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US may give asylum to MEK, Al-Qaida terrorists

US eases rule for asylum seekers who support terror groups

The Obama administration has unilaterally eased the rules for would-be asylum-seekers and refugees who the United States says have given “limited material support” to terrorist groups.

The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department now say people with links to terrorists or terrorist groups are no longer automatically banned from entering the United States.

The DHS said in a statement that the rule change, made last week and not in concert with Congress, gives the administration more discretion on immigration.

Under the new rules, people seeking refugee status, asylum and visa, and those who want to expand their visa, still will be checked to make sure they do not pose a threat to national security, the department said.

The move marks one of President Barack Obama’s first steps towards altering immigration rules since promising to take more executive actions in his State of the Union address last month.

A provision in immigrant law, enacted since Sept. 11, 2001, had affected anyone considered to have give support to terrorists.

The new decision could pave the way for networks like the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), and al-Qaeda-linked foreign insurgents fighting in Syria to seek asylum in the US.

The US government has already taken the MKO off its terror watch list.

February 12, 2014 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

EU must reassess risk after Rajavi orders MEK loyalists to kill critics

Maryam Rajavi has used a meeting at her headquarters near Paris to incite her followers to go ahead and kill individuals that she identifies as her enemies. Speaking to Mojahedin Khalq loyalists on the eve of the thirty fifth anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Rajavi drew a red line between her supporters and everyone else; at one point she lashes out at Iranian opposition groups outside Iran, calling their criticism of the MEK “the struggle of Khamenei’s Pasdars’ satanic attacks against the resistance”, (i.e. Rajavi). Her red line has a very clear definition; you are either totally for us or totally against us.

According to the MEK’s NCRI website, three hundred associations – essentially sub-sects of the Mojahedin Khalq – were in attendance, although the pictures do not reflect these numbers and the associations are not named anywhere in the report. These represent the core supporters of the MEK who are paid to perform the activities which the majority of actual MEK members are incapable of doing. To the extent they are loyal to Rajavi, they are at her command.

Rajavi began to motivate them by first claiming, without providing even anecdotal evidence and in spite of the recent popular election of President Rohani that, “the Iranian society stands ready to change this regime”. She then went on to define her red line: “we highlight the demarcation with the regime in its entirety and we also stress solidarity with all those true defenders of overthrowing the regime”.

To be absolutely clear about what she means by drawing this red line between ‘us and them’, she says, “the struggle of the participant organisations and associations in this convention against the Mullah’s intelligence ministry at this time is the most needed part of the struggle to topple the Mullah’s regime and bring about democracy and the rule of people in Iran. We announce that countering the agents of religious fascist rulers of Iran who are targeting the leadership of the resistance (i.e. Rajavi), is a nationalistic duty of every freedom lover Iranian irrelevant to their political and ideological belief”. [my emphasis]

By “agents of the religious fascist rulers of Iran”, Maryam Rajavi means anyone who criticises the MEK and in particular former members of the MEK who are by default, and “according to the rules of armed struggle [war], condemned to death”.

Since the vast majority of these critics and former members are resident in Europe and North America, ‘countering the agents’ who are ‘condemned to death’ can only be interpreted as instructing her loyal followers to kill these people wherever they reside in the west.

Of course this is never expressed in English, only on the Farsi sites was the threat published. Realising that, as a resident of France, Rajavi would be held personally responsible for incitement to murder, the MEK quickly removed the incriminating Farsi sections of her speech from the hambastegi meli website (a copy is available), and instead an MEK spokesman in Iraq was quoted issuing the same threat. This time more directly as he said, “since we are at war with Iran we will treat anyone who leaves us as someone who has changed sides and we will execute them”. In this context the specific delineation of the red line becomes highly significant as Rajavi is now able to label anybody who does not bow down to her as her enemy , as an “agent of the Iranian regime”. Even those who have escaped Camp Liberty after thirty years in isolation, and threaten them with elimination.

Try as they might the leaders of the MEK cannot for long disguise their total dependence on violence as a means to pursue the very existence of their group. Although posing for Western consumption as a democratic opposition group, the MEK operates as a cult and relies absolutely on instilling fear and dependency on its members. It is imperative that the leaders maintain this atmosphere among the members in order to keep them ‘on message’. As a result, any criticism or protest aimed at exposing the true nature of the group provokes an immediate deployment of intimidation and aggression, sometimes leading to actual physical attacks, even in the streets of western countries. In this way, members (and backers) are graphically reminded of their real role as a group.

The question is, how far will the MEK go to counter the exposures made by former members who are increasing in number and who remain undeterred in their efforts to help rescue those former colleagues who remain trapped in conditions of isolation and suffering daily abuses inside all the MEK’s bases, whether in Iraq or in Europe and North America?

