The anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has played an active role during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990, a document released by a Kuwaiti daily disclosed.
According to a report published by the Kuwaiti Al-Dar daily, the MKO members had all-out cooperation with Saddam forces and were in massive intelligence coordination with former Iraqi regimes’ military and security authorities during the occupation of Kuwait.
The MKO members had also participated in checkpoint operations and interrogated Kuwaiti citizens, the Habilian Association, an Iran-based human rights group, quoted the Kuwaiti paper as saying.
The daily said that MKO’s main elements were stationed at a hotel near Hawalli square during the Kuwait occupation.
The Invasion of Kuwait was a major conflict between Iraq and Kuwait, which resulted in the seven-month long Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, which subsequently led to direct military intervention by US-led forces in the Persian Gulf War.
The invasion started on August 2, 1990, and within two days of intense combat, most of the Kuwaiti Armed Forces were either overrun by the Iraqi Republican Guard or escaped to neighboring Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
The state of Kuwait was annexed, and Saddam Hussein announced in a few days that it was the 19th province of Iraq.
The MKO, 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.
The group started assassination of the 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 Neo-conservatives in the United States, who also argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.