Paid advocacy for MKO

The Disgraceful Shilling for the MEK Continues

The de-listing fight may be over, but that hasn’t stopped the Mujahedin-e Khalq‘s American cheerleaders from uncritically repeating its propaganda. Here is Hugh Shelton, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs:

The main Iranian opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), is a viable alternative to the Islamist regime, and we owe it a chance to build a secular, democratic, non-nuclear Iran. If anyone doubted the NCRI’s support base, a groundswell of more than 100,000 Iranians turned up in Paris last month for its annual rally, joined by top politicians, dignitaries and former national security figures, myself included. It was an enormous display of support.

Shelton is opposed to diplomacy with the Iranian government, because he insists that Tehran can’t be trusted to honor its agreements and shouldn’t be “rewarded” for previous deceptive behavior. Leaving aside how crazy it is to spurn diplomacy because governments sometimes lie and break their promises, there is something especially weird about an argument that simultaneously promotes the cause of the MEK while complaining about Iranian deceit. (The NCRI is the umbrella organization that the MEK dominates.) As it has sought to rehabilitate itself in the West, the MEK has claimed all sorts of spurious, self-serving things about what it represents. Despite being a bizarre authoritarian cult with Marxist and quasi-Islamist views, it now pretends to be exactly what Westerners want an Iranian exile group to be. It doesn’t matter to the MEK’s American fans that it is lying about its political views, and they are obviously not worried about reciting those lies for Western audiences. Indeed, it has so completely hoodwinked them that they think it should be rewarded with American support.

It’s important to remember that the MEK and its umbrella group are not “the main Iranian opposition” or anything like it. For one thing, the real “main” Iranian opposition is still in Iran, and unlike the MEK it is not widely loathed by Iranians. Naturally, any exile group would like foreign governments to believe that it is the “main opposition” to the regime in its home country, but in order for this deception to work the foreigners have to be thoroughly oblivious and/or indifferent to the internal political realities of the country in question. If there is ever to be a “viable alternative” to the current Iranian regime, it will come from inside Iran and won’t have anything to do with a group that is best-known for its service to one of Iran’s worst enemies during the Iran-Iraq war. The shilling for this group by many prominent American former officials and politicians is one of the more disgraceful displays of the last decade, and as long as it continues it should be held up for derision.

By Daniel Larison

August 10, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US politicians bribed to back MKO: Iran diplomat

An Iranian diplomat has slammed the US for backing the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), saying the terrorist group has bribed American politicians into showing public support for it.

In a column published on the USA Today daily on Thursday, Counselor and Head of Press Office for the Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN Hamid Babaei, criticized Washington for removing the MKO from the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012.

The Iranian official also highlighted the crimes perpetrated by the MKO members against the Iranian and Iraqi nations and said the support of some American political figures for the terrorists as an Iranian “opposition group” shows “their cluelessness about Iran.”

“Washington lobbyists and former American politicians and officials have accepted millions of dollars from the group…in return for which they have publicly supported” them, wrote Babaei.

He further censured the Western states for sheltering the terrorists instead of bringing them to justice for their crimes.

“It remains unclear why an organization with such a violent history would be allowed so freely to operate in many Western countries,” said Babaei, stressing that the “dual nature of standards against terrorism is likely the greatest threat being faced by international efforts to stop terrorism today.”

The MKO fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it received the backing of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein and set up a camp near the Iranian border. The terrorist group also sided with Saddam during Iraq’s eight-year war on the Islamic Republic in 1980-1988.

The group is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and is notorious for committing numerous terrorist acts against Iranians and Iraqis.

The European Union also removed the MKO from its list of terrorist organizations in 2009 after the group filed a petition against the blacklisting in 2008.

July 13, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Big money buys powerful friends: Column

Why are Newt Gingrich, Joe Lieberman and Patrick Kennedy hanging with members of a terrorist cult?

Several well-known American political figures appeared at a rally in Paris on June 27 in support of an anti-Iran organization that was until recently formally listed as a terrorist group by the United States and Europe. They included Howard Dean, John R. Bolton, Bill Richardson, Newt Gingrich, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, and Joseph I. Lieberman. Their appearance and their support for the People’s Mujahedin Organization (MEK) as an Iranian "opposition group" demonstrates their cluelessness about Iran. Considering the group’s history, its popularity in Iran is comparable to an American-led affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

Among the many victims of MEK terror are innocent civilians in Iran, as well as Westerners including Americans. Its violent history, cultic nature and oppression of its own members spans close to four decades. It supported Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s, and its leader even boasted about killing thousands of Iranians while this cult served ex-Iraqi dictator’s expansionist ambitions. The scope of their crimes against the people of Iran and Iraq among others is baffling, and yet many Western countries seem to be unwilling to impose serious restrictions on the MEK the way they do with other terrorist groups.

It has also been reported that some in the American foreign policy community are conflicted about there being a possible role for this group in the future of American policy towards Iran. But one must wonder what state of bewilderment has befallen American foreign policy when such a group is seen as even a potential part of a solution to its policy conundrums in the Middle East.

