Press TV

Iran finds US-backed MKO fingermarks in riots

The terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) has reportedly played a major role in intensifying the recent wave of street violence in Iran.

Iranian security officials reported Saturday that they have identified and arrested a large number of MKO members who were involved in recent riots in Iran’s capital.

According to the security officials, the arrested members had confessed that they were extensively trained in Iraq’s camp Ashraf to create post-election mayhem in the country.
They had also revealed that they have been given directions by the MKO command post in Britain.

Street protests broke out after defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi rejected President Ahmadinejad’s decisive win in the June 12 election. His supporters have staged a series of illegal rallies ever since.

Iran’s deputy police commander, on Saturday, warned against the mass gatherings, asserting that those who engage in any such actions would be severely reprimanded.
Earlier on Saturday, MKO leader Maryam Rajavi had supported the recent wave of street violence in Iran during a Saturday address to supporters in Paris.

Rajavi had reportedly described the MKO terrorists as the real winners of the Iranian election.

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization is a Marxist guerilla group, which was founded in the 1960s.In the past two decades, MKO leaders have been resettled in the northern outskirts of Paris.

The terrorists are especially notorious for taking sides with former dictator Saddam Hussein during the war Iraq imposed on Iran (1980-1988).

The group masterminded a slew of terrorist operations in Iran and Iraq — one of which was the 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, in which more than 72 Iranian officials were killed.

A 2007 German intelligence report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has identified the MKO as a "repressive, sect-like and Stalinist authoritarian organization which centers around the personality cult of [MKO leaders] Maryam and Masoud Rajavi".

Anne Singleton, an expert on the MKO and author of ‘Saddam’s Private Army’ explains that the West aims to keep the group afloat in order to use it in efforts to stage a regime change in Iran.

"With a new Administration in the White House a pre-emptive strike on Iran looks unlikely. Instead the MKO’s backers have put together a coalition of small irritant groups, the known minority and separatist groups, along with the MKO. These groups will be garrisoned around the border with Iran and their task is to launch terrorist attacks into Iran over the next few years to keep the fire hot," she explains.

"The role of the MKO is to train and manage these groups using the expertise they acquired from Saddam’s Republican Guard," Singleton added.

A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report also condemns the MKO for running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations. According to report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.

June 21, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

Press TV to air documentary on MKO

Press TV is slated to air a documentary about the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) and its ideological changes before the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Failed Tactics focuses on the foundation of MKO, and its political abuse of the first Iranian president Abolhassan Banisadr as well as its terrorist operations inside Iran, the Mersad operation and its removal from the EU blacklist of terror organizations.

The organization’s armed confrontations and its collaboration with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war are also among the topics discussed in the documentary.

“The international society’s anti-terrorism claims have become a tool in the hands of certain countries to achieve their goals,” said Press TV production manager Mehdi Homayounfar.

Referring to Iran as the foremost victim of terrorism, Homayounfar added, “it was impossible for the MKO to survive without the financial and moral support of Western countries during all these years.”

Failed Tactics includes interviews with renowned Iranian political figures such as Mohsen Rezaei, Abolhassan Banisadr, Rouhollah Hosseinian, Hossein Shariatmadari, Hadi Shams-Haeri and a number of former high-ranking MKO members.

Produced by Amir Tajik, the documentary has been filmed in Iran, the UK, France and Switzerland. It will be aired on June 21, 2009, the 28th anniversary of MKO’s declaration of armed conflict against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The MKO, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s, but was exiled some twenty years later for carrying out acts of terrorism in the country.

June 11, 2009 0 comment

The MEK and Jundullah

Jundullah admits MKO connection

The head of the Jundullah gang, Abdulmalik Rigi, has admitted receiving assistance from the terrorist group Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).

The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jundullah is a sectarian Sunni organization that occasionally launches terrorist attacks against Shias in the southeastern Iranian province of Baluchestan from across the border in Pakistan.

The PMOI’s Maryam Rajavi (L) and Jundullah’s Abdulmalik Rigi (R)

Their latest outrage was a suicide bombing in a Shia mosque in Zahedan, the provincial capital. Last Thursday’s bombing killed 25 worshippers and injured more than a hundred.

