Habilian Association

What The Experts Say

about MKO

Compiled by:
Habilian Association

1
Tancredo and the Mojahedin
Rocky Mountain News
January 18, 2003
…Since its founding 35 years ago as an anti-American, Islamic-Marxist
alternative to Shiite fundamentalism, the Mujahedin has murdered U.S.
military personnel and civilians, bombed U.S. business offices, supported
the taking of American hostages in Iran in 1979, and engaged in fraud,
smuggling and money laundering on U.S. soil. Despite making the State
Department's select list of global terrorist organizations for the last seven
years, it continues to whitewash its ugly past and dupe members of Congress
like Tancredo into believing it's the only viable opposition to Iran's radical
Islamic regime.
By no stretch of the imagination can the Mujahedin and its thugs in the pay
of Saddam be considered friends of America. It's too bad Tancredo wants to
associate himself with a group whose terrorists may soon have their
gunsights trained on American men and women liberating Iraq.
Since taking up residence in Iraq, the Mujahedin's military wing, the
National Liberation Army, has been bankrolled, trained and equipped by
Saddam and his Republican Guard. Some of the NLA's dirtiest work
included participating in Saddam's bloody 1991 campaign to crush the
northern Kurds.
…Michael Ledeen, a widely respected Iran analyst and resident scholar at
the American Enterprise Institute, echoes the views of other Middle East
experts when he says the NLA presents a clear danger to U.S. troops.
"These guys work for Saddam," says Ledeen. "If we go in there, surely they
will fight us."

2
With Friends Like These

James Ridgeway & Camelia Fard

'Terrorists' Share Space With Press in D.C. Building

WASHINGTON, D.C.— According to the State Department, the Iraqi-based

National Council of Resistance of Iran—which keeps an office in the
National Press Building on 14th Street—is one of several names used by the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a large and well-armed corps of dissident Iranian
terrorists backed by none other than Saddam Hussein.
During the early 1970s, the MEK did kill Americans and later helped seize
the U.S. Embassy in Tehran,…
That characterization conveniently crops out the MEK's ties to Hussein, who
welcomed the members and let them set up camps. From bases in Iraq, the
MEK sent hit-and-run assassination squads to Tehran. Hussein also availed
himself of MEK fighters as a mercenary force against the Kurds during the
Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
In recent years, the mujahideen have carried out various assassinations and
armed strikes within Iran, managing to kill a top military commander in
1999. The MEK boasts a force of several thousand—from 5000 to 10,000,
say published reports—complete with artillery.
In the U.S., the MEK has been accused of raising money for arms under the
guise of a charity drive. The FBI, acting on a tip from German police,
arrested seven individuals in Los Angeles in February on charges of
supporting a terrorist organization. The government claims these individuals
had solicited travelers in airports, among other places, on behalf of orphans.
According to the feds, over the last several years the charity operation had
transferred $400,000 to a used auto parts store in the United Arab Emirates,
with people connected to the MEK moving more than $1 million.
During a rare interview with a Western reporter in 1994, MEK leader Masud
Rajavi said his group had collected $45 million from supporters that year.
The MEK soon killed a number of American civilians and military personnel
to draw attention to the old U.S.-Shah symbiosis.
From its current base in Iraq, the MEK conducts acts of assassination and
sabotage against the Islamic regime. Periodically, the Iranian government
responds with air attacks against their base deep inside Iraqi territory.
Life in the MEK camps is no picnic, reported Wall Street Journal writer
Peter Waldman, who visited the group's Baghdad headquarters in 1994.
MEK fighters "write detailed reports to their superiors," Waldman relayed.
"Bunkmates inform on bunkmates, siblings tell on siblings, and spouses spy

3
on spouses. The rare dissident is publicly humiliated, jailed, sometimes
beaten until 'wrong thinking' is confessed.
Those who ask to leave Iraq are often accused of betrayal and threatened
with death."

4
Mojahedin-e Khalq in international Media

In the following article we bring the latest positions of world’s political and
governmental officials against the terrorist group of Mojahedin-e Khalq,
which has been reflected in the international media:
The U.S. department of state has emphasized several times that Saddam’s
regime is supporting terrorist groups and trains them, gives them base and
equipments. White House announced in September 2002 that the president
Bush consider this group as Saddam ally and that he considers it as a case
for removing Saddam. The U.S. department of state spokesman, Richard
Boucher, once again and among international reporters warned this group
that “if Mojahedin stand against U.S. troops in support of Saddam, the U.S.
will encounter them severely.”
AFP in an analysis of Iraq crisis, emphasizes: “Washington called this group
an international terrorist organization in 1997.”
Sunday Times says in a report based on the admissions of 2 Mojahedin
defectors: “Mojahedin bases are used to hide Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction.”
This report adds that Iraq has large laboratories hidden beneath a pool in
Ashraf Base (Mojahedin’s main base 43 miles north of Baghdad).
Radio Farda declares according to Kurd opposition sources that Mojahedin
forces have been settled around the cities of Kirkuk and Khanaqin.
Guardian newspaper, in a report about Iraq, points out the loyalty of
Mojahedin to Saddam and adds some information about the settlement of
Mojahedin forces along the borders of Jordan, Syria and some of Iraq’s main
cities.
Kansas city news website reported on February 23rd that Mojahedin terrorist
group is the last defensive ring for Iraq’s main cities; this news website adds:
“Mojahedin are harsh militia strongly loyal to Saddam.”
These reports have been disclosed based on a news about the meeting of
Rajavi and Ezzat Ibrahim and also coordination between Mojahedin and
Iraq’s intelligent agency.
Ezzat Ibrahim in the meeting with Rajavi had said that according to
Baghdad’s scenario, Mojahedin’s duty is to suppress Kurds and Shiites.
The 2nd army of Iraq also has had the duty to train this group the way of
working with missiles having a range over 150 kilometers.
Alsharqalawsat reminded its readers once again of this fact that the U.S.’s
point of view toward Saddam and Mojahedin is the same, so that Mojahedin
bases will be the target of U.S. military airplanes.

5
Another news and analysis made Mojahedin very angry so that they insulted
its reporter, namely Emma Nicholson.
Emma Nicholson, the founder of Amar and the member of Britain’s House
of Lords and MEP, declared through out a report:
“Supporting the terrorist group of Mojahedin, Saddam violates the U.N.
resolution No.678 which prevents Iraq from supporting terrorist groups.”
Nicholson, bravely, called Mojahedin a threat to the world security and
described them as murderers that have formed private army for Saddam, and
she called for an end to their operations.
She, speaking in a session of European Parliament, emphasized: “they strike
smoothly and deadly. Those murderers who form Mojahedin organization
and kill innocent people should be stopped, with war or without war.”
These statements were reflected in many European media:
In an analysis about Mojahedin, Sadegh Saba, BBC’s analyst and
correspondent, described Mojahedin’s future as gloomy and predicted that
the U.S. army will bombard Mojahedin bases along with the war on terror.
Some reports from news websites, such as Daily Star, reveal that Mojahedin
are trying to get asylum in European countries.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman warned European countries not to turn
into bases for terrorists.
Radio Farda during a report from Leili Sadr drawn the ambiguous and dark
future of Mojahedin in Iraq once again.
UPI according to the witnesses from Iraq’s Kurdistan stated that “Mojahedin
forces are preparing the oil well-heads in Kirkuk for demolition according to
a mission by Saddam.”
At this time, Indian Express expresses concern over the possibility of
sending weapons for India’s terrorist group by Iraq. This concern is on the
basis of this fact that Saddam supports Mojahedin and its terrorist group and
Mohammed Albradai, in the meeting of atomic energy experts, warned
about the possibility of terrorist groups accessing to “dirty bombs”.
Alsharqalawsat stated in a report that: “the U.S and Britain have guaranteed
that there will be no Mojahedin-e Khalq in the future of Iraq.”

6
The Plan of the Attack

NY Times, ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, June 24 : An Iranian opposition group operating in France that was

the target of a large police operation last week had plans to attack Iranian
embassies and assassinate former members working with Iranian
intelligence services in Europe, according to a classified report by France's
counter-intelligence service prepared two weeks before the crackdown.
The report also said that the group, known as the Mujahedeen Khalq, had
discussed having their members commit suicide by setting themselves on
fire to draw attention to their cause.
In France, the organization "conducts many activities that have a
clandestine, sect-like and unlawful character even criminal," the report said.
Ms. Rajavi uses several aliases and holds permanent refugee status in France
until 2006, the report said.
The report, prepared by France's domestic intelligence agency, provides the
fullest official description of the Iranian exile movement since last week's
crackdown.
"According to recent information, in case of a British-American attack," the
report said, Mujahedeen Khalq, planned to "organize operations against
Iranian targets within Europe (embassies, consulates), and to physically
eliminate former members of the movement collaborating with Iranian
intelligence services."
The report said that many members of the organization in France have
traveled regularly to Iraq where they received military and political training.
They often use false documents and vary their itineraries to get to Iraq to
avoid surveillance of their travels.
Members of the organization's "liberation army" based in Iraq regularly
travel to the group's French headquarters in the Paris suburb of Auvers-Sur-
Oise, and some of their army veterans have become "established in France."