Some American politicians supporting the MEK have claimed that these accusations are merely allegations from opponents in Tehran. In fact, scores of journalists, government agencies, and think tanks from around the world have catalogued these practices. The U.S. Department of State has stated that the MEK is "responsible for violent attacks in Iran that victimize civilians" including "attacks against clearly civilian targets." Adding that the MEK "joined Saddam Hussein’s brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion" in 1991. The State Department has also referred to them as a "repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis." This is the reason why the Iraqi people, Kurds and Shiites in particular despise this group, not Iranian political influence as some have tried to claim.

U.S. based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has extensively recorded the MEK’s oppression of its own members, demanding that they divorce their spouses and "all physical and emotional attachments in order to enhance their ‘capacity for struggle.’" HRW also stated that MEK members are exposed to "solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death."

Recently the French Foreign Ministry decried the MEK’s "violent and non-democratic inspirations," its ”cult nature" and "intense campaign of influence and disinformation."

U.S. officials attributed their removal from the list of terror groups to what they deemed the MEK’s "public renunciation of violence." But the MEK’s stated renunciation of violence also involved the claim that it had never itself targeted civilians — an assertion the State Department has clearly said is false. After the September 11 attacks, the MEK understood that their fate would lie in the hands of the West and that they could no longer rely on their benefactor, Saddam Hussein. The decision in 2001 to lay down arms and stop murdering civilians was a tactical decision — not a moral epiphany — that can be overturned if the aforementioned strategic calculation was ever to change.

Moreover, in 2009, the State Department submitted information in court stating the MEK had trained individuals "to perform suicide attacks" and a declassified FBI report from 2004 similarly found that MEK cells around the world were "actively … planning and executing acts of terrorism." Most importantly, none of the members of the organization have ever been brought to justice by the Western governments who give them shelter.

Instead Washington lobbyists and former American politicians and officials have accepted millions of dollars from the group, as campaign donation or speakers fees — the exact amounts of which most refuse to disclose publicly — in return for which they have publicly supported the MEK, claiming them to be an opposition group that deserves the protection of the U.S. By undertaking these efforts that the Rand Corporation called "cultic practices and its deceptive recruitment," the group managed to get itself removed from the terror list.

The dual nature of standards against terrorism is likely the greatest threat being faced by international efforts to stop terrorism today. If politicians are to be selective in opposing one terrorist group while supporting another based on their potential geopolitical usefulness, many nations would have many reasons to support various terrorist groups. When fighting terrorism, reaching for moral consistency cannot be seen as a possible option or an inconvenience; it must be considered a necessity.

It remains unclear why an organization with such a violent history would be allowed so freely to operate in many Western countries, raise money, build institutions, and ultimately be allowed to engage in a multi-million dollar political campaign. It’s simply impossible to imagine al-Qaeda or Boko Haram having the same level of freedom to operate.

The principle of the prevention of impunity dictates that acts of terror must not remain without legal consequence and those responsible must be brought to justice. The many victims of the MEK, those who have been killed or maimed and their family members deserve justice and the principles that Western nations claim to be unflinchingly dedicated to in the context of the so-called war on terror are trampled on every day that they accommodate terrorists, rather than contribute to their prosecution.

Hamid Babaei is counselor for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations.

Hamid Babaei

July 12, 2014 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi’s annual Rally in Villepinte

Maryam Rajavi’s annual Rally in Villepinte. This year promoting ISIS, MEK, Saddamists – Everyone Loses

This past Friday in Paris, the Mojahedin Khalq is held its annual rally to celebrate its violent past. This year, as every year, the MEK will pay both speakers and audience to attend. The annual rally is increasingly exposed and mocked by the media.

Who are they?

Mojahedin Khalq is one of the rare forces which advertises and is proud of being a mercenary force. They never had an agenda of their own but have taken money from their paymasters, such as Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Although no government except Saddam Hussein’s regime has ever publicly condoned or supported the MEK, various Western agencies – the Pentagon, CIA, MOSSAD, the Israeli lobby and various neoconservatives – have at various times, and for various purposes, used the MEK. The MEK undertakes activities and poses in particular ways which suit their agendas – information laundry, assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, and more, culminating in Maryam Rajavi’s disastrous, ludicrous attempt to pose as a human rights advocate in the Canadian Parliament in May this year.

What is different this year?

This time the annual rally is being held at the same time that Western leaders meet in Paris to discuss how to find a political solution to the crisis in Iraq.

Each government is, of course, pursuing its own interests in Iraq and each wants to wrest the greatest political influence and benefit from the current crisis. But what they all share in common is the need to confront and stop the terrorist threat of ISIS in Iraq.

Iraqi media and analysts identify this current manifestation of ISIS as a sophisticated military force – although said to be an offshoot of Al Qaida formed in Syria – as an element of the Baath Party (that is, the remains of Saddam’s regime), who had warned before that they would take revenge and create chaos and mayhem. Some ISIS equipment has been found to have previously belonged to the MEK. This is not a group which has newly emerged or lately come together, but is part of an existing cohort of groups and individuals prepared to use extreme violence to pursue political aims. The MEK are part of this cohort.

