TPM Muckraker

MEK Advocate Tried To Get State Dept. Meeting Under ‘False Pretenses’

During a call with reporters on Friday, State Department officials spoke about issues related to the MEK, the exiled Iranian opposition group currently pushing hard to get off the United States’ list of foreign terrorist organizations. MEK Advocate Tried To Get State Dept. Meeting Under ‘False Pretenses’

The MEK is engaged in a multifaceted effort to get off the list, and, as part of its strategy, supporters of the group have recruited prominent former lawmakers and government officials from both parties to appear at pro-MEK events in both the U.S. and Europe. Some of these advocates have received tens of thousands of dollars for their appearances.

On Friday, State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Ambassador Daniel Benjamin and Special Advisor to the Secretary on Camp Ashraf Ambassador Daniel Fried covered the situation at Camp Ashraf, the MEK’s base in Iraq, and how that situation relates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pending decision on whether or not to keep the MEK on the terror list. Among the pieces of information: a foreign national once got into Benjamin’s office under “false pretenses” in an attempt to lobby for the MEK.

“I would like to go back to the issue that was asked before regarding lobbying, and I do just want to underscore that when it comes to the [terrorist organization] designation itself, we have not met with any lobbyists or others,” Benjamin said, after Fried confirmed that department officials had met with former U.S. government officials, European lawmakers, and other “advocates” in regard to the situation at Ashraf. “There was, in fact, one gentleman who came into my office under false pretenses from a foreign country to lobby for the MEK, and he was promptly thrown out. But other than that, I’ve had no conversations on this issue.”

The Iraqi government has set a July 20th deadline by which it wants the MEK to leave Ashraf. The MEK set up camp at Ashraf under Saddam Hussein, and several thousand group members remained there after the U.S. invasion. The Iraqi government essentially considers the MEK to be in the country illegally and, in recent years, MEK members at Ashraf have been killed during clashes with Iraqi troops. Benjamin said the MEK’s relocation to Camp Hurriya, a “temporary transit facility,” has hit an impasse.

“The Iraqi Government and the United Nations continue to encourage the secure, humane relocation of residents to Hurriya for refugee status determinations by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees,” Benjamin said. “Almost 2,000 individuals have already relocated, but the remaining 1,200 to 1,300 are holding at Ashraf until various MEK demands are met by the Iraqi Government. The last convoy of individuals, about 400 people, was on May 5th. And the patience of the Iraqi Government is wearing thin.”

Benjamin said the MEK “seems” to have misinterpreted a recent court ruling in the United States, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Secretary Clinton had to make a decision one way or another on the MEK’s terrorist designation before October 1. Benjamin said that “[t]his is the MEK’s moment to show that it has taken on a fundamentally different character.”

“The MEK’s relocation will assist the Secretary in determining whether the organization remains invested in its violent past or is committed to leaving that past behind,” he said. “And that really is going to be a very important illustration – or demonstration, I should say – of what the MEK’s orientation in the future will be.”

That said, Benjamin said that any decision about delisting would be made “on the merits.”

Asked about the MEK’s demands that have contributed to the impasse, Fried said that he considered some of the requests legitimate, but not all of them.

“Some of the MEK demands are reasonable. For example, given the hot weather in Iraq, they’ve requested more air conditioners. The Iraqi Government has agreed to provide them, that is agreed to allow a special shipment of air conditioners from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty, and this is being arranged as we speak,” Fried said. “But it has been frustrating to deal with constantly shifting demands, many demands. We find that U.S. Embassy and State Department and the UN will work to resolve problems and, a la whack-a-mole, you find that new ones – you’re constantly presented with new ones.”

By Eric Lach

July 10, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Speaking Fees From MEK Come Under Government Scrutiny

The Washington Times reported Friday that the counterterrorism arm of the Treasury Department is probing speaking fees paid to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) by supporters of the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

But Rendell is far from the only former government official who has publicly acknowledged accepting speaking fees from supporters of the MEK, which has been lobbying to get the group off the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The Huffington Post put together a list of 33 speakers at various MEK related meetings and conferences, though not all of them had accepted payments.

MEK supporters include a former director of the FBI, the former U.S. Attorney General, former military leaders and former high-ranking elected officials of both political parties, many of whom were paid thousands of dollars for short public speeches. The list of officials advocating for MEK to be taken off the list — which the group often helpfully provides in media packets at MEK rallies — includes Michael Mukasey, Patrick Kennedy, Rudy Giuliani, Andy Card, Howard Dean, Lee Hamilton, Bill Richardson, Tom Ridge, Wesley Clark, Fran Townsend and John Bolton.

As Glenn Greenwald points out, it may not even matter if every speaker at an event was paid since a 2010 Supreme Court decision upheld a law which banned advocacy that was “performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization.”