7
Terrorist Cult
Karl Vick

Washington Post Foreign Service

…"They use the term democracy," said Ervand Abrahamian, a City
University of New York professor and author of "The Iranian Mojahedin."
But "there's no shred of democracy in the Mujaheddin. Rajavi decides who
you sleep with, who you marry, who he sleeps with -- everything."
"They stopped being a mass movement with Marxist roots and became
basically a cult," he said.
Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the head of France's counterintelligence
agency, called the group's compound in suburban Paris "an operational
center for terrorism."
In 1971 the group was blamed for the killing of seven American military
advisers in Iran.
Rajavi moved the headquarters to Paris and allied with Saddam Hussein in
the war with Iran.
"The people, they didn't have any contact with the world," said Karim Haggi
Moni, a resident of the Netherlands who said he was a member from 1980 to
1991. "They can't listen to news, read the newspaper, the Internet. During
two years in Paris, I left the base just two days."
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy group, has collected
testimony that Mujaheddin members were threatened or imprisoned if they
tried to quit. Many who did leave were first "obliged to make a taped
confession of being a spy" for Iran, according to researcher Elahe Hicks.
Hicks wrote that some ex-members were handed to Iraqi security agents,
who reportedly tortured them.
Rajavi even asserted control over the sex lives of members, according to
analysts and former members. He married Maryam Abrishamchi in 1985
after ordering her husband, Rajavi's assistant, to divorce her, according to
Abrahamian. "It looked like wife-swapping; he claimed it was an ideological
revolution," he said. "If you had any objection to this, he'd say you're not
revolutionary enough and don't believe in women's rights."

8
Rajavi, who members are instructed to call "brother," ordered married
couples to live apart in the name of focusing on war.
"I was seeing my husband once a month, maybe once every two months,"
said Mahra Haji, a former member who now lives in Canada. Haji said she
quit after the Rajavis moved the Mujaheddin to Iraq, "where we saw the
whole system was killing and violence."
In 1991, according to Iraqi Kurds, the Mujaheddin helped Hussein's forces
put down a rebellion in the north of Iraq following Iraq's defeat in Kuwait.

9
Iranian Mercenaries

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Ali Ansari, head of the Center for Iranian Studies at Durham University in
the United Kingdom, told RFE/RL: "Mojahedin used to get a lot of money
from Saddam Hussein. They were based north of Baghdad, and they used to
do a lot of the dirty work of the Saddam Hussein regime. They were
essentially Iranian mercenaries. They did very little agitating in Iran, and
frankly they didn't have the credibility to do it."
Ansari says the movement has evolved into a leadership cult centered around
Masud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam. There are reports that members are not
allowed to marry -- as well as some older claims that married members were
forced to divorce.
"Masud Rajavi takes the role of leader, in an imitation of the leader in
Iran, and then his wife has been sort of 'elected' -- in very thick
inverted commas -- as president," Ansari said. "So they have this dual
structure of husband and wife team, and frankly it's caused quite a bit of
discomfort from those Iranian families who find that their young idealistic
types have headed off to Iraq to be part of the armed wing of the
mujahedin."

10
Friends in high places

Dan De Luce, guardian

Tuesday July 15, 2003

French security officials claim that the People's Mojahedin was planning to
stage terrorist attacks throughout Europe, but the group says that it advocates
secular democracy and women's rights in Iran.
Outraged by the Shah's brutal suppression of dissent, the People's
Mojahedin, or Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO), chose to take up
arms.
Bombings and assassinations, including several attacks that claimed the lives
of US military officers and contractors, took a serious toll and provoked
further repression by the regime.
MKO members resumed the terror tactics practised during the Shah's era,
assassinating senior figures and then speeding away on high-powered
motorbikes.
Its underground war against the government reached a peak in June 1981,
when a series of bombs exploded in Tehran's city centre during a major
political meeting. The bombing killed 72 people, including chief justice
Mohammad Beheshti, a senior figure close to the ayatollah, government
ministers, numerous MPs and civil servants.
A month later, the president, Mohammad-Ali Rajei, and the prime minister,
Javad Bahonar were killed in a bombing attack.
The group acted as infiltrators and a source of military intelligence for
Baghdad, and Saddam later used the MKO to help crush Kurdish and Shia
opponents.
By siding with a regime bombing Iranian cities and killing hundreds of
thousands of young Iranians, the MKO became despised in Iran and lost
what support it still retained.
… Former members have told horror stories about life inside the
organisation, which, they say, resembles a cult. They have accused their

11
former masters of punishing disobedience with torture, or even murder, and
allege that the leadership separated some children from their parents.
Ervand Abrahamian, a history professor at Baruch College, in the US, has
written a comprehensive history of the MKO. He says that the group has
been sustained less by ideology than by a cult of personality surrounding its
leader, Massoud Rajavi, and his wife, Maryam.
"If Massoud Rajavi got up tomorrow and said that the world was flat, his
members would accept it," he told the New York Times.

12
Paris raid reveals Washington's fractured Iran policy

William O. Beeman

2003-06-30
The People's Mujahadeen is the military branch of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a secular group that helped overthrow the Shah
in 1979. Later, it installed itself in Iraq as a paramilitary organization with
troops, tanks and guns, sheltered and supported by Saddam Hussein.
The State Department declared the People's Mujahedeen a terrorist
organization in 1997. One hundred and fifty U.S. congress members
protested, but the designation remains in place. The European Union, too,
considers them terrorists.
The Paris raid was a serious blow to the organization. It accomplished the
arrest of symbolic leader Maryam Rajavi, and confiscated $1.3 million.
Paul Bremer, was more forthcoming. "The Mujahedeen... is a terrorist
group; it has been identified as that... If (the French) have arrested some
people, I am glad to hear it," he said at a Baghdad briefing.

13
Iranian Opposition Movement's Many Faces

ELAINE SCIOLINO

"We could no longer tolerate an organization that was expanding its terrorist
operations, and we feared that it could start organizing and planning attacks
from French soil," said Pierre de Bousquet, the director of the Directorate for
Territorial Surveillance, France's counterintelligence service, in an
interview.
Mujahedeen planned to attack embassies and other Iranian interests in
Europe and assassinate 25 former Mujahedeen members.
"This is by no means a political movement, a democratic movement," Mr. de
Bousquet said. "It was not preparing the restoration of democracy in Iran.
They are complete fanatics, a fanatical sect with a total absence of
democracy, and a cult of personality towards the leader."
But for those who have studied the organization — and to some former
members — it is far from being a political movement with popular support
inside Iran. It has gone through several ideological shifts since its founding
in opposition to the Iranian monarchy in the 1960's — moving from anti-
imperialism to a blend of Islam and Marxism to egalitarian socialism to a
vague philosophy that talks of democracy, freedom and equal rights for
women.
"It is a mystical cult," said Ervand Abrahamian, a history professor at
Baruch College who has written the most authoritative history of the
organization. "It's the stress on obedience to the leader that has kept it going,
rather than any political program. If Massoud Rajavi got up tomorrow and
said the world was flat, his members would accept it."
"There were celebrations at all the Mujahedeen camps on Sept. 11," said
Ardeshir Parkizkari, 39, a former member of the group's central council who
is now a political refugee in Europe, in a telephone interview. "I was in one
of their prisons then, and we never were treated so well as we were that day
— given juices and sweets. They called the events of Sept. 11 God's revenge
on America."

14
He explained his own rupture with the group: "You lose your identity and
are not allowed to think freely. When I started having fights with them and
pointed out their mistakes, they put me on trial and sent me to prison for not
following the leader's orders." He said he was beaten so badly that he now
walks with a limp.
In interviews, Mujahedeen defectors described a brutal side of the
organization in Iraq, where it had been based since 1986.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf war, they said, the Iraq government ordered
Mujahedeen soldiers to help suppress revolts against Saddam Hussein by
Kurds and Shiites.
"We were told that if the revolts succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein
it would be the end of our movement," said Karim Haghi, 42, a former
bodyguard of the Rajavis who is a political refugee in Europe, in a telephone
interview. "Mrs. Rajavi told us to kill them with tanks and try to preserve
our bullets for other operations. We were forced to kill both Kurds and
Shiites, and I said I didn't come here to kill other people."
Mr. Haghi said he was jailed, and eventually escaped.
Former members said they were forced to divorce and some had their
children taken from them and sent to families in Europe for adoption. They
said their passports were taken from them and they were given new
identities, and they were forced at group meetings to confess their "sins,"
sessions that were videotaped as evidence if members tried to defect.
Muhammad Hosein Sobhani, 42, also a former bodyguard of the Rajavis,
said in a telephone interview that he was forced to divorce his wife. Their
daughter was taken out of Iraq when she was 6 and adopted by an Iranian
couple in Denmark.
"They told my daughter, `Your father died in a Mujahedeen operation,' and I
was forbidden to have any contact with her," he said, adding that he has
since tracked down his daughter, who is now 18.

