Hot Pursuit into Syria, Iran, had been authorized; US Kills Innocents at Adwar Mass Grave with 50 Bodies Found at Samarra The Bush administration authorized hot pursuit of Iraqi Baathists into Syria and Iran, according to a just-released document at wikileak. The document also reveals that as late as 2005, the US military authorities were still unaware that the "mobile weapons labs" were a Neocon scam and never existed. (Biological weapons labs require a clean room, difficult to install on a winnebago). The document shows that by 2005, the US military had a de facto truce with the Mahdi Army (a paramilitary whose political party parent actually joined the Iraqi government later that year). It also shows that the Mojahedin-i Khalq terror group engaged in hostile action toward the US forces, but also were granted a truce in 2005. The MEK is an Iranian terror group that has killed civilians inside Iran and was given a base in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. US Neoconservatives have tended to support it and to want to use it to do further terrorism against Iran. The MEK has been defended by Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (the think tank of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and by notorious Islamophobe and Giuliani adviser Daniel Pipes. Danny Postel explains cogently. In other words, key figures in the Israel lobbies support a terrorist group that has fired on US troops. US forces raided the village of Adwar south of Tikrit on Monday, and appear to have mistakenly killed an Awakening Council fighter, a woman and two children, wounding another girl as well. It may be that they were baited into firing on the family by anti-American guerrillas. This mistake is the second such in recent days, and adds to a strain felt between the Sunni Arab Awakening Councils and their American patrons. The LAT reports on how difficult it has been for the US military to root out the Salafi Jihadi extremists from Diyala province. Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic that hundreds of Iraq’s actors and performers staged a demonstration on Sunday in front of the national theater in Baghdad to protest their loss of livelihood and dire economic straits. They called on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to improve their incomes just as he had for government employees. Unlike US screenwriters, they can’t even go on strike– they are already largely unemployed. Reuters reports political violence on Monday: ‘SAMARRA – Iraqi police and members of a neighborhood police unit found a mass grave containing about 50 bodies in an area west of Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Security forces had been searching for al Qaeda fighters when they found a house with 10 people inside who had been kidnapped from the area. Some of those inside led police to the grave. Three car bombs were also found. KHALIS – Six suspected militants were killed during operations by U.S. forces targeting al Qaeda near Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. Three died when one of the suspected militants detonated a vest packed with explosives. Another three were killed by U.S. soldiers in a nearby building. [Taji] – One member of a neighborhood police unit and a civilian were killed by a suicide bomber close to an internet cafe at Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, a local tribal leader said. . .’ McClatchy adds: ‘Baghdad Two civilians were injured in an IED explosion that targeted an American convoy in Palestine Street east Baghdad around 12:00 pm. Police found four bodies in Baghdad today. Three bodies were found in Rusafa, the eastern side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (1 body in Ur, 1 body in Jisr Diyala and 1 body in Shaab). The fourth body was found in Washash neighborhood in Karkh, the western side of Baghdad. Misan Three officers in the Iraqi army were killed by gunmen in three different neighborhoods in Umara city south of Baghdad today morning. The first officer was a colonel who was a Lieutenant Colonel who was killed in al Askari neighborhood downtown Umara city. The second officer was a Major who was killed in the new buildings neighborhood downtown [A]mara city while the third officer was Lieutenant who was killed in his car while he was returning back home in al Uroba neighborhood downtown [A]mara city. Anbar A source in the Sahwa council of Sheikh Sanad said that three members of the Sahwa were killed and five others were injured when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated himself near one of the check point of the Sahwa office of Sheikh Sanad Abdul Salim in Thiraa Dijla area east of Ramadi city at 3:30 pm.’
Iraqi police has announced the arrest of a number of Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) members in a raid on rogue elements in Karbala. Karbala police spokesperson, Rahman Mshawi said four of the fifteen detainees are affiliated with the MKO terrorists. Other sources claim six members of the group were arrested in the raid. The European Union, the United States and other members of the international community have blacklisted the MKO as a terrorist organization. The group, which assisted Saddam in the massacre of thousands of innocent Iraqis, is responsible for several acts of terror in Iran including the 1994 bombing of Imam Reza’s holy shrine in Mashhad. Press TV -Sat, 09 Feb 2008
THEY are Iraq’s forgotten terrorists, more than 3,000 fighters of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) languishing at one of their former military camps some 100km north of Baghdad.
