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MKO provoked post-vote unrest

An Iraqi security official says the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) triggered the recent post-election unrests in Iran.

National Security Advisor Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said in an interview with al-Hayat that certain members of the terrorist group had instigated and fomented the recent political unrest in Iran.

"We have intelligence reports available that certain elements of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) infiltrated into the crowd of protestors [after the election results were announced] and sparked the riots."

The announcement of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election sparked opposition rallies in the capital Tehran with defeated candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi rejecting the result as fraudulent and demanding a re-run.

President Ahmadinejad’s victory caused Mousavi supporters to take to the streets to protest the vote result. The rallies turned violent, resulting in the death of at least 20 people.

Al-Rubaie, however, rejected claims that MKO members had entered the country through neighboring Iraq, claiming that MKO terrorists were ‘either already in Iran or had entered it from another country’.

Iranian security officials had earlier reported that a large number of MKO members who were involved in recent riots had been identified and arrested.

According to security officials, the detained MKO members had confessed to receiving extensive training in Iraq’s camp Ashraf to create post-election mayhem in the country.

The MKO is blacklisted as a terrorist organization by many international entities and countries, including the US.

The group was exiled from Iran after the Islamic Revolution and settled in Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The MKO is responsible for numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials as well as Iraqis during the reign of Saddam.

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