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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Maryam Rajavi and her cult brand prove too toxic for The Hill

Struan Stevenson has written an article for The Hill titled ‘Iraqi pipe dreams’ which attacks both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iraqi government led by Al Abadi. But in spite of the usual hyperbolic tone, driven by his support for the remnants of the former Saddam regime, the article has not a single mention of the Mojahedin Khalq or Maryam Rajavi.

For those who know his background, this absence is significant. It indicates very strongly that the Rajavi brand has become so toxic that it is better to omit it completely. It’s not as though Stevenson has dropped the MEK though. His biography admits he is currently President of the Mojahedin Khalq’s lobby group ‘European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA)’. Before this he spent a decade in his former position as an MEP advocating for the MEK and its destructive role in Iraq as chairman of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq. Here he misused the parliamentary system to recruit other MEPs to his side by using the MEK’s deceptive blend of fact and fiction, aided by the MEK’s financial incentives and its neoslave labour. Several times he hosted Maryam Rajavi in parliament to pass the message of ‘violent regime change’ against both Iran and Iraq.

Now, although the MEK has publicised Stevenson’s article and other writings in its websites, he has not been able to reciprocate by giving them desperately needed publicity in one of America’s top political publications. Apparently The Hill has drawn the line at that kind of propaganda stunt.

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Maryam Rajavi

US Envoy Becomes Next to Refuse Attending House Hearing Due to MKO Leader’s Attendance

Former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford joined former State Department counter-terror official Daniel Benjamin as a second witness that refused to testify at a House hearing because of the presence of the leader of the anti-Iran Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK, PMOI and NCRI) in the meeting.

“I didn’t want to be on a panel with the MEK. I was shocked they invited the MEK. What the MEK has to do with the ISIL, I don’t have a clue,” Ford told FP.

“I told the committee to put me on a panel without the MEK or I wouldn’t appear,” the former envoy stressed.

The April 29 hearing, in front of a House subcommittee on terrorism and nonproliferation, will focus on the threat from the ISIL, which has overrun much of Syria and Iraq. Among the invited speakers is Maryam Rajavi, president of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is the umbrella organization for groups that include Mojahedeen-e-Khalq (MKO), the foreign policy reported.

Earlier, former State Department counterterror official Daniel Benjamin balked at sharing the spotlight with terrorist group’s leader.

Daniel Benjamin, formerly the State Department’s counterterror coordinator, also was slated to testify at the House hearing. But on Monday, Benjamin declared that “I will not appear at a hearing” about the ISIL with the MKO’s leader, because “I know of no substantive expertise that the MKO has developed on the ISIL.” News of Benjamin’s cancellation was first mentioned on Twitter by ALM Congress Pulse.

In an email to Foreign Policy, Benjamin noted that the MKO’s “exclusive focus” of concern has for decades been Iran. “So one has to wonder what the purpose of Rajavi’s presence on this panel is,” said Benjamin, who is now director of an international studies program at Dartmouth University.

“Being delisted as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a decision I took part in — doesn’t mean that this group … has suddenly … become trustworthy or worthy of engagement,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a follow-up interview with Foreign Policy, Benjamin — who had a role in the State Department’s decision to delist the MEK — criticized the House panel for agreeing to let Rajavi testify by video. He said that is not a perk that is offered to US witnesses.

“Why won’t she travel here to testify?” Benjamin asked.

"MEK offered me tens of thousands of dollars to speak on its behalf, but i turned down the request," he underlined.

“This is still a group that has American blood from killings in the 1970s on its hands and killed many other innocents as well. That has never been apologized for,” the former senior American official stressed.

The Obama administration believed the MKO was providing misinformation in an effort to derail recent nuclear talks with Iran. During negotiations the MKO insisted Tehran was building underground nuclear facilities, an assertion dismissed by the State Department.

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 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.

Earlier this month, the managing editor of Veterans Today from Atlanta said the number of Iranian terror victims is “in effect almost six 9/11’s,” but these attacks never got enough coverage in international media.