‘They are definitely in a legal limbo. No one wants them,’ said Mr Said Boumedouha, a researcher at Amnesty International in London. No one, that is, except Iran.
The MEK, also known as the MKO or the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, is described as an Islamic Socialist group that advocates the overthrow of Iran’s government. Founded in Teheran in 1965, it opposed the rule of Iran’s shah, but was violently suppressed after the Iranian revolution as it was viewed as a threat by Ayatollah Khomeini’s newly established regime.
With its headquarters relocated to Iraq in 1986, the MEK fought with Saddam Hussein’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988. They were organised as a conventionally armed brigade with an estimated fighting strength of 6,000 to 8,000 personnel. In mid-1994, Iraq’s Ministry of Defence announced that these fighters had been formally integrated with the country’s armed forces.
The MEK is designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States, the European Union and several individual countries – in part, it seems, because of anti-Western attacks and assassinations before the Iranian revolution. Teheran also views the MEK members as terrorists and has sought their extradition from Iraq.
There have been efforts to lift the yoke of this designation, including a 2002 call to end the US proscription signed by 150 members of Congress. In fact, some have suggested that Washington originally tagged it as a terrorist group in 1997 as a gesture to Iran’s newly elected reformist president.
The US proscription nevertheless remains in place, and the EU Council continues to blacklist the MEK despite a December 2006 ruling by the European Court of Justice that overturned Brussels’ edict freezing MEK funds.
There are currently some 3,360 MEK members at Camp Ashraf, located in Iraq’s Diyala province. About 110 others are defectors seeking refugee status and residing at the Ashraf refugee camp. Some have been voluntarily repatriated to Iran, claiming they were forced to join the MEK after being taken prisoner by Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says it has helped in the repatriation of 255 former fighters, most recently just this month, but the US-led Multinational Force in Iraq provides a figure of 380.
Though part of the Iraqi army, the MEK effectively declared itself neutral when coalition forces invaded the country in March 2003, and surrendered without a fight after suffering a few air attacks. But there is some confusion concerning its subsequent status.
‘The MEK were never captured or classified as prisoners of war (under the Third Geneva Convention). ‘Protected person’ status (under the Fourth Geneva Convention) was granted as part of a ceasefire agreement negotiated between the US and MEK,’ explained Major Winfield Danielson, a press officer with coalition forces in Baghdad.
‘Each member of the MEK was required to sign a document renouncing violence and agreeing not to take up arms. The MEK was also disarmed.’
However, this is contradicted by earlier statements that MEK members’ status was changed from ‘prisoners of war’ to ‘protected persons’ in June 2004.
‘The change in their status is linked to the change of authority (on June 28, 2004, when an interim government assumed control of Iraq). It was also prompted by a process that saw each individual disarm and renounce violence,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, a US spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq, told me at that time.
The shift is curious in either case. ‘Protected person’ status applies to civilians, whereas the MEK personnel were uniformed soldiers in an established army – and affiliated with a proscribed terrorist group at that. ‘It is not the responsibility of the ICRC to independently determine their status,’ said ICRC official Dorothea Krimitsas in an e-mail from Geneva. The ICRC has never visited Camp Ashraf due to security concerns. But the coalition would contend that this may be unnecessary as the MEK members are not being detained.
‘Neither the active MEK members nor the former MEK refugees are being detained,’ said Major Danielson. ‘The Ashraf refugee camp refugees have every right to depart and travel in Iraq using an Iraqi-issued laissez-passer. They can also repatriate to Iran if they desire, or they may stay in the camp.
‘The active MEK members who live in Camp Ashraf have ‘protected persons’ status. As part of the ceasefire agreement, they may travel outside the city of Ashraf but must do so under the protection of coalition forces.’
