In the past, the MEK leadership has refused to allow most residents of Camp Ashraf to apply for refugee status or to speak with UNHCR representatives without MEK officials present.Former members of the group, who contend that the MEK is a cult that fosters blind obedience to its leaders, say that many Ashraf inhabitants have been held against their will and would eagerly leave the camp if they could. ..
The US and the MKO would like to use the MKO as a US proxy against the Islamic Republic as a way to destabilize the Iranian government. Despite the group’s violent extremist background record, it was embraced by some in the US administration. What this means for Iran haters, is that the MKO aka MEK/PMOI are the new freedom fighters, and they deserve, and must be de-listed.
The group’s long list of detractors – and many Iran experts – warn against removing them from the terrorist list.In a 2009 report, Rand, a non-profit Washington think-tank, called the group a”cult”and”skilled manipulators of public opinion”.Based inside Iraq, at a camp called Ashraf, north of Baghdad, the MEK/MKO/PMOI has been on the US list of banned foreign terrorist organisations (FTO) since 1997.
Since 1997, the MEK has been through many ups and downs and now, on the eve of its 50th anniversary, has mobilized all its efforts to be removed from the United State’s list of terrorist organizations. The MEK/MKO/PMOI says it renounced violence in 2001, after claiming responsibility for 350 attacks in 2000 and 2001, according to a RAND Corporation tabulation. However, a 2004 FBI report found that the group was “currently actively involved in planning and executing acts of terrorism.”
The material-support law is the statute prosecutors most use in suspected terrorism cases, including not just in our federal courts but also in military commissions. It is now the most far-reaching statute prosecutors use in suspected terrorism cases. That certainly appears to be happening now, and that’s part of the danger of criminalizing speech and advocacy in this way. It allows the government to pick and choose whose speech and whose advocacy it favors.
In a sign of how even the world’s conservative governments increasingly refuse to support the People’s Muhajeddin Organization of Iran (MKO), an international conference sponsored by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy included Iranian victims of what many say is nothing but a terrorist “cult.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to decide soon whether the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) should remain on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations or be delisted and free to raise taxpayer support for their operations.
The MEK/MKO/PMOI leaders know full well that contrary to their claim, to be or not to be in the list does not strategically make much difference in their destiny since they are already in a fatal deadlock and they have no way out of it. The use of propaganda and publicity over the list of FTO is to retain the disappointed members both inside Ashraf garrison and those in the western countries, and to keep them busy. The struggle to be removed from the FTO list..
An Iranian political group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization is offering large payments to orators willing to speak at events on their behalf. Among those with connections to the organization, Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) aka MKO/PMOI, are Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s chief foreign policy adviser and liberal politician Howard Dean.
“This is clearly an invitation to provide a service to a designated group[MKO/MEK/PMOI/NCR]. This would be a clear violation of the law,”says Cole, who last year argued a major material support case before the Supreme Court. The material support law bars providing not only money and weapons to a foreign terrorist organization, but also”service,”defined by the government as anything of benefit to the group performed in coordination with or at the direction of the group.Cole adds ..