A field commander of Iraq’s al-Mukhtar Army that attacked the camp where the commanders and members of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, PMOI and NCRI) have been sheltered revealed that one of the MKO members had provided them with intelligence to carry out the operation.
"The coordinates and locations of the (Liberty) base had been given to us by an MKO member who is now in Liberty," the commander said on Wednesday.
He said that the difficult and painful living conditions at Liberty Camp makes the MKO members who don’t see any chance to escape the camp, cooperate with groups like al-Mukhtar Army as their only chance for reversing the situation as they prefer to be killed or injured and be transferred out of Liberty than stay in the Camp.
Al-Mukhtar Army rocket attacks crashed in and around Liberty on Thursday, killing 23 members and wounding over 200, including senior commanders of the terrorist group.
"We warned the members of this terrorist organization to leave Iraq as soon as possible … If they don’t do so, there will be more similar attacks," al-Mukhtar Army commander Wathiq al-Battat said on Friday.
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 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 argued for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.
The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under the US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with the American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.
In September 2012, the last groups of the MKO terrorists left Camp Ashraf, their main training center in Iraq’s Diyala province. They have been transferred to Camp Liberty. Hundreds of the MKO terrorists have now been sent to Europe, where their names were taken off the blacklist even two years before the US.
The MKO has assassinated over 12,000 Iranians in the last 4 decades. The terrorist group had even killed large numbers of Americans and Europeans in several terror attacks before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.