There have been persistent intelligence reports of collaborations between the MKO and Jundullah in the past. But, in a significant admission, Rigi told a US-based satellite TV station, monitored by the ISNA news agency on June 2,”They (MKO) have had good intelligence collaborations with us and have provided us with much information about the activities of the Iranian regime.”

Rigi, who was described as a man who”used to fight with the Taliban and is part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist,”by Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members, told the station,”They (MKO) inform us about the regime’s activities in our areas of operations and let us know of the regime’s forces in these districts and send us most of the intelligence of our interest by email and messages.”

Rigi, who like his fellow al-Qaeda fanatics, has a penchant for videotaped decapitation of hostages, boasted in the interview,”We have treaties of friendship with all groups who act against Iran, and, among these, the MKO can do some things for us and we too can transit their members. But, I guess that they have certain limitations and are in countries where they cannot carry out their intended actions the way they want.”

This was an apparent reference to the presence of MKO co-leader Maryam Rajavi in France, where the group has recently been taken off the terrorist list on the pretext of having forsworn violence.

Rigi’s revelations undermine the MKO’s claimed transformation.

The MKO, which killed thousands of people in their campaign of terrorism in Iran, mainly in the 1980s, later were sheltered and armed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They are led by the husband-and-wife team of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. While the whereabouts of Massoud are not clear following the US invasion of Iraq, Maryam is based in France and openly solicits for support and funds from certain European politicians.

The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by Iran, Iraq, Canada, and the US, but was recently removed from the list in the European Union.

June 3, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Israeli point man on Iran gets the boot

The Israeli point man on Iran affairs, Uri Lubrani, has been forced into early retirement amid incessant power struggles between Mossad and the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to shut down Lubrani’s office after coming under excruciating pressure from the notorious Mossad spy agency.
According to the senior officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity, Mossad spymasters had grown weary of Lubrani’s interference in intelligence affairs and had demanded his dismissal.
The dismissal, which is likely to end the operations of Israeli Radio’s Farsi service, has been met with an angry response in Tel Aviv.
“At a time when Israel is working to stop Iran’s nuclear program it is unfortunate that Lubrani is being forced out,”said an Israeli political heavyweight on condition of anonymity.
“He is one of the country’s foremost experts on Iran and is one of the only people who warned about what was happening in Iran before the nuclear program picked up steam,”he added.
With a career that spans half a century, Lubrani headed the Israeli Mission to Iran before the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
One of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s most senior advisors, Lubrani spearheaded a torrent of conspiracies in Iran. He has vocally and actively pursued a regime change in Iran, calling for investment in Iranian terrorist groups such as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).
MKO is a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army which was founded in Iran in the 1960s. They were exiled some twenty years later for performing numerous acts of terrorism in the country.
Lubrani’s lay-off comes as Israeli spymasters and Defense Ministry officials are currently mired in a political tug-of-war for power.

May 20, 2009 0 comment

Iran

EU decision on MKO ‘will’ backfire

The MKO is responsible for numerous acts of violence
against Iranian civilians and government officials as well as Iraqis
A senior Iranian dignitary describes the EU-led decision to remove the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) from the terror blacklist as a ‘strategic mistake’.
A senior member of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Javad Jahangirzadeh said the EU move to exempt the MKO from the killings of thousands of Iranians was a political disgrace, Fars News Agency reported Sunday.
“It is the European Union’s strategic mistake to hold hope on the MKO because the terrorist group has no social or popular base in Iran,”he added.
The lawmaker said the mistake by European countries would be in Iran’s favor because the”West has no concrete information and analysis about the MKO.”
The Mujahedin Khalq Organization, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s, but was exiled some twenty years later for performing numerous acts of terrorism in the country.
The terrorists are especially notorious for taking sides with former dictator Saddam Hussein during the war Iraq imposed on Iran (1980-1988).
Anne Singleton, an expert on the MKO and author of Saddam’s Private Army explains that the West aims to keep the group afloat in order to use it in efforts to destabilize Iran and possibly attempt to stage a regime change.
“With a new Administration in the White House a pre-emptive strike on Iran looks unlikely. Instead the MKO’s backers have put together a coalition of small extremists groups, the known minority and separatist groups, along with the MKO. These groups will be garrisoned around the border of Iran and their task is to launch terrorist attacks inside Iran over the next few years to turn up the heat,”she explains.
“The role of the MKO is to train and manage these groups using the expertise they acquired from Saddam’s Republican Guard,”Singleton added.
A 2007 German intelligence report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has identified the MKO as a”repressive, sect-like and Stalinist authoritarian organization which centers around the personality cult of [MKO leaders] Maryam and Masoud Rajavi.”