15
Transformations may mark demise of Mujahideen
Mahan Abedin

The downfall of Saddam Hussein has been a misfortune for a number of

non-Iraqi groups and organizations that benefitted from the former dictator’s
patronage. Arguably the greatest losers have been the Mujahideen-e-Khalq
organization
The Mujahideen pretended to be Muslims to mask their Marxist ideology.
Their ultimate aim, argued the propagandists of the new revolutionary
regime, was to sabotage Islam from within.
The ideological revolution not only disconnected the Mujahideen from the
outside world, but it took them to the depths of depravity. It moved beyond a
pseudo-feminist revolution to a tool against the very idea of sexual identity.
The culmination was a series of lectures delivered by Masoud Rajavi to his
flock in March 1991. The setting was in the immediate aftermath of the first
Gulf War with Iraq engulfed by a Kurdish and Shiite rebellion. The
Mujahideen were assisting the Iraqi regime in quelling both uprisings. This
move had proved unpopular with some MKO cadres.
Rajavi contended that what threatened the organization more than anything
else was the members’ attachment to their families. The solution, according
to Rajavi, was a full scale war on sex and sexual identity.
By de-sexualizing his flock Rajavi had finally secured the transition to full
cult-like status. The Mujahideen now inhabited a bizarre de-sexed parallel
universe.
The Mujahideen’s history, meanwhile, is a catalogue of treachery. The
organization spied for Moscow. Vladimir Kuzishkin, the former head of the
KGB station in Tehran, disclosed in his memoirs that the Mujahideen were a
source of information for the KGB. For nearly 20 years the Mujahideen were
Saddam Hussein’s proxy army. And since the Iraqi dictator’s ouster they
have done everything in their power to endear themselves to the new
American masters of Iraq.
Any investment on the Mujahideen is bound to yield negative equity.

16
The Wrong Man?
Richard Leiby

Thursday, January 29, 2004; Page C03

Rep . Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who helped put "Freedom Fries" on House
restaurant menus in the run-up to the Iraq war, is championing a new
patriotic cause. He wants Fox News to fess up about the controversial past of
one of its commentators on Middle Eastern affairs.
"The MEK has killed United States military and civilian personnel in the
past, aided in the overthrow of the American Embassy in Tehran and
targeted American civilians for murder," wrote Ney, who used to teach
English in pre-revolutionary Iran.
"I watch Fox News, I like Fox News, but I was shocked to see him on there,"
the congressman told us. Ney demanded that the network inform viewers
about Jafarzadeh's background, saying, "I don't think they're fair and
balanced on this issue."
"This is old news," said Fox spokesman Paul Schur, declining to comment
further."Absolutely false," Jafarzadeh said yesterday of Ney's claims. "The
MEK is not headed by me. I've been in this country for 29 years and the
MEK's headquarters is . . . in Iraq. It's ridiculous for somebody to say MEK
is headed by me, sitting here in Washington."
In August, officials from Justice, Treasury and State shut Jafarzadeh's
Washington office, where he had worked in recent years as the U.S.
representative for the National Council of Resistance of Iran. According to
State Department officials, that group is an alias for MEK. But Jafarzadeh
says he worked there before it was designated as a terrorist front group.
He described himself as a supporter of bringing democracy to Iran. "The
mullahs of Tehran have been trying to silence me," he said. "Who do you
think revealed the major nuclear facilities of the Iranian regime in the past
year and a half? It was me."
The Justice Department is reviewing Ney's letter.

17
Charity Event May Have Terrorist Link

Glenn Kessler

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, January 29, 2004
The Web site for the $35-a-person event, billed as "a night of solidarity with
Iran," flashed between references to support for "the Iran earthquake
victims" and "a referendum for regime change in Iran." One administration
official said that the FBI determined that at least three of the sponsoring
organizations were associated with the MEK, while a senior Treasury
official said "there were general indications the MEK may have an interest
in the event," but it could not yet prove it.
The day before the function, Treasury sent a letter to the Convention Center
warning that the "MEK may have an interest in this event or may attempt to
use the event to raise funds." But the Treasury official said officials moved
cautiously because in general they did not want to chill possible charitable
acts. "This is what makes terrorist financing so complex," he said. "You
often have a blending of purposes and interests."
No one answered the phone at the Iranian-American Community of
Northern Virginia, and messages seeking comment were not returned.
The MEK, though listed on the State Department list of foreign terrorist
organizations since 1997, in the past year has been the subject of an
administration tug of war over its status. The group maintained for the past
decade thousands of fighters armed with tanks, armored vehicles and
artillery in three camps northeast of Baghdad along the Iraq-Iran border.
U.S. analysts concluded its primary support came from Hussein's
government, despite some financial backing from Iranian expatriates.
Nevertheless, some Pentagon officials considered the MEK as a possible
vanguard against the Iranian government, which they viewed as a threat in

18
the region. But in May President Bush ordered the group surrounded and
disarmed. Even then, reports persisted of an easy-going relationship between
the military and the MEK forces, leading the White House to clarify late last
year that the MEK is "part of the global war on terrorism" and its members
"are being screened for possible involvement in war crimes, terrorism and
other criminal activities."
Jacki Flowers, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, said the relief agency had
been contacted by the sponsors about receiving funds raised at the event
several weeks before it took place. But the Red Cross decided to reject the
proceeds once it became aware that the event was "political in nature,"
specifically the promotion of regime change. She said accepting the funds
would "compromise our fundamental principles of neutrality and
impartiality."
Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, said he was contacted by the Premiere
Speakers Bureau in mid-January about giving the keynote speech. He asked
for more information about the sponsoring organizations and received a
letter saying aid would be coordinated though the Red Cross and describing
the event as "solidarity with earthquake victims in Iran and an evening for
Iranian Resistance."
The Iranian Resistance is often an alias for the MEK. In August, the State
Department shut down the U.S. offices of the political arm of the MEK,
known as National Council of Resistance of Iran.
In his speech, Perle said he made the case that the current Iranian
government supports terrorism and said the fall of the Soviet empire
foreshadowed the fate of the mullahs who he said control Iran. He said the
hall was full of families and children and "it did not have an aura of an event
with terrorist sponsorship."
Raymond Tanter, a University of Michigan professor who introduced Perle,
has long maintained that the MEK does not belong on the list of foreign
terrorist organizations. He said MEK was never mentioned in speeches, "but
I did hear references to Camp Ashraf," which is where U.S. troops are
holding MEK fighters.
Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.

19
IRAQ'S MYSTERY TERRORISTS

Justin Raimondo

Are the Mujahideen-e-Khalq behind the Najaf massacre?

Who was responsible for the Najaf bombing, in which 125 people were
killed – including the leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)?
The Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami avers:
"The plot to assassinate Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim... was
undoubtedly planned by the US and implemented by local mercenaries
under US control. As far as local US mercenaries are concerned, one should
not forget the role of the Monafeqin [hypocrites, pejorative reference to the
Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation]... As they are Shia Iranians, the
Monafeqin can easily infiltrate Iraqi Shia circles."
That the U.S. government is sowing chaos where it is supposed to be
keeping order is indisputable. That it is doing so intentionally seems highly
improbable. But it is undeniable that the one group most opposed to the
extension of SCIRI's influence throughout Iraq is the Mujahideen-e-Khalq
(MEK), the "Monafeqin" so disdained by Jomhuri-ye Eslami.
The history of this weird authoritarian socialist grouplet – including its
apparent sponsorship by the neoconservative faction in the U.S. government
– implicates it as a prime suspect in the Najaf blast.
Ideologically, the MEK – Marxist, militantly feminist, and linked by an
umbilical cord of financial and political support to the old Ba'athist regime –
is the antipode of SCIRI, which is Islamist, militantly anti-modernist, and for
all intents and purposes an agent of the Iranian regime. If the Ayatollah al-
Hakim had lived to establish an Islamic Republic of Iraq, there would have
been no place in it for the MEK.
Otherwise known as the Peoples Mujahideen, or the Iranian National
Liberation Army (INLA), the MEK started out as a "left" faction of the
Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah and installed the Ayatollah
Khomeini as the supreme power in Tehran. The U.S., as the Shah's sponsor

20
and chief ally, became the principal target of MEK terrorism. A State
Department report notes:
"Bombs were the Mojahedin's weapon of choice, which they frequently
employed against American targets. On the occasion of President Nixon's
visit to Iran in 1972, for example, the MKO exploded time bombs at more
than a dozen sites throughout Tehran, including the Iran-American Society,
the U.S. information office, and the offices of Pepsi Cola and General
Motors. From 1972-75 … the Mojahedin continued their campaign of
bombings, damaging such targets as the offices of Pan-American Airlines,
Shell Oil Company, and British organizations."
The MEK also participated in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran. After the fall of the Shah, the MEK fell out with the orthodox Shia
clergy, and was attacked by the Revolutionary Guards. They began to launch
terrorist attacks against the Iranian government, in which civilians were
targeted. During the Iran-Iraq war, they made an alliance with Saddam
Hussein, who funded them and gave them sanctuary on Iraqi territory, a
tactic that succeeded in completely isolating them from the Iranian people.
Their pact with Saddam also made them plenty of enemies inside Iraq. The
MEK were used to put down the Kurdish rebellions in the north, and they
were also sent to help crush the 1991 Shi'ite uprising in the south – where
they faced what is today the SCIRI on the battlefield, and drove them over
the border into Iran. After Saddam's fall, the SCIRI returned, with Ayatollah
al-Hakim at their head. But his moment in the sun didn't last too long....
When the U.S. invaded Iraq, there was a big debate within the administration
over what to do about the MEK. The neoconservatives in the Pentagon and
around Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans want to use the
Marxist terrorists as a club to bash Iran in the next phase of their war to
"democratize" the Middle East. Leading neocons such as Daniel Pipes and
Arnold Beichman tout the MEK as a U.S. ally, the latter hailing it as "a
legitimate force for democracy and regime change in the Middle East."
That's an odd way to characterize a totalitarian cult whose commitment to
"democracy" consists of having unilaterally proclaimed Maryam Rajavi –
wife of the group's military leader, Masoud Rajavi – "President Elect"of
Iran.
This is the only terrorist outfit that I know of with a huge constituency on
Capitol Hill: 150 members of Congress signed on to a letter in response to
the banning of MEK and its front groups from the U.S.
Its bank accounts closed, the MEK public relations machine still managed to
put out a full-page ad in the New York Times protesting the crackdown. The

