Washington Times

U.S. pushes MKO to accept Albanian asylum offer

The Obama administration said Monday that an Iranian dissident group must immediately accept an offer of asylum from Albania for some its members being housed at a camp in Iraq.

Albania has agreed to take in 210 members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK), a dissident group that seeks to overthrow Iran’s theocratic regime.

The MeK has rejected the offer.

The U.S. wants the MeK leadership to “accept the government of Albania’s humanitarian offer immediately, and urges the residents of Camp [Liberty] to resume participation in resettlement interviews to ensure that individuals avail themselves of safe and secure relocation opportunities outside Iraq,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

The dissidents are housed at Camp Liberty, a temporary location near Baghdad’s international airport.

“We further urge the MeK leadership to place the highest priority on the safety and security of the former residents of [Camp] Ashraf through full and unconditional cooperation with the resettlement process,” Mrs. Nuland said.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has been interviewing Camp Liberty residents to determine their eligibility for refugee status.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants the Iranians out of his country.

The Iraqi government is “working closely with the U.N. and the international community to find a permanent place for the residents of the Camp Hurriya outside Iraq,” an Iraqi official said on background.

The Obama administration welcomed the Albanian offer, which it described as “generous,” and thanked Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha “for the humanitarian gesture to provide a safe haven” for the Iranians, said Mrs. Nuland.

“We believe the permanent resettlement of former Ashraf residents outside Iraq is the only sustainable solution and remain committed to assisting [U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees] and the government of Iraq in this endeavor,” she said.

Saddam Hussein gave the MeK refuge in Iraq in the 1980s. The dissidents established a paramilitary base, Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad. After the Iraqi strongman was overthrown in a U.S. invasion in 2003, U.S. military forces disarmed the dissidents, who had renounced violence in 2001.

Meanwhile, Martin Kobler, the special representative of the U.N. secretary-general in Iraq, met Deputy Secretary of State William Burns at the State Department on Monday morning.

Mrs. Nuland said the U.S. “strongly supports” Mr. Kobler, the UNHCR and UNAMI.

The Clinton administration designated the MeK as a foreign terrorist group in 1997 while it sought to open negotiations with Iran. The designation had proved to be an obstacle to finding other countries willing to give asylum to the Iranians.

The Obama administration took the MeK off the terrorism list in September.

Camp Ashraf’s 3,100 residents were transferred to Camp Liberty under a deal brokered by the U.N. in December.

Ashish Kumar Sen,

March 26, 2013 0 comment

USA

Official: No decision yet on Iranian dissidents MEK

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has not moved any closer to removing an Iranian dissident group from the U.S. list of terror organizations, senior Obama administration officials Secretary of State has not moved any closer to removing an Iranian dissident group from the U.S. list of terror organizations said on Monday.

Speaking on background with reporters, a senior official said members of the Iraq-based Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) seem to “think that de-listing is now imminent.”

“We continue to try to impress upon them that there is no such automaticity,” the official said.

Representatives working on behalf of the MEK, also known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, have sued the State Department in federal court to take the group off the terror list.

While the case has dragged on for more than two years, it appeared to move forward June 1 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Court ordered Mrs. Clinton to decide within four months whether to de-list the MEK.

Dispute over the MEK’s status hinges on a group of the organization’s supporters who have been living under U.S. protection at a camp in Iraq since shortly after U.S. troops entered Iraq in 2003.

Now that the Americans have left, the Iraqi government has said it will close the camp. As a result, members of the MEK are being relocated from their present home at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near the Iraqi capital’s international airport under a deal brokered by the U.N.

But State Department officials on Monday said movement of the MEK members has stalled during recent weeks and that representatives of the group have grown less willing to cooperate with the deal.

“The United States remains concerned about the situation at Camp Ashraf and urges the residents of Camp Ashraf to resume full cooperation immediately with the Iraqi government and United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

“The United States has made clear that cooperation in the closure of Camp Ashraf, the Mujahedin-e Khalq’s main paramilitary base, is a key factor in determining whether the organization remains invested in its violent past or is committed to leaving that past behind,” she said.

