Pars Brief – Issue No.19

With assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Ministry of Human Rights, ten former members of the Iranian Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization based at Camp Ashraf returned home this month.These former members requested to be repatriated back to Iran upon arrival at the Coalition controlled facility. Since late 2004, over 300 former members of the organization have returned home to Iran through the amnesty program provided by the Iranian Regime.”

As supporters of the rival dissident groups vied for media attention, one group accused the other of being imposters. An hour and a half into the National Press Club event in Washington, D.C., organizers halted it and Capitol police were called in to keep order.

..the People’s Mujahideen Organisationaka PMOI/NCR/MEK and its political co-leader, Maryam Rajavi, are given leeway in the US as they campaign to have the”terrorist”tag removed and to become eligible for US funding of Iranian opposition groups…the group led by Mrs Rajavi and her husband Massoud, was outlawed by the US for its killing of Americans before the 1979 Iranian revolution; alleged collaboration with Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaigns against Iraqi Kurds; and attacks on civilians inside Iran.

The issue of the settlement of armed paramilitary groups in Iraq is also important. Some paramilitary groups in Iraq have been disarmed but other international terrorist organizations still possess weapons and everyone, familiar with politics, understands how dangerous it is for Iraq. There’s no doubt that these terrorist groups are linked to each other and there are secret ties and cooperation between terrorist MKO, Al-Qaeda and Zarqawi and other remnants of ousted Saddam regime.

The toppled regime of Saddam Hussein actively supported international terrorism, and the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation, led by Massoud Rajavi, was at the top of the list of these terrorist organisations.
— The Mojahedin as part of Saddam’s military played a decisive role in the suppression of the internal uprisings in Iraq in 1991, and are responsible for the massacre of many Iraqi Shiites and Kurds who opposed Saddam.

The European Union published Tuesday an updated list of persons and groups that the 25-member European bloc designates as terrorists.
The Iranian Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which was put on the EU’s terrorist list in 2002, remains on the new blacklist.

..where many papers have failed to publish over the past few days because of an election holiday, one daily is optimistic, while another links the vote to a call for the expulsion of a controversial Iranian rebel group.
Commentary in Iraq’s independent Al-Shahid Now that Iraqis have voted on their new constitution which has put an end to the presence of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation in Iraq,