The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

Wathiq al-Batat claims responsibility for Camp Liberty missile attack

A camp of Iranian dissidents in the Iraqi capital was hit by rockets on Thursday in an attack the group said killed three residents and seriously wounded several others. Wathiq al-Batat claims responsibility for Camp Liberty missile attack

A Shi’ite militia claimed responsibility for the attack on the Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) camp in western Baghdad, which has repeatedly been the target of mortar and rocket attacks in recent months.

The group, which calls for the overthrow of Iran’s clerical leaders and fought on Iraq’s side during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi’ite-led government that came to power after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

A Paris-based spokesman for the MEK, Shahin Gobadi, said three people had been killed when “Camp Liberty,” located in a former U.S. military compound, was hit with dozens of missiles.

Several of the wounded were in a critical condition, said Gobadi, adding that more than 50 had been reported injured. The group accused the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of being behind the attack in an attempt to win support from Iran’s government ahead of elections next year.

Iraqi authorities have repeatedly denied involvement in attacks on the group.

In a rare claim of responsibility for attacks on the MEK, Wathiq al-Batat, commander of the al-Mukhtar Army militia, told Reuters his group had fired 20 Katyusha rockets and mortar rounds at the camp.

“We’ve asked (the government) to expel them from the country many times, but they are still here,” he said, accusing the group of communicating with Sunni and Shi’ite politicians he said were linked to al Qaeda.

The U.S. State Department condemned the attack “in the strongest terms.” In a statement, it urged the Iraqi government to take additional steps to secure the camp against further violence and “to find the perpetrators and hold them accountable for the attack.”

Al-Mukhtar Army is a relatively new Shi’ite militia, which has said it is supported and funded by Iran. Batat is a former leader of the more well-known Kata’ib Hezbollah militia.

Shahriar Kia, another spokesman for MEK who lives in the camp he said houses about 3,000 Iranian dissidents, said two men were killed when a rocket fell near their caravan.

“I saw two caravans set ablaze and black smoke billowing,” he said. “We are still taking shelter inside the caravans out of fear of more shelling.”

Police sources confirmed the camp had been targeted by mortars and said four wounded Iranians had been transported to a hospital in western Baghdad.

More than 50 people were killed at a separate MEK camp north of Baghdad in September. The attack drew condemnation from the United States and Britain.

(Reporting by Suadad al-Salhy, Ahmed Rasheed and Kareem Raheem; Additional reporting by Peter Cooney in Washington; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by David Evans and Bill Trott)

December 28, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Purchases 27 US Senate Votes for War With Iran

On Tuesday, I posited that the threat of new sanctions kicking in if a final agreement on nuclear technology is not reached could serve as a strong incentive for Iran to bargain in good faith with the P5+1 MEK Purchases 27 US Senate Votes for War With Iran group of nations. But then, on Thursday, an actual sanctions bill was introduced. Ali Gharib took the time to read it (he got an advance copy and posted about it Wednesday) and what he found is profoundly disturbing (emphasis added):

The legislation would broaden the scope of the sanctions already imposed against Iran, expanding the restrictions on Iran’s energy sector to include all aspects of its petroleum trade and putting in place measures targeting Iran’s shipping and mining sectors. The bill allows Obama to waive the new sanctions during the current talks by certifying every 30 days that Iran is complying with the Geneva deal and negotiating in good faith on a final agreement, as well as meeting other conditions such as not sponsoring or carrying out acts of terrorism against U.S. targets.

In accordance with goals laid out frequently by hard-liners in Congress and the influential lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the bill sets tough conditions for a final deal, should one be reached with Iranian negotiators. Among those conditions is a provision that only allows Obama to waive new sanctions, even after a final deal has been struck, if that deal bars Iran from enriching any new uranium whatsoever. The bill states Obama may not waive sanctions unless the United States and its allies “reached a final and verifiable agreement or arrangement with Iran that will … dismantle Iran’s illicit nuclear infrastructure, including enrichment and reprocessing capabilities and facilities.” (Congress could also block Obama’s waivers by passing a “joint resolution of disapproval” against a final deal.)