While the violence of the triangle of Saddamists, ISIS and MEK in Iraq is ongoing, we witness that the MEK’s strongest advocates in the west, Struan Stevenson, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Paulo Casaca and a couple of others have abandoned their mainstream political careers in the European Parliament and similar places to become full time advocates for this cohort. Under the organisational label ‘European Iraqi Freedom Association’ (EIFA), they claimed that the recent violent acts in Iraq were not carried out by ISIS, but were “part of a popular uprising” against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In doing so, they are openly backing the MEK, ISIS and Saddamist cohort against the government of Iraq even after successful elections returned popularly elected political representatives.

For those with any lingering doubt about where the MEK stands on the issue of terrorism, an examination of their own website in Farsi is instructive. Only days before the current crisis erupted in Iraq, MEK leader Massoud Rajavi expressed his solidarity with the Saudi backed Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group based in Pakistan. Referring to the execution of 16 men affiliated to Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group Masoud Rajavi described them as “martyrs” and “brothers”.

A screenshot of the MEK site’s first page quickly circulated on the internet as shocked Iranians of every stripe denounced the MEK. As the world looked on in horror at the actions of ISIS (beheadings, mass murders, etc), the MEK hailed the group as “revolutionary forces”, (an echo of the false identity it ascribes to itself as “Iran’s resistance movement”), and continued to advertise ISIS achievements and stances.

Humanitarian issues

The MEK’s collaboration with Saddamists and its public support for ISIS is unsurprising for experts on the group, but it is problematic. This support has made MEK in Camp Liberty a legitimate target for revenge killing by its old enemies – the Kurdish and Shiite populations among which the MEK massacred several thousand for Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War in 1991. This matches with one of Massoud Rajavi’s recent internal proclamations; that should Camp Liberty be threatened by (unspecified) outside forces the residents should all kill themselves. In this way, Rajavi would be rid of many witnesses to his multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes. A meeting of ex members in Paris on 21 June highlighted this very threat.

But this stance contradicts another of Rajavi’s positions, which is to use the forces in Camp Liberty as advertising products in the Paris rally. The speakers may admit to being paid, but they also claim to sincerely believe in the MEK’s ability to bring about freedom for Iran, and will no doubt be keen to use the platform in Paris to echo the demand to ‘rescue’ the Camp Liberty residents. Whether they are willfully ignorant of the facts or simply naïve is open to question. Indeed, both speakers and attendees should ask how this rally will help rescue the residents in Camp Liberty, Iraq, who the MEK leaders absolutely refuse to help. The UN has not hesitated to denounce the hindrances and obstruction created by the MEK leaders when it has tried to help these victims. In addition, the UN has accused the MEK of human rights abuses against its own members.

Lobbying for what? survival of a terrorist cult?

The idea that this rally is for lobbying is not only false but it is dangerous. Lobbying cannot involve the promotion of bloodshed and terror; that is murder. In any case, the MEK are not lobbying anyone for anything. The MEK is a cult and has its own agenda quite independent of its publicly stated policies. Its own internal interests are paramount and the current rally is being used to promote Maryam Rajavi as a replacement for Massoud Rajavi as the cult guru or ideological leader.

Everything the MEK has ever done has been to ensure its own survival; from working for Saddam Hussein to getting de-listed as a terrorist group. Governments, countries, agencies and lobbyists would do well to sit down and work out what have been their gains and losses because of using this organisation. For example, the MEK has not advanced the neoconservative agenda at all, instead because of its resort to violence it has benefited the conservatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran who use it to point out western double standards on terrorism. The MEK’s achievements in relation to its proclaimed stance are nil.

Can MEK be trusted? beneficial?

The MEK pretend to work as mercenaries to suit western backers but have in reality simply exploited loopholes and weaknesses in western political systems purely to promote themselves and, like parasites, find a niche to exist in for a while. The MEK have infiltrated parliaments and ministries and misused them. The rally in Paris on June 27th exploits the concept of ‘freedom of speech’ to promote a pretended political point of view.

Given the MEK’s very clear and public support for ISIS, the fallout from this rally will affect everyone. While Western leaders are in the same city promoting the formation of a united front (according to configurations best suited to themselves) to confront the terrorist group, by turning a blind eye to a rally held by ISIS supporters in Paris, all western governments, not just that of France, are implicated in tacit support for that terrorism.

June 30, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

SPAINISH POLITICIAN’S DANGEROUS RELATION

Alejo Vidal-Quadras , the best friend of the Mojahedin Khalq

The President of Vox admits to 13-years working for an astonishing cause: remove the Iranian Mojahedin Khalq from the terrorism list and rehabilitate the group. He says Spanish politicians should support this organization, which is an ” ally ” of the CIA.

