors who were working in Iran at the time. But after the shah’s expulsion in 1979, the MEK found itself left behind in the ensuing power struggle over who would control the new Iran. Neither the secular democrats who formed the provisional government nor the religious factions who followed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted anything to do with the MEK’s Marxist agenda

Reza Aslan is the author of the forthcoming book, "No God but God: The

Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam," to be published by Random House

Los Angeles Times  –  December 14, 2004

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Charity Event May Have Terrorist Link

Pentagon Adviser Who Spoke at Function Thought Money Was for Quake Victims

Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle, a strong advocate of war against Iraq, spoke last weekend at a charity event that U.S. officials say may have had ties to an alleged terrorist group seeking to topple the Iranian government and backed by SaddamHussein.

The event, attended by more than 3,000 people Saturday at the Washington Convention Center, generated enough concerns within the administration that officials debated whether they had the legal authority to block the event, U.S. officials said yesterday. FBI agents attended it and, as part of a continuing investigation, the Treasury Department on Monday froze the assets of the event’s prime organizer, the Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia.

Perle, in an interview, said he was unaware of any involvement by the terrorist group, known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), and believed he was assisting the victims of the Bam earthquake when he delivered the paid speech.

"All of the proceeds will go to the Red Cross," Perle said. Informed that the Red Cross had announced before the event it would refuse any monies because of the event’s "political nature," Perle said: "I was unaware of that." Perle declined to say how much he received.

The Web site for the $35-a-person event, billed as "a night of solidarity with Iran," flashed between references to support for "the Iran earthquake victims" and "a referendum for regime change in Iran." One administration official said that the FBI determined that at least three of the sponsoring organizations were associated with the MEK, while a senior Treasury official said "there were general indications the MEK may have an interest in the event," but it could not yet prove it.

The day before the function, Treasury sent a letter to the Convention Center warning that the "MEK may have an interest in this event or may attempt to use the event to raise funds." But the Treasury official said officials moved cautiously because in general they did not want to chill possible charitable acts. "This is what makes terrorist financing so complex," he said. "You often have a blending of purposes and interests."

No one answered the phone at the Iranian-American Community of Northern Virginia, and messages seeking comment were not returned.

The MEK, though listed on the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997, in the past year has been the subject of an administration tug of war over its status. The group maintained for the past decade thousands of fighters armed with tanks, armored vehicles and artillery in three camps northeast of Baghdad along the Iraq-Iran border. U.S. analysts concluded its primary support came from Hussein’s government.Nevertheless, some Pentagon officials considered the MEK as a possible vanguard against the Iranian government, which they viewed as a threat in the region. But in May President Bush ordered the group surrounded and disarmed. Even then, reports persisted of an easy-going relationship between the military and the MEK forces, leading the White House to clarify late last year that the MEK is "part of the global war on terrorism" and its members "are being screened for possible involvement

in war crimes, terrorism and other criminal activities."

Jacki Flowers, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, said the relief agency had been contacted by the sponsors about receiving funds raised at the event several weeks before it took place. But the Red Cross decided to reject the proceeds once it became aware that the event was "political in nature," specifically the promotion of regime change. She said accepting the funds would "compromise our fundamental principles of neutrality and impartiality."

Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, said he was contacted by the Premiere Speakers Bureau in mid-January about giving the keynote speech. He asked for more information about the sponsoring organizations and received a letter saying aid would be coordinated though the Red Cross and describing the event as "solidarity with earthquake victims in Iran and an evening for Iranian Resistance."

The Iranian Resistance is often an alias for the MEK. In August, the State Department shut down the U.S. offices of the political arm of the MEK, known as National Council of Resistance of Iran.

He said the hall was full of families and children and "it did not have an aura of an event with terrorist sponsorship."

Raymond Tanter, a University of Michigan professor who introduced Perle, has long maintained that the MEK does not belong on the list of foreign terrorist organizations. He said MEK was never mentioned in speeches, "but I did hear references to Camp Ashraf," which is where U.S. troops are holding MEK fighters.

Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.

By Glenn Kessler  –  Washington Post Staff Writer 

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Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

Laughing for The War

Minority warmongers laugh at Majority peace-seekers!

Terrorist brutes laugh at the victims of terrorism!