21
Mujahideen e-Khalq has become a symbolic issue in Washington, a rallying
point for the radical neocons and their congressional amen corner.
The State Department, having designated MEK a terrorist organization,
opposed utilizing the group against Tehran. U.S. diplomats were trying to
convince the Iranians to hand over Al Qaeda operatives reportedly on their
territory, but Tehran wouldn't agree unless MEK was disbanded. The
mullahs were furious because a formal agreement was signed with MEK
leaders, enabling the group to "remain fully armed, but nevertheless
effectively quarantined," as one analyst put it.
Back channel negotiations between Iran and the U.S. over Al Qaeda
members held in Iran are opposed by the neocons, who see more "regime
change" as the logical next step in the war on terrorism. They have gone so
far as to meet with Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar, a discredited
arms merchant, in order to derail U.S.-Iranian cooperation.
The cabal that lied us into the Iraq war is not above using the MEK terrorist
cult to provoke Tehran and trigger a new conflict. The news that the U.S. is
now reviving the Mukhabarat, Iraq's hated secret police, in order to boost the
intelligence-gathering capabilities of the occupation government is more
than a case of strange bedfellows. It points directly to the prospect of a rapid
escalation of the war, with the U.S. clearly preparing to expand operations
into Iran. As the New York Times recently reported:
"[Sabi al-] Hamed, a Mukhabarat officer since 1976, said he refused to join
the revived unit when former co-workers told him that it would be
cooperating with the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen, an Iranian
opposition group that is on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist
organizations. Mr. Hamed said he had worked with the group during the
Iran-Iraq war and called them butchers, adding that he had seen bodies of
people they had executed."
In characterizing the MEK as "mercenaries under U.S. control," Jomhuri-ye
Eslami may not be too far off the mark. That is, if by "under U.S. control"
they mean under the control of the parallel intelligence service set up by the
neocons to carry out their own private foreign policy.
As American troops disarmed MEK, "President Elect" Maryam Rajavi fled
to France, where her group was raided by the police and now faces
expulsion from the country. The French charged the MEK compound was a
terrorist nerve center, where acts of violence were being planned against
Iranian targets and dissident members throughout Europe. Masoud Rajavi,
husband of the "President Elect" and commander of the group's armed wing,
remained in Iraq, where he had been living in the home of Iraqi Gen. Ali-
Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali."

22
The Rajavi Islamo-commies may be banned in the U.S., but in Iraq they will
doubtless carry on their 35-year battle in another form. We may have seen
the first results already. If so, it wouldn't be the first time MEK has carried
out terrorist activities in and around Najaf.
"Can the Mujahideen be useful?" asks Daniel Pipes, recently appointed to
the board of the "U.S. Institute of Peace," a government-run think-tank. His
answer:
"Yes. Western spy agencies are short on 'human intelligence' meaning spies
on the ground in Iran, as distinct from eyes in the sky. Coalition military
commanders should seek out the Mujahideen for information on the Iranian
mullahs' agents in Iraq."
Interestingly, the possibility that the MEK might be doing more than merely
gathering information in post-Saddam Iraq was prefigured in an interesting
piece in the Beirut Daily Star [June 6, 2003]. Ed Blanche observed the
"alarm" of the Americans at the appearance of the 15,000-strong Badr
Brigades, the military wing of the SCIRI, and noted:
"SCIRI leader Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, whose family was decimated by
Saddam's secret police, announced May 31 that his movement had given up
its heavy weapons although it doesn't seem to have handed them over to the
Americans to focus on the political struggle. But the Badr Brigades and the
INLA are mortal enemies, and the Americans may just find it useful to use
the Mujahideen as a counterweight to the Iranian-backed Shiites in the
stormy days ahead. The Mujahideen face final collapse if they are subdued
in Iraq, or forced to disband. But given the power of Rumsfeld's Pentagon
right now, they could live to fight their enemies another day, under one guise
or another."
The Mystery Terrorists of Iraq, masters of a thousand guises – who knows
what they'll morph into next? The war is young, and we have a lot to look
forward to: the Zoroastrian Liberation Front, the Turkmen Freedom Fighters,
the Assyrian Assassins. Iraq is teeming with disgruntled grouplets – for sale,
cheap.
As our old friend, the anonymous "police official" cited above, spreads
confusion about the Najaf massacre story throughout the Western media, his
Iranian doppelganger, described by the Tehran Times as "an Iraqi analyst,"
adds his own spin to the mix, claiming that "traces of Mossad agents were
found at the Najaf blast site." As to whether they left a calling card, this
"analyst" does not say. He merely passes along rumors that the Mossad has
lately made a point of "infiltrating" certain unnamed "organizations in
southern Iraq." He does, however, name the MEK as having "helped Zionist
operatives in this mission." In any case, he speaks with as much ersatz

23
authority as his Western cousins, who attribute the massacre to Al Qaeda,
Ba'athists, or both:
"While not ruling out the hand of the extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in
the massive blast in Najaf, he noted, 'Of course I think the massive
propaganda by some Western-minded media and an emphasis on blaming al-
Qaeda or remnants of the Baath party is to be considered a conscious effort
to hide the role of Zionist and occupying forces in this abominable atrocity.'"
Hiding beneath the thin veneer of anonymity, competing interests spin rival
versions of the same story. Adding to the cacophony and the confusion is the
news that Saddam, or a voice purporting to be him, denies having anything
to do with the Najaf atrocity. Anyone who scoffs at the idea that we're in a
quagmire just isn't paying attention: we're stuck in a news quagmire, sunk in
the yawning abyss between truth and fiction.

24
Mojahedin, Jafarzadeh and Foxnews

http://www.rmpn.org/weblog/archives/permalink/001143.cfm
A few months ago J.B. Holston posted an article "Tancredo and Terrorists"
to Rocky Mountain Progressive Network and Professor Paul Sheldon Foote
wrote a comment on it and discussed about Mojahedin and Jafarzadeh.
Although the article was published long time ago, it's still fresh and
attractive:
Tancredo and Terrorists
By J.B. Holston

Remember the stink a couple of weeks back, when Tancredo had to back out
of a fund-raiser sponsored by an Iranian group on the U.S.' terrorist target
list, about whom the State Department said;
“They’re a combatant,” said Greg Sullivan, a spokesman for the State
Department’s Near East Affairs bureau. “They’re being targeted. Targeting
data is being provided to the Pentagon. We believe they are undertaking
some of the action in the south [of Iraq] where enemy combatants have
disguised themselves as civilians.”
...Last week, Reuters reported that U.S. forces attacked and destroyed two
MEK bases in Iraq. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported Thursday that
Masud Rajavi, the group’s leader, has relocated MEK headquarters to the
private residence of General Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam
Hussein and one of his most trusted deputies. He earned the nickname
“Chemical Ali” for his involvement in the campaign to suppress ethnic
Kurds in northern Iraq.
Here's how Tancredo dealt with it then;
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), another MEK champion, was initially
appalled when told that MEK forces have engaged coalition forces.