Jim W. Dean said even now, very few people know the scale of the Iranians who were killed in terrorist acts. “I would imagine your maimed casualties would also be high, and those statistics should be publicized as well.”

He went on to say that despite this great number of terror victims, “Iran did not crank up a huge War on Terror that slaughtered countless thousands of innocents, as happened with the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld gangsters and their army of helpers.”

The US political analyst underscored that the story of Iranian victims of terror, “with all of its gory details,” still has to be brought to the international audience. “The Western media blackout shows they fear their audiences wanting to know more about why this was being covered up and eventually figuring out that these were offensive Western Intel operations during peacetime.”

"You have been maligned in Western media as a longtime supporter of international terrorism, but we know that hiding the history of Iran having been the top victim of terrorism was part of the false propaganda," he continued.

“Suppressing publicity of your being the major victim of terrorism at the time played a key role in falsely casting Iran as a major terror threat to everyone else,” Dean continued. “This is what people remember as it was an organized campaign in the Jewish controlled media for years and years.”

Regarding the presence of Iranian terrorist groups such as MKO in the US and their role in anti-Iran policies, Jim Dean said, “They have no negative profile here whatsoever. They are presented as oppressed freedom fighters and that is all the public ever hears.”

He pointed out that American people would be shocked, if Iranian terror victim groups and families were constantly touring the American college campuses and the church networks on speaking tours. “But the Zionist Lobby, the NeoCons and Christian Zionists would fight any attempt to do this, but that would be good as it would show they fear exposure.”

The US veteran went on to say that Iran should not act alone in exposing the state sponsors of terrorism, “as the victims of terror are now manufactured on an industrial scale, most of it state-sponsored terrorism, and the guilty parties naturally dread having this exposed.” “This is why I feel Iran is in a unique position to be the tip of the spear for efforts to uncover the long sordid history of state-sponsored terrorism and to publicize it on a continual basis to challenge the various nations involved to hold their leaders and operational organs responsible.”

“Their goal to destabilize target countries to protect their own nations will not be believable once the truth is out that these were purely offensive operations straight out of the Cold War operations manual, where anything could be done to hurt ‘the other side’ and be done with immunity, despite there being no state of war existing.”

He also made a reference to the Zionists’ killing of Iranian nuclear scientists and said, “Unfortunately, we see old tactics being reused, the ones with a track record of being successful and low risk.” “The killing of a few scientists would not have much effect on a major program. Personnel losses get replaced. And with 20/20 hindsight, we see from the 18 months of nuclear talks with Iran that neither Israel nor Britain ever disclosed any hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

He finally said that he saw Iran nuclear deal as “an offering of good will from Obama,” and that “he wants to turn the corner on the sordid past of US diplomacy and start a new era.” “The average American is not aware of how our CIA and British intelligence basically hijacked your country and terrorized it under the Shah for a long time. No reparations for that flagrantly offensive act have ever been discussed here.”

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Maryam Rajavi

Cult Leader Will Tell Congress: Fight ISIS by Regime Change in Iran

Last week, the House Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade announced that a controversial Iranian exile opposition figure would be testifying via video uplink at a hearing on the Islamic State, known as ISIS. What does the witness, Maryam Rajavi, a co-leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), have to say about the subject at hand?

Rajavi’s written testimony, a copy of which was obtained by The Nation, focuses on an unexpected way of bringing ISIS to heel: by fostering regime change in Iran. “The ultimate solution to this problem” of Islamic extremism, such as ISIS, Rajavi says in the written statement, “is regime change by the Iranian people and Resistance”—a reference to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MEK’s political wing.

It sounds counter-intuitive—Iran’s aid to the Iraqi government and various Iraqi militias, after all, is widely credited with stopping ISIS’s advances there—but not when you know about the MEK’s tortuous past. Over the years, the MEK has been nothing if not opportunistic; animated by the twisted logic that the enemy of its enemy is its friend, the group seizes whatever political angle is fashionable at the moment to bring them relevance (Congress is happy to oblige). But more to the point, the MEK has always had only one goal: the overthrow of the Iranian regime. For decades, it has tried to shoehorn regional and geopolitical dynamics into its aim, irrespective of any salient connections.