Alejo Vidal- Quadras is the key man in Spanish political relations with the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen. The ‘ ex-popular ‘ and current president of Vox was the first Spanish politician to begin having a liking for the “Iranian democratic opposition in exile.” This is how he defines it: “The year was 2000 and I had just been elected to the European Parliament. I was soon to be in Brussels when I met a socialist Portuguese MEP, Paulo Casaca. He had spent a few years working with the Iranian democratic opposition and asked me to receive some representatives of this movement. We had a long conversation and I was provided with documents and they explained to me the circumstances of Iran and the Mojahedin’s history. Here began our relationship…

Since then, he gave his full support to this cause. Since being in the European Parliament, he has “13 years” working for the Iranian National Resistance Council – according to many experts, the political arm of the Iranian People’s Mujahedeen – to achieve its objectives. First, get them off the list of terrorist organizations, in which the group was included in 1997 in the U.S. and 2002 in the EU, being accused of the murder of several Americans in the 1970s and the attempted attack in 1992 against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York. And second, to have it recognized as the “legitimate alternative” opposition in the eyes of the international community. To do this, the ‘lobbying activity’ performed for more than 20 years by the organization has been fundamental. And the support of the Spanish politician – a leading member of the group Friends of Free Iran, consisting of around 70 MEPs – has been essential to take the message into international institutions.

The first objective has already been met. In 2009 the Council of the European Union withdrew the terrorist designation. “But it was a strictly judicial procedure,” Vidal-Quadras quickly justified . “It’s been the courts that have ruled that they are not terrorists,” insists the ex-popular, referring to the judgment issued in 2008 by the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, claiming that no evidence was found of the MEK terrorist threat. After this victory in the EU, the Mojahedin also began their specific crusade in Washington. “I lived very close to this process. I had a long meeting with lawyers to raise the issue in the U.S.. We explained how the dispute had been worked out in Europe”. The result? In 2012, the U.S. State Department also stopped considering them terrorists.

What could motivate the U.S. to take them off the blacklist?

Academic researchers, however, rule out that the only reason to get them out of the blacklist was legal. Hillary Clinton warned that the department she headed would not “ignore” or “forget ” past events ” including the MEK’s involvement in the murder of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992 “, but in the opinion of the experts we consulted there are several reasons that led the U.S. government to take this decision.

First, in 2002 the Iranian People’s Mojahedin allegedly discovered Iran ‘s nuclear program and enabled the U.S. to declare ‘war’ on the regime of the ayatollahs. Second, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, after the Mojahedin were captured as prisoners of war, the U.S. granted them the status of “protected persons”. According to official versions, the MEK was “voluntarily disarmed”. According to the unofficial version, the CIA and the Israeli Mossad is training the Mojahedin for their own benefit. So much so, that in January 2012, Ilan Mizrahi, former head of the secret Israeli intelligence service, disclosed the involvement of the Mojahedin in the “secret war” against Iran that had already cost the lives of four Iranian nuclear scientists. And thirdly, for years, U.S. politicians supported the Mojahedin cause as an instrument of pressure against the Iranian regime. “They speak Farsi and still maintain important contacts within the regime. Useful for the USA, justify the experts we consulted.

Of course what these experts do not believe is that this support is selfless. In the U.S. there are precedents. The New York Times reported years ago on the Mojahedin’s alleged bribery of influential politicians to support its cause. Then there was talk of fees of between 15,000 and 30,000 dollars; and even the former governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell, had to face an investigation by the Department of Treasury of the United States for having taken more than 150,000 dollars from this group which was still included in the terrorism list at the time. And in the case of the European Union it is the same. DIGITAL STAR has unveiled two Spanish presidents attended meetings in Paris annually in June to take payments. “But other politicians who support them do not charge a euro”, Alejo Vidal- Quadras hastens to clarify. “In the world there are still regimes that crush human rights, such as Cuba , North Korea and Iran. I believe it is the duty of any democrat to help transform Iran into a democracy”, concludes the current president of Vox.

Who funds the Mojahedin?

The question still remains unresolved and the experts bring to the fore the question of where does the MEK get all the money it costs to maintain this important network of contacts and support . According to Vidal-Quadras, solely from the Iranians in the diaspora, “some of them are very wealthy”. Although other politicians we consulted doubt this. “I am not so naive to think that the contributions of all Iranians in exile are sufficient to maintain that infrastructure. I do not rule out that there may be powers that are instrumental in acting in their favor”, admits Gari Duran Sen. PP Baleares, and one of the Mojahedin’s greatest defenders in Spain. The USA , Israel and Saudi Arabia are among the possible hidden funders. Duran, however, says she does not care about that; “I have seen people on hunger strike, I have seen the pictures of the dead and have heard their mothers talk, and unless you have to conclude that this is a giant deception, to me it is real.”

The deaths of 40,000 Iranians during the Iraq- Iran war are attributed to the Mojahedin, as are the assassination of the Iranian president Ali Rajaei and Prime Minister Javad Bohanar and many Kurds, and the Mojahedin is now active in supporting the Syrian opposition. And in some reports by the UNHCR it confirms that this is a movement which does not respect human rights. But Vidal- Quadras does not give credence to any of these charges and insists it is Iranian propaganda. A message that its leader, Maryam Rajavi, constantly repeats in all the parliaments that she visits. She does so in Europe two times a year when she visits and has done so in Spain in December 2012 during a flying visit to Madrid where she also took the opportunity to meet with the mayor, Ana Botella – interestingly the wife of one of the politicians the Mojahedin paid in exchange for public support.