25
“If that’s occurred, if they have done this, they have certainly ruined
whatever modicum of support they have here, at least from me,” he said. “If
these reports are accurate, that’s the end of it for me.”
Tancredo later called The Hill to say he had “received information of a
different nature entirely from people who are closer to the scene than the
State Department.”
He would not identify the source or content of the information, except to say
it came from “our government.” The State Department flatly dismissed
Tancredo’s claims.
Well, here's what Tancredo said about those terrorists in an interview last
summer;
John Hawkins: Let me ask you another question, it's Iran related. I heard that
you support the National Council of Resistance (NCR), a political arm of the
Mujahedin-e Kalq (MEK)...
Tom Tancredo: Yes I do.
John Hawkins: While they are certainly an anti-Iranian group, the State
Department says they are also terrorists. Do you believe that to be the case
and...
Tom Tancredo: Well if you're a mullah in Iran, you definitely view them as
a terrorist. They're not a terrorist threat to the United States. They pose
absolutely no threat. In fact, they are a great asset. They are the ones who
have brought to light almost everything we know about the nuclear
capabilities...
....John Hawkins: And they don't kill Iranian civilians or that sort of thing
either?
Tom Tancredo: Well, they attack and do assassinate members of the Iranian
government, yeah. That part of the world, it's not a Sunday school picnic
over there.
Naive? Dissembling? Both??
Remember, "Legendary Kook" Tancredo is on the House Subcommittee on
International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Human Rights
Comments
J.B. Holston’s “Tancredo and Terrorists”
On February 18, 2004, J.B. Holston posted “Tancredo and Terrorists” to
criticize correctly Congressman Tom Tancredo (a neoconservative who
claims to be a Republican—Colorado) for Tancredo’s support of terrorists
American troops fought and killed in Iraq in March 2003.
http://www.rmpn.org/weblog/archives/permalink/001143.cfm

26
J.B. Holtston’s critique noted correctly Congressman Tancredo’s false claim
that the Marxist terrorists kill government leaders in Iran, not civilians. John
Hawkins posted this entire interview at Right Wing News.
http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/tancredo.php
During the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian Marxist terrorists fought for Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein and killed large numbers of Iranian soldiers and civilians.
In Iran, these Marxist terrorists have a long history of fund raising by
stealing automobiles and motorcycles. They have killed many Iranian
civilians while these terrorists commit their crimes.
The following facts support J.B. Holston’s critique of Congressman Tom
Tancredo:
1. On January 15, 2003, a full-page advertisement appeared in the New York
Times (page A19): “150 Members of U.S. Congress Declare Support for the
People’s Mojahedin (PMOI), Call for an End to Iran’s Terrorist Regime”.
This advertisement included the photographs and names of 6 of the 150
traitors in Congress who support a terrorist organization named by President
George W. Bush in his September 2002 background paper for his remarks at
the United Nations. President Bush named only 3 terrorist organizations
operating in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The PMOI (known also as the MEK or
the MKO) was one of the 3 terrorist organizations President Bush cited as a
major reason for going to war with Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. Al-
Qaeda was NOT on President Bush’s list. Congressman Tancredo betrayed
President Bush on January 15, 2003. The 6 traitors in Congress are:
Democrats Bob Filner (California), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Edolphus
Towns (New York); Republicans Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Florida), Ileana Ros-
Lehtinen (Florida), Tom Tancredo (Colorado).
2. During March 2003, American troops fought against the MEK in Iraq.
While some news services reported that hundreds of MEK died during the
fighting, these news services did not report if any American troops died
fighting Tancredo’s Marxist terrorists. Tancredo should issue a press release
mentioning the names of the American military units involved in the
fighting, the dates of the fighting, and the names of any American troops (if
any) who died killing hundreds of the MEK in Iraq.
3. After a cease fire, the American government ordered American troops to
protect the remaining Marxist terrorists. On May 1, 2003, in Camp Ashraf,
Iraq, the Marxist terrorists joined communists around the world in
celebrating May Day. News services distributed photographs to the media
showing the Marxist flag of the organization used in the celebrations.
Tancredo should issue a press statement on his position about when and how

27
many of these MEK terrorists should be permitted to return to America and
to countries other than Iran.
4. In June 2003, the French police arrested the leader of the MEK plus
approximately 150 supporters. Some supporters protested by burning
themselves to death in front of television cameras. After the burning scenes
appeared on televisions in much of the world, fewer politicians wanted their
names to be used publicly as supporters. The MEK has honored Tom
Tancredo and some other members of Congress for continuing to support
them in spite of all of these events:
• Senator Sam Brownback - United States Senate
• Senators Campbell and Brownback - United States Senate
• Ed Towns - Member of Congress
• Dennis Moore- Member of Congress, 24 July 2003
• Wm Lacy Clay - Member of Congress
• Dennis Moore - Member of Congress, 20 June 2003
• David Scott - member of Congress
• Sheila Jackson Lee - Member of Congress
• Tom Tancredo - Member of Congress
• Bennie G. Thompson - Member of Congress
• Kendrick B. Meek - Member of Congress
• Nick Lampson - Member of Congress
• Bob Filner - Member of Congress
http://www.maryam-rajavi.org/pages/supports.htm
5. Why has Tancredo supported Marxist terrorists before and after American
troops risked their lives fighting these Marxist terrorists in Iraq? As a
Vietnam veteran, I think that it is obvious why Tancredo does not support
American troops. As a leading “chicken hawk” in Congress today, he
avoided going to Vietnam by opting to go for therapy to obtain a 1-Y
exemption from service in Vietnam. Patricia Calhoun’s “Crazy for You”
(published December 3, 1998) contained Tom Tancredo’s explanation:
‘But if I could have gone to Vietnam instead of suffering this depression,
these attacks, I'd trade it in a heartbeat.’
http://www.westword.com/issues/1998-12-03/columns.html/print.html
Clarifications
1. At which conservative Republican site did J.B. Holston post a critique of
Tancredo? Holston did not post it at a conservative Republican site. Holston
posted the critique at the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network, a “...chorus
of voices opposing the radical right in our region.”
2. As a conservative Republican and as a Vietnam veteran, I am opposed to
Tancredo. Shortly before the March 2, 2004 Primary Election in California,

28
Tancredo visited California to endorse some Republican candidates. After
learning this, I withdrew my endorsement for one Republican candidate for
the United States Senate and requested the return of my campaign
contribution. I informed the political consulting firm for this candidate that I
shall continue to vote against any Republican candidates Tancredo endorses
in California.
3. Tancredo and the other traitors in Congress will remain in office until
voters learn to make basic distinctions. I know Republican activists who
cannot tell me the difference between a conservative and a neoconservative.
If the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network really wants to remove
Tancredo from office as much as I do, then the members of the network need
to learn some distinctions about the right wing in American politics. Real
Republicans will not support neoconservatives. Neoconservatives have
pointed to their Trotsky origins as evidence that they are anti-Marxist. Last
year, the neoconservatives proved that they will support Marxist terrorist
enemies of America. Only Marxists could claim that neoconservatives are
members of the radical right. To a conservative Republican, a
neoconservative is not a member of the right wing. While I might not agree
with progressives on any other issue, I agree completely with the
progressives that Tancredo should not be re-elected to Congress. Hopefully,
progressives know enough about politics to understand that all of the traitors
in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, should not be re-elected.

4. For many years, the MEK operated from an office in the National Press
Building in Washington, D.C. One of its spokespersons, Alireza Jafarzadeh,
has become now an analyst for the Fox News Channel. You may check for
his past and future appearances on the Fox News Channel by entering
Jafarzadeh in the search at this Web site: http://www.foxnews.com/

While the New York Times and some other media printed numerous lies
about Fidel Castro that resulted in America’s imposition of a Marxist regime
in Cuba, the Fox News Channel has overtaken even the New York Times in
supporting America’s terrorist enemies, the MEK. The Fox News Channel is
a neoconservative channel. The Fox News Channel is not a conservative,
Republican, or right wing channel.

29
Professor Paul Sheldon Foote has also written an article called "America's
Marxist Terrorists" which was published in "Insight on the news" on
2003/03/13. Bringing that valuable article here is useful:

At his March 6, 2003 press conference, President Bush criticized Saddam

Hussein’s support of Al-Qaeda-like terrorist organizations. In the September
12, 2002 background paper for President Bush’s speech to the United
Nations General Assembly, “A Decade of Deception and Defiance”, the
White House named three terrorist organizations operating from Iraq: (1)
Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK or MKO) (2) Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) (3)
Abu Nidal Organization. The background paper failed to note that the MEK
and its front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, operate from a
registered office close to the White House: 1051 National Press Building,

529 14th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20045. For more than a decade,
some American newspapers, such as the Washington Post, have published
favorable articles about this organization, classified by the State Department
since 1997 as a Marxist terrorist organization. The organization claims to
have letters of support from more than 200 members of Congress
(Democrats and Republicans), including now-Attorney General John
Ashcroft. Recently, even the Fox News Channel has been interviewing a
representative, permitting him to criticize Iran and to describe his
organization as the pro-democracy organization of Iranians. In “Democracy
Betrayed”, this organization denied the State Department’s accusations that
they assassinated American Air Force officers and Rockwell International
employees. However, there is no denial that this is a Marxist terrorist
organization. If America invades Iraq, the American media will need to find
a way to hide scenes of thousands or tens of thousands of these Iranian
Marxist terrorists killing American soldiers. Before we can ask Saddam
Hussein to stop supporting terrorists, America must stop supporting the
Marxist takeover of Iran. The New York Times, State Department
employees, and American political leaders imposed a Marxist dictatorship in
Cuba. It is time for the Federal Government to disclose the documents taken
from the home of Alireza Jafarzadeh, according to Newsweek, including the
letters of support from members of Congress. Americans need to know who
is supporting a repetition of the Cuban blunder for Iran.