The plan to bring down ISIS by toppling Iran’s government, then, is little more than the latest chapter of group’s 50-year history of monomaniacally trying to install itself atop the Iranian government. Indeed, Rajavi is testifying at Congress with the title of “president-elect” of the NCRI, which hopes to run a transitional government immediately upon the fall of the Islamic Republic.

Founded as an Islamo-Marxist revolutionary group in the 1960s, the MEK spent its early years pursuing its Quixotic aims by opposing the Shah’s government with a vengeance: through student organizing, outright terrorism—including against American targets when the United States was allied with the Shah, helping to earn its 1997 American designation as a terror group—and fighting at the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution. By the 1980s, after the leader of the revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini, kicked the group out of Iran, critics were regularly deriding the MEK as a cult of personality—not least because of its continuing “wacky” behavior, as a former congressional aide put it to me for a feature I wrote this winter with Eli Clifton.

So how do Rajavi and MEK plan to end the threat from ISIS by upending the Iranian regime? That’s not so clear. But it definitely involves ignoring, despite the current clashes, the distinction between Sunni and Shia extremism—including, for example, propagandistic exaggerations like saying that “Shiite militias act more viciously than their Sunni equivalents, such as ISIS”—and pointing out several times that Iran went Islamist before anyone else. That’s about it.

It’s worth noting, however, that the MEK does have some experience in Iraq: after going into exile, its leaders gathered their fighters in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to take his side in the Iran-Iraq war—earning the enmity of many Iranians. After the war ended, the MEK, led by Maryam Rajavi and her husband Massoud (who hasn’t been seen in public for a dozen years), stuck around and enjoyed Hussein’s largesse, acting, periodically, as mercenaries to crush incipient uprising against the Iraqi strongman—earning, in turn, the enmity of many Iraqis.

After Hussein’s fall in 2003, the American invaders stripped the MEK of its multitude of arms. (Curiously, for a group that claims to have renounced violence in 2001, Rajavi cites in her Congressional testimony the “disarming” of the MEK as a “misguided polic[y]” that helped give rise to Muslim extremism—but not the invasion that toppled their benefactor itself.) The MEK then languished in its camps, coming under periodic attack by a murky combination of the Iraqi army and, reportedly, government-aligned Shia militias. Dozens of MEK adherents were slaughtered.

The period also marked the growth of an ardent pro-MEK lobby in the United States. As Eli Clifton and I detailed in our Intercept piece this winter, a multimillion-dollar campaign kicked into gear to remove the MEK from the US State Department’s terrorist list. Once that hurdle was cleared, the MEK—despite its cult-like practices—began to accumulate more mainstream power in Congress, where super-hawkishness against Iran is guaranteed to attract powerful bedfellows, including large amounts of pro-Israel donor money and more modest cash from MEK supporters themselves.

Meanwhile, the massacres of the MEK’s ex-fighters at its Iraqi desert bases fueled the group’s hatred of the Iraqi government led by Nouri al-Maliki, which had failed to protect them. Just as the MEK had grown close to Hussein because he was an arch-enemy of the Iranian regime, the group likewise reviled Maliki’s government, and vice-versa, for its closeness to the Iranians—the Islamic Republic had hosted and fostered Maliki’s movement in exile before the 2003 war, and supported his Shia government after its rise to power in Iraq.

When ISIS began to rip apart what was still then Maliki’s Iraq, the MEK’s prevailing logic seemed to again fall back on the enemy of its enemy. Perhaps chastened by their own labeling by the US as a terrorist organization, the group seldom uses the word “terrorism” in conjunction with ISIS. Instead, MEK propaganda refers to ISIS as “extremists,” in some instances. At other times, the language is more ambiguous: Last June, when ISIS took the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, one MEK website gave a triumphalist account of the conquest, referring to ISIS as “revolutionary forces.”