Informed people are beginning to ask what Maryam Rajavi will ask of the members being kept in Iraq against their will. The MEK are trained to violence, to kill and be killed. That has been the MEK’s raison d’être for five decades. It is the reason warmongers and anti-Iran pundits back the group. Loyal members who are trained for assassination are known to already be in Europe. Will they be unleashed soon in an attempt to silence the MEK’s most effective critics? (In her recent speech Maryam Rajavi emphasises that her real enemies – former MEK members – are no more than a handful in every western countries, but she does not name them.)

Judging by past behaviour, the answer to this question is a resounding yes. On many occasions since the MEK established bases in western capitals, it has used violent attacks on its rivals and enemies; tactics from character assassination campaigns to knifings and attempted kidnaps have frequently been reported by victims. Unfortunately, because the MEK has powerful backers, these low level criminal activities have seldom been investigated or prosecuted, leaving the victims vulnerable, though undeterred.

This threat however must be taken seriously. The gruesome death of a former MEK member who had become incarcerated in Camp Ashraf is a vivid reminder of what the MEK is capable of. Massoud Dalili’s disfigured body was discovered among 52 other victims of a violent attack on the Camp which occurred on September 1st 2013. The victims had mostly been subjected to execution style killing. But Dalili’s face had been burned with acid to render him unidentifiable. Although it is still unclear who launched the attack – Iraqi investigators are unable to interview the 42 eyewitness because the MEK are holding them incommunicado inside Camp Liberty – the fact that Dalili was a former high ranking member who disappeared unaccountably from a hotel in Baghdad two years before has led experts on MEK behaviour to conclude that he was killed by the MEK themselves after being kidnapped or deceived into returning to Camp Ashraf. The MEK have simply blamed Iran for his death.

There are further indications that the MEK are actively mobilising to counter the inevitable exposures of former members about human rights abuses committed systematically inside all MEK camps and bases. Two MEK intelligence and security officers of the Mojahedin Khalq have been tracked travelling between Paris and Tirana in Albania. Tirana is now home to some 210 individuals who were recently transferred there from Camp Liberty. The MEK has made every effort to contain them and keep them under cult control, sending minders along with them from Iraq to maintain the control.

Since their arrival, 70 have separated from the MEK and begun to speak out against their treatment in the Iraqi camps. Now, Esmail Mortezaee (Javad Khorasan) and Hassan Nayb Aghad, have been reported bringing suitcases of money (well over a million dollars in cash) with them from Paris out of which they pay $500 per month to each person on condition that they do not talk to anyone, not even their families, about their experiences in the MEK camps, that they do not talk to the UNHCR, which is responsible for the individuals but pays only around $200 per month, and that they work for the MEK by updating social networks to promote the group. Some of these refugees have been threatened with violence and physical elimination. Interestingly, Esmail Mortazaee carries a card or pass which identifies him as working from the Pentagon office in Tirana. He shows this to the ex members as proof of his backing and power over them.

Such activities are not new and have gone on unchallenged for many years in Europe and North America. Many former members who are outspoken critics of the MEK have been, over the years, subjected to mental and physical intimidation carried out with impunity by loyal MEK members trained in security, intelligence and military skills. But importantly, not one of these trained killers will act without the order of their cult leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. It is incumbent on western security services to understand this dynamic and also acquaint themselves with the current change in risk following the transfer of defected MEK members from Iraq to Europe and in particular Maryam Rajavi’s speech in France blatantly giving her ‘permission’ (read order) to go ahead and kill her opponents.

Middle East Strategy Consultants,Author of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

February 12, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Purchased MKO supporters to violate New deal

The sworn enemy of the Iranian Nation, the Mujahedin khalq Organization is passionately paying the US officials to pass new legislations in the Congress that violate the interim agreement reached by Islamic Republic in December 2013 in Geneva. The MKO’ efforts have got some attention among bipartisan US representatives and senators.

Dave Seminara of Purchased MKO supporters to violate New deal The Washington Diplomat puts, "In Washington, there are very few issues that unite Republicans and Democrats. One is support for Israel and condemnation of the Islamic Republic of Iran." [1] The Israeli notorious lobby AIPAC is a powerful Zionist body that effectively runs Israeli policies including hostile guidelines against Iran, in the US government.

"The MeK is putting a lot of effort behind the same Senate sanctions bill that the Israel Lobby is so staunchly behind" , writes Jason Ditz of the Anitwar website. "The bill would violate the Iran deal by imposing new sanctions, and would effectively kill negotiations." [2]

Today, the MKO’s Multi million campaign in the Congress is in the limelight of various media in the West although the group is hardly ever known in its own motherland. The Diplomat correspondent describes the opportunist nature of the group. "With its shadowy past, shifting ideologies and deep pockets, the MEK has been called the most powerful lobby you’ve never heard of," He writes, " It has evolved from killing Americans to courting them — and supporting the Iranian Revolution to becoming its sworn enemy."[3]