A State Department spokesman wouldn’t confirm that a subpoena had been issued to the office of an attorney for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, which handles Rendell’s speaking engagements. “But the MEK is a designated terrorist group; therefore, U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to this group,” the spokesman told the Washington Times.

NBC News reported that MEK was involved in the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

TPM sat down with a former spokesman for the MEK last year, who defended the group from charges that it has encouraged a cult of personality around MEK leader Maryam Rajavi and her husband, has supported violence in the past.

Ryan J. Reilly

March 13, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Ex-Officials Say They Were Paid To Attend Pro- MEK Events

Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton (D) and former CENTCOM Commander Anthony Zinni told the Inter Press Service that they were paid to appear at recent events supporting the MEK, an Iranian opposition group currently considered a terrorist organization by the State Department.

Hamilton and Zinni are among the many big time former government officials and military leaders who have appeared at recent pro-MEK events sponsored by a group called Executive Action, LLC. (The events true organizers remain unclear, Executive Action’s CEO Neil Livingstone would only tell TPM they included Iranian American groups.) Speakers at the events have portrayed the MEK as critical to any chance of regime change in Iran.

Hamilton, who once chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was a co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, told reporter Barbara Slavin he was paid "a substantial amount" to appear at a panel in Washington D.C. in February. Zinni, who spoke at a similar event in January, said he had been paid his "standard fee," without detailing what that is.

According to Slavin, both men said they were unaware of the cultish elements attributed to the MEK. The State Department’s 2008 Country Reports on Terrorism, for example, reported the following:

In addition to its terrorist credentials, the MEK has also displayed cult-like characteristics.
Upon entry into the group, new members are indoctrinated in MEK ideology and revisionist Iranian history. Members are also required to undertake a vow of "eternal divorce" and participate in weekly "ideological cleansings." Additionally, children are reportedly separated from parents at a young age. MEK leader Maryam Rajavi has established a "cult of personality." She claims to emulate the Prophet Muhammad and is viewed by members as the "Iranian President in exile."
The MEK’s cult tendencies have also been noted by The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Council On Foreign Relations.

"They presented me with a platform that was thoroughly democratic," Hamilton told Slavin. "Were they misleading me? You always can be misled."
Zinni was firmer:

"De-listing ought to be done much the way we handled the PLO and the IRA," Zinni said in an interview.
[…]
Zinni, who famously inveighed against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and was a fierce opponent of Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, seemed to have no similar compunctions about Iranian exiles.

"The Iranian community outside Iran has much more influence inside than the Chalabis of the world that we ended up supporting in Iraq," he said.

Over the years, the Iranian government has arrested and executed MEK members. Still, experts say that the group actually has very little support in Iran, where people remember how it fought for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. Iranian studies scholar Ahmad Sadri told TPM in February that U.S. support for the MEK would anger ordinary Iranians.

Although it was put on the U.S. terror list in 1997, the MEK has a history of support in Congress. While it originally blended elements of Islam and Marxism, the group and its supporters say it has renounced violence and now advocates for a secular and democratic Iran. After the fall of Hussein, who armed and funded the group for many years, about 3,400 MEK members were consolidated at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad. MEK backers also insist that U.S. forces should be permanently stationed at Ashraf, for protection. (Camp residents have been subject to attacks they blame on the Iraqi and Iranian governments.)

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where several lawmakers urged her to delist the MEK. Clinton said that the State Department is reviewing the MEK’s designation in accordance with a Washington D.C. District Court of Appeal’s recent ruling, after a suit brought by the MEK.

"You know it’s proceeding," Clinton said. "These are very important considerations and reviews and you know as soon as we can we will make such a decision."
TPM reached out to both Zinni and Hamilton for comment.

Eric Lach

March 5, 2011 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Iranian Prof: U.S. Support For MEK Would Anger Ordinary Iranians

The recent acts by former prominent republicans to lend their support to Mujahedin Khalq terrorists motivated Eric Larch a writer for TPM to have an interview with Professor Ahmad Sadri from Lake Forest College in Illinois. He is a professor of Islamic Word Studies and Sociology. In his phone interview with TPM, professor Sadri described MKO claims as ” They are saying to the world we are whatever you want us to be.”

Eric Lach reports the phone interview with professor Sadri by presenting a background of MKO situation in the United States administration and among US neoconservatives:

As TPM has reported, the MEK has a history of support in Washington, and a number of prominent U.S. national security experts and former government officials have recently taken up the MEK cause, which includes getting the MEK removed from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. The MEK was put on the terror list in 1997, in a move that has been described as a nod to Iran’s then reformist president.