A senior Obama administration official added that “we cannot speak with certainty about the reasons for the MEK’s slowdown in its cooperation.”

The official said the group may have “over-interpreted” the most recent federal court ruling and assumed that its removal from the U.S. terror list is imminent.

The official said that while Mrs. Clinton fully intends to respond to the court’s order by the Oct. 1 deadline, she “retains complete discretion” over whether to take the group of the terror list.

By Guy Taylor

June 19, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Treasury probes Rendell over speeches for the MEK

The Treasury Department’s counterterrorism arm is investigating speaking fees paid to a long-time Democratic Party leader who is among the most vocal advocates of an Iranian Treasury probes Rendell over speeches for the MEK opposition group designated as a terrorist group by the State Department.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell told The Washington Times that Treasury investigators last week subpoenaed records related to payments he has accepted in exchange for public speaking engagements.

Mr. Rendell is among a bipartisan group of prominent former officials – including Cabinet-level Republicans – who have accepted payment in exchange for speeches calling for the removal of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long called for the overthrow of the Islamic regime in Tehran. The group, which engaged in terror attacks on Iranian government targets in the 1980s, has been on the terrorist list since 1997, when President Bill Clinton put it there in an attempt to improve relations with Iran.

Mr. Rendell and others argue the MEK should be removed from the list because it has not engaged in violence in more than two decades and shares a common enemy with the United States.

While support for their position is widespread in Washington, some observers have raised questions about the legality of accepting payment in exchange for providing assistance or services to a listed terror group.

Mr. Rendell, who asserts that he has done nothing illegal, said that on Feb. 29 the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a subpoena seeking “transactional records about what payments we received for speaking fees.”

The subpoena was sent to the office of Thomas McGuire, an attorney with the Los Angeles-based talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, which handles all of Mr. Rendell’s speaking engagements, including those in which he has advocated on behalf of the MEK.

Calls to Mr. McGuire on Friday were not immediately returned.

A Treasury Department spokesman on Friday refused to confirm or deny the subpoena’s issuance, saying the department “does not comment on possible investigations.”

“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 said.

Designated terrorist groups are subject to sanctions and the spokesman, added that “the Treasury Department takes sanctions enforcement seriously and routinely investigates potential violations of sanctions laws.”

Mr. Rendell said the subpoena sent to his agent seeks information “about any emails, any letters, any communications involving payment that we’ve received or sent back.”

“We’re absolutely cooperating 100 percent,” he said. “I’ve instructed my agent not to hold back on any emails or any documents. There’s nothing to hide.”

Mr. Rendell, who once served as general chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is apparently the only person to be subpoenaed among a group of nearly two-dozen high-level political figures who have grown increasingly vocal in their calls for the MEK’s removal from the terrorist list.

The group includes Democrats such as former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and high-profile Republicans such as former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.

At issue is the fate of 3,400 Iranian dissidents said to be members of the MEK. They have been living in Iraq since the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s when they fought on the Iraqi side.

Since the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, the MEK supporters lived under U.S. protection at a camp on the Iranian border. But now the Americans have left, the Iraqi government has said it will close the camp.

The supporters fear they will be departed to torture and death in Iran, but third countries are unwilling to take them because of the group’s designation on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list overseen by the State Department.

The group has sued the State Department in federal court to be taken off the list, but the case has dragged on for more than two years. Last week, a court ruled that the State Department must respond to the MEK petition by March 26.

The European Union removed the group from its terror list in 2009.

David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, noted that “any group that’s on the list is also, by definition, on the Treasury Department’s list for specially designated global terrorists.”

“Anyone in the United States is prohibited from engaging in any transaction with such an entity,” he said.

While Mr. Cole stressed his personal belief that individuals have a “First Amendment right to speak out freely” for an organization like the MEK, he said that “it is a crime to engage in any transaction, which would certainly include getting paid to do public relations for them.”

Mr. Rendell and Mr. Ridge acknowledged to The Times this week that they have accepted payment in exchange for making media appearances and speeches calling for the MEK’s removal from the terrorist list.

And both men defended their actions.