Although Gharib ascribes the war mongering aspects of this bill to positions advocated by AIPAC, the work (and funding money) of MEK, which advocates for (in my opinion, violent) regime change in Iran, seems to be just as likely, if not more likely, to be behind this hideous piece of legislation. The chief architect of the bill is Robert Menendez (D-NJ). He lists his cosponsors (Menendez’s original release claimed 26 cosponsors and the news stories linked below also cite 26, but Corey Booker was added to the list this morning while this post was being written. The press release was changed to add Booker to the list without changing the 26 to 27. The press release at the old URL was wiped out so that an empty page is returned. The date of December 19 for the release was also retained.):

The legislation was co-sponsored by twenty-six senators [sic], including: Senators Menendez, Kirk, Schumer, Graham, Cardin, McCain, Casey, Rubio, Coons, Cornyn, Blumenthal, Ayotte, Begich, Corker, Pryor, Collins, Landrieu, Moran, Gillibrand, Roberts, Warner, Johanns, Hagan, Cruz, Donnelly, Blunt and Booker.

Perhaps the only encouraging aspect of this long list of bipartisan backers of war is that back in June of 2012 this group got 44 signatures on a Senate letter calling for all negotiations with Iran to cease unless three conditions were met:

The senators wrote that the “absolute minimum” Iran must do immediately to justify further talks is to shut down the Fordo uranium enrichment facility near Qom, freeze all uranium enrichment above 5 percent, and ship all uranium enriched above 5 percent out of the country.

Note that the current agreement does stop enrichment above 5%. It also calls for half of the 20% uranium to be diluted back down to 5% while the other half is converted to a chemical form for fuel that can’t easily be further enriched. Qom is not shut down, but the agreement does spell out specific numbers of centrifuges that can be used at the two enrichment sites.

But consider this for a moment. Most of what these war mongers were lobbying for last year actually appears in the interim agreement, and so they have been forced to move the goalposts in order to reach a point that they think won’t be part of the final agreement. What they want is a war to change the regime in Iran, not a diplomatic solution that prevents nuclear weapons being developed by Iran.

It became obvious during the final discussions that led to this interim agreement that Iran insists on its right to low level enrichment to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. Since that is seen as a deal-breaker for Iran, it is precisely what the MEK now sets as the determinant of whether sanctions that will certainly lead to war are enacted.

The intellectual dishonesty surrounding this move by MEK shills in the Senate is stunning. They claim, as stated in Menendez’s press release that their goal is “the complete and verifiable termination of Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program”. Low level enrichment is not part of a weapons program and yet this group insists that Iran also must abandon low level enrichment along with any aspects of a weapons program.

Even more disturbing is that stories today by both the New York Times and CNN mention the introduction of the bill but don’t get around to explaining that the bill calls for the extreme sanctions if all enrichment is not abandoned and that that condition is almost certainly a deal-breaker for Iran.

There is at least some push-back within the Senate. A letter signed by ten Democratic committee heads has been sent to Harry Reid strongly advocating against bringing the bill up for a vote. Sadly, the letter fails to point out the manner in which Menendez’s bill undercuts the ongoing negotiations by setting terms that almost certainly are not going to be a part of any final agreement with Iran. There also is an op-ed (in Politico!) by Carl Levin and Barbara Boxer lobbying against the bill. Significantly, Levin was one of the 44 signatories on the June, 2012 letter but now seems to have come around to favoring diplomacy over war. Failing all this, the White House has promised to veto any bills calling for new sanctions since they clearly violate the interim P5+1 agreement.

by Jim White, Emptywheel.net

December 22, 2013 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

It’s Time to Close the Camps

The last quarter century has been a time of great change across the globe, much of which has been for the better. The number of electoral democracies has grown from 69 in 1989 to 118 today. Despite

Michael Rubin Russia’s resurgence, the instability wrought by the Arab Spring, and the dangers posed by rogue regimes, the world remains far freer now than at any point in history.