Elsa S. Vejo Destrella Digital (Digital Star), Translated by Iran Interlink

May 11, 2014 0 comments

Italy

Open letter of Nejat Society to Ms. Laura Boldrini,

The President of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy

Dear Madam,

Nejat Society is an NGO consisting of the former members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK) and the families of present members trapped in Iraq in the hands of Massoud Rajavi.

As you are aware a 10-member delegation, headed by co-chairman of Iran-Italy parliamentary friendship group Ettore Rosato, arrived in Tehran on Saturday morning for a four-day visit.

Amongst the members of the delegation were some who signed petitions in favor of MKO to condemn the Islamic Republic of Iran and to support Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

We requested the members of the delegation to visit the members of our society and the victims of this mind control destructive cult, but they refused to do so.

If these parliamentarians claim that they work for Human Rights, Freedom and Justice, and yet openly support the MKO; it would have been a fare policy to listen to the victims of the MKO who have suffered from the violation of Human Rights inside the organization.

The aim of Nejat Society to request visiting the Italian members of parliament was merely to find a way to rescue the members in Iraq and try to put them in contact with their families in Iran.

Surprisingly, they support a terrorist organization under the name of defending human rights, but they refuse to listen to the victims of this terrorist organization.

Yours faithfully

Nejat Society

Copy to:

President of the Italian Senate

The Head of the Italian delegation to Tehran

May 11, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The MEK’s Influence in EU Politics Matters

In a sign of re-emerging ties between the European Union (EU) and Iran, Edgars Rinkevics, Latvia’s minister of foreign affairs, visited Tehran on April 24. The visit was significant because Latvia will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the first half of 2015. Issues pertaining to regional cooperation between the EU and Iran in Central Asia and Afghanistan were discussed during Rinkevics’ stay, indicating an EU desire to look beyond Iran’s nuclear program. This visit was another step in a string of reconnections that include trips to Iran by foreign ministers and parliamentarians from a number of EU countries including Austria, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Not everybody is pleased with these developments. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the front group for the exiled Iranian dissident organization, the Mujahadeen-e Khalq (known as the MEK, MKO, or PMOI), which was classified as a terrorist organization by the EU until 2009 and by the United States until 2012, denounced a trip last month to Tehran by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz. The denunciation came two weeks after the so-called Friends of Free Iran (FoFi), an informal network of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) closely allied to the NCRI, organized a conference calling for regime change in Iran and lauding the NCRI-MEK as the democratic alternative.

This is the message that the NCRI and bedfellows like FoFi have been promoting for years in European countries where the MEK has had many more years to lobby for and promote its agenda than in the United States. While the notion of an irreconcilable enmity between the West and Iran was relatively easy to promote during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency (2005-13), the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani and the meaningful progress in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program challenge that narrative. So, the MEK, which detests the notion of rapprochement between Iran and the West, has shifted gears and chosen human rights as its casus belli against the Iranian regime.

[..]

The good news is that MEK lobbying efforts against diplomacy with Iran are unlikely to succeed. Even with the extravagant funds the MEK has spent on endorsements by political elites, the group’s prominence in the EU is confined only to one part of the EP. The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and the External Action Service (EEAS) — do not consider the MEK a serious alternative to the current government in Tehran, as it has virtually no support among the Iranian population. The dominant EU line now clearly favors diplomacy with Iran, which will, hopefully, lead to a final deal over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program. The more the chances of success for diplomacy increase, the more irrelevant the MEK will become.

It would be a mistake, however, to completely disregard the capacity of the MEK to poison the present atmosphere of European-Iranian relations. Institutions like the European Parliament are by their very nature open to lobbying from different groups, and the MEK has proven very adept at recruiting supporters. Among the conservative right, the MEK is viewed as staunch defenders of Israel and Western values against Iran’s so-called “mad mullahs”; among the progressive left, the MEK is seen as victims of the American invasion in Iraq in need of protection (the MEK created its base, Camp Ashraf, in Iraq following its exile from Iran).

The MEK’s expensive lobbying and advocacy efforts have also promoted an image of the group as defenders of human rights, especially women rights, facing Iran’s alleged “medieval, barbaric mullah regime”. The group’s strong presence of women, including leader Maryam Rajavi, is sold as evidence of its commitment to gender equality and secularism. Never mind the irony of its members in Camp Ashraf — excluding, of course, Mrs. Rajavi — being invariably dressed in uniformed, almost military suits and headscarves, and never mind the documented human rights abuses by the MEK against its own members.