Historical revisionism of the ISIS assault started almost immediately. “These forces have taken over the Badoush prison and they had hundreds of prisoners that had been proclaimed to be terrorists and they freed them,” read a Persian-language post on the website Mojahedin.org. HRW, however, collected survivor testimonies from the prison takeover that told a different story: “After seizing Badoush Prison near Mosul, the gunmen from Islamic State, also known as ISIS, separated the Sunni from the Shia inmates,” an HRW release said, “then forced the Shia men to kneel along the edge of a nearby ravine and shot them with assault rifles and automatic weapons.”

Herein lies the MEK contradiction behind its early positions. On the one hand, ISIS, like the MEK, is militantly opposed to Iranian influence in the region. But Rajavi needs to gin up support in Washington. So she poses herself in opposition to ISIS, claiming the best strategy for fighting the marauding Sunni terrorists is to… overthrow the first regime in the region to commit blood, money and heavy weaponry to the fight against ISIS.

As ISIS became the world’s most famous terrorist group, the MEK eased its whitewash and adopted the stances Rajavi will bring to Congress on Thursday: namely, that ISIS is an extremist group—whose model and inspiration is Iran, however nonsensical that point is. That Congress would invite these ex-terrorists—Rajavi’s past prevents her from getting a visa, the reason for her video testimony—speaks ill of their commitment to shaping serious policy on either ISIS or Iran. Rajavi’s participation proved such an embarrassment that a distinguished diplomat, Ambassador Robert Ford, and another witness withdrew from the hearing rather than speak alongside her on the dais—just as the top UN official for human rights in Iran withdrew from a program last year in Canadian parliament where Rajavi was set to appear.

The MEK’s story is a tragic one of sustained failure, of being massacred and massacring, of being abused and abusing its own people, of terrorizing and being terrorized, and of a constantly morphing politics consistent only in its oddness and toxicity. That story needs to be heard, but as a cautionary tale, not as expert advice. Instead, Congress is asking one of the groups most hated in Iraq and Iran what to do about those countries’ woes. What could go wrong?

Ali Gharib, The Nation

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Maryam Rajavi

Renowned U.S. Arabist Is Second Witness to Refuse to Appear With MEK Leader

House counterterrorism panel is pushing ahead with a hearing on the Islamic State — even though two of its top witnesses are refusing to testify alongside the leader of a controversial Iranian dissidents group that was itself regarded as a terrorist organization as recently as 2012.

Arabist Robert Ford, who served as U.S. ambassador to Syria and also was posted in Baghdad, in Cairo, and across the Mideast, told Foreign Policy on Tuesday that he would not appear on the panel with Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK).

He is the second witness to balk at sharing the spotlight with Rajavi. On Monday, former State Department counterterrorism director Daniel Benjamin pulled out of the hearing, which is scheduled for Wednesday.

“I didn’t want to be on a panel with the MEK. I was shocked they invited the MEK. What the MEK has to do with the Islamic State, I don’t have a clue,” Ford told FP. “I told the committee to put me on a panel without the MEK or I wouldn’t appear.”

Rajavi will not be at the hearing: She is set to testify via videoconference, presumably from Paris, where her National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is based. The NCRI is an umbrella organization of groups that include the MEK.

Until September 2012, the MEK was designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization for the alleged 1970s killing of six Americans in Iran. The group is led by Iranian exiles who bitterly oppose Tehran’s clerical regime and is widely believed to have allied with Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq during the 1980s war between those two nations.

It has bankrolled numerous high-profile U.S. officials and other worldwide dignitaries who appear on the MEK’s behalf, a roster that includes former FBI Director Louis Freeh and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Representatives for the MEK have not returned repeated requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for House Foreign Affairs subcommittee chairman Ted Poe (R-Texas) defended the panel’s decision to call Rajavi as a witness. In a Tuesday email to FP, spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said Rajavi’s background as a Muslim woman gives her insight into “prejudices inherent in radical Islamist ideology.”