How tragic it is, then, that so many tens of thousands remain effectively imprisoned in political concentration camps. North Korea, of course, is the world’s worst violator. According to the Guardian, the left’s flagship paper, up to 200,000 North Koreans remain imprisoned. CNN has detailed some of the ongoing horror in the six camps, and any report from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea is worth reading. The Hermit Kingdom is not alone, though.

For decades, China has also maintained a series of “re-education through labor” [laojiao] camps. And while the Chinese government has recently promised to dismantle its network, actions ultimately speak louder than words.

The United States might have little leverage over China and North Korea, but low-hanging fruit which could be resolved with American diplomatic pressure does exist. The Mujahedin al-Khalq (MKO) is correct to castigate those who believe that the Iranian government or its militia proxies should enjoy an open season on group members. Opposing massacres is not synonymous with support for the group, however; it may no longer be a U.S.-designated terror group, but remains just as much an authoritarian cult. And while MKO spokesmen may castigate the Iraqi government and the Iranian regime, the real victims of the MKO lay within the group itself. Camp Liberty—the successor to Camp Ashraf—exists as much if not more to keep MKO members insulated from the real world and under the control of MKO leader Maryam Rajavi’s commissars than as a means of protection for group members.

Other camps exist in the Tindouf province of southwestern Algeria. Here, perhaps 40,000 residents of southern Morocco, Algeria, western Mali, and northern Mauritania languish in camps controlled by the once-Marxist Polisario Front, largely kept from returning home by the group’s political commissars and the Algerian government. During a recent visit to Dakhla, in Western Sahara, I had the opportunity to speak to former members who described not only their own escape from the camps, but the attempts by others who were forcibly returned to the camps, where Polisario authorities punished them for the audacity of seeking to return home rather than languish in camps 22 years after the war between Morocco and Algeria ended. Simply put, Polisario realizes that if the camps close, the gravy train of international assistance would end and the Polisario would lose its raison d’être.

The Polisario is not the only Cold War remnant stubbornly holding hostages. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia also engages in the practice, holding some prisoners for more than a decade. While some journalists parachute in and whitewash just what happens in FARC camps, it is hard to see “cultural programming” as anything other than an attempt at ideological re-education.

The Obama administration came into office seemingly committed to prioritizing human rights, never mind the debates about how best to guarantee rights, freedom, and liberty. The State Department became a revolving door not only for journalists, but for human-rights advocates, most notably Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski and writer Samantha Power. Increasingly, however, it seems such figures are either window dressing for an administration so disinterested in human rights that it is willing to sanction political concentration and re-education camps or, worse yet, that these figures are so permeated by moral equivalency and skewed in their understanding of what universal human rights are that they are willing to normalize with the regimes, sponsors, and groups which engage in such practices.

Concentration camps and slavery (discussed in a previous post) are two phenomena that simply should not exist in the 21st century. That they do is a sad testament to the reality of regimes like North Korea’s, China’s, Algeria’s, Venezuela’s, and Cuba’s, and the choices which successive U.S. administrations–both Democrat and Republican–have made to not let such issues be stumbling blocks to engaging with the United States on other issues.

Michael Rubin, Commentary Magazine

December 18, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Notes on the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq and Americans in Paris

On Saturday, 7 December 2013, in an auditorium at the Bourse in Paris, France, Maryam Rajavi and the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) held a meeting with several notable supporters including former New York

Photo by CSD of Rudolph Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi

Mayor and Republican Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard Dean, former attorney general in the George W. Bush administration Michael Mucasey, and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter Naomi Nontombi Tutu. Over the years, despite it cult-like practices and even when it was formally labeled a terrorist organization, the organization managed to acquire quite a list of high-profile ex-dignitaries in the United States.

I went to cover the event because I think the group may wind up playing a role of one sort and another helping to undermine American and European efforts to reach an agreement with Iran to forestall and foreclose its nuclear weapons capability.