On the operational level, the MEK is extremely persistent and aggressive. MEK lobbyists maintain a constant presence in the coffee bars of EP buildings in Brussels and Strasbourg, or in front of the plenary room in Strasbourg. These are strategic locations from which to bombard MEPs and their staffers with requests to support the MEK. Sometimes, however, they overdo it — one MEP recounted to me about how she had to scream at an MEK activist until they exited the elevator she was using to get to her office. Even MEPs’ offices are targets: the MEK lobbyists have no qualms about entering them uninvited and distributing flyers against alleged “Islamo-fascist tyranny” in Tehran.

Yet there is a growing backlash in the EP against the MEK. In May 2011, a number of MEPs from across the political spectrum sent an open letter to their colleagues warning against legitimizing the MEK and its destructive agenda, including to heavyweights such as the powerful German chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, christian-democrat Elmar Brok, the leader of the social-democrats, Austrian politician Hannes Swoboda, the president of the party of the European liberal-democrats, Annemie Neyts, and many others. The last resolution of the European Parliament on Iran contained no references to the MEK or its demands. And the delegation for relations with Iran, while regularly offering the floor to various opposition groups, resisted giving a platform to the MEK.

However, more needs to be done to counter MEK propaganda, which can impede diplomatic efforts with Iran that can, arguably, allow the government to reform from within. Iranian diaspora organizations and individuals, the vast majority of whom do not sympathize with the MEK, may feel that confronting the MEK would give the group unwarranted importance, but the reality is that by being the only organized and constantly present Iranian opposition group in the West, the MEK gets its voice heard. The only way to prevent those MEPs who sincerely desire democratic change in Iran — but are uninformed about Iranian politics or the MEK — from falling into the MEK´s trap is to provide alternative sources of information.

Tehran can also play its part. The leaders of the MEK and the Iranian government may never get along — the Islamic government executed MEK members en masse in the 1980s following terrorist acts by the MEK against Iranian officials that also killed civilians, and the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein’s regime during the brutal Iran-Iraq war — but the Iranian government faces no current, tangible threat from this organization. By complaining about the group to foreign dignitaries, Iran appears weak and preoccupied with secondary concerns. For example, the EP’s ties with the MEK were raised at all meetings during the EP delegation’s visit to Iran in December 2013, but members of that particular delegation never supported the MEK. Denouncing the MEK to this group of people was akin to preaching to the converted.

Ultimately, a successful nuclear deal will make the MEK more irrelevant, and the EU is an important actor in this process. This deal should also make way for tangible improvements in Iran’s domestic environment. So far, the MEK has not presented a credible challenge to this process, but it must not be given the opportunity to parasite on the legitimate concerns of the international community over Iran’s nuclear program and its civil and human rights policies.

–Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the delegation for inter-parliamentary relations between the EP and Iran.

Eldar Mamedov, Lobelog FP

May 10, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Ordinary citizens trapped for years while Senators paid for supporting terrorists

San Fernando Valley-based Iranian brothers turn to international tribunals over U.S. detentions

Ordinary citizens trapped for years while Senators paid for supporing terrorists Four Iranian brothers who live in the San Fernando Valley are asking two international tribunals to rule that they were unlawfully held on alleged immigration violations for more than 40 months shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Mirmehdi brothers were detained on allegations that they were affiliated with a terrorist organization, though the men argued they had just attended a rally in Denver opposing the Iranian government and they have no terrorist involvement.

They have already filed claims asking for compensation and an apology but were rejected by the U.S. courts who said federal officials are immune from prosecution. But now with help from UCLA law students, they are asking the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Washington D.C.-based Inter-American Commission for Human Rights to take up their case.

The two human rights bodies do not have the legal authority to force the U.S. government to compensate the brothers, but the Mirmehdis and their backers feel the groups could give them a form of justice by authenticating their claims.

“We do want some sort of monetary damages and compensation as well (but) the most important thing is that the court says that the U.S. government was wrong about us,” said Mostafa “Michael” Mirmehdi, 55, of Lake Balboa.

The brothers say they were “arbitrarily detained” in October 2001 and mistreated while held on the basis of a false allegation that they were members of a terrorist organization for which no criminal charges were ever filed. The brothers, who were denied political asylum more than a decade ago but are allowed to stay in the country for the time being, were released from detention in March 2005.

According to federal officials, the Mirmehdi brothers were found to have been subject to removal from the United States because they were in the country in violation of the nation’s immigration laws and were subject to mandatory detention because of their alleged affiliation with a terrorist organization.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the Mirmehdis’ claims against U.S. government officials in 2012 and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case last year.

The Mirmehdis’s troubles date back to 1998 when they applied for political asylum with the help of an attorney named Bahram Tabatabai, who falsified certain details in the brothers’ applications, according to a 9th Circuit Court opinion. After Tabatabai was arrested for immigration fraud in March 1999, he agreed to cooperate with federal authorities; as part of a plea bargain, he told federal authorities that the Mirmehdis were supporters of an Iranian terrorist group known as the Mujahedine-e Khalq (MEK) “though he later recanted,” according to the opinion.

The agents arrested the Mirmehdis for immigration violations in March 1999 and they were later released on bond. The other three brothers are Mohammad, 43, of Tarzana, Mojtaba, 51, of Encino, and Mohsen, 47, of Tarzana.