Ungrateful traitors laugh at decomposition of their country!

Mercenary hypocrites laugh at masses (of people)!

“ but at the day of judgment, terrorist brutal warmongers will cry.

When Khorramshahr was freed from the occupation of Baath army, Iranian masses celebrated and bowed to the Iranian resistance to scandalized warmonger enemy. But at that time, mercenaries who had camped in the home of Iran’s enemy were upset from this victory. From that day up to 6 years later, when they separated the city of Mehran and presented it to their master, they have always been beating the drum of war, celebrated and laughed.

Ceasefire was a flaming charcoal into their throats; so they sought another war with defining the strategy of “spark and war”, wishing (like a vulture) to take advantage of the outcome of the events. Suddenly, the bloodthirsty master was hunted by another hunter and hungry vultures, which hoped to stay, mourned for their godfather.

Now, the strategy of “spark and war”, is being followed by those very vultures in a larger scale and whenever a dragon threatens Iran of making a war against it, these vultures congratulates the bats laughingly!

Prostitutes, who relied on military victories of a devil like Saddam, are now waiting for a military attack against Iran in order to take advantage of the events. Clearly, they want to show themselves as modern, peace-seekers and human rights protectors in the nonsense they say, that’s why they appear with mummy face in European Parliament and add that”no war, no compliance, only let the resistance (cult) liberate Iran” and then they write this very bluff in Herald to pretend that they’re against the war!! But they agree with terrorism under the name of ”liberating movement”! and they think that if a wolf pretends to be a dove, others will easily accept!

When Iranian cities were hit vainly by Iraqi missiles, Massoud Rajavi asked Saddam Hussein to stop bombings!! And then claimed that his requests were signs of his friendship with Iranian people! And then he ordered his forces to fulfill the uncompleted missions of Saddam Hussein by mortaring.

We remember that he called peace”the execution rope of regime” and said that the fall of regime following the peace is certain. He did this to get the figure of peace-seeking! And when the ceasefire was put to practice, they started second war with the strategy of “spark and war” and this is how they were registered in the memory of Iranians, and in the history of mercenaries, as dirty opportunists.

Now that they deny the war and promote the liberation of Iran by Mojahedin, they have initiated exactly the same previous tactics. The tactics which have taken the form of this strategy that “basically, the war has become a kind of sadism for Mojahedin which makes them happy, and they are fed from the bloodshed; and they are waiting for a big war against Iran”. But they are ignoring 3 points. First, warmongers are aware of MKO’s inefficiency and believe that these cursed ones have no base in Iran; second, they are well aware that if Mojahedin could do anything they would have done something when supported by Saddam. Third and above all, God scrambles all the equations of warmongers and turns these equations against themselves and restrains dragons, vultures and dictators from convenience and relief, and also scandalizes them in both worlds;The time and history will confirm this claim.

Shahin Torabi

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Appeals court reinstates terror indictments

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal appeals court reinstated indictments against seven Los Angeles residents accused of raising money for a terror organization with links to ousted Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein.

In a victory for the Bush administration’s war on terror, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday reversed a Los Angeles federal judge who declared the 1996 terror financing law unconstitutional.

The law makes it illegal to funnel money – "material support" – to organizations the State Department says are linked to terrorism, about 30 groups in all.

Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government rarely used the terror law. The administration subsequently has used that law to win dozens of terror convictions nationwide, from Lackawanna, N.Y., to Seattle and Portland, Ore.

One legal expert criticized the decision.

"This is a troubling result for a nation that believes in freedom of association," said David Cole, an expert on the law in question at the Georgetown University Law Center.

The case stems from a 2001 indictment against the seven defendants for allegedly providing several hundred thousand dollars to the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which the appeals court said "participated in various terrorist activities against the Iranian regime" and "carried out terrorist activities with the support of Saddam Hussein’s regime."

U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi invalidated the law, saying it did not provide the groups a proper forum to contest their terror designations.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based federal appeals court overruled that decision and went a step further, saying individuals accused of supporting the listed groups cannot challenge whether the groups should be listed.

The government, the court said, must prove the "fact that a particular organization was designated at the time the material support was given, not whether the government made a correct designation." The decision mirrors a ruling this year by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., upholding the conviction of a man who funneled money to the militant Hezbollah organization while insisting he had a right to challenge that group’s listing.