There are several ways the MEK might do this.

It was listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization until last year for reasons outlined in this Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder. Despite official denials, it may yet try to use violence inside Iran to undermine the talks, knowing full well that any terrorist incidents will serve the hardliners in the regime and “exacerbate the contradictions,” as leftist revolutionaries used to say. When Iranian scientists have been killed, suspicion often has fallen on the MEK, the Israelis, or both.

The MEK claims to have extensive intelligence resources on the ground in Iran and claims credit for the important revelation in 2002 of the regime’s secret nuclear program, although there has been extensive speculation that the actual intelligence was supplied to the MEK by the Israelis. Its ability to float information — or disinformation — about the regime’s activities could complicate debate inside the United States.

To the extent the MEK claims credit for adding to the pressure on the Iranian government to negotiate it strengthens the hand of those inside Iran who want to discredit the negotiators.

But its greatest disruptive ability at the moment may well be connected to the way the Iranian-backed government of Iraq has treated MEK members in various camps there. On September 1 this year, 52 of them were killed, allegedly by special forces from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, and seven (six of them women) are alleged to have been taken hostage.

Why the Iraqi government would do this, even with prodding from the Iranians, is something of a mystery. One obvious possibility would be revenge: the MEK sided with the mullahs to overthrow the shah, then attempted, and failed, to take over the revolution; it subsequently blew up scores of top Iranian religious leaders, and after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran it sided with his forces. More than 20 years later, when the United States led the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam, the MEK still supported him. But U.S. forces decided its members might be used in some way as a card in future negotiations with Iran and the more than 3,000 MEK members in Iraq were put in a camp, disarmed, and began an existence in legal, political and diplomatic limbo. As the United States withdrew from Iraq in 2011, fears mounted that the government of Prime Minister Maliki would simply ship the Iranian MEK members across the border to face the tender mercies of the government in Tehran.

That did not happen. Instead their camp at Ashraf was closed after a violent incursion by Iraqi forces and they were sent to Camp Liberty on the outskirts of Baghdad (although they are still referred to by the MEK as “Ashrafis,” which is why in my tweets there were some references to killings at Camp Ashraf that were in fact at Camp Liberty).

The United States and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees assured the Ashrafis that they would be resettled in other countries, but that process has been very slow and one of the few countries willing to accept them even temporarily for medical care has been Albania. The camp came under repeated mortar attacks, and then came the September 1 killings and abductions.

Giuliani, Dean and others who worked to get the MEK “delisted” from the State Department’s catalogue of foreign terrorist organizations were involved to some extent in the assurances given the MEK that they would be protected at Camp Liberty and relocated in a timely fashion.

Giuliani argued yesterday that the issue of the Ashrafis and the nuclear negotiations should be linked, something the Obama administration is very unlikely to do. Dean claimed that failure to protect the Ashrafis dishonored the United States of America.

Following are my live tweets from the meeting:

http://christopherdickey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-mujahadeen-e-khalq-mek-and.html?spref=fb

Award-winning author Christopher Dickey is the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor for The Daily Beast. Chris’s nonfiction books include “Securing the City,” a New York Times Book Review notable book in 2009; “Summer of Deliverance,” his memoir about his father, poet and novelist James Dickey; “Expats,” about Westerners in the modern Arab and Muslim world; and “With the Contras,” a first-hand account of combat in Central American wars. He is also the author of two acclaimed thrillers: “Innocent Blood” and “The Sleeper.” Before moving to Newsweek, Chris worked for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Mexico City Bureau Chief. Chris’s columns about counter-terrorism, espionage and the Middle East appear on The Daily Beast. Links to most recent columns and articles are posted on The Shadowland Journal, and also on the archive at ChristopherDickey.com.

Christopher Dickey, The Shadowland Journal

December 10, 2013 0 comments

Iraq

Iraq says no success tracing killers of Iranian dissidents

Iraq is hunting militants, still unidentified, who led a deadly attack on an Iranian dissident camp near Baghdad and dismisses suggestions its own security forces were behind the violence, a senior government official said.