Removed from the list of officially designated terrorist organizations in 2012, after an intense multimillion lobbying campaign in which the organization gave donations to Congress and recruited a number of high-profile former officials, the second step for the MKO seems to be pushing the US and its allies particularly Israel towards war with Tehran where the group leaders dream of founding their own dictatorship. "While the depth of the MeK’s funding of this is, like much of their lobbying, strictly off-the-record ,the group appears to still envision itself being the benefactors of US-imposed regime change in Iran, and is willing to pull out all the stops to see to it that diplomacy does not succeed and rapprochement remains impossible,” suggests Jason Ditz.[4]

In order to make such a disastrous dream come true, the MKO has to closely work with Israel . Regarding the MKO-Israeli relations, Dave Seminara asks John Ghazvinian a historian who is working on a book about the history of U.S.-Iranian relations. Ghazvinian thinks the MEK-Israel connection is credible. "The Israelis have a long history of using the MEK as a sort of foil,” the historian said. “In 2002, when the allegations about Iran’s nuclear programs hit the headlines, they were presented to the world as having come from the MEK, but they probably came from Israel. The revelations were handed to the MEK because the Mossad didn’t want to be obvious. Better to present the information as coming from this ‘Iranian opposition group.’ It made it look to the world like it was Iranians blowing the whistle, but that was probably not what happened.”[5]

Although American Neo-cons and other ardent supporters of Israel consider the group up as a possible "democratic" alternative to Islamic Republic, many intellectuals and analysts believe that they are thoroughly misguided. John Ghazvinian told the Diplomat that sponsoring the MKO terrorist cult "could derail sensitive talks with Iran on the nuclear issue ".[6]

John Glasser of Antiwar also criticizes the US double standards towards Terrorism. He warns the former government officials speaking out on behalf of this group against diplomacy with Iran would launch them in " the inevitable war path to Tehran". Glasser refers to the famous White House document in which George W. Bush includes Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorists like MEK in his propaganda justifying the invasion of Iraq: “Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several US military personnel and US civilians.”[7]

Regardless of all dual approaches of the West towards Iranian nuclear program and the MKO terrorist cult of personality, the group’s support in the West is extremely limited. Moreover and more important is its support inside Iran which is "virtually none" ."The MEK is the one thing that most Iranians of any political persuasion can agree on,” Ghazvinian tells Seminara. “They are viewed as traitors to their country.”[8]

The historical memory of the Iranian people never forgets the atrocities the MKO committed against their own country fellowmen during the years of their serving as Saddam Hussein mercenaries as well as the services they offer Israel.

By Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Seminara, Dave, Small Band of Iranian Exiles Gets Lots of Attention in U.S., The Washington Diplomat, January 28, 2014

[2]Ditz, Jason, Mujahedin-e Khalq Opposes Iran Deal, Pushes Sanctions, MeK-Paid Officials Blast Deal as ‘Appeasement’, Antiwar.com , January 29, 2014

[3] Seminara, Dave, Small Band of Iranian Exiles Gets Lots of Attention in U.S., The Washington Diplomat, January 28, 2014

[4] Ditz, Jason, Mujahedin-e Khalq Opposes Iran Deal, Pushes Sanctions, MeK-Paid Officials Blast Deal as ‘Appeasement’, Antiwar.com , January 29, 2014

[5] Seminara, Dave, Small Band of Iranian Exiles Gets Lots of Attention in U.S., The Washington Diplomat, January 28, 2014

[6]ibid

[7]Glasser John, The Other Lobby: MEK’s Crusade Against US-Iran Negotiations, Antiwar.com, January 31, 2014

[8] ] Seminara, Dave, Small Band of Iranian Exiles Gets Lots of Attention in U.S., The Washington Diplomat, January 28, 2014

February 8, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Small Band of Iranian Exiles Gets Lots of Attention in U.S.

In Washington, there are very few issues that unite Republicans and Democrats. One is support for Israel and condemnation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet the story of how an exiled Iranian dissident group Small Band of Iranian Exiles Gets Lots of Attention in U.S. secured bipartisan support from a host of heavyweight Washington insiders and fought its way off of the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations illustrates how power is wielded in Washington, and how former officials continue to influence American foreign policy.

The Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), also known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and People’s Holy Warriors, inspires fierce passion among its followers, deep skepticism among its critics, and more than its fair share of conspiracy theories. With its shadowy past, shifting ideologies and deep pockets, the MEK has been called “the most powerful lobby you’ve never heard of.” It has evolved from killing Americans to courting them — and supporting the Iranian Revolution to becoming its sworn enemy.

Violent History

The MEK was one of two Marxist guerrilla student groups formed in the 1960s to topple Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran.

Iranian-American activists protest in Washington, D.C., in June 2009 demanding protection for members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) in Camp Ashraf. The MEK says the Iraqi government periodically attacked the camp, where some 3,000 MEK members have since been moved to another camp near Baghdad after being taken off the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

“They played an important role in bringing down the Shah,” said John Ghazvinian, a historian who is working on a book about the history of U.S.-Iranian relations. “But they fell out of favor and [Ayatollah] Khomeini condemned them as hypocrites. He called them the ‘Hypocrites of the People’ and said you can’t be Marxists and Muslims at the same time.”