Paul Sheldon Foote

30
MKO's Financial Sources

Eric Furrier, Jean-Marie Pontaut/ Le Express

The police force has sought the origin of the million dollars discovered with
the seat and on the accounts of the Organization of the Mojahedin-e Khalq
(PMOI), a movement of Iranian opponents established for more than twenty
years with Auvers-on-Oise. At the end of June 2003, 17 members of PMOI
are put in examination for criminal conspiracy in relation to a terrorist
company. All the people imprisoned, since, have been freed.
Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière and the investigators of the Brigade of research
and financial investigations (Brif) started investigating the strange circuits of
financing of the organization. At the time of the searching of 2003, nearly
8,5 million dollars in cash, and not declared in customs, were thus seized.
Certain bundles still carried bands of the German, Swiss and British banks.
The specialists, who translated the Persian, said nearly 1 million documents
found in the memory of the 300 seized computers, peel today the countable
elements of PMOI. They are interested particularly in the collections
organized in France and abroad by the organization. The versed sums
forwarded by Iran Aid, an association presented like a caritative
organization, whose humane engagement is of doubtful validity. The givers
of PMOI domiciled in France should be heard soon.
The police officers, intrigued by documents detailing the methodology
installation for the collections, indeed suspected the existence of pressures or
harassing, although no complaint was found up to that point. As for the
collections abroad, they, alone, would have brought back some 20 million
dollars in 2002. To disentangle this financial circuit complexes between the
United States, Germany, Great Britain and Turkey, follow-up of withdrawals
in Dubai, Bruguière judge recently heard "witnesses protected" in Los
Angeles. Parallel to the investigations on the sources of financing, the
investigators are interested in the invoices paid by OMPI, in particular in a
contract signed with a company of sale of satellite means, with height of 2
million dollars per annum.
With the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mojahedin lost their principal backer. The
DST has a historical document for this reason: an authenticated cassette
showing Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the founder of the organization,
tightening hand of the Iraqi dictator. And the study of the accounts could
bring others surprised.

31
MKO, US Winning Card in Deal with Iran

Essam Fahem/Al-Rai Al-Aam

Essam Fahem, reporter of Kuwaiti newspaper of Al-Rai Al-Aam, who had
visited Ashraf Camp in order to write a report, wrote on 20th September
2004:
"When you enter Camp Ashraf (named after Ashraf, Masoud Rajavi's first
wife who was killed in battle with Iranian Revolutionary Guards) you feel
walking in another world. When Saddam was in power, they had different
situation. This camp was surrounded by American troops and the one who
wants to enter it should pass a number of checkpoints. Taking photograph is
forbidden in this camp. Also, carrying mobile phone is considered as illegal.
Passing these barriers, I faced Dr. Mahmood, who introduced himself as the
head of Organization's public relations. His duty was to note me that the
condition for reporters to enter this camp was that they should not name the
people and officials there. He and another person, called Dr. Mohsen,
refused to talk about Organization's new stances toward recent events.
This camp is vast. I had only time to have short walk. There were a number
of radio communication stations. I visited the museum of the organization
and went to cemetery where MKO militants were buried. Then these two
men gave me some information that, as a journalist, I was aware of."
This reporter, at the end of his report, wrote:
"when I came out of the Ashraf, I realized that nothing has been left from
this organization except a chip on the table of the US (which misuses it in
deals with Iran). They may know this, for they know it since they asked
Saddam's help and when they saw American tanks near the Iranian border
they shouted the slogan of impartiality and to win the support of the US they
started talking about human rights and establishing democracy in the Middle
East. This case reminds me of the story of a rug dealer who spent more
money on buying older Kashan rugs. May be he knew that his rugs will be
sold. Now, it seems that American customer has prepared itself for the deal;
the deal whose secret is only known to "rug dealers."

32
Our Citizens Need Security and Tranquillity, Not Terrorists

Ms Mette Tegnandern, Norway

…Mojahedin, even before I knew of my husband’s personal story, it was
clear that the leader Massoud Rajavi was just treating people like him as
commodities and spilling their blood as though he was spending money from
his bank account. I was shocked to learn that once people joined the
Mojahedin they were not allowed to leave and not even allowed to contact
their families.
I still genuinely cannot understand how people can be made to divorce their
wife or husband or to give up their children to strangers for adoption. How is
that possible?
My husband was one of those who, after a while, decided he wanted to leave
the organisation and go back to his ordinary free life. But he wasn’t allowed
to leave.

... He then told me about the women in Iraq who obey her and that it was
they who ordered him to be beaten and imprisoned. With this public face
and this hidden reality, what boundaries does this organization accept? Very
few it seems.
Accompanying my husband, I started to meet others and to listen to the
horrifying stories of these cult victims, and to hear about the miseries that
the Mojahedin leaders had created under the protection of Saddam in Iraq.
As a woman who has been brought up in a western democracy, I have wept
many times to see how this organisation has misused the total trust of the
people who had given every thing they had with no expectation of anything
in return. The torture and brutal mistreatment of the same people by the cult
leader is truly shameful, unjust and a black page in the history of humanity.
A few years ago, Mojahedin agents attacked a prominent journalist in
Germany. He is a friend of my husband and is based in London. He was
attacked while delivering a speech.
The attack was so severe that he ended up with a broken nose and broken
teeth. Dr Alireza Nourizadeh is among the outspoken critics of Rajavi’s cult.

The Mojahedin still threaten their opponents and on occasion attack them in
European cities.
Surely the security of our citizens is much more important than the presence
of such a dangerous cult in our cities.
Our citizens need security and tranquillity, not terrorist organisations.

33
Shades of Gray

Newsweek/13 October 2004

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

The new report by chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer contains
evidence alleging that Saddam Hussein used the United Nations-managed
Oil-for-Food program to provide millions of dollars in subsidies to a group
the U.S. State Department has branded a foreign terrorist organization.
In fact, U.S. officials concede, the Duelfer finding does little to advance the
administration’s case and could even be politically awkward. The State
Department designated terrorist group in question, is the Mujahedin-e Khalq
(MEK)—an Iranian opposition group that was long backed by Saddam’s
regime as a counterweight to the Tehran government. Not only does the
MEK have no connection either to September 11 or Al Qaeda, in the past, it
has had strong support from members of Congress—including leading
Republicans in both chambers and a current Bush cabinet member, Attorney
General John Ashcroft.
Duelfer’s evidence linking the MEK to the burgeoning Oil-for-Food scandal
comes from 13 secret lists that were maintained by Iraqi oil officials of
favored recipients for vouchers for the sale of oil overseas.
According to the list, people using the MEK’s oil vouchers actually
collected (or "lifted," in oil-industry jargon) around 27 million barrels of
Iraqi oil during the four years before the U.S. invasion. By cashing in on the
vouchers, the MEK could have generated profits of at least $11.2 million,
Duelfer’s figures suggest. One U.S. official said the vouchers were most
likely Saddam’s way of rewarding the MEK for the support it provided his
regime. The list also says that the MEK apparently used two British
companies or business entities to handle the oil deals. Initial efforts to trace
the companies named in the report have so far proved unsuccessful.

34
The new documents relating to the MEK underscore the awkward problems
the group has long presented for U.S. officials. For the past seven years, the
State Department has labeled the MEK a terrorist organization, depicting it
as a cultlike organization that “mixes Marxism and Islam.” The department’s
most recent annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report says the group has
been implicated in repeated bombings, mortar attacks and political
assassinations inside Iran. "This group has a long, bloody history of
committing terrorist acts and retains the capability to do so," a U.S.
counterterrorism official said today when asked about the MEK.
Saddam is known to have supported the group for years as a potential
subversive force against the theocratic mullahs in Tehran. Just last year, the
U.S. Treasury Department shut down the operations of an affiliated group,
the National Council of Resistance of Iran, on the grounds that it was
serving as the political front—with an office at the National Press Building
in Washington, D.C.—for the MEK.
A U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that more recent reporting from Camp
Ashraf indicates that about 40 MEK members have been identified as
possible candidates for prosecution. Most likely, the official said, the
prosecutions would take place in Iraq, where MEK members might be
charged with crimes against humanity or war crimes associated with
assistance they provided Saddam’s regime—including acting as a
paramilitary force to suppress uprisings by the Shia. Another handful,
perhaps four to six, might be brought to the United States for prosecution for
terrorist-related acts or other crimes, the official said.

35
Weird Alliance with Mad Bombers

Juan Cole

Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, has posted a

new article on Progressivetrail website. He criticizes republicans and Bush
administration and in part of his article says:
" I am frankly not impressed by the Bush administration response to al-
Qaeda. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are at large, as are a large number of
other high al-Qaeda operatives. The Bush administration missed a chance to
get a number of important al-Qaeda figures from Iran, which wanted some
Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorists in return, because the Neocons in the Pentagon
have some sort of weird alliance with the MEK mad bombers. Most of the
really big al-Qaeda fish have been caught by Pakistan, to which the Bush
administration has just farmed out some of the most important counter-
insurgency work against al-Qaeda. Is this wise?"

36
A most peculiar kind of alliance

Edward T. Pound/USnews.com
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/041122/usnews/22iran.b1.htm
…Given that background, it would seem that everything would be just rosy
between the MEK and the U.S. government. Not so. In October 1997, the
State Department designated the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization, an
allegation its leaders deny. The MEK supported the 1979 takeover of the
U.S. Embassy in Tehran but later fell out with the radical mullahs there and
established a base of operations in Iraq, with the support of Saddam
Hussein's regime. After invading Iraq in March 2003, U.S. military forces
took control of the MEK, whose members number about 3,800. Today, the
organization's members are based at a camp northeast of Baghdad, under
U.S. guard.
A senior Defense Department official says: "They are not an ally of ours,
and we have no stake in them."