May 11, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

EU urges Obama to support terror cult

After removing an anti-Iranian terror group from their blacklist, European Union lawmakers are now urging President Barack Obama to follow suit.

More than 100 members of the European Parliament have tried to persuade the US president to lift an American ban on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), AFP reported on Thursday.
The MKO, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s but was exiled some twenty years later for carrying out numerous acts of terrorism inside the country.

The group is especially notorious for the help it extended to former dictator Saddam Hussein during the war Iraq imposed on Iran (1980-1988) and helped him in the massacre of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

The group masterminded a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, one of which was the 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, in which more than 72 Iranian officials were killed, including the then Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.

The report adds that the lawmakers feel the group’s removal from the US list of terror is necessary as it has”clearly demonstrated”its commitment to the West and its opposition to religious fundamentalism.

The organization, known as the”Rajavi cult”after its leader Masoud Rajavi, was placed on Washington’s list of banned organizations in 1997.

The European Union had also initially banned the group, but later gave in to the intense lobbying of Rajavi’s wife Maryam and removed it from the terrorist list in January.

Renowned journalist Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times brands the group as a cult, operating like”any other military dictatorship.”

“No one can criticize Rajavi. And everyone must go through routine self-criticism sessions…If there’s a sign of resistance, you are considered not revolutionary enough, and you need more ideological training. Either people breakaway or succumb,”she wrote in 2003.

The group’s cult-like activities include psychological coercion techniques, physical abuse and ‘forced sterilization’ to prevent members from leaving the group.

The MKO is responsible for several acts of terror in Iran including the 1994 bombing of a revered Shia shrine in Mashhad in eastern Iran.

In 2003, French anti-terrorist police arrested 165 members in Paris, including Maryam Rajavi, for ‘associating with wrongdoers in relation with a terrorist undertaking.’
More recently, around 10 members of the notorious organization were arrested in France and Switzerland on charges of money laundering on September 29, 2008.

May 9, 2009 0 comment

USA

Terrorist MKO supporters confess in US

The MKO is responsible for numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials as well as Iraqis.

Seven Iranian-Americans confess collecting money for anti-Iran terrorists loyal to the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).

The MKO is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by many international entities and countries, including the US.

"With jury selection in the case underway, the seven defendants each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and one count of actually providing material support to the group," AFP quoted a statement released by the Justice Department.

The seven face up to 20 years in jail over the charges, after having been indicted for the first time by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles in 2001.

They are to be sentenced on August 10. The court says they had helped the MKO by raising funds for its members at public places like the Los Angeles International Airport.

The group, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s but was exiled some twenty years later for performing acts of terrorism in the country.

The terrorists are especially notorious for taking sides with former dictator Saddam Hussein during the war Iraq imposed on Iran (1980-1988).

The MKO is responsible for numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials as well as Iraqis.

Baghdad has vowed to move MKO members to their country Iran or to send them to a third country, as it holds the anti-Iran group responsible for destabilizing Iraq.

Earlier in March, Iraqi national security advisor, Muwafaq al-Rubaie, described MKO members as "foreign terrorists" and ordered them to leave their headquarters in Camp Ashraf, where they had been stationed for more than two decades.

"The residents should understand … that their days in Iraq are numbered and we are literally counting down," al-Rubaie told reporters.