In the ’70s and ’80s, the group committed acts of terrorism against the Islamic theocracy, killing scores of Iranians, plus six Americans. In perhaps their most notorious attack, MEK operatives blew up the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party in 1981, killing more than 70 prominent Iranian politicians, including members of parliament, clerics and cabinet ministers. Two months later, they killed the prime minister and newly elected president.

“That massive campaign of terrorism turned Iranian people completely against them,” said Ghazvinian.

During the Iran-Iraq War, the group was given refuge by Saddam Hussein, and it mounted attacks on Iran from within Iraqi territory and joined Hussein’s brutal crackdown on the Kurdish rebellion. The State Department placed the MEK on its list of designated terrorist groups in 1997 for a “swath of terror” that targeted Americans and killed thousands of Iranians. But the group, which in the last decade has renounced violence, was removed from the State Department’s terrorist list in September 2012 after an intense lobbying campaign involving dozens of prominent American officials, including former directors of the FBI and CIA, generals and prominent politicians, most of them recently retired.

Limbo at Liberty

The U.S. military disarmed the MEK after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, reportedly securing their cooperation in exchange for a pledge to protect them at Camp Ashraf. The group provided intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program — some charge that the information was funneled to them by Israeli intelligence — and began to win allies in the Department of Defense by sounding the right notes about democracy, women’s empowerment and freedom of speech.

Since control of Camp Ashraf was returned to Iraq in 2009, more than 100 MEK members have been killed, allegedly by Iraqi security forces with ties to Iran. MEK supporters believe that the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad is deliberately targeting their group, now about 3,200 strong and located in the former Camp Liberty near Baghdad, acting on orders from the Iranian regime, which still views them as traitors.

The bulk of MEK members moved to Liberty (also called Camp Hurriya) last year, reportedly as a condition for being taken off the State Department’s terrorist list. (From there, U.N. and State officials hope to resettle them in third countries.)

About 100 members remain at Camp Ashraf, where 52 people were killed in a Sept. 1 attack that the MEK blamed on Iraqi security forces (a separate rocket attack on Camp Liberty in late December reportedly killed three people). The circumstances of the Ashraf attack remain murky. Nevertheless, the deaths sparked outrage in various quarters of Washington.

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) decried what he called a “massacre.” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, demanded that Iraq do more to find the seven members who were allegedly taken hostage during the attack. Both suggested withholding U.S. weapons sales to Baghdad until it cooperates. Marc Ginsberg, former U.S. ambassador to Morocco under the Clinton administration, evoked the memory of John F. Kennedy and his advocacy for refugees to push President Obama to help the Iranian dissidents. Reporter James Morrison of the Washington Times’s Embassy Row column has written about the MEK no fewer than a dozen times last year alone.

Beltway Cause Célèbre

The plight of these 3,000 stranded Iranians has certainly taken up an inordinate amount of bandwidth in Washington, as strange bedfellows offer a full-throated defense of a group that has been described by critics and former members as a cult.

The MEK is part of an umbrella coalition known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Paris-based “parliament in exile” led for decades by Maryam Rajavi and her husband Massoud (Maryam is now the main figurehead). Interestingly, feminism is part of the group’s ideology, and the MEK is “the only army in the world with a commander corps composed mostly of women,” according to Elizabeth Rubin, a former Council on Foreign Relations press fellow.

Critics though say the group is hardly a beacon of democracy and women’s rights. Defectors have accused it of being a totalitarian cult that forced its members to divorce and stay celibate (so they could focus on fighting Iran) and confess their sexual fantasies in public. The MEK counters that many former members are really Iranian agents out to tarnish them.

Despite its opacity and relative obscurity, analysts agree that the MEK has been able to punch above its weight in Washington. The bipartisan roster of prominent supporters includes: R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss, both former CIA directors; Louis J. Freeh, the former FBI director; President George W. Bush’s homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, his attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, and his chief of staff, Andrew Card; former National Security Adviser Gen. James L. Jones; former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton; former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell; former House Speakers Dennis Hastert and Newt Gingrich; and former Vermont Governor and Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean, among many others.

“You had people who had made their names as terrorism fighters in the Bush administration offering to speak on behalf of the MEK, which was on the terrorist list at the time, for $10,000,” said Jeremiah Goulka, a writer and former analyst at the Rand Corp. who was the lead author of a lengthy 2009 report on the MEK. (The MEK took issue with the report, hiring a crisis communications firm to publish its own rebuttal. Goulka says he spent a year researching the report in the United States and in Iraq, along with its co-authors, and stands by it.)

Many on the MEK’s list of prominent supporters were indeed paid by the group to deliver speeches, sometimes reportedly charging up to $40,000 per speaking engagement. Rendell told the Washington Post that he was paid more than $150,000 in expenses. The MEK also recruited journalists as speakers. According to ProPublica, the group paid Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame $12,000 and Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, $20,000.