37
In Bed with Terrorists

Laura Rozen, AlterNet. December 16, 2004

…Ledeen's camp, however, has been vocal in opposing the idea of using the
MEK, which received significant military support from Saddam Hussein.
And there's just one other problem: in 1997, the State Department put the
MEK, and its political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran
(NCRI), on the official U.S. government list of foreign terrorist
organizations.
Founded as an Iranian leftist group in the 1960s with Marxist and Islamist
leanings, the MEK participated in the 1979 revolution to overthrow the U.S.-
backed Shah. But in 1981, the MEK broke with Iran's post-revolutionary
leaders and decamped first to France (where it still has a large following),
and then in 1986, to Iraq, where the group fought with Saddam Hussein
against fellow Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war. They also served as shock
troops to put down the rebelling Iraqi Shias in the wake of the first Gulf
War. The MEK was also responsible for numerous attacks on Iranian
embassies and assassination of Iranian officials carried out by the group in
Europe and Iran in the 1990s.
Thanks to this bloody track record, the MEK/NCRI is widely despised by
fellow Iranians, including other Iranian dissident groups that are working to
overthrow Iran's clerical rulers.
Their history with regard to the United States is just as unsavory. When the
State Department designated the MEK and the NCRI as terrorist
organizations in 1997, it cited the group's involvement in attacks during the
1970s on U.S. military contractors in Iran, and more importantly, in the 1979
takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
In recent months, however, some experts have expressed growing doubts
about the group's claims. "I can no longer trust their information," says
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and director of the Institute
for Science and International Security in Washington. "It is like a barrage
they are throwing up, making all of these accusations There is not a single
bit of evidence that has been offered to back any of this." While the MEK
does provide important intelligence, Albright says that their claims now
reflect "a political agenda."
"We will use them, but not de-list them [as terrorists]," predicts Dan Byman,
a former Middle East analyst at the CIA now affiliated with the Brookings
Institution and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. "We have control
of MEK facilities in Iraq … and we are taking advantage of it, and not
shutting them down."

38
Iranian Group Seeks Legitimacy in U.S.

KATHERINE SHRADER /AP/February 24, 2005

One-time members of a terrorist organization are hiding in the United States
- in plain sight.
The organization's former U.S. representative freely walks the streets and
has a contract with Fox News as a foreign affairs analyst. Lawmakers write
letters on the group's behalf. And former intelligence officials say the group
maintains contacts in defense circles, although the Pentagon denies it.
Yet the MEK is far from a U.S. ally.
As soon as the State Department created a list of terror organizations in
1997, it named the MEK, putting it in a club that includes al-Qaida and
barring anyone in the United States from providing material support. By
1999, the department designated the MEK's political arm, the National
Council of Resistance, and related affiliates.
The State Department says the MEK groups were funded by Saddam
Hussein, supported the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and
are responsible for the deaths of Americans in the 1970s.
U.S. policy toward the MEK and its affiliates has not changed. The official,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group is still considered a
threat because of its history of launching terrorist attacks.
But others find the sometimes soft approach to the MEK alarming. Further
complicating the issue, the report from the top U.S. weapons inspector in
Iraq said the group received oil as part of the scandal-tainted oil-for-food
program, earning it millions of dollars in profits.
But a defense official denied contacts with the MEK are occurring. Michael
Rubin, who used to handle Iran issues at the Pentagon, said those he knew
there hated the group.

``Even if they are not terrorists, although I believe they are, any group that
tells its members who to marry and when to divorce, the United States
should not be doing business with. They are very cult-like,'' Rubin said.

39
Uncertain Future for MKO
Hannah Allam/Knight Ridder Newspapers/March 18, 2005

The only thing missing [in MKO compound] is an exit.

This never-never land is Camp Ashraf, home to nearly 4,000 Iranian
militants on windswept plains in the heart of Iraq's most treacherous region.
At once sympathetic and strange, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, or
Mujahedeen Khalq, have spent the past two decades on a single-minded
mission to overthrow the fundamentalist clerics of the neighboring Iranian
regime.
The Mujahedeen once had tanks and guns, but were forced to surrender their
armaments after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. They had a protector in
Saddam Hussein, who gave them land and sold them millions of dollars in
weapons, but now he's gone.
Joining the Mujahedeen requires a total relinquishing of mind and body to
an ideology most often described as Marxist-Islamist. Men and women live
in separate, self-contained units where everything, from ice cream to "Ashraf
Cola," is made on site. Marriages aren't allowed and troops are encouraged
to purge sexual thoughts by writing them out on paper. E-mail, letters,
movies and news are all filtered by camp commanders - mostly women -
before reaching the units.
People who've fled the camp, however, tell stories of being lured by
promises that they would help Iranian children and restore democracy to
their homeland. What they found instead, some former members said, was a
lonely sect where members were intimidated into staying.
Founded in the 1960s to oppose the pro-Western Shah of Iran, the
Mujahedeen participated in the Islamic revolution of 1979. They were
instrumental in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, where 52
Americans were held hostage for more than a year.
The group's leftist philosophy quickly put them at odds with the post-
revolutionary government, and the new mission of the Mujahedeen became
overthrowing the mullahs. Their attacks have spanned decades and have
wiped out dozens of top regime officials. Iran's current supreme leader, Ali
Khamenei, is partially paralyzed as a result of a 1981 assassination attempt
for which the Mujahedeen claimed

40
Israeli Mole in The Pentagon

Eric Margolis

Notes on Security and Intelligence service of Italy (SISMI)

The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the
Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have
secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing
the ayatollahs in Iran. When the US recently categorized the MEK as a
terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from scholars associated
with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such
as Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any
definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its
struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of
Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases
in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the
question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon
wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it
against Tehran.
So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda
operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.
Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop
that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they wanted
to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, the MEK.

41
Laying the Groundwork for War With Iran

Aaron Glantz

What opponents of the Iranian regime like about the Mujahedin-e-Khalq

(MEK) is its terrorism.
According to the State Department, the MEK conducted near-simultaneous
attacks on Iranian Embassies and installations in 13 countries in April 1992,
demonstrating the group's ability to mount large-scale operations overseas.
Then, in 1999 the group assassinated the deputy chief of Iran's Armed
Forces General Staff. In April 2000, they attempted to assassinate the
commander of the Iranian government organization responsible for
coordinating policies on Iraq. In 2000 and 2001, the State Department
reports, the MEK was involved regularly in mortar attacks and hit-and-run
raids on Iranian military and law-enforcement units and government
buildings near the Iran-Iraq border.
"In the middle 1980s, they made an alliance with Saddam Hussein," notes
Shaul Bakhash, who teaches Middle Eastern studies at George Mason
University. Saddam "gave them a home and financial material support, and
there are credible charges that Saddam Hussein used them against the Kurds
in his own campaigns."
Bakhash says the MEK is universally despised inside Iran because the group
fought alongside Saddam Hussein's army during the Iran-Iraq war.

42
Bolton's Terrorist Tango

James Ridgeway/The Village Voice

Last spring, the State Department stated its case again MEK, saying its
members "assisted the Government of Iraq in suppressing the Shia and
Kurdish uprisings in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north. In
April 1992, the MEK conducted near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian
Embassies and installations in 13 countries, demonstrating the group's ability
to mount large-scale operations overseas. In April 1999, the MEK targeted
key military officers and assassinated the deputy chief of the Armed Forces
General Staff. In April 2000, the MEK attempted to assassinate the
commander of the Nasr Headquarters—Tehran's interagency board
responsible for coordinating policies on Iraq. The normal pace of anti-
Iranian operations increased during the "Operation Great Bahman" in
February 2000, when the group launched a dozen attacks against Iran.
"In 2000 and 2001," the State Department continued, "the MEK was
involved regularly in mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids on Iranian military
and law-enforcement units and government buildings near the Iran-Iraq
border, although MEK terrorism in Iran declined throughout the remainder
of 2001. In February 2000, for example, the MEK launched a mortar attack
against the leadership complex in Tehran that houses the offices of the
Supreme Leader and the President."

43
'Tank girl' army accused of torture

Guardian/ David Leigh in Nijmegen, Netherlands/ May 31, 2005

Guardian and Human Rights Watch find evidence of abuse by Iranian

revolutionaries under US protection
…However, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, calls them a "a nasty terrorist
organisation" and British officials are barred from contact. The Mujahideen
are officially proscribed but their British backers want the terrorist
designation lifted.
Refugees from the Mujahideen we traced in the Netherlands include
Ardeshir Pahrizkari, who walks on crutches. His back and feet were broken,
he told us, when he was punched, kicked and had chairs thrown at him at a
mass meeting to denounce him organised by his commander.
At the time, the "tank girls" were being financed by Saddam Hussein in
camps in Iraq. The army was allocated illicit cash from the UN oil-for-food
programme, according to Iraqi ministry documents.
Mr Pahrizkari says he was handed over to Saddam's secret service, who took
him to Abu Ghraib prison. There were continual beatings there, he said.
"When the Red Cross came round, we were told: 'Any contact with them and
we will break every bone in your hands and feet.'"
His fellow refugee, Akbat Akbari, says he was tortured extensively, and is
still having psychological counselling, after three years in Abu Ghraib.
"The moment you arrived, you were beaten on the soles of the feet.
Prisoners were used to hoist your feet in the air with ropes."
Later, he says, his toenails were pulled out. Pepper and salt were forced into
his anus.