Nor are MEK members at Camp Ashraf facing criminal charges, with Major Danielson noting that ‘they are not charged with criminal offences’. This appears peculiar in view of existing laws in the US and elsewhere that criminalise support for terrorist organisations.
According to the US State Department, for example: ‘It is unlawful for a person in the US or subject to the jurisdiction of the US to knowingly provide ‘material support or resources’ to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation.’
As prisoners of war, the MEK personnel would have to be ‘released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of hostilities’, according to Article 118 of the Third Geneva Convention. For ‘protected persons’ under the Fourth Geneva Convention ‘internment shall cease as soon as possible after the close of hostilities’, according to Article 133.
The ICRC maintains that the Iraq war ended with the transfer of sovereignty to the country’s interim government in June 2004, with the fighting since then characterised as ‘an internal conflict internationalised by the presence of multilateral forces’.
The coalition argues that the MEK personnel at Camp Ashraf are not being detained. But nor are they wandering about or relocating.
‘Our position is that they shouldn’t be returned to Iran due to the fear of torture and the death penalty. And they shouldn’t be handed over to Iraq for the same reason,’ said Amnesty’s Mr Boumedouha. ‘Their immediate future looks bleak.’
In this context, Mr Boumedouha sees the US-led coalition’s oversight of MEK personnel at Camp Ashraf as something of a humanitarian act in keeping with the ‘protected persons’ provision. If that is the case, the coalition is upholding the spirit of the Fourth Geneva Convention but perhaps not its legal mandate, as Article Six states: ‘In the case of occupied territory, the application of the present Convention shall cease one year after the close of military operations.’
However, some have suggested an alternative interpretation of the coalition’s treatment of the MEK people.
Unconfirmed allegations have surfaced in Teheran and elsewhere that the US Central Intelligence Agency is using the MEK for covert operations in Iran. Teheran failed to respond to a request to substantiate these claims.
Straits Times, Robert Karniol, Defence Writer
If there are people, notably among parliamentarians, who believe that restraining the threats of the potential adversaries of a nation is ‘bad politics’, then, the good politics would be espousing a terrorist opposition against that nation. Besides, if a country like the UK proscribes an organization, under legislated laws, as terrorist to protect the nation against its threats, it is alleged to be a task of incentive done for political interests rather than for the security of the nation. That is what Roger Gale, a British MP and the former Vice Chairman of Conservative party, strongly advocates.
In an article released by Global Politician, Mr. Gale claims that blacklisting Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK) as a terrorist organisation first by the US in 1997, which was followed by the UK in 2001 and the EU in 2002, was a task to appease Iranian regime. I doubt that Mr. Gale has failed to have access to published reasons by the mentioned countries for proscribing MKO. Or he might have been kept in the dark about the group’s long, bloody, terrorist activities perpetrated against Iranian people.
Following the Iranian revolution, with Massoud Rajavi leading the group, the MKO declared an overall violent armed struggle to topple the ruling power and assume power instead. Iranian history will never forget this bloody chapter which the MKO drafted, and its collaboration with Saddam. The group failed in its violent strategy and taking shelter behind another alias, NCRI, led by husband-imposed leader, started a pro-democratic struggle for the same cause. Never has MKO been concerned about the nation itself but about gaining power regardless of who may pay the price.