“As the leader of an Iranian opposition group, she can speak to how ISIS’ ideology is both similar to and different from the mullahs leading Iran,” Hynes said. “Finally, as an exiled leader of a group that has had members living in Iraq for decades, including most recently in a refugee camp in Baghdad, she has firsthand and on the ground knowledge of ISIS.”

Additionally, Hynes said, Rajavi has already been approved as a witness by the full House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Meanwhile, in a follow-up interview Tuesday with Foreign Policy, Benjamin — who had a role in the State Department’s decision to delist the MEK — criticized the House panel for agreeing to let Rajavi testify by video. He said that is not a perk that is offered to U.S. witnesses.

“Why won’t she travel here to testify?” Benjamin asked. He said he was offered — and turned down — tens of thousands of dollars by the group to speak on its behalf.

“This is still a group that has American blood from killings in the 1970s on its hands and killed many other innocents as well,” he said. “That has never been apologized for.”

David Francis, Foreign Policy,

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Israeli court sentenced MKO – Mossad agent to 7 years in prison

Long serving Agent victimized for MKO- Mossad mutual scenario

An Israeli court sentenced an Iranian-born Belgian to seven years in prison on Tuesday April 21, 2015 after convicting him of spying for Tehran.

In September 2013 Israeli security forces announced for the first time the arrest of Ali Mansouri who was accused of spying.

Ali Mansouri was arrested on charges of having photographs of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and other sites. However, pretty soon he was found to be a veteran member of the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq group.

The Belgium Newspaper Le Soir reported that the alleged Iranian spy had identified himself as a supporter of the MKO.

Besides, Mohammad Razzaghi , a former member of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) identified him as a long serving member of the MKO.

Mr. Razzaghi said Mansouri was a close member of the MKO for at least 30 years and had been working as a mediator for the Mujahedin Khalq and Mossad. He added that Mansouri, who lived in Turkey between 1980 and 1998, travelled to Iran regularly posing as a businessman to gather information for Mossad and the MKO leaders.

Razzaghi indicated:” Many ordinary members of the Intelligence Section of the MKO remember him because every now and then they were tasked to do things for him”.

Razzaghi recalled:” I remember clearly a few times that I was tasked to go to see him to collect some pictures and documents about Mehrabad Airport and Jamaran H.Q. and to bring them to our safe house and hand them over to my commanders.”

MKO’s propaganda system desperately tried to whitewash the Organization of the accusations. The NCR published a statement and identified the arrestee to be a once infiltrator to the group. However, the statement itself was a proof of Mansouri’s link to the MKO.

The arrest seemed to be politically motivated since it was coincided with Netanyahu’s effort to convince Obama not to engage in diplomacy with Iran.

Actually it was one of the Mossad-MKO mutual scenarios. By arresting and accusing Mansouri as an Iran spy they tried to get rid of an expired agent and to derail diplomacy between Iran and the West in order to encourage a war with Iran on the other hand.

The MKO – Israel collusion is now known to everyone since it has been corroborated many times by different sources and individuals in the past. According to NBC, Israel provides funding, training, and weapons for the MEK to assassinate Iranian scientists. The award-winning, independent investigative journalist and writer of the Book : Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of The Iran Nuclear Scare” ,Gareth Porter has several times put The MEK as a client of the Mossad, serving to launder Israeli intelligence’ claims that the Israelis did not want to attribute to themselves. 

A. Sepinoud

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MKO Terrorist leader praise the Saudi-led coalition bloodshed in Yemen

The MEK and its affiliated fronts – the NCRI, Maryam Rajavi etc – have gone all out to praise Saudi Arabia for attacking Yemen.

It is not the first time they have praised Saudi Arabia for just about anything at all [an indication of the needy relationship Rajavi has with the country].

Fars News reproduced the MEK praise alongside praise from Israeli media such as the Jerusalem Times, showing they are carbon copies of each other’s’ position.