“I’ve been in politics 34 years, and I can tell you right now that I would not jeopardize my reputation for any amount of money,” said Mr. Rendell. “I did my research extensively on this issue before I ever agreed to speak on it, and I am 100 percent convinced that the MEK shouldn’t be on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.”

As to the extent to which accepting payments for such advocacy may or may not be legal, Mr. Ridge said it is a “moot question.”

“Assuming there may be a question, and we don’t think there is, the bigger question is: Does the MEK belong on the list?” he said. “It’s kind of curious that those who don’t like our advocacy are suggesting that we might be doing something wrong.”

Neither man would specify how much he has been paid for his speeches, although Mr. Rendell, who has traveled to Paris and Geneva five times to attend conferences calling for the MEK’s removal from the terrorist list, said that in addition to receiving a “substantial speaking fee,” his expenses have been covered in full.

A source familiar with the payments said told The Times that a public figure of Mr. Rendell’s stature receives “in the ballpark” of $20,000 per speaking appearance.

But where the money actually comes from is unclear.

Mr. Rendell said payments for his speeches come from “money from citizens, both American citizens here and Iranian expats in Europe who believe in the cause.”

He stressed that he never directly accepts speaking fees, which are handled by his agent at William Morris.

Mr. Ridge, who has not been issued a subpoena from the Treasury Department, said he believes the money comes from legitimate sources but that he was not sure what they are.

“It is my understanding that there is a very large diaspora of Iranian Americans, and the diaspora is international obviously,” he said. “There’s a very significant group of American citizens and how they pledge their money and send it in and aggregate it to pay us, I don’t know.”

Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian America Council, argues that the money is connected to the MEK.

“Everyone on Capital Hill knows that, once on the terrorist list, the MEK could no longer lobby under their own name, so they created organizations with the same individuals and used those organizations, which are not on the terrorist list, to do the lobbying,” said Mr. Parsi.

“That includes giving money to U.S. officials to speak on their behalf and speak in support of the MEK while pretending that the money is not coming from the MEK.”

The website of the National Iranian American Council maintains a list of groups it claims are raising money for the MEK, and Mr. Parsi claims that officials from the State Department have privately told him that the MEK sets up “shell organizations” to raise money.

When asked about Mr. Parsi’s claim Friday, a State Department spokesman declined to comment.

By Guy Taylor
Shaun Waterman contributed to this report

March 11, 2012 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Who are the terrorists?

As Mujahedin-e-Khalq’s propaganda campaigns and lobbies in the United States government make efforts to gain American politicmen’s support in order to remove the name of their notorious organization from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) of Department of State, Keneth Timmerman ,a contributing editor for Newsmax Media wrote an article "Timmerman: who are the terrorists?" on The Washington Times enlightening his fellowmen on terrorist nature of Mujahedin Khalq, Timmerman suggests that MEK should never be removed from the FTO list ,accusing MEK of committing terrorist activities against American military personnel and Iranian civilians. While Timmerman presents evidences on MEK’s terrorist nature, he believes that MEK is a more dangerous group than PJAK, another terrorist designated Iranian opposition.
Here is an extract of Timmerman’s article:

TIMMERMAN: Who are the terrorists?

By Kenneth R. Timmerman – Washington Times – Tuesday, June 22, 2010

PJAK is a danger only to the Islamic regime
A bipartisan group of House members last week unveiled a resolution in support of the Iranian TIMMERMAN: Who are the terrorists? "resistance," a code word for an opposition group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) that has been on the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations since its inception in the late 1980s.

The MEK has a long record of carrying out violent attacks inside Iran. During the period leading up to the 1979 revolution, the group proudly murdered U.S. military officers and civilians working in Iran. And while the group’s current leadership and its apologists claim that those attacks were carried out by a splinter group no longer associated with the MEK, eyewitnesses tell me that the MEK continued to celebrate the anniversary of those murders in ceremonies and song in their training camps inside Iraq all through the 1980s.

In the power struggle that followed the 1979 revolution, the MEK actively promoted the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and planted a bomb that wiped out the leadership of the Islamic Republican Party led by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, arguably the last of the "moderate" leaders of the revolution.