A number of the MEK’s high-profile supporters spoke on its behalf while it was still designated as a terrorist group, often through speaker agencies or third-party Iranian-American organizations. According to news reports, the Treasury Department investigated Rendell’s receipt of money from the MEK but apparently declined to pursue the matter.

Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon, pointed out that numerous Muslims inside the United States “have been prosecuted for providing ‘material support for terrorism’ for doing far less than these American politicians are publicly doing on behalf of a designated terrorist group.”

An Iran analyst who works for a major think tank in Washington, D.C., but didn’t want to speak for attribution because he feared a backlash from MEK supporters, said that the MEK’s well-funded lobbying campaign, which included full-page ads in prominent newspapers as well as high-powered advocacy, was what got them off the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

“They are paying a lot of influential people big sums of money to come and speak at their events, and I think that’s had an impact,” he said. “They’re a marginal actor on the Iran issue, but they garner support because they spend a lot of money.”

Hired Guns?

How does a group of Iranian dissidents, most of them stranded in a refugee camp in Iraq, afford millions of dollars to advertise and pay big-name politicians to make speeches? A story in NBC News from February 2012, citing unnamed U.S. officials, asserted that the MEK was financed by Israeli intelligence, which also reportedly used MEK operatives to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The MEK issued a statement denying the allegations.

Ghazvinian thinks the MEK-Israel connection is credible.

“The Israelis have a long history of using the MEK as a sort of foil,” the historian said. “In 2002, when the allegations about Iran’s nuclear programs hit the headlines, they were presented to the world as having come from the MEK, but they probably came from Israel. The revelations were handed to the MEK because the Mossad didn’t want to be obvious. Better to present the information as coming from this ‘Iranian opposition group.’ It made it look to the world like it was Iranians blowing the whistle, but that was probably not what happened.”

Goulka said he wasn’t sure if the MEK would risk getting involved in covert activities like the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists because, at that time, the group was making a major push to get off the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

Despite being on that list, Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, reported in 2012 that the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained MEK operatives at a secret site in Nevada beginning in 2005. A JSOC spokesperson denied the report.

Still, suspicions linger that the group hasn’t completely left its militancy days behind it and is being recruited as a proxy to fight Iran, much like it was by Saddam Hussein years ago.

‘American Honor’

The MEK declined numerous interview requests, but in an interview with The Diplomat, Howard Dean said that he wasn’t under any illusions about the MEK’s past — or the present-day humanitarian situation it finds itself in. Dean acknowledged being paid by the MEK to make speeches at their conferences over the years but declined to say how much he received, insisting that it was only his “normal speaking fee.” But he said that he would be a supporter of the MEK regardless of whether they paid him.

“That’s what really annoys me about journalists,” he said, referring to insinuations in the media that he was paid by the MEK in exchange for his support. “What they say is, because I gave a speech for the MEK, therefore my argument doesn’t mean anything…. I was never paid to speak on their behalf. I was paid to speak at their conferences and I say what I damn well please, which is what I always do. There’s a lot of snideness and assumptions. If you think we can all be bought by speaking fees, that’s your privilege.”

Dean alleged that many supposedly nonpartisan Iran analysts in the United States are actually on the Islamic Republic’s payroll, and he insisted that there was an “Arabist rump” at the State Department that was soft on Iran and unhelpful to the MEK. He also maintains that senior American military commanders convinced the MEK to disarm after the invasion of Iraq and promised them protection.

“Thirty-one hundred unarmed people get herded into what has turned into a prison camp — we talked them into that. We thought it was the best way to get them out of Iraq in one piece,” he told us. “Since then, the State Department has done very little to keep them safe. They are in danger every single day. They’re being abused every day.”

The group was issued identity cards, but it’s unclear how U.S. officials could pledge to protect MEK members, knowing that U.S. troops wouldn’t be in the country indefinitely. Dean maintained that retired U.S. Army Col. Wes Martin or retired Brig. Gen. David Phillips could verify what was promised to the MEK. The Diplomat learned that both are now members of the U.S. Foundation for Liberty, a nonprofit group that appears to be working on behalf of MEK members in Iraq. The foundation did not respond to a request to make Phillips or Martin available for an interview.

The State Department appointed a senior advisor, Jonathan Wine, to help resettle those in Camp Hurriya, and the United Nations has been in the process of determining their refugee status. Albania has agreed to take about 200 MEK exiles, but no other country has stepped forward to accept any others. Dean says Washington should organize an airlift to bring the 3,100 remaining members to the United States, where he believes they should be allowed to stay permanently as refugees.

“It’s a matter of American honor,” he argued. “Are we willing to let 3,100 now civilians die? I don’t think that would preserve American honor.”

But if the State Department is reluctant to issue visas for Iraqi and Afghan interpreters who risked their lives to help Americans during those wars, it’s doubtful Washington would bring over 3,000 Iranians that up until fairly recently were officially deemed terrorists. Moreover, Ghazvinian warned that action could derail sensitive talks with Iran on the nuclear issue.