More than 50 people were killed at the dissident Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) group’s Camp Ashraf in September in an attack the United Nations described as “an atrocious crime” and which drew condemnation from the United States and Britain. Assailants took time to conduct execution-style killings and plant bombs.

MEK, which the U.S. State Department removed from its list of terrorist organisations last year, wants Iran’s clerical leaders overthrown and fought on former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s side during the Iran-Iraq war in 1980s.

The group, which has accused Iraqi security forces of being behind the attack, is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi’ite Muslim-led government that came to power after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam in 2003.

“The main thing that the investigations have revealed so far is that the Iraqi security forces were not involved in that attack and an unknown militant group was behind it,” said Haider al-Akaili, who is part of a government committee overseeing the investigation, which was demanded by the U.N.

Iraqi authorities have repeatedly denied involvement in the attack, in which camp residents also went missing. MEK says they were taken hostage by Iraqi forces and were flown to Amara province to be extradited to Iran.

Akaili, who is an official in Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights, denied this: “Pictures of the alleged missing persons have been circulated to airports and checkpoints and we have not received any news about any of them,” he told Reuters.

The committee is headed by Iraq’s national security chief and includes representatives from government ministries and the intelligence service as well as the U.N.

Akaili added that 53 people had been killed, not 52 as originally reported by the U.N. which said its representatives had seen corpses with gunshot wounds and some with their hands tied. The additional victim had not been reported until now because his face had been burnt and he had not been previously identifiable as a camp member, Akaili said.

The last residents moved out of the camp to a new base in September. The camp had housed around 100 MEK members at the time of the attack.

Iraqi authorities have issued 148 arrest warrants for MEK members for crimes against Iraqis since 1991 but none have been arrested, according to officials.

The group which attacked the camp appeared to have had ample time to execute the victims as well as plant bombs in cars and buildings which it detonated remotely, Akaili said.

“The operation was elaborate, complicated and big,” he said, adding that MEK members who had seen the attack had shown a “serious lack” of cooperation with investigating authorities.

He raised the possibility that there had been a dispute within the camp and some of the attackers had come from inside it. Another scenario was that the seven missing people were behind the assault, he said.

MEK numbered 4,174 members in Iraq up to 2003. The U.N. has resettled some 1,000 while 1,600 have declined to meet with officials, Akaili said. The rest are being resettled.

Suadad al-Salhy , Editing by Sylvia Westall; editing by Ralph Boulton

November 27, 2013 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Derailing diplomacy: MEK weighs in on Iran nuke talks & Tom Ridge interview

Last week while the outlines of a historic interim deal were being hashed out between the P5+1 nations and Iran, a last ditch effort to derail diplomacy and garner support for regime change in the Islamic Republic took place on Capitol Hill organized by the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the the MEK. VOR’s Sean Nevins writes about the event, as well as his one-on-one interview with former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, and a discussion with the MEK’s political arm.

The MEK, which according to U.S. Department of State, has been involved in the assassinations of American citizens and committed abuse against its own members, held a congressional briefing about a group of MEK members that were kidnapped following an attack on their compound in Iraq on September 1st of this year.

Prominent US officials, such as John Bolton (Fmr. US Ambassador to the United Nations), Tom Ridge and Brad Sherman (D-CA), attended and spoke on behalf of the MEK.

However, rather than focusing on the legitimately tragic events that took place against the MEK and its compound in Iraq, speakers zeroed in on the Iranian nuclear deal and its potential problems while also supporting regime change in the country.

Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas’s 18th District, said, “I want to see Iran disarmed, totally disarmed” while Randy Weber, a Republican also from Texas, said, “We need regime change. That’s pure and simple.”

None of the speakers over the two-hour time span supported diplomatic efforts taking place in Geneva.