More recently, MEK operatives inside Iran have carried out hit-and-run terrorist attacks on regime officials and have planted bombs in urban areas that have randomly killed civilians. The MEK and its supporters call these attacks acts of "resistance" against the regime.

Senior State Department officials have stated that their condemnation of the MEK’s use of random violence against civilians stems from a desire not to use a "double standard" when it comes to terrorism. The MEK and its supporters claim that keeping the MEK on the State Department’s list of international terrorist organizations benefits the Iranian regime. Some even argue, incorrectly, that the group was placed on the list in 1994 by the Clinton administration as a sop to the regime. (While the Clinton folks kept the MEK on the list in hopes it would encourage a rapprochement with Tehran, the MEK was placed on the list years earlier).

Contrast the MEK’s record of random violence against civilians with the use of violence by the Free Life Party of Iranian Kurdistan, PJAK, a group that was designated by the Treasury Department as a terrorist organization in February 2009.

PJAK guerrillas operate inside Iran in trained groups. Their primary mission is political: That is, they seek to spread a message that Iranian Kurds must abandon tribalism and traditional politics if they want to aspire to democratic self-governance.

Indeed, at PJAK camps I visited in northern Iraq in October 2007, the emphasis was on the political indoctrination of new members, not military training. PJAK prides itself on its inclusiveness: More than 30 percent of its guerrilla fighters and leadership are women.

PJAK makes no bones about its use of violence. Indeed, a Google search of the terms "PJAK attack" results in dozens of incidents in which PJAK guerrillas have attacked Iranian military targets and bases inside Iran. Almost all of these attacks have targeted the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But PJAK uses violence in defense of the Kurdish population, not as an instrument of terror against civilians. In contrast to the MEK, PJAK has never planted bombs in public areas or targeted regime officials for assassination.

By Mazda Parsi

June 23, 2010 0 comment

MEK Camp Ashraf

U.S. seeks to protect Iran terror group

Iraqis urged to keep camp
The United States is quietly pressing Iraq not to close a camp that holds more than 3,000 members of an Iranian opposition group that served as Saddam Hussein’s shock troops in 1991 when he crushed rebellions after the Gulf War and now is vulnerable to Iraqi and Iranian reprisals.

Last week, Iraqi police stormed Camp Ashraf outside Baghdad, killing at least seven and injuring dozens during clashes with the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK. At the time, members of a U.S. unit known as Task Force 134, which deals with prisoners of war, were present outside the compound, said two U.S. officials — one in Washington, one in Iraq — who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A day after the raid, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad met with members of the Iraqi government to urge restraint. The next day, the U.S. Army helped medevac at least two dozen injured members of the MEK, the officials said.

Many Iranians despise the group for siding with Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Iraqi Shi’ites have grievances that grow out of the MEK’s participation in crushing an uprising in southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.

The U.S. has designated the MEK as a terrorist group for these actions and for the assassinations of six Americans in Iran before the 1979 Iranian revolution. But the U.S. nevertheless has sought to protect Camp Ashraf members — who include women and children — from Iraqi or Iranian attack and forced repatriation.

The camp had been under U.S. protection since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Iraq now seeks to reassert control under the provisions of the Status of Forces Agreement signed with Washington last year.

Iraqi media have reported that the government plans to close Camp Ashraf and disperse its residents to other locations in Iraq. Such a move could make the dissidents more vulnerable to Iranian intelligence and angry Iraqi Shi’ites who lost family members in 1991.

"Embassy officials met with representatives from the Government of Iraq [GOI] on July 29, to stress the importance of the GOI fulfilling its commitment to the United States Government to treat Ashraf’s residents humanely and to propose permitting an assessment of injuries and deaths by U.S. forces," one U.S. official wrote in an e-mail to The Washington Times. "The GOI allowed a U.S. medical assessment team to enter Ashraf and subsequently approved joint U.S.-Iraqi medical assistance to injured MEK Ashraf residents."

A spokesman for the Iraqi government, Ali al-Dabbagh, acknowledged that there had been meetings with Americans about the subject.