The countries that proscribed the MKO were well acquainted with its dual nature and hideous terrorist threat it exposed not only to its own people but wherever it settled to set up a base. In fact, the MKO has turned into a grave problem many countries try to deal with. Redesignation of the MKO in spite of two courts’ ruling indicates that no country trusts the group’s democratic masquerade whether people like Mr. Gale like it or not. The group might have few supporters among parliamentarians outside Iran, but, to assure Mr. Gale, the MKO is short of an iota of publicity inside Iran and lacks the political weight to make any change
Sattar Orangi, Mojahedin.ws, January 21, 2008
The ever-increasing political and military crises within Mojahedin due to the wrongly adopted policy in the period subsequent to the failed rallies of June 20, 1981 had devastating internal as well as external impacts on MKO relations with other opposition groups in general and the National Council of Resistance (NCR) in particular. The formation of NCR in 1981 at the peak of terrorist perpetrations of MKO, referred to as strategic strokes by Rajavi, expanded the illusion of an abrupt overthrow of the regime among Mojahedin allies. The quantitative growth of such allies implied the fact that the opposition groups, regardless of political, ideological and strategic disparities, were unanimous to wed all their potentials under the leadership of MKO to bring down the regime. The promises made by Rajavi as well as the encouraging supports by some Westerners made the majority of NCR members yield to the hegemony of Mojahedin. As such, all joined parties and factions had to endorse the essentiality of armed warfare as the cornerstone of the struggle to accomplish the cause despite they were critical of the plans and the drafted charter of NCR. In fact, by submitting to the political hegemony of Mojahedin, all members of NCR entrusted the leadership of armed struggle to Mojahedin.
Many believed that repetitive conduction of bloody, terrorist feats was a grand opportunity for MKO to swagger of big achievements since a number of political and religious figures of the Islamic Republic were the victims of these operations. Rejoiced at committing atrocities for which the group hardly faced condemnation, some Westerners began to cultivate hope in MKO as an appropriate alternative for Iranian clerical government. However, soon MKO’s terrorist activities inside Iran were controlled but Mojahedin and their supporters were the sole losers and MKO could not escape the negative consequence of being stigmatizes as a terrorist organization.
Interestingly, even in such critical conditions Mojahedin’s leadership made an attempt not only to keep integrity of his hegemony on the council but also to expand its dimension. Simultaneous with increasing tensions within NCR, the Iranian regime was overcoming the internal crises. Desperate to find a solution, Rajavi met with Tariq Aziz in 1981; it disappointed all NCR allies who had trusted his leadership. Within one year after Rajavi’s meeting with Iraqi officials, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the largest and weighty allies of Mojahedin, left the council. Soon after, the leftist party, led by Mehdi Khanbaba Tehrani, and also Bani-sadr, the ousted Iranian president, detached from NCR. Subsequently, a number of NCR members got separated due to a variety of organizational as well as personal reasons. The heavy avalanche of defectors challenged the legitimacy of NCR to lead the opposition, and above all, Rajavi failed in recruiting new allies. Niyabati, although a left member of the council, well illustrates the critical phase. He elaborates on the internal crises of Mojahedin and the failure of armed warfare and their grave influence on NCR:
It was even worse in political stage.The failure of Mojahedin in the short-time overthrowing of the regime as well as the failure of NCRI, considered as the sole democratic alternative, in recruiting all the anti-Shah and anti-sheikh political forces made Mojahedin subject to intolerable pressure both from inside and outside of NCRI. Evidently, the main target of all pressures in the first place was Massoud Rajavi. (1)
He also analyses the effects of the big claim of the overthrow on Mojahedin’s allies in the council and the process in which the council turned from an ally to a critical opponent that challenged Mojahedin:
Out of the council, an increasing process of antagonism against Mojahedin that had emerged through 1982 and had reached its peak in 1983, formed into an overwhelming confrontation with Mojahedin in 1984. This remarkable skirmish with an organization fully involved in a bloody war against a regime which logically was the basic enemy of all opposition groups has been, if not rare, a unique occurrence in the contemporary history of Iran. (2)
Opposed to such statements aiming at legitimizing the reactions of Mojahedin to their critics, Mehdi KhanbabaTehrani, a former member of NCR, draws a different picture of the relations of Mojahedin leadership with NCR members. He says:
At the end of the year 1983, when [MKO’s] political failure was proved, impatience, lack of self-control, hegemony, and excluding all non-Mojahedin political groups, under the pretext of keeping ideological principles of the organization, replaced the previous policies. From now on, any criticism on the part of anybody is considered as a ‘satanic’ plot and has to be counterplotted completely (3).