“At a time when we’re possibly about to make headway with Iran in the nuclear negotiations, it strikes me that giving asylum to 3,000 MEK is quite possibly the dumbest thing we could do,” he said. “Even dumber than adding new sanctions.”

MEK’s Chances Back Home

Yet some neoconservatives and avid supporters of Israel on the left hold the group up as a possible democratic alternative to the clerical regime in Iran. But Iran scholars and analysts say that notion is wishful thinking.

“The MEK is a lot like Ahmed Chalabi was for Iraq,” said Goulka, referring to the Iraqi dissident accused of trumping up intelligence on Iraq’s phantom weapons of mass destruction to goad the United States into war.

The Iran analyst who spoke to The Diplomat on background said that hardcore opponents of Iran have reflexively backed the MEK, without knowing much about the group.

“There’s a tendency to support any group that opposes the Islamic Republic without delving very deep into what that group stands for,” he said.

Goulka’s report for Rand alleged that the MEK leadership engaged in cult-like practices after leaving Iran.

“Families were broken up, there was mandatory divorce, there is mandatory celebratory,” he said. “They separate friends. They tell family members back home in Iran that members were killed by the regime, so they don’t try to get in touch. They keep diaries of their sexual thoughts and then discuss them. They’re publicly jeered for having them but if they deny having them, they are criticized because they must be lying.”

In 2005, Human Rights Watch issued a report alleging that the MEK engaged in serious human rights abuses from 1991 until February 2003, prior to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, including “prolonged deprivation of liberty and torture.”

Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times Magazine visited Camp Ashraf just after U.S. forces invaded Iraq. “After my visit, I met and spoke to men and women who had escaped from the group’s clutches. Many had to be deprogrammed. They recounted how people were locked up if they disagreed with the leadership or tried to escape; some were even killed,” she wrote.

The State Department itself once had harsh words for the group. In a 1994 report to Congress, it said that co-founder Massoud Rajavi “fostered a cult of personality” around himself and that “internally, the Mujahedin run their organization autocratically, suppressing dissent and eschewing tolerance of differing viewpoints.”

Massoud Rajavi himself hasn’t been seen publicly in more than a decade, only adding to the enigma of the MEK. Regardless, both the State Department and the European Union seemed to have changed their tunes about the Iranian exile group, removing it from their respective terrorist lists.

But Ghazvinian, who has spent time in Iran recently to conduct research for his book, says the group has scant support in Europe and North America, and virtually none in Iran.

“The MEK is the one thing that most Iranians of any political persuasion can agree on,” he said. “They are viewed as traitors to their country.”

By Dave Seminara, The Washington Diplomat

February 4, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Report Discloses MKO’s Ties with French Counterintelligence

The terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI or PMOI) has been reporting its activities and operations in Iraq as well as the status quo in the country to the French counterintelligence agency every two weeks for years, a report revealed on Monday.

The MKO leaders were called to the headquarters of the French counterintelligence agency every two weeks to present their intelligence on the situation in Iran, Habilian Association – a human rights NGO representing the families of 17,000 Iranian terror victims – said quoting a report from the Lebanese al-Nahar daily.

“We have had good relations with the French government since 2002 and had regular contacts with the French counterintelligence agency, interior ministry and president’s office,” Spokesman of the MKO in France Afshin Alawi told the AFP according to al-Nahar.

“The counterintelligence agency had some meetings with us at its headquarters so that we present our reports on the events in Iran,” he added.

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 the 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 eventually took the MKO off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September 2012, one week after the then 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.

February 4, 2014 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Gross abuses continue in Mujahedin Khalq Camp

Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), have been busy seeking to raise the issue of human rights violations in Iran to gain the support of agencies and diplomatic bodies, such as the European Union, the European Parliament, the UN and others to consider it as a credible and real opposition group against

Gross abuses continue in Mujahedin Khalq Camp the IRI. The aim of MKO is to put pressure on IRI through international sanctions and also to gain support of these international organizations in order to show itself as a democratic replacement for Iranian government.

At the same time in a parallel move the group’s high-priced public relations and lobbying firms are hard at work trying to whitewash the MEK’s violent, vicious black trace. Years of lobbying and buying support got the MKO delisted in 2012. However, no longer being considered a terrorist group does not make the MKO democratic, as anyone who has ever studied their internal workers can attest.[1]

Elizabeth Rubin writer of the famous article” The Cult of Rajavi” who visited the Camp Ashraf in 2003 says:” despite its rhetoric, the Mujahedeen operates like any other dictatorship. .. As the historian Abrahamian told me, ”No one can criticize Rajavi.”[2]

Although the illegal multi-million dollar lobby of the group brought it about with some paid advocators, yet the MKO making use of the human rights issues bear no fruit for the group and the things doesn’t go as the group leaders wishes. The human rights issue resulted in the opposite of what they longed for.