At a panel in Washington D.C. two weeks ago, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and ex-Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) joined former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in painting the MEK not only as unfairly shackled by the terrorist label, but also as a critical part of the Iranian opposition movement.

“The Mujahedin have absolutely no backing in Iran,” Sadri told TPM. He said he’d first become aware of the MEK 40 years ago, when he occasionally listened to the group’s clandestine radio shows, broadcast before the fall of the Shah. He described the MEK in its early days as a “vanguard organization.”

Sadri, who moved from Iran to the U.S. in the mid-1970s to attend a Ph.D program at The New School, said he visited Iran once every year or two until the 2009 election, and “never heard a positive word uttered” about the MEK. According to Sadri, many Iranians have never gotten over the group accepting safe haven and patronage from Saddam Hussein, and then fighting on his behalf in the Iran-Iraq war. MEK supporters maintain that they had nowhere else to turn in 1986, when Saddam took them in.

“If there is one thing everyone can agree on Iran, it’s that Saddam Hussein is a really bad guy,” Sadri said.

Professor Sadri describes the group propaganda campaign as “very very active”. “They wheel and deal and they’re willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder”, he told Eric Lach.

February 8, 2011 0 comment

MEK Camp Ashraf

State Dept: Mojahedin Khalq backers claims not true

State Dept. Refutes Ridge Claim That MEK Has Special Protection Under Geneva Convention

When a who’s who of Washington heavyweights spoke at a panel two weeks ago on behalf of the MEK, an Iranian opposition group currently considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge made a claim that the members of the group who currently reside in Iraq enjoy special protection under the Geneva Convention. But the State Department tells TPM that’s not true.

During his remarks, after reading aloud portions of the MEK’s ten-point plan for the future of Iran, which includes calls for a "pluralist system," "separation of church and state," and an Iran "devoid of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction," Ridge made a plea:

That’s the Iran that the resistance, the People’s Mojahedin, MEK, have fought for, believe in. Remember they relinquished their arms. They’re protected under the Geneva Convention. We have to send a message to Al-Maliki and to the Iraqi government. The United States troops handed responsibility of protecting these individuals, who are protected under the Geneva Convention, to you. How can you tolerate those loudspeakers, and what about these incursions that precipitated some problems inside Camp Ashraf? You must heed the admonition. You promised to protect them under the Geneva Convention. Right now, one wonders the sincerity of that initial promise

Ridge was referring to the 3,400 or so MEK members who currently live at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, and who were recently attacked. But the State Department says the Geneva Convention claim is wrong.

"MEK members are not ‘protected persons’ under the Fourth Geneva Convention," a State Department official in the Counterterrorism Office told TPM in an email. "After the end of the occupation of Iraq, the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) continued to treat the MEK as ‘protected persons’ as a matter of policy, not as a matter of legal obligation, until MNF-I’s UN mandate expired at the end of 2008."

In 2007, the department’s terror list included a sentence that the Camp Ashraf residents "have been designated as ‘protected persons’ under Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention." But in 2008, the list stated that Camp Ashraf residents "have been treated as ‘protected persons’ consistent with provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." And the 2009 list makes no mention of the Geneva Convention.

As State Department official explains it, "With the expiration of MNF-I’s UNSCR mandate, the Government of Iraq assumed security responsibility for Ashraf on January 1, 2009. The Government of Iraq assured the USG in writing that it will treat the MEK humanely and will not forcibly transfer them to any country where they will be tortured or be persecuted based on religious or political beliefs."

MEK members went to Iraq in 1986, after they were forced to leave France. They were offered safe haven by Saddam Hussein, who armed them and deployed them against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. According to the State Department, Hussein also used MEK forces to crack down on Iraqi Shia and Kurds in the early 1990s, and the group received millions of dollars in Oil-for-Food program subsidies from Hussein. Earlier this month, MEK supporters accused Iraqi special forces and Iranian agents of orchestrating an attack on Camp Ashraf and injuring 175 people.
At the D.C. event, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey also mentioned the Geneva Convention in regard to the residents of Camp Ashraf, but his take was more nuanced.

"In 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, the residents of Camp Ashraf surrendered their weapons, the weapons they had to defend themselves, and accepted written confirmation from the then deputy Commander of allied forces in Iraq, General Jeffrey Miller, on behalf of the United States, that they were protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention," Mukasey said. "From 2003 until 2009, the United States protected the residents of Ashraf and fulfilled the solemn obligation that we had undertaken in 2003. But in January 2009, as some of you may know, the United States turned over responsibility for safety and security to Iraqi security forces."
And Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson mentioned "protecting the rights of those at the camp," though he added it was "something that I was not aware of until this morning."