The statements made by another ex-member imply that Rajavi, despite his claims negating the influence of Mojahedin on NCR, resorted to the factor of ideology in his relations with dissident members of NCR. In this regard he writes:
MKO addressed all the NCR members and said ‘First, you should not take any position against our ideology. First you confirm our ideology and then we will answer your strategic questions. We will give no answer to those denying our ideology’. And finally due to the lack of democracy and totalitarian nature of relations within Mojahedin, NCR members left it one after another. Consequently, since 1984 NCR was undervalued and became another wing of MKO active in political and diplomatic affairs of Mojahedin. (4)
The critical circumstances necessitated controlling of the escalated internal crises within NCR as well as justifying MKO’s political and military failures. Niyabati in his review of the ideological revolution refers to the double effects of the challenges met by Mojahedin due to the internal crises of MKO as well as that of NCR and justifies the necessity of an ideological revolution to curb them:
To confront such complicated conditions as a prerequisite for the next phases, while the lack of an internal and international equilibrium in favor of armed warfare was apparent, Mojahedin’s leader had to take for a decisive and crucial decision. (5)
And finally, Niyabati focusing on the necessity of the organization’s turn from a pseudo-democratic organization to an ideological one, considers the pyramidal ideological revolution as the sole solution for responding to the challenges of the critics. He acknowledges that the change could strongly influence the relations of Mojahedin and also guarantee the integrity of NCR:
The sum of internal and international pressures and their political impacts on the National Council of Resistance, the strategic failure of armed struggle and its organizational impacts on MKO, the lack of public support in its real concept, and most important of all, an urging need to take advantage of the Iraqi soil followed by a shift from the strategy of micro to macro, which despite the Mojahedin’s claim to be promoting their previous strategy was an acknowledgement of the failure of their old strategy, necessitated MKO to turn into a full pyramidal organization that had to be absolutely ideological. (6)
In a nutshell, beside the factors mentioned as the reasons for the start of the ideological revolution, the internal tensions within NCR played a key role, too. For Rajavi, the situation of NCR due to its external consequences was as important as controlling the internal relations of MKO. Rajavi’s appeal to the quantitative growth of NCR by means of a foolish order, resignation of MKO members and their registration in NCR, implies the awareness of Mojahedin leader and his western sympathizers of the importance of the collapse within NCR. The next significant issue for Rajavi was the fact that he had to initiate the same ideological revolution within NCR in order to control any kind of opposition or dissidence.
References
1. Niyabati, B. A different look at the internal ideological revolution within MKO, Khavaran publication, p.14
2. ibid, p.18
3. An inside look at the leftist movements in Iran: a collection of some interviews with Mehdi KhanbabaTehrani. (1987). 17th interview.
4. Rezvani, N. Neo-scholastics in Rajavi’s cult. (1966).
5. Niyabati, B. A different look at the internal ideological revolution within MKO, Khavaran publication, p.18
6. ibid, p.19
Bahar Irani,Mojahedin.ws,January 21, 2008
Al-Araghiya TV documnetary on Rajavi’s Canadian Hostage Alaraghiay TV broadcasted a documentary about two Canadian sitizens, Mostafa and Mahboobeh Mohammady, who have gone to Iraq in an attempt to rescue their daughter from Mojahedin Khalq Organisation terrorist cult currently under protection of US army in Ashraf camp North of Baghdad.
The full translation of this film will be posted shortly.
Download Al-Araghiah TV documentary on Rajavi’s Canadian Hostage
In the same way that a leopard cannot change its spots, MKO fail to give up violence and terrorism not only in its struggle conduct but also in the literature of criticizing its opponents. Bad-mouthing the critics and threatening them to death is the characteristic of criminal gangs and terrorist groups that advocate violence and atrocity as the sole working apparatus to achieve the ends. For instance, in an angry backlash against a series of articles by Bahar Irani published in Mojahedin.ws, the last of which was Arab countries, Latin America or Africa, where will MKO settle after Iraq? one of MKO’s penman, Sasan Mahmoudi, in an article entitled Mojahedin’s station in the world released by MKO-run iran-efshagari originally in Parsian, threatened the author of the articles to a lethal reaction from the group’s agents. In the ending part of his article he writes:
There will be a group, for sure from Mojahedin, that turns the mills by splitting the blood of the cleric-fed villains even if you make attempts to escape.