Immigration authorities, however, revoked the bonds in October 2001 largely based on a document known as the “L.A. Cell Form,” a handwritten piece of paper that the government maintained listed members, affiliates and supporters of the MEK but that the Mirmehdis and their attorneys say was just a list of attendees at a “constitutionally-protected, pro-democracy” rally in Denver in 1997. That rally was hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which was affiliated with the MEK, and attended by several members of the U.S. Congress, the brothers said.

The Mirmehdis have maintained that they are not members of the MEK nor any other terrorist organization. They contend that federal officials detained them for as long as they did to try to get them to provide terrorist-related information about MEK members they did not possess.

An FBI spokeswoman said it would be inappropriate to comment beyond the U.S. courts’ decisions on this case.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice declined comment on Tuesday, but she pointed to earlier statements made by her agency about the case.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that aliens may not be detained indefinitely when the United States is unable to carry out their removal,” Kice said in a written statement in 2005 after the brothers were ordered released from custody. “However, the law permits continued detention of individuals who pose an imminent threat to national security. Following a detailed analysis of all-important factors, there is insufficient basis to support continued detention of the brothers. One of these important factors is a judicial finding that, although they were associated with a terrorist organization, there was not enough evidence to connect the brothers to personally engaging in terrorist acts.”

When the Supreme Court rejected their case last year, there was no other avenue in the United States for the Mirmehdis, said Catherine Sweetser, an associate of the Venice-based law firm Schonbrun DeSimone Seplow Harris & Hoffman that has represented the brothers for years. The firm then asked the UCLA School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic for help in taking the course to the international arena.

“The first thing we’re hoping for… are opinions that vindicate our clients’ position saying they were arbitrarily detained and experienced all these human rights violations under detention,” said E. Tendayi Achiume, instructor of the UCLA School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic and a Binder Teaching Fellow. “We’re hoping that both tribunals will also make recommendations that ask the U.S. government to do several things … award damages and some form of rehabilitation/compensation for our clients for the violations they suffered. In addition to that, we would like both tribunals to recommend that the U.S. government amend the laws that immunize governments agents that engage in this conduct from being held accountable.”

A decision from the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights can take many years while the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention could respond within the year, Achiume said.

Brenda Gazzar, Los Angeles Daily News

April 26, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Kerry Gets Pressed To Grant Asylum To Former Terrorist Group Mojahedin Khalq

WASHINGTON — In what has become an all-too-familiar sight on Capitol Hill, at least a half-dozen members of the exiled Iranian group Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, arrived at Thursday’s hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all dressed in their trademark yellow shirts.

For most of the past 15 years, the group had been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. But in September 2012, as the U.S. prepared to pull troops out of Iraq, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revoked the terrorist designation, part of a diplomatic effort to persuade MEK leadership to begin moving their 3,000-plus members out of Iraq. Ever since the American pullout, the MEK has found itself under threat from Iraqis who vividly recall its decade-long alliance with Saddam Hussein.

MEK members attended Thursday’s hearing to advance a bold proposition: that the thousands of their adherents still living in Iraq should be granted asylum and moved to the United States.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) emerged Thursday as the most vocal proponent of this plan, which was also championed at the hearing by Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). Rohrabacher aimed his questions at the only witness testifying that day, Secretary of State John Kerry.

“I’ve introduced legislation, H.R. 3707, which would grant asylum to these people in Camp Ashraf, who are obviously in danger,” Rohrabacher said. “Is the administration supporting this concept?”

Kerry sidestepped the question in his typically diplomatic way. “There’s one solution to the problem [of the MEK], and that is that we need to relocate those folks,” he said.

“Can’t we relocate them here? Why not?” Rohrabacher shot back.

“That’s one of the things we’re looking at,” Kerry replied.

Kerry went on to describe a new position he had created within the State Department, that of senior advisor for Mujahedin-e Khalq resettlement. In October of last year, he appointed Jonathan Winer, a longtime Kerry adviser and an expert in international law, to the position.

Rohrabacher’s bill is co-sponsored by many of the same lawmakers who initially backed delisting the MEK from the terrorist roll. As of Thursday, there were 46 co-sponsors.

But administration officials privately suggest that Rohrabacher’s bill, and any other efforts to grant asylum to the MEK in the United States, face nearly insurmountable odds.

“It’s one thing to unfreeze their assets [by removing the terrorist designation], but asylum is a whole different ballgame,” an administration official said, speaking on background to The Huffington Post. To illustrate how limited U.S. asylum policy is in practice, the official noted that out of the more than 135,000 applications received from individuals fleeing Syria’s bloody civil war, only 31 were admitted in the last fiscal year.

“The policy concern with asylum is what kind of precedent that might set for the future. By those standards, the MEK isn’t looking very good,” said the official.

So far, Winer has managed to secure visas from the Albanian government for more than two dozen MEK members.