May 2, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

EU steps in to save MKO from expulsion

As Iraq prepares to expel the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) from its territory, the European Union steps in to delay the process.

In last-minute efforts to shield MKO members from expulsion, the EU urged Iraq to drop a parliamentary bid which requires the group to leave their bases at Camp Ashraf — a military training headquarters north of Baghdad.

The EU parliamentarians also demanded that Iraq respect the”protected persons”status of the Iranian dissidents and refrain from any action that would endanger their lives or security.

The European Union removed the anti-Iran MKO group from its terror blacklist in January amid Iraqi vows to implement parliamentary measures and expel members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).

Earlier in March, Iraqi national security advisor, Muwafaq al-Rubaie, described MKO members as”foreign terrorists”and ordered them to leave their headquarters in Camp Ashraf, where they had been stationed for more than two decades.

“The residents should understand … that their days in Iraq are numbered and we are literally counting down,”al-Rubaie told reporters.

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization, which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s but was exiled some twenty years later for performing acts of terrorism in the country.

The terrorists are especially notorious for taking sides with former dictator Saddam Hussein during the war Iraq imposed on Iran (1980-1988).

The group masterminded a torrent of terrorist operations inside Iran, one of which was the 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, in which more than 72 Iranian officials were killed.

A 2007 German intelligence report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has identified the MKO as a”repressive, sect-like and Stalinist authoritarian organization which centers around the personality cult of [MKO leaders] Maryam and Masoud Rajavi”.

High-ranking MKO members have camped-out in most of Europe’s parliaments for the past two years and have managed to gain scattered support from various high-ranking circles in the West

Anne Singleton, an expert on the MKO and author of ‘Saddam’s Private Army’ explains that the West aims to keep the group afloat in order to use it in efforts to stage a regime change in Iran.

“With a new Administration in the White House a pre-emptive strike on Iran looks unlikely. Instead the MKO’s backers have put together a coalition of small irritant groups, the known minority and separatist groups, along with the MKO. These groups will be garrisoned around the border with Iran and their task is to launch terrorist attacks into Iran over the next few years to keep the fire hot,”she explains.

“The role of the MKO is to train and manage these groups using the expertise they acquired from Saddam’s Republican Guard,”Singleton added.

April 25, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Who was Lord Slynn?

Lord Slynn, the former senior judge in English courts and the European Court of Justice died 8th April.

During his long career as a judge, he was responsible for some of the most notorious decisions of the English judiciary in recent years, which made him a bogey-man of defenders of human rights.

In the 1970’s, in what became a cause célèbre of a class-influenced and sexist judgment, Judge Slynn, along with two other judges of the English Appeal Court, released a convicted violent child rapist from prison, ostensibly because serving a prison sentence would damage his “promising career” as a military officer.

The fact was that the rapist officer was from the magnificently aristocratic Coldstream Guards regiment and his victim was “only” a 16-year-old working class girl working as a waitress for some pocket money.

To the honorable judge, the well-bred Guardsman had an innate right to all that was possessed by the teenage waitress, including her body. True, the “little serf” had caused a fuss over the issue, and there was the slight inconvenience of the law that demanded equal protection against rape irrespective of class, but not enough to merit inconveniencing an esquire’s “promising career”. So, Judge Slynn felt that a suspended prison sentence would more than suffice as punishment for the gentleman-officer, at least for his offence of reaching out for a woman below his station.

This ruling understandably caused outrage in Britain, especially among women campaigning against rape, and led to widespread protests across the UK.

A number of Members of Parliament signed a petition calling on Judge Slynn to be sacked or to resign. But, the honorable judge rejected these calls, citing the independence of the judiciary.

Years later, when the former Chilean dictator and coup leader General Pinochet was arrested in the UK on a Spanish extradition request for crimes against humanity, (the then Lord) Slynn entered the arena again and did his bit for humanity by being the sole law lord in the House of Lords who ruled against the admissibility of his extradition. Lord Slynn had the unique distinction of declaring that the Chilean dictator was entitled to “state immunity” although he may have committed grave crimes against humanity, mainly torture and murder. A view rejected by other senior British judges and other legal experts.