Iraninterlink Weekly Digest

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Iraqi Authorities' stance on the MEK

Senior Iraqi MP: ISIL Continuing Mojahedin Khalq’s Terrorist Ideology

A senior Iraqi parliament member said reminding the crimes committed by terrorist groups such as the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK, NCRI and PMOI) is why holding the International Congress of 17000 Iranian Terror Victims is important, warning that ISIL is currently pursuing the same ideology promoted by the MKO.

Iraqi MP Hunain Al-Qado said the importance of reminding MKO’s crimes stems from the fact that some people try to keep these crimes under wraps.

He said the terrorist groups all pursue a shared objective, and added, “There is no difference between the ISIL’s terrorist acts in Iraq and Syria and Mojahedin-e Khalq’s terrorist acts.” “These groups use the same methods and have similar purposes which is creating fear and terrorizing civilians. So, what is going on now in Iraq is the continuation of MKO’s ideology.”

Emphasizing the need for cooperation among the regional countries that have been targeted by terrorist groups, al-Qado said, “On account of the arrogant powers’ struggles against Iran as well as their efforts in sowing the seeds of chaos in the Axis of Resistance, which is made up of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and most probably Yemen in the future, it is vital to set up strategies in order to encourage integrated efforts in these countries and other countries which are a victim of terrorism.”

“There is, and must be, a coordination between Iran and Iraq in fighting terrorism, since the growth of terrorism in Iraq threatens Iran’s stability,” head of the Democratic Shabak Assembly added. “So it is vital for Iran to back Iraq in the fight against terrorism, which is an effort in protecting security and territorial integrity of Iran and neighboring countries.”

The Iraqi MP finally made a reference to the killing of Shabak minorities at the hands of ISIL following the bombing of the holy shrines of two Shia Imams in Samarra, and added, “There has been organized attacked against Shabak minorities to expel them from Mosul.” “Most of them have been killed and their houses were destroyed before the eyes of the local authorities. During the last year, ISIL occupied their villages and blew all their mosques out of the water,” he concluded.

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Terrorist groups and the MEK

Mojahedin Khalq Has Strong Ties with ISIL: Former Member

A former member of the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) revealed the group’s close relations with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.

Ghorban Ali Hosseinnejad said the leaders of MKO (also known as MEK) maintain strong ties with the ISIL Takfiri group in Iraq and Syria.

The MKO leaders had pinned hope in ISIL to seize control of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad after the northern city of Mosul fell to ISIL forces last summer, Hosseinnejad was quoted by Iraqi Al-Masalah website as saying.

“When Mosul was occupied by ISIL militants, the MKO supported ISIL and described the seizure of the city as popular Iraqi revolution,” the defected member of the terrorist group stated.

Militants from the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant overtook Mosul and a number of cities last June, as the group marched across large sections of Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqi army, backed by volunteer forces, has managed to retake parts of the occupied territories and the operation to liberate Mosul will begin in the near future.

The MKO – listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community – fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

They fought on the side of Saddam during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88). They were also involved in the bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991 and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.

The notorious group is also responsible for killing thousands of Iranian civilians and officials after the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979.

More than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings.

Back 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 the former US military Camp Liberty outside Baghdad.

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

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

A terrorist funded trip – Mojahedin Khalq planned to take Polish students to Berlin

Around 800 students from Krakow agreed to travel to the German capital to party, to explore and to support an Iranian organization accused of terrorism. “I signed up for this event, because it’s a cheap way to go on a

foreign trip and do sightseeing in Berlin.” Chalicka Iga is a student from Krakow. She is one of the approximate 800 Krakow students who are going to Berlin for a meeting held on March 7 by the People’s Mojahedin. A few years ago this organisation appeared on lists of international terrorists. Similar trips have also been organized in other Polish cities.

Advertising for the trips seems tempting – the total cost of travel in both directions and stay in a hotel with breakfast is only 15 euros or 65 zł. The problem is that most young people have no idea who is organizing the Berlin Conference, and what will be happening in it. The organizers for the trip from Poland have created a Facebook page for the invitation but do not give specifics.

