Head of Iraq’s Court of Appeal judge Munir Haddad said that Iraq’s people and government are resolved to expel the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from the country.
“The great powers, the US in particular, are seeking to reach many of their goals through terrorists, specially the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization,”Haddad said in a meeting with Secretary-General of Habilian Association Seyed Javad Hasheminejad.
Habilian Association is an Iranian non-governmental entity formed of the bereaved families of terror victims.
Haddad further condemned the US support for terrorists in Iraq, and underlined that the MKO has played an active role in sowing discord and violating peace in the country.
“Wherever the US sought to create sabotage and terror, the MKO has played an active role,”Habilian website quoted Haddad as saying.
Haddad further pointed out that the MKO has long sought to stir political feud between Iranian and Iraqi brothers, but its efforts have backfired and caused closer ties between the two Muslim neighboring nations.
Hasheminejad, for his part, noted that the presence of the MKO in Iraq is a violation of the international law, reiterating that the hues and cries by a limited number of pro-MKO media and supporters in Europe can in no way sway the law in this regard.
He further expressed hope that terrorism in Iraq would disappear in the near future.
The MKO, whose main stronghold is in Iraq’s Diyala province, is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.
The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).
Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.
A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.
According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.
Numerous articles and letters posted on the Internet by family members of MKO recruits confirm reports of the horrific abuse that the group inflicts on its own members and the alluring recruitment methods it uses.
The most shocking of such stories includes accounts given by former British MKO member Ann Singleton and Mustafa Mohammadi – the father of an Iranian-Canadian girl who was drawn into the group during an MKO recruitment campaign in Canada.
Mohammadi recounts his desperate efforts to contact his daughter, who disappeared several years ago – a result of what the MKO called a”two-month tour”of Camp Ashraf for teenagers.
He also explains how the group forces the families of its recruits to take part in pro-MKO demonstrations in Western countries by threatening to kill their loved ones.
Lacking a foothold in Iran, the terrorist group recruits ill-informed teens from Iranian immigrant communities in western states and blocks their departure afterwards.
The group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and western targets.
Leaders of the group have been fighting to shed its terrorist tag after a series of bloody anti-western attacks in the 1970s, and nearly 30 years of violent struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The group started assassination of citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief Mohammad Hossein Beheshti, who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.
The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.
The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.
Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by the neo-conservatives in the United States, who argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.