By Eric Lach

February 3, 2011 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Big Time Dems Join GOPers In Support Of Iranian Terror Group

Along with usual efforts of MKO propaganda campaign, the group held another gathering in Washington DC last Thursday. According to Eric Lach article posted on TPM Muckraker Website,

"a prominent group of former government officials gathered for a panel on Iran. Richardson and Tom Ridge Among them were a former National Security Adviser, a former CENTCOM Commander, a former Democratic Senator, a former Democratic Presidential candidate, a former Republican Attorney General, a former Republican Homeland Security Secretary, a former CIA Director and a former FBI Director.

Almost to a man — and they were all men — they expressed support for a group considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

The panel, organized by a consulting firm called Executive Action, LLC, was called “Iran’s Nuclear, Terrorist Threats and Rights Abuses: After Engagement and Sanctions, What?” and the group in question is the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, also known as the MEK."

Eric Lach reveals that the agenda of panelists was the removal of MKO from United States’ list of FTOs describing the true nature of MKO as a cult-like organization, according to US State Department documents:

"So what is the MEK? The State Department website states that the group “advocates the violent overthrow of the Iranian regime and was responsible for the assassination of several U.S. military personnel and civilians in the 1970’s.” When it was founded by students in the 1960s, the group’s philosophy blended Marxism and Islam, and it later developed a strong feminist bent. In fact, according to The New York Times, the MEK became for a time the “only army in the world with a commander corps composed mostly of women.” Membership is in the several thousands, with large pockets in several European capitals. About 3,400 live at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, where they have been declared “protected persons” under the Geneva Convention — a status that does not apply to members living outside the camp.

After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the group fell out of favor with Ayatollah Khomeini. In 1981, the MEK attempted to overthrow the regime, which responded by arresting and targeting group members. In a subsequent bombing campaign, the MEK managed to kill Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei, and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar. One bomb cost current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei the use of his right arm. Popular sentiment in Iran turned against the MEK, and the group fled, first to France, and then, in 1986, to Iraq, where they were offered safe haven by Saddam Hussein.

Hussein armed the MEK with tanks and other heavy military equipment, and deployed “thousands of MEK fighters in suicidal, mass wave attacks against Iranian forces” during the Iran-Iraq war, according to the State Department. In 1991, Hussein used the MEK to crack down on Iraqi Shia and Kurds. ”Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” MEK leader Maryam Rajavi commanded her troops at the time, according to The New York Times. During the rest of the 1990s, and through 2001, the MEK was engaged in various anti-Iranian attacks and operations, and it received millions of dollars in Oil-for-Food program subsidies from Hussein. None of the speakers at last week’s panel mentioned the MEK’s prior ties with Hussein.

The State Department states that the MEK maintains “the capacity and will” to commit terrorist acts across the world. But the members living at Camp Ashraf agreed to be disarmed in 2003, and surrendered two thousand tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery pieces. And the group’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which maintains offices in several capitals, says its goal is to establish a “pluralist democracy” in Iran. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the MEK “has had little success luring new recruits and is composed mostly of its founding members.”

Several of the speakers at last week’s panel said it’s widely known that the MEK was put on the terrorist list in 1997 as a nod to Iran’s then-new reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. None of the speakers, however, said that the State Department considers the group to have “cult-like characteristics,” and that Maryam Rajavi has established a cult of personality. MEK members are not allowed to marry, attend weekly “ideological cleansings” and children are separated from parents. When Elizabeth Rubin, a New York Times Magazine reporter, toured Camp Ashraf in 2003, she found Rajavi’s image displayed “almost as ubiquitously as the image of Saddam in Iraq or Khomeini in Iran.”

”Every morning and night, the kids, beginning as young as 1 and 2, had to stand before a poster of Massoud and Maryam, salute them and shout praises to them,” Nadereh Afshari, a former MEK member, told Rubin. And inside Iran? Rubin reported that, at the time, “the street protesters risking their lives and disappearing inside the regime’s prisons consider the Mujahedeen a plague — as toxic, if not more so, than the ruling clerics.”

So what brought Washington heavyweights to the MEK cause? It remains unclear. The group’s political arm is known to have a global support network and active lobbying efforts in major Western capitals. Being delisted would allow the group to fundraise and operate freely in the U.S. The State Department claims that since the fall of Hussein, the group has had to rely on front organizations to solicit contributions from expatriate Iranian communities. Meanwhile, the group that has been organizing the panels, Executive Action, LLC, bills itself as “a McKinsey & Company with muscle.” From the group’s website:

If you are under attack by political or business adversaries, unsure of how to do business in emerging markets, or being treated unfairly in the media, then you need ExecutiveAction.

This week, The Wall Street Journal reports, Jones and Richardson were in Brussels, for yet another pro-MEK panel, this one alongside former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton."

January 29, 2011 0 comment