It is only a report to let advocates of MKO know that the group proves to be a great disappointment if anybody tries to trust it as a pro-democratic resistance as it claims.
January 17, 2008
A senior member of the European Parliament, Angelika Beer, condemns the invitation of the MKO terrorist group to a parliament session.
Beer slammed the Greens Alliance in the European Parliament for providing the outlawed Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) with an opportunity to attend a parliament session. The European legislator said ignoring the terrorist group’s violation of human rights and inviting it by Struan Stevenson would undermine the European Parliament’s efforts to promote democratic values.
Beer expressed strong opposition to lifting the ban on the outlawed group. The MKO has carried out countless terrorist acts against the Iranian nation, including the assassination of a president, a prime minister, 80 senior officials as well as thousands of defenseless civilians.
Visiting member of European Parliament Angelika Beer met and conferred here Sunday evening with Speaker of Iran’s parliament Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel.
Haddad in the meeting referred to the century old parliament presence in Iran and contribution of the Iranian people to the democratic process of electing their representatives in the legislature since the Islamic revolution. He said the forthcoming poll will be thirthieth elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran for electing members of the eighth parliament.
He said the US has created a gloomy atmosphere against Iran which has led to misunderstandings between Iran and the European countries since the Islamic revolution.
On the recent report of the US intellingence system about Iran, Haddad called it as relatively positive and said it showed the honesty of Iran about its peaceful nuclear efforts and disproved all US claims.
He added that now Iran can steadfastly go ahead with its cooperation with IAEA for further confidence building and continue its peaceful nuclear activities.
Haddad also said that Iran is doing its best to confront the drug smuggling from the neighboring country in which the drug production and smuggling has now quadrupled from two thousand tons four years ago.
The Iranian official also criticized the double standard of Europe towards the terrorism and terrorist groups notably the MKO. Haddad said the problem with the Europe and European Parliament is that they claim to fight terrorism while they obtain wrong information from a terrorist group whose history is drenched with the blood of the innocent people in Iran.
During the meeting Angelika Beer who is leading an 11-member delegation from the European Parliament for her visit to Iran expressed her satisfaction with talks with Iranian officials and said the visit is aimed at upgrading parliamentary relations.
She said the recent US intelligence report on Iran proved the non- military nature of Iran’s nuclear activities. She remarked that the European Parliament sees Iran’s peaceful nuclear projects as legal and legitimate and hopes any problems would be removed through dialogue.
She also asserted that the MKO grouplet is recognized as an illegal outfit by European Parliament, European Union and also US and British services, adding that the policy of European Parliament toward MKO is rejecting it and avoiding contacts with it.
She also said there is a collective mentality in the Europe which rejects US military approach. She called for more contacts between Iranian members of parliament with their colleagues in the European Parliament for cooperatrion in fields of common interest.
Tribunal rejects Iran group ban The People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) is illegal in the European Union and the United States. But the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission in London ruled ministers must remove it from their blacklist.
After the verdict, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said: "I am disappointed at this judgement. We don’t accept it and we intend to appeal."
The Home Office said that the PMOI would remain a proscribed organisation during the appeal by the government. Launch attacks The PMOI, or Mujahideen-e Khalq, which operates in exile, says it has renounced violence since 2001. The opposition group has been a thorn in Tehran’s side for more than two decades.
A militant organisation, whose ideology combines elements of both Marxism and Islam, the group based itself in Iraq after being expelled from Iran.
For more than 15 years before the fall of Saddam Hussein, it used bases in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran.
Sixteen MPs and 19 members of the House of Lords appealed against the proscription in the first case to be heard by the POAC.
They argued that there rights to support and promote what they said was a democratic and peaceful opposition to the regime in Tehran had been infringed.
Lord Corbett, chairman of the Committee for Iran Freedom, claimed the banning had been tied up with international diplomatic attempts to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.