"The Justice Department is pleased that yet another court has upheld the constitutionality of the material support statute, a key weapon in our arsenal of legal remedies in the war on terror," spokesman John Nowacki said. "Stopping the flow of money and other resources to terrorists is critical to our success, and the department will continue to pursue those who provide material support for terrorist objectives."

The seven Los Angeles defendants said it was a violation of their First Amendment rights to be prohibited from contributing money to groups they say are not terror organizations, and they should be afforded the right to prove the group in question should not be on the State Department’s list.

Writing for the majority, Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld said the First Amendment did not provide unlimited speech, and even allows limits on campaign contributions.

"It would be anomalous indeed if Congress could prohibit the contribution of money for television commercials saying why a candidate would be a good or bad choice for political office, yet could not prohibit contribution of money to a group designated a terrorist organization," Kleinfeld wrote.

Joining Kleinfeld were Kim McLane Wardlaw and William A. Fletcher.

According to the indictment, the Los Angeles defendants solicited donations at the Los Angeles International Airport and wired money to a Mujahedin-e Khalq bank account in Turkey. The group had unsuccessfully tried to get removed from the terror list.

No court date has been set for the seven.

The case is United States v. Afshari, 02-50355.

By DAVID KRAVETS, AP Legal Affairs Writer – Bakersfield. Com  – December 21st, 2004

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Canada

Guerrillas claim links to Canada

Iranians captive in Iraq

Canadian government officials visited a former Iranian guerrilla base north of Baghdad last month and met with dozens of detained members of a militant group who say they come from Canada.

After reports U.S. troops were holding several Canadian members of an outlawed faction called Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Ottawa dispatched two envoys to the group’s headquarters.

Thirty-seven of the MEK members told the officials they were Canadian citizens or landed immigrants, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. In all, 81 are claiming links to Canada, a lawyer said.

Authorities are trying to verify their immigration status. They are being held at Camp Ashraf, which was the MEK’s military headquarters until U.S. forces captured and disarmed it last year.

The MEK is a militant group that has been fighting for more than two decades to overthrow the Iranian government. Saddam Hussein financed the group and gave it a military base for staging attacks against his neighbour.

Thousands of Iranian expatriates made the trek to the camp 100 kilometres west of the Iran-Iraq border to wage war against Tehran’s hardline Islamic regime .Among them were a handful of Canadians.

The camp was disarmed by U.S. troops in June, 2003, and the 4,000 inhabitants are now being detained there by a battalion while the U.S. and Iraqi governments decide their fate. Tehran wants them deported to Iran.

The MEK, or People’s Combatants, is a designated terrorist organization in the United States and Britain but it has not been banned by the Liberal Cabinet, although the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) calls it a "militant Marxist Islamic movement" dedicated to violence.

 From Iraq, MEK units conducted scores of cross-border raids, assassinations and bombings in Iran. CSIS has estimated the group has 13 large offices and 170 smaller ones worldwide, including one in Canada.

"The MEK has also evolved into a form of cult, strongly devoted to its chief, [Massoud] Rajavi," says a CSIS report, adding, "The MEK’s 29-year record of behaviour does not substantiate its capability or intention to be democratic."

The MEK presence in Canada came to public attention on April 5, 1992, when about 40 people armed with sticks, crowbars and mallets attacked the Iranian embassy in Ottawa hours after Iranian bombers struck the MEK’s Iraq base.

In 1993, Robab Farahi-Mahdavieh, whom CSIS called a "leading female member of the MEK" and the alleged mastermind of the Ottawa embassy raid, was deported for reasons of national security.

Another MEK leader, Mahnaz Samadi, was arrested in Ottawa in 1999. A CSIS report said she "was responsible for directing some MEK operations in Iraq" and that she was sent to Canada "to act in an organizational capacity."

Shortly after French counterterrorism authorities arrested Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the MEK leader and herself a prominent figure in the movement, Neda Hassani, 25, of Ottawa set herself on fire in protest and died.

U.S. forces who took control of Camp Ashraf last year in a truce agreement seized 300 tanks, 250 armoured personnel carriers, 250 artillery pieces and 10,000 small arms from MEK fighters.

Stewart Bell

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