Other than that, however, it’s been an uphill climb to convince other countries to accept MEK members, due to their cult-like characteristics and near-religious devotion to the Paris-based Maryam Rajavi and her husband, Massoud Rajavi. Under the Rajavis, MEK members have instituted forced celibacy, mandatory divorce and gender segregation, according to a 2009 report from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation. The MEK is also still widely viewed as a militant organization with a “cultic focus on suicide,” wrote the Rand authors, despite the group’s having formally renounced violence in 2003.

But long odds don’t mean the MEK won’t keep trying to gain asylum in the United States. No longer restricted by the terrorist designation, they are now free to spend their millions of dollars — the source of which remains murky — without fear of Treasury Department scrutiny. In 2013, they opened a formal office in a high-rent building on Pennsylvania Avenue and set about expanding their already large cadre of prominent Washington lobbyists.

Around Washington, the MEK is known for having spent millions of dollars on a highly visible advocacy campaign to help secure their delisting as a terrorist organization. To plead their case, the group hired dozens of former administration officials turned government affairs consultants, including Andrew Card, onetime chief of staff to President George W. Bush, and James Jones, former national security advisor to President Barack Obama.

By Christina Wilkie,

March 15, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The MKO’s deep pocket is not enough

Despite the well funded efforts by the Mujahedin Khalq Organization’s lobbyists in the US Congress, the pro Israel lobbying group, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) turned its back to the MKO. AIPAC gave up on pushing for a vote on an anti-Iran bill after top sponsor of new sanction bill — who is actually an MKO’s main advocate in the Congress– Senator Robert Menendez spoke against an immediate vote. AIPAC said in an emailed statement, "that there should not be a vote at this time on the measure.”[1]

The New York Times’ Mark Landler suggests that there have been very few issues on which the AIPAC "lost showdown with the White House"."But now Aipac, as the group is known, once again finds itself in a very public standoff with the White House,” He writes. "Its top priority, a Senate bill to impose new sanctions on Iran, has stalled after stiff resistance from President Obama, and in what amounts to a tacit retreat, Aipac has stopped pressuring Senate Democrats to vote for the bill."[2]

US Lawmakers confirm that the political climate on Capitol Hill has changed since the bill’s sponsors and Aipac made their push to sign the new bill to increase sanctions against Iran in December. Apparently they plan "to give Mr. Obama breathing room for diplomacy".

Menendez and AIPAC’s change of course, however, came after the bill lost steam when several Democratic cosponsors of the legislation, including senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), Ben Cardin (Maryland), Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), and Chris Coons (Delaware), said they did not favor an immediate vote on the bill, according to Press TV.[3]

In December 2013 when the new anti Iran legislation was first brought to the Congress by Senator Menendez and his colleague Senator Kirk, Jim White of the Empty Wheel website gave the MKO too much credit to state that ” the work (and funding money) of MEK, which advocates for (in my opinion, violent) regime change in Iran, seems to be just as likely [AIPAC], if not more likely, to be behind this hideous piece of legislation ”.[4]However he was definitely right to accuse Menendez of being in the payroll of the MKO.

Earlier, in November, Austin Wright of Politico reported that an MKO activist in the US Masood Abooali contributed $2,600 in August to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reelection campaign. In his investigative report he also revealed, "Earlier this year, Abooali contributed to two other Iran hawks, giving $2,600 to Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and $1,000 to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee."[5]

It is worth to know that Menendez is under criminal investigation by the FBI for his ties to two fugitive Ecuadorian bankers and his donors. Moreover, Ros- lehtinen is charged with the same crime. "While the fugitive brothers cannot donate directly because they are not US citizens, their American relatives can and have given generously to Ros-Lehtinen, Menendez and others," reported Brett Wilkins of Digital Journal. "In addition to Ros-Lehtinen, who received $20,000 from the family, and Menendez, who got $10,000 for his 2012 campaign." [6]

Although the two Senators deny any quid pro quo with the fugitive brothers the author of the piece adds more to the list of their mistakes. He criticizes Ros-lehtinen for publicly voicing "her support for Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), a then-State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization of Iranian dissidents who once assassinated numerous US officials and carries out attacks inside Iran with US and Israeli assistance."[7]

By the way, the MKO’s lavish parties for its high profile –corrupt– friends in the US Congress in order to run its hostile policies against the Iranian nation has not worked yet and it is unlikely to work in the future.

By Mazda Parsi

References:

[1] Pecquet, Julian, AIPAC breaks with GOP on Iran sanctions, THE HILL, February 6, 2014

[2] Landler, Mark, Potent Pro-Israel Group Finds Its Momentum Blunted, New York Times, February 3, 2014

[3]Press TV, AIPAC gives up on anti-Iran bill vote, February 7, 2014

[4] White, Jim, MEK Purchases 27 US Senate Votes for War with Iran, emptywheel.net, December 20, 2013

[5] Wright, Austin, Lindsey Graham returns donations to Iranian exile group, Politico.com, November 13, 2013

[6] Wilkins, Brett, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) helped fugitive embezzlers, Digital Journal, February 6, 2014

[7] ibid

February 16, 2014 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts