Mehr News Agency

TEHRAN, April 23 (MNA) — Apparently the U.S. and British authorities have become so desperate for an alibi that they have readily embraced the assertion of the infamous anti-Iranian Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), which is listed as a terrorist group by Britain, the United States, and the European Union.

A spokesman of this group, which vegetates in the shadow of the U.S. Army at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, said that Iran’s capture of 15 British military personnel, who illegally entered Iran’s territorial waters on March 23, was planned in advance.

But David Stringer of the Associated Press immediately realized that he owed it to his readers to mention that the MKO spokesman offered no evidence to support his claims. This group, along with the old Iranian monarchists, like their financiers in the White House and Downing Street, need no evidence to fabricate stories.

It should be noted that three years ago, U.S. intelligence circles suggested rearming the MKO and using it to destabilize Iran, a recommendation that has apparently readily been implemented. The implementation of this plan makes the U.S. government complicit in the terrorist acts that have been carried out inside Iran. The New York Times recently revealed that the camp operates under the protection of the U.S. military and that U.S. troops chauffer MKO operatives.

Another organization that carries out cross-border attacks on Iranian villages is the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), which is supported with equipment and training by Israeli special forces. This group receives its “lists of targets inside Iran” from U.S. intelligence agents.

A third terrorist organization that operates on the border between Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan Province and the countries of Pakistan on the southeast and Afghanistan on the northeast is Jundallah (God’s Brigade), an extremist Sunni group. Jundallah has been launching armed attacks on the civilian population, planting bombs, and kidnapping travelers. The group has its bases in Pakistan and apparently is funded, trained, and armed by the U.S. and British armies in Afghanistan and in the Iran-Pakistan border regions.

According to Greg Elich of www.GlobalResearch.ca, U.S. and Israeli officials are setting up front companies to help finance future covert activities in Iran. An old adage comes to mind when thinking about how the CIA armed and financed Osama bin Laden and the Mujahedin in Afghanistan during the 1980s to undermine the Soviet Union: History repeats itself; the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce.

It is now common knowledge that U.S. special operation forces in Iraq have been given the task of kidnapping Iranian diplomats and officials in Iraq and the countries where U.S. intelligence agents operate freely. For example, U.S. forces led a commando-type, helicopter-borne raid in Irbil, northern Iraq, and grabbed five Iranian diplomatic liaison personnel in January 2007.

These special units, operating without the permission of the Kurdish authorities, reportedly used stun guns against the men while seizing office computers, ransacking and intentionally destroying the property inside, and taking down the Iranian flag from the rooftop of the raided building as a demonstration of animosity and disrespect toward the Iranian people. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as well as one of the country’s most powerful Shia leaders condemned the raid, calling it an attack on Iraq’s sovereignty.

Furthermore, the United States refused to allow any communication with the detained officials until the incident involving the 15 British sailors and marines was brought into a process of negotiation. The U.S. was pressured to agree to allow the Iranian government to communicate with the Iranian captives, a promise yet to be fulfilled.

An Iranian diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, who was kidnapped in Iraq by U.S. forces and held for over two months, was released earlier this month. Mr. Sharafi told Iran’s state news agency IRNA that he was subjected to torture “day and night”. He said, “I was kidnapped on a Baghdad street while shopping by officials who had Iraqi Defense Ministry ID cards and were riding in U.S. forces vehicles.”

Mr. Sharafi said he was taken to a military base near Baghdad airport and questioned in Arabic and English. “The CIA officials’ questions focused mainly on Iran’s presence and influence in Iraq. When faced with my responses on Iran’s official ties with the Iraqi government, they increased the torture,” he stated.

Apparently, this is the customary method that the United States government, which likes to brag about its ‘love of democracy and concern for human rights’, treats foreign detainees and kidnapped individuals.

What respect for human rights!

Where are the human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, to expose and condemn Washington’s routine practice of human rights violations?

Earlier this year, former Iranian deputy defense minister Alireza Askari, who was in Turkey to attend a conference, disappeared into thin air, and his family in Tehran has not heard from him since. Iranian officials said Askari was kidnapped by Western agents.

These attacks, not highly nor widely publicized in the U.S. press, are part of the covert front of the U.S. and British forces.

Professor Paul Sheldon Foote’s comment on the article:

America’s worst enemies are not in the Middle East. America’s worst enemies are the neo-conservative (admirers of Trotsky and of Machiavelli) traitors who support America’s terrorist enemies: MEK (MKO, PMOI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran). When will the major American media expose the long history of the Rajavi Cult in terrorist operations, from killing American military officers and Rockwell International employees to working on secret terrorist missions with the American military?

Ardeshir Ommani, Mehr News, April 23, 2007

http://www.mehrnews.com/en/NewsPrint.aspx?NewsID=475131