On the page you can read that the theme will be “the protection of and respect for human rights and the struggle for democracy in Iran.” But we are not told which Iranian group is organizing the conference. However, there is a warning that “if you leave the meeting, you will be made to pay the full costs of your travel and stay in Berlin”.

When we called the number given on the web, we were told that the organizers are associations supporting the struggle for democracy. The person responsible for compiling the departure list would not, however, give us a Polish contact for the tour. Facebook is the only information we had and it says that “the subject is the same as every year in Paris”.

The point is that in 2008 the People’s Mojahedin held a rally at Charles de Gaulle airport. That was attended by around 3.5 thousand Polish students and was met with criticism from Iran. The Iranian ambassador in Warsaw said that this event, in which a terrorist organization could deceive students, was a humiliation for Polish society.

Until yesterday the authorities of Kracow University did not know about the Berlin trip. In the same way as the Paris Conference, Professor Anna Krasnowolska from the Department of Iranian Studies at Jagiellonian University learned about the Berlin Conference in March from us. Professor Krasnowolska said “I advised my students not to participate in this. The way in which it is organized shows that the concept of democracy is foreign to the People’s Mojahedin”.

When articles began to circulate on the Internet showing the true face of the Conference in Paris, some students began to sell their tickets for the trip to Berlin. “I preferred to withdraw from participation in the meeting altogether. I even heard that the Americans refuse to issue visas to those who were at a similar conference”, the student from Krakow told us.

The People’s Mojahedin mixes Islam with Marxism. The group contributed to the overthrow of the Shah, but after the revolution lost the battle for influence against supporters of the ayatollahs. After the invasion of Iraq into Iran in 1980 they joined forces with Saddam Hussein and fought on his side at the front in that war. They lost support inside Iran, and are hated by the Iranian opposition for siding with Saddam. They have little influence in exile.

Marcin Banasik, Dzienni Poliski24,Translated by Iran Interlink

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Iran

Iran rejects MKO’s nuclear claims as”baseless”

Iran’s permanent UN mission in New York dismissed as "baseless" and "fake" the recent claim that was raised by the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI and PMOI) and appeared on a US daily about Iran’s nuclear program. "It is regrettable that the newspaper (Washington Post) has released false and repeated claims of a terrorist grouplet whose anti-human nature is evident to all," a statement by the Iranian mission said on Wednesday, FNA reported.

It added that the extremist and radical groups which are witnessing the failure of their useless attempts to turn Iran’s peaceful nuclear technology into a security case and the growing failure of Iranophobia policies embark on lying and black propaganda against Tehran.

The statement underlined the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, and said as stated in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports, Iran and the IAEA are cooperating at a good level and Tehran is committed to its undertakings based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

According to Washington Post, the terrorist MKO on Tuesday claimed that Iran was conducting secret research with the aim of developing nuclear weapons.

It claimed that underground labs in suburban Tehran had been used since 2008 to enrich uranium. It said the plant, named Lavizan-3 after the neighborhood where many officers and their families live, is reached through tunnels leading from under a building ostensibly used to process passports and identity cards.

Meantime, Washington Post underlined that claims could not be independently verified and US officials had declined to comment.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that the country’s logical approach in talks with the world powers and its transparent cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog had caused the world states to admit that Tehran’s nuclear technology is for peaceful purposes.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the meeting of Science Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states, President Rouhani stressed that in the today world nobody could ever claim that Iran’s nuclear program is non-peaceful.

Also, on Thursday, Iran’s envoy to the IAEA Reza Najafi said the latest report by the UN nuclear watchdog on Iran indicated that the country’s nuclear activities were transparent and the alleged concerns of certain western states were baseless.

"The detailed report inclusive of the places, the number of centrifuges and their types, the amount of enriched and not enriched materials, the number of manufactured fuel plates and reports on numerous inspections all in all indicate full transparency of Iran’s nuclear program," Najafi said.

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