The laptop computer itself was not of Iranian origin, but rather served as the vehicle for which the United States had assembled a significant body of fragmentary data, most, if not all, of which was sourced to an Iranian opposition group — the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK aka MKO/PMOI — which has a mixed record with regard to its …
… The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK/PMOI has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given”protected status”under the Geneva Conventions. The MEK says its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses”refugee camps”inside Iraq as its bases …