US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report in 2005 on Human Rights abuses taking place within MKO Camps. The report was based on interviews with 12 former members of the group now living in Europe. They alleged abuses ranging from detention, solitary confinement, beatings and torture. [3]

In mid-2009, the Pentagon- Funded Rand Corporation also published a report titled ‘Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum’. The RAND report also reaffirmed the MKO as a cult that abuses its own members.[4]

Jeremiah Goulka who as an analyst with the RAND Corporation was sent to Iraq says: “… I also interviewed former MEK members. As Human Rights Watch also concluded, I saw that the MEK is a cult. It uses brainwashing, sleep deprivation, and forced labor to indoctrinate members.”[5]

The leaders and their supporters of course deny being a cult which abuses members accusing the critics to being either IRI agents or their dupes. However, many outsiders who eye witnessed the affairs of the MKO along with the groups’ former members testimonies evidently prove the harsh abuses MKO practice on its members.

U.N. envoy Martin Kobler several times accused the leaders of Mujahedin Khalq of human rights abuses.[6]

The UNAMI Half Yearly Report on Human Rights also reiterated continuing concerns about human rights abuses committed by the PMOI leadership within Camp Liberty against the residents.[7]

One senior State Department official (now retired), sent to Iraq to interview thousands of MEK members after the invasion, concluded that the organization was a cult; that the weirdly child-free Camp Ashraf was ‘a human tragedy’; that members were ‘misused and misled’ by the leadership; and that many had been tricked into joining[8]

The Rajavis couldn’t hide the true nature of their handmade destructive cult as continued evidences indicate that MKO commits abuses against its own members. The group former members recite their firsthand accounts of abuses taking place in MKO Camps.

More recently an Iraqi physician through a letter to Iraq Human Rights Ministry cited its experiences with the Camp Liberty hunger strikers. The Iraqi physician wrote in his letter the hunger strikers told him that they were forced by the group’s ringleaders to go on hunger strike. They also gave letters to the Iraqi medics to be submitted to due Human Rights bodies and stated their unwillingness to stay with the Cult.[9]

The MKO leaders see their so called organization on the verge of collapse .They have stuck in the limbo of Iraq. The recruitment tricks they applied before doesn’t work anymore and they have problem keeping members as they are fed up with the cult practices and the full of mendacity leaders. The Camp Liberty residents risk everything to escape the cult. The reports suggest the defection of about 70 out of 159 members of the organization who have been transferred to Albania.

So the Rajavis prefer to keep members in Iraq to save their cult rather than relocating them to other countries where they will lose members and consequently their handmade cult.

Besides, allying with the Iranian nation enemies didn’t bring anything good for the MKO as their time has reached the end for their western lords. The West prefer not to disrupt diplomacy with Iran by pleasing a broken cult.

The bitter reality which is difficult for the MKO to come along with is that it has been excluded from the international political spheres.

The cult leaders who are struggling hard to survive do not hesitate to victimize all its members. The international Human Rights bodies should take action, prevent a disaster and save the 3000+ individuals who are trapped behind the bars of a destructive cult of personality. They should also make the Cult leaders accountable for the crimes they have committed against their own members.

By: A. Sepinoud

References:

[1] Rubin, Michael, Yes-Mujahedin al Khalq is a dishonest cult, Commentary Magazine, July 07, 2013

[2] Rubin, Elizabeth, The Cult of Rajavi, The New York Times, July 13, 2003

[3] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/79

[4] Goulka, Jeremiah, Hansell, Lydia, Wilke, Elizabeth, Larson, Judith, The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq, A Policy Conundrum, RAND

[5] Jeremiah,Goulka, THE IRAN WAR HAWKS’ FAVORITE CULT GROUP, Salon.com, March 28, 2012

[6] Charbonneau, Louis, Iran dissidents in Iraq, accused of rights abuses, slam UN envoy, Reuters News, July16,2013

[7] UNAMI Half Yearly Report on Human Rights – January to June 2013

[8] Bennett-Jones, Owen, Terrorists? Us? , London review of books, December 2011

[9] Fars News , Mojahedin Khalq Members Fail to Escape Camp Liberty, January 28, 2014

February 3, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq 's Terrorism

French author criticize his government for hosting the MKO

French philosopher, Journalist, former government official and academic, Regis Debray has recently visited Iran. He has written his account of a brief stay in Tehran and Qom. Impressed by the trip to Iran, the French journalist got to know that his visit to Iran was “enough to shake lazy prejudices” he “was not free to leave”.

Debray recounts the “joie de vie” within the Iranian youth and describes the government as”too fragmented and plural to be told ‘totalitarian'”. He criticized his government for double standard and mistaken policies towards Iranians including hosting the Mujahedin Khalq Organization terror cult in French territory and aiding “the Iraqi aggressor” Saddam Hussein in the disastrous war against Iran.