A one-on-one with Tom Ridge (Fmr. Secretary of Homeland Security)

Following the briefing, Voice of Russia, intercepted Tom Ridge and asked him about his support for the MEK, an organization that has killed American citizens in the past. He denied the veracity of the claims, calling them “allegations,” and said that, if true, “the people at Liberty and Ashraf [the camps in Iraq] weren’t involved in those… assassinations back then”. This answer is despite the that fact that the State Department, Human Rights Watch, and the Rand Corporation say that the MEK was involved with those killings.

Additionally, Voice of Russia asked the former Secretary about allegations by the same aforementioned organizations that the MEK has abused its own members in the Iraqi camps. Again, the Secretary challenged the veracity of the claims. He said, “I think the Rand report, I’m not sure about the Human Rights [Watch report], has been discredited for many, many years.” This answer also came despite the fact that the State Department has said, “the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

With regards to the talks going on in Geneva at the time, Ridge told Voice of Russia, “I think a bad deal is worse than no deal.” During his presentation, he also emphasized that he did not support negotiations.

My own encounter with the MEK

Following my discussion with Tom Ridge, two people named Ali Safavi and Ben Borhani, from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is a political arm of the MEK, approached me to inquire about my questioning of the Secretary. They claimed that my concerns were part of a massive propaganda campaign targeted against the MEK by the Iranian regime.

I invited Mr. Safavi to come into the Voice of Russia studio on another date to voice his organization’s views, and so I could moderate a debate between himself and, if possible, a member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). I have no idea if a member of NIAC would agree to such a debate but will not have to find out as Mr. Safavi declined the request. He then alleged that Trita Parsi, the president of NIAC, is “acting as a lobby for the [Iranian] regime”, which is laughable as NIAC is stalwart in their criticisms of human rights violations by the Ayatollah and other government officials in Iran. For example, NIAC frequently criticizes the Iranian government’s treatment of Bahais, who are not allowed to attend university in Iran, and are frequently murdered and imprisoned for their beliefs.

However, Mr. Safavi did invite VOR into the NCRI offices to further discuss his organization and its plans, which we will do in the near future.

The 2009 Rand report on the MEK says they are “skilled manipulators of public opinion”. It says that the group has a “long history of deception”. Included in the report is an account of how the MEK has lied to the US government in the past in order to achieve favorable status as detainees at Camp Ashraf in Iraq.

Sean Nevins, Voice of Russia (VOR)

November 27, 2013 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

UNHCR urges states to relocate former residents of Camp Ashraf

Press Releases, 19 November 2013

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) calls for renewed efforts from states to relocate former Camp Ashraf residents, also known as Camp New Iraq.

Since the 1 September 2013 attack on Camp New Iraq where 52 residents died, there has been limited progress in moving the remaining residents to a third country. UNHCR encourages all Member States to share in the international efforts, admit residents and offer them a long-term solution.

UNHCR and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) also call upon the Government of Iraq to take all possible measures to ensure the safety of the residents. UNHCR and UNAMI remain gravely concerned about the fate of seven missing individuals formerly residing in Camp New Iraq who disappeared on 1 September and call on the authorities to locate them, ensure their wellbeing and safeguard them against any forcible return.

Since 2011, UNHCR, together with UNAMI, has been engaged in an effort to find relocation opportunities outside Iraq for some 3,200 former residents of Camp New Iraq. In total, UNHCR has so far been able to secure the relocation to third countries of 300 residents.

November 24, 2013 0 comments

The MEK Expulsion from Iraq

Iraqi NGOs Urge Rapid Expulsion of Mojahedin Khalq

Iraq’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) asked the Baghdad government to expedite expulsion of the members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI and PMOI) from their country.

Several NGOs attending a conference in Baghdad urged the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki to expel the remaining MKO members from Iraq immediately.

Adnan Al-Shahmani, member of the Iraqi Parliament’s National and Defense Committee said that the Baghdad conference has been organized by NGOs in a bid to exert pressure on the government to accelerate expulsion of MKO members.