Nevertheless, this bizarre position was inline with Lord Slynn’s personality and views about the function of law. His view was that laws were there to protect the status quo and to ensure that the representatives of the ruling classes – be they the dashing “gentlemen officers” of the Coldstream Guards or the brutal Chilean coup leader – were to be protected from the consequences of their crimes against their “inferiors”. By extension, it was the victims who had been the authors of their own misfortune; The teenage waitress in the UK should not have shown the temerity to resist the unwanted approaches of the dashing Guardsman and the defenders of freedom and justice in Chile should have known better than to resist the US-backed putsch by Pinochet.

It was, therefore, almost inevitable that he should have found sympathy, not only for the cause, but for the ill-gotten cash, of the anti-Iran terrorist Rajavi cult, sometimes known as the PMOI or MKO.

Throughout their ignominious existence since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the PMOI have stopped at no treachery or crime against their compatriots.

Random bombings and assassinations, murders of a popularly elected president and his prime minister, blowing up of elected members of the Iranian parliament (Majlis), spying for the defunct Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, while his troops were occupying Iran, setting up military camps in Saddam’s Iraq and mounting joint operations against Iran from these bases, and much much more. They have done it all.

With the defeat of Saddam Hussein, the PMOI were left without a sponsor. So, bewildered, brainwashes, despondent and defeated. Furthermore, being listed as a proscribed terrorist organization curtailed their fundraising efforts.

So, in an effort to be removed from the list, to whom could the PMOI turn but the trust old bullies’ warhorse: Lord Slynn of Hadley.

The defenders of British child rapists and Chilean torturers rose to the occasion and did his best to have the PMOI removed from the EU’s list of terrorist organizations.

Eventually, the PMOI were delisted in the European Union by the European Court of Justice, in a perverse ruling which merely accepted the PMOI’s claims that it had “stopped” terrorist activities. It left open the slight matter of their previous crimes, in a verdict that showed contempt for the Iranian lives that had been destroyed by PMOI’s violence in the past.

In order to satisfy himself that the PMOI violence was directed at Iran only and not the British and American occupiers of Iraq, Lord Slynn traveled to the PMOI’s terrorist training base in “Camp Ashraf” in the Iraqi desert, not far from Iranian border.

Lord Slynn did not live long after this legal “victory”. Upon hearing of his death, the PMOI co-leader Maryam Rajavi declared that as a member of the PMOI, Lord Slynn should be buried in Camp Ashraf.

The Rajavi cult have long since buried themselves alive in Camp Ashraf, and their hunt for new companions only rarely bears fruit these days. Saves for the likes of the late Lord Slynn

By Anna O’hara

April 19, 2009 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

MKO begins Camp Ashraf departure

A number of Mujahedin Khalq Organization members reportedly leave Camp Ashraf after Baghdad started a countdown to remove the group from Iraq.

Some dissident MKO members aim to return to Iran as the terrorist organization has denied its members the right to choose an alternative place to stay.

The dissidents have held a press conference in Baghdad where they complained of their "tough situation" in Camp Ashraf

The dissidents have held a press conference in Baghdad where they complained of their "tough situation" in Camp Ashraf — the MKO’s military training headquarters in the Iraqi province of Diyala.

Baghdad has vowed to move MKO members to their country Iran or send them to a third country as it holds the anti-Iran group responsible for destabilizing Iraq.

Ali Kaki, one of the dissidents, told al-Alam that most of 3,500 members of the group residing in the camp suffer "lack of freedom of thought and operation".

Vali Khodabandeh, another dissident, also said that the leaders of the terrorist group have prevented the residents of the camp from leaving.

The anti-Iran MKO is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by many international entities and countries, including the US.

The group was exiled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution and settled in Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The MKO is responsible for numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials as well as Iraqis.

Tehran has long called for the expulsion of MKO members from Iraq, saying that the members of the group who have not participated in terrorist activities can return home but others will need to stand trial.

April 18, 2009 0 comment

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