"There will be no plans to move [the MEK members] anywhere in the short term," he said, denying the Iraqi media reports. "We are thinking of their security about finding a safer place. But till now, this plan is not yet approved."
By Eli Lake

August 5, 2009 0 comment

The MEK Expulsion from Iraq

So What to Do with Those Mujahedin Terrorists?

Deciding the fate of the Mujahedin

The Bush administration inherited many of Iraq’s problems when it invaded that country, including an Iranian terrorist organization funded and armed by Saddam Hussein, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO). Though in the midst of a war on terror, the Bush administration chose in 2003 to protect 3,000 of the organization’s militants and house them in a camp given to the group by Saddam — Camp Ashraf just north of Baghdad. Trita Parsi

Ever since, the faith of this State Department-listed terrorist organization has been unclear. Hated by Iraqis for its involvement in Saddam’s crimes against the Iraqi people, the Baghdad government wants to expel the group. But no country is willing to take them.

Though the Iranian government wants to put the group’s leadership on trial in Iran, it seems less interested in the organization’s rank and file. The European governments have little interest in taking in 3,000 battle-hardened Muslim militants, fearing that they will use Europe as a base to plan and execute further terrorist attacks.

The U.S., on the other hand, has already contradicted its own principles by giving preferential treatment to an organization on the State Department’s terrorist list — even though President Bush himself pointed to the organization’s patronage under Saddam Hussein as evidence of Iraq’s support for international terrorists in his speech to the United Nations in September 2002.

"Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran," President Bush said.

To complicate matters further, if reports that the U.S. has used MKO terrorists for cross-border raids into Iran are true, then Washington certainly doesn’t want these militants to end up in Iranian hands.

Washington seems doomed if it does, doomed if it doesn’t.

Members of the terrorist organization have protested outside the White House this past week, angered by the Bush administration’s decision to hand over Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi government. The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will surrender the MKO members to Tehran, they argue, who in turn will imprison and execute them.

Though approximately 500 MKO fighters have been repatriated to Iran and no reports of abuse have emerged according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversaw their return, sending rank-and-file Mujahedin members to Iran against their will would be irresponsible.

Hated by the Iranian people for having fought on Saddam’s side in the Iraq-Iran war, the Iranian Mujahedin is understandably fearful of the fate awaiting them in Iran.

Yet, contrary to the protesters outside the White House, the issue is not a choice between freedom in Camp Ashraf and captivity in Iran.

The Mujahedin is not an effective opposition to the government in Iran as the organization’s defenders in Washington claim, but a politico-religious cult that brainwashes its members, places children of Mujahedin members with other families in order to prevent parents from defecting, and who according to Human Rights Watch, maintains control by torturing its rank and file. "Members who try to leave the Mujahedin pay a very heavy price," according to Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch.

Its involvement in terrorism is undisputed. It assassinated several Americans in Iran in the 1970s. It supported the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Iran and blasted Ayatollah Khomeini for releasing the American diplomats in 1981, arguing instead that the hostages should have been executed. It made a pact with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and fought alongside his army against their Iranian countrymen. Later in the 1990s, they became Saddam’s most trusted henchmen, tasked with quelling Kurdish and Shiite uprisings against the Iraqi dictator.

According to defectors, Mujahedin members in Camp Ashraf celebrated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In 2004, French authorities descended upon the Mujahedin headquarters in France, arresting the leader of the cult, Maryam Rajavi. Immediately, zealous Mujahedin members staged hunger strikes and several set themselves ablaze. Hardly the behavior of a democratically oriented opposition group.

But the vast majority of the Camp Ashraf residents are not so much members of a terrorist cult as they are victims of it. The camp is itself a prison. It may have provided Mujahedin militants with protection against ordinary Iraqis who sought to avenge their relatives killed by the Mujahedin at the behest of Saddam Hussein, but the prison has primarily enabled the leaders of the terrorist organization to prevent the rank and file from defecting.

Rather than debating where to expel the Mujahedin terrorists, help should be provided to the rank and file to break with the cult and make free choices about their future. It’s the only humanitarian solution to this dilemma – and one that defeats rather than protects this anti-American terrorist group.

Trita Parsi

October 5, 2008 0 comment