He noted that there are still more than 2,000 MKO members present in Iraq, although hundreds of others have been sent to other countries.

Abbas Al-Bayati, another participant in the conference, reiterated that MKO plays a dangerous role in Iraq and its presence poses a grave danger to the crisis-hit country.

The last group of MKO terrorists at Camp Ashraf, now called Camp New Iraq, was evicted by the Iraqi government on September 11 to join other members of the terrorist group in the former US-held Camp Liberty, now called Camp Hurriya, near Baghdad International Airport where they are awaiting relocation to other countries.

The MKO, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly-established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by the MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who eventually took the MKO off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September 2012, one week after the then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under the US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with the American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

November 18, 2013 0 comments

Members of the MEK

Meet The Weird, Well-Connected Ex-Terrorists

Meet The Weird, Super-Connected Group That’s Mucking Up U.S. Talks With Iraq

When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki begins a three day official visit to Washington today, he’ll face predictable questions about Iran, Syria, and Iraq’s own political instability and soaring violence. Top lawmakers, however, will press him on a very different issue: the recent killings of dozens of members of a former terrorist group that the Iraqi government had promised — and failed — to protect.

The Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK, is the most powerful lobby you’ve never heard of, and probably the most unusual. It has used a combination of political savvy and seemingly bottomless pools of money to persuade many prominent lawmakers and former officials from the Bush and Obama administrations that it has broad support within Iran and could help turn the country into a democracy. Along the way, it’s gone from being as seen as a group responsible for the deaths of at least six Americans to one that is a vital partner in the effort to overthrow Iran’s theocratic regime.

MEK supporters like New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say they want to punish the Maliki government for an attack on an MEK compound called Camp Ashraf last month that left that killed at least 50 of its members. During an October 3rd hearing, Menendez told Wendy Sherman, the number three official at the State Department, that he would suspend U.S. weapons sales to Iraq until more was done to protect the MEK members at the base.

Vice President Biden discussed the MEK issue when he spoke with Maliki Wednesday morning, according to a senior administration official. The official said Baghdad wanted the MEK to leave Iraq, but said the U.S. government had no credible information that the Iraqi government was involved in the September attack on Camp Ashraf. Still, the official said that Washington worried that the group’s roughly 2,900 members would be in danger until they could be moved to new homes in other countries. The problem, he said, was that Albania and Germany were the only nations that have so far been willing to take in even small numbers of MEK followers.

Menendez aides say the senator, for his part, plans to specifically raise the Iraqi government’s treatment of the MEK members, along with his concern that Baghdad is allowing Iran to use its airspace to fly weapons and fighters to Syria, when he sits down with Maliki later Wednesday.

“It is unacceptable to lose one more life when American commanders gave these individuals a written guarantee toward their safety and it sends a message to others in the world that when we say that we are going to do that and we do not, that they should not trust us,” he said at the time. “I doubt very much that we are going to see any approval of any weapons sales to Iraq until we get this situation in a place in which people’s lives are saved.”

The MEK has also enlisted prominent retired officials to tout its cause in public speeches and private meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill. Its long list of supporters includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Mike Mukasey, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, retired Marine General Jim Jones, Obama’s first national security advisor, and retired Army General Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

MEK advocates like Rendell receive up to $30,000 per speech, which means many have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the group. Rendell, in an interview, said he genuinely believed in the group’s cause and wasn’t in it for the money. He said that he and MEK advocates like Jones and former FBI Director Louis Freeh have spent hundreds of hours personally lobbying the State Department and members of Congress on behalf of the group and had done so pro bono. Rendell said he bills $1,000 per hour as a lawyer, which meant that had foregone significant amounts of money to aid the group.

“The U.S. had promised to guarantee their safety and then just stood aside when they were massacred, gangster style,” he said in the interview. “It’s disgusting.”

Rendell helped draft a letter to Obama last week that demanded U.S. assistance for the MEK members still stuck at Camp Ashraf. In the letter, obtained by FP, MEK’s advocates said the killings at Camp Ashraf was a “premeditated mass murder planned at the highest level and executed by Iraqi forces and agents, using equipment and training provided by U.S. forces.”