Regis Debray suggests:

We are much more conscious of always hosting on our territory, with visible public support (by parliamentarians and mayors), the People’s Mujahedin, politico religious cult, so far without representation in the country, and with the record of fighting alongside Saddam Hussein against its motherland. It targeted and killed half of the government and made thousands of civilians die.”Where are the terrorists”, we ask. ” Are they with you or with us?”

Nejat Society reporting from the French daily newspaper Le Monde

February 2, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US officials ‘bribed’ to lobby against Iran

A number of high-profile former US officials are getting paid by an exiled Iranian terrorist group known as Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) to lobby the Obama administration against diplomacy with Iran.

The former US government officials lobbying on behalf of MKO include former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg, General James L. Jones, and former US Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation Robert Joseph, reports BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray who attended a briefing sponsored by the group.

A US-based Iranian group affiliated with the MKO sponsored the event Wednesday in the Dirksen Senate office building on Capitol Hill to press for additional sanctions against Iran as nuclear talks continue to unfold.

The MKO has “combined efforts with Israeli, Zionist” groups to “bribe” US officials, said Scott Rickard, a former American intelligence linguist in Florida.

The four American officials “are nothing more than Zionist puppets who are consistently being paid by this group (MKO) and this group obviously being funded by anti-Iranian and pro-Israel initiatives,” Rickard told Press TV on Saturday.

“This is a form of bribery and the bribery goes on and on and on,” he added.

The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and has committed numerous terrorist acts against Iranians and Iraqis.

The group fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it had former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein’s support and set up Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border.

In December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to Camp Liberty.

“I said I was for it, but as a condition of signing the nuclear agreement, we ought to make sure these 3,000 people are safe and they ought to be out of Iraq,” Dean said of his stance on negotiating with Iran, according to BuzzFeed.

The last group of the MKO terrorists was evicted by the Iraqi government on September 11, 2013, to join the other members of the terrorist group at Camp Liberty and await potential relocation to other countries.

February 2, 2014 0 comments

European Union

EU to offer €22 million aid for MKO members’ resettlement

The European Union plans to provide 20 million euros in aid for the relocation of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, a.k.a. MKO) members outside Iraq.

According to the A EU to offer €22 million aid for MKO members’ resettlement rabic-language website Voice of Russia, in her meeting with the Iraqi minister of Human Rights, head of the European Union Delegation in Iraq Ambassador Jana Hybáškova, said the EU plans to allocate 22 million euros for the relocation of MKO members outside Iraq in order to respond to Iraq’s requests.

The Iraqi Minister of Human Rights said the GOI has been seriously obligated to the agreement signed with the United Nations.

The United Nations and the Government of Iraq signed on December 25, 2011, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a humanitarian and peaceful resolution of the situation of the MKO members in Iraq.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani criticized as “irresponsible” the countries who are constantly expressing concern over the condition of MKO members in Iraq, but refuse to accept them in their countries.

A number of other representatives of diplomatic delegations in Iraq were also present at the meeting.

Germany’s ambassador to Iraq referred to his country’s readiness to accept 100 members of the MKO, adding “87 of them had been living in Germany.”

Voice of Russian, arabic – translated by Habilian Association

February 2, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Other Lobby: MEK’s Crusade Against US-Iran Negotiations

If you say it out loud, it seems too preposterous to be true. Four high-profile former government officials are getting paid by an Iranian dissident group that until 2012 was an officially designated terrorist organization to publicly oppose the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran.

BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray attended a briefing in the Dirksen Senate office building on Capitol Hill sponsored by “an Iranian exile group related to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK).” The former government officials speaking out on behalf of this group against diplomacy with Iran included “former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg, General James L. Jones, and and former US Special Envoy for Nuclear Nonproliferation Robert Joseph.”

Robert Joseph described the diplomacy as “appeasement” and urged additional sanctions, which Obama has promised to veto, to stop “Iran’s nuclear quest.”

Howard Dean refused to answer questions as to whether he was still getting boatloads of money from MEK groups and even went so far as to say that U.S.-Iran negotiations should not go forward until the Obama administration agrees to grant some kind of asylum to the 3,000 MEK activists sheltered by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein that are now living in a U.S. military base called Camp Liberty.

“We ought to sign no agreement until those 3000 people are safe,” Dean said.

Rewind to 2003. George W. Bush included Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorists like MEK in his propaganda justifying the invasion of Iraq. “Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization,” reads a document in the archives of the White House’s website, “which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several US military personnel and US civilians.”

As recently as 2007, a State Department report warned that the MEK, retains “the capacity and will” to attack “Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.”

Many experts, including current senior U.S. officials, believe that the MEK, backed by Israel, is the group responsible for assassinating Iran’s civilian nuclear scientists in what are clear-cut terrorist acts.

This is the group lobbying hard to get high-profile U.S. officials to come out publicly against the U.S.-Iran negotiations, which supporters say is the only thing with any chance of verifiably curtailing Iran’s nuclear program and keeping Washington off the inevitable war path to Tehran.

Like I said, reality seems stranger than fiction in this case.

By: John Glaser

February 1, 2014 0 comments

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