A defected member of the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization unveiled that MKO ringleaders had issued an order to assassinate Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and former Head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Ayatollah Seyed Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim.
“A defector from Camp Ashraf, home to the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MeK) in Iraq, says the group’s leadership at Camp Ashraf is prepared to order residents to kill themselves to protest any arrests of Ashraf residents”“They claim to have turned over all their arms to U.S. forces in 2003, and their camp 60 miles from Baghdad looks more like a relatively affluent Iraqi village than a military garrison. However, until the end of 2008, residents wore military-style uniforms and flew pre-revolution Iranian flags..
An Iranian political group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization is offering large payments to orators willing to speak at events on their behalf. Among those with connections to the organization, Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) aka MKO/PMOI, are Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s chief foreign policy adviser and liberal politician Howard Dean.
A clearer picture of what US leaders really think of the MEK aka MKO/PMOI/NCR can be found in earlier assessments of the group by the US government—at a time when MEK’s connections in Western governments weren’t as extensively developed. Today the MEK propaganda efforts mentioned in this report are showing their effects.Excerpts from 1992 report by Congressional Research Service addressed to Lee H. Hammilton, Chairman…
Certainly, an unethical dogmatic cult like the MEK aka MKO/PMOI – which has the capacity of instructing its own members to self-immolate in support of their leaders – a cult that went as far as fighting alongside the troops of Saddam Hussein when he invaded its own country’s territorial integrity – is much less principled and predictable than some hawkish American politicians wish it to be.
The MEK’s ongoing delisting campaign is guided by the belief that the American public and the U.S. government are ignorant enough to believe its statements no matter how many times they’re proven false. The breathless claims of seeming support made by former U.S. officials are marketed by the MEK as a testament to its legitimacy, especially when these people conflate the human rights issue at the MEK’s base in Camp Ashraf near the Iran-Iraq border with its FTO delisting campaign…
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “should ignore their [MEK] P.R. campaign. Mujahedeen Khalq is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us.” Rubin argues that what is “most disturbing” about the MEK/MKO/PMOI is the way the leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi treats its members that reside in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf.
Such comments would seemingly go against the MEK’s repeated claims to have transitioned from Islamo-Marxist cult into the non-violent champion of the free market it now styles itself as, but didn’t seem to phase anyone, including the conference’s organizer Ray Tanter, who insisted the attacks the MEK/MKO/PMOI has conducted inside Iran were simply “military activities” and didn’t count as terrorism.
Delisting the MEK has little to do with humanitarian concern or support for a democratic Iran, and everything to do with putting the military option at the center of our Iran policy. The group’s biggest supporters in Washington have suggested using the MEK in a ‘tit for tat’ campaign of attacks against Iran that could quickly escalate into war..delisting it would only worsen humanitarian concerns in Camp Ashraf by empowering the group’s leadership.
… Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy were among those speaking in support of the Mujahedin-e Khalq. The midday crowd filled a a street outside the State Department for a rally with confetti and doves released into the air. The U.S. declared the group a terrorist body in 1997. But a court last year ordered the State Department to reconsider the designation. ..