“We urge you to allow all of the Camp Liberty residents to be evacuated immediately from Iraq, using United States forces, and brought to safety in a United States Government supported facility,” the letter read. Until that happened, the group argued, the Obama administration should “suspend any aid or sale of arms to Iraq.”

For the moment, that’s not a step the White House is prepared to take. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said the administration was “deeply concerned” about the safety of the MEK members at Camp Ashraf and consistently pressed the the Iraqi government to do as much as possible to protect them. Still, she said that delaying weapons sales to Iraq could do more harm than good.

“U.S. security assistance, and foreign military sales in particular, are tools that we use for building and shaping Iraq’s defense capabilities and integrating Iraqi security forces with our security forces and regional partners,” Meehan said. “Withholding security assistance may well serve to decrease our influence in Baghdad, our ability to seed relationships, and provide leverage for strategic competitors who will fill the vacuum and could conceivably damage our long-term interests.”

Administration officials said the president would discuss a range of regional and security issues with Maliki when the Iraqi leader visits the White House Friday but declined to say whether the president planned to specifically raise the MEK issue.

Either way, the MEK’s prominent role in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship represents a remarkable turnaround for a group that was once held responsible for a string of bombings and assassinations inside Iran that killed at least six Americans, including the deputy chief of the U.S. military mission to Iran and a senior Texaco executive. It was also linked to the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In 1997, the State Department designated the group a “foreign terrorist organization,” a move that imposed strict financial sanctions against the MEK. The MEK’s current leadership has long denied any involvement in the killings or the seizure of the embassy.

The group’s relationship with Washington improved dramatically after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The MEK group gave up its weapons and formed a warm relationship with senior American commanders, who gave the group formal promises of protection. Last month, however, masked gunmen with military-quality weapons swept into an MEK compound outside Baghdad, killed roughly 50 of its members and abducted seven others. Grisly videos released by the MEK showed the corpses of men who were shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs. The group’s supporters here at home immediately accused Maliki’s government of orchestrating the attack, something Baghdad denies, and called for it to be sanctioned in response.

The MEK’s power in Washington surprises many experts on the group, who describe it as a cult that exerts tremendous power over the daily lives of its followers.

Jeremiah Goulka, a former RAND researcher who has made repeated visits to Camp Ashraf, said MEK leaders physical cut their members off from the outside world, limit their access to outside newspapers or TV stations, and enforce gender segregation and celibacy. He said the MEK required its followers to attend regular sessions where they were forced to admit whether they had sexual thoughts. Those that admitted to them were publicly humiliated, while those that denied having them were derided as liars and criticized anyway.

“That’s the definition of how a cult works,” he said.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the group had little support back home because ordinary Iranians were nationalists troubled by both the MEK’s vaguely socialist ideology and its past relationship with Saddam Hussein, which funded the group’s operations for decades. Many outside experts believe the MEK is still drawing from the pools of money it received from the former Iraqi leader.

“What keeps them in the news are their deep pockets,” Sadjadpour said. “Once those deep pockets run out they’re basically going to be rendered irrelevant.”

By Yochi Dreazen

November 2, 2013 0 comments

Britain may admit 17 Liberty residents with no links to terrorism

Menzies Campbell (North East Fife, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 10 June 2013, Official Report, column 84W, on Iraq: Iran, what the current immigration status is of the 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty who are seeking resettlement in the UK.

Mark Harper (Forest of Dean, Conservative)

None of the 52 residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty who were previously settled in the UK have any current immigration status here. We have agreed to consider, exceptionally, their re-admission as refugees, subject to a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) assessment of each individual to ensure that none have been complicit in acts of terrorism or other activities incompatible with refugee status. Thus far, UNHCR have submitted 17 assessments to the Home Office. No decisions have yet been reached.

October 31, 2013 0 comments

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