44
The two men's testimony is supported by last week's New York-based
Human Rights Watch report. It says telephone interviews with 12 other
former Mujahideen soldiers "paint a grim picture of how the organisation
treated its members". Witnesses alleged two cases of deaths under
interrogation.
The group raised up to £5m a year in Britain through a charity called Iran
Aid, until the Charity Commission closed it down in 2001, saying it was
unclear where the money was going.
Ms Singleton denies this, saying: "To claim that every western government
and humanitarian organisation which criticises the Rajavi cult is somehow
connected to the Iranian secret services shows Lord Corbett's own refusal to
take responsibility for supporting this terrorist cult."

45
Who is Publishing the Truth?

Professor Paul Sheldon Foote/September 25, 2005

President George W. Bush employed two major pretexts to dupe Americans

into supporting the Iraq War: (1) extend the war on terror to Iraq, a major
sponsor of terrorist organizations such as the MEK (2) find and destroy
weapons of mass destruction before Saddam Hussein uses the weapons or
sells the weapons to terrorists.
Chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer’s report includes evidence
that Saddam Hussein allocated approximately $16 million of oil to the MEK
over a 4-year period prior to the Iraq War. Saddam Hussein made the
allocations using the United Nations-managed Oil-for-Food program.
Saddam Hussein signed approvals to add any group to the Oil Allocation
Recipient List.
The MEK’s response was that Iranian intelligence agents must have been
involved with placing the MEK on the list!
A U.S. official told NEWSWEEK that more recent reporting from Camp
Ashraf indicates that about 40 MEK members have been identified as
possible candidates for prosecution. Most likely, the official said, the
prosecutions would take place in Iraq, where MEK members might be
charged with crimes against humanity or war crimes associated with
assistance they provided Saddam’s regime—including acting as a
paramilitary force to suppress uprisings by the Shia. Another handful,
perhaps four to six, might be brought to the United States for prosecution for
terrorist-related acts or other crimes, the official said.”

46
Report to Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Senate website/Foreign Relations Committee/May 19, 2005

http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2005/SamiiTestimony050519.pdf
THE QUEST FOR IRAN'S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT.
Testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
By Abbas William Samii, Ph.D.

The MKO was created in the 1960s and its ideology combines Islam and
Marxism. It was involved with anti-U.S. terrorism in the 1970s, and it
initially supported the 1978-79 revolution. In June 1981, it staged an
unsuccessful uprising against the Islamic regime; many members were
imprisoned while others fled the country. The MKO transitioned from being
a "mass movement" in 1981 to having "all the main attributes of a cult" by
mid-1987, Professor Ervand Abrahamian writes in his 1989 book, Radical
Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. The MKO refers to its head, Masud Rajavi, in
religious terms, calling him the rahbar (leader) and imam-i hal (present
imam).
Former President Saddam Hussein granted the MKO refuge in Iraq, and it
helped Saddam Hussein suppress the 1991 uprisings of Shia in southern Iraq
and Kurds in the north, so it is not very popular in Iraq. The MKO fought
Iranian forces in the Iran-Iraq War, and this has discredited the organization
among the Iranian public.

Information provided by the MKO, which does not have the same objectives
as the U.S., is likely to be self-serving and unreliable. Using MKO personnel
as a partisan force is appealing, but association with them will discredit the
U.S. in Iranians' eyes.

47
In the Shade of Saddam… and Bush

EL PAIS/ANGELS THORNY

In its report “No Exit”, published in May, Human Rights Watch revealed
abuses and violations of the human rights in the camps of this organization
during the last two decades. The testimonies gathered by Human Rights
Watch in Iran corroborate solitary confinements, forced confessions,
execution threats, beatings and tortures of those who tried to leave the group.

"They didn’t let us have feelings towards women, mothers, children, or even
to speak about it with friends. We had to write daily reports on the
weaknesses of our friends. According to Moradi, there were two meetings of
that type: “Current, daily critical meeting which tortured the spirit, and the
weekly. In weekly meetings, we were forced to write down our feelings
towards the women we had imagined during the week, and we had to talk
about it in public, and this is really difficult regarding our Iranian culture”.
The beginning of their works in MKO coincided with the arrival of the
Rajavi in Baghdad and formation of the National Liberation Army, the
guerilla army and the military hand of the organization. “Camp Ashraf was
established and we began to receive professional military training by
Saddam’s Republican Guard", remembers Amin.
Amin relates these stories while his hands are empty; he lost the best years
of his life in a useless persistence. His leaders allowed their members to act
as the soldiers of Saddam and during the Iraqi invasion to Kuwait,
Mujahidin were sent to Khanequin to suppress the Kurds.
In 2000, Maryam Rajavi, new leader of the militants, deployed several
operational teams to Iran to foment chaos before the presidential elections of
2001 but military commanders never crossed the Iranian borders

48
MKO, A Challenge for Fighting Terrorism

Barbara Slavin/USA Today/April 15, 2005

TEHRAN, Iran —
The U.S. posture has been ambiguous. The MEK's violent habits — it has a
history of bombings and assassinations, including the murder of six
Americans — earned it a spot on the State Department list of terrorist groups
in 1997.
Aided by training from the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group
began attacks on officials of the U.S.-backed shah. The group also killed six
Americans in Iran during the 1970s — three military officers and three
contractors involved in selling weapons to the shah.
The MEK took part in the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah and
supported the seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages.
Of more than 50 people interviewed about the MEK during a recent visit to
Iran, only one had anything positive to say about it.
Former members and friends of members of the group describe the
organization, which insists its members be celibate, as a cult. "They take
your individuality and beliefs and tell you that all the love you have must go
to the leadership," Sametipour says. "That's how they make terrorists."

49
With Friends Like These

Erik Sass/ForeignPolicy.com/September

An Iranian group has killed American civilians, allied itself with Saddam
Hussein, and holds a spot on the State Department’s terrorist watch list. So
why might it become America’s newest friend in the Middle East?
There is no doubt the group has a darkly violent past. The MEK opposed
Iran’s Shah in the 1970s, and during its militant opposition, killed U.S.
military and civilian personnel in Iran, and backed the 1979 U.S. Embassy
takeover in Tehran. Though the MEK initially was supportive of the 1979
Islamic revolution, it eventually opposed the clerical regime that came to
power. In two 1981 attacks, the MEK killed the Iranian president, premier,
chief justice, and 70 other Iranian officials. And with the support of Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein, the MEK launched attacks on Iran beginning in 1987,
during the brutal endgame of the Iran-Iraq war, later claiming that they
killed 40,000 of their countrymen during these campaigns.
With a curious ideology somehow melding Marxism and Shiite Islamism,
the MEK is a relic of a different time—a group of aging student activists
who cling to their 1970’s radicalism.
Despite its claims to be “democratic,” the group is actually a strict
authoritarian commune, with frequent reports of beatings and torture of
members who try to leave. Critics of the MEK don’t hesitate to call it a cult,
and even some supporters concede that the group is rather unusual.
During the MEK’s long cooperation with Saddam Hussein, it assisted in the
brutal suppression of the Kurds and Shiites, earning the enmity of both
groups.
According to Massoud Khodabandeh, a former MEK security officer who
left the group in 1996 and recently testified against its leadership on trial on
charges of terrorism in France, “more than 300 members have fled…[and]
1,000 disaffected members approached the U.S. army and requested to be
separated from the organization.”
Former member Khodabandeh is blunter: “They have this dilemma. On one
hand they have [used] violence for 30 years. On the other hand they have to
get some support from someone (in America or other places) to survive after
Saddam.” He dismissed the “peaceful” rhetoric as tactical posturing by the
group, masking its terrorist character.
But is MEK intelligence any good? Current and former U.S. officials have
told Newsweek magazine that they knew of the major revelations about
Iran’s nuclear program before the MEK made them public, and the group

50
has a record of exaggerating intelligence or sometimes simply making things
up. U.S. officials have learned to take MEK claims with very large grains of
salt. David Kay, the former intelligence official who spent years
investigating Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, expressed a balanced view:
“They're often wrong, but occasionally they give you something.”
Despite the political changes on the ground, it is still hard to imagine the
MEK playing a large role in any future regime change in Iran. With no more
than 3,800 aging members, the group could hardly destabilize the Iranian
government itself, but it may prove useful as an intelligence asset. With its
allies currently frustrating U.S. efforts to refer the Iran nuclear issue to the
U.N. Security Council, Washington may be in need of friends and any help
may be appreciated. The question is whether the MEK are the kind of
friends you can count on.

51
Opposition a stick against Tehran?

ELIZABETH BRYANT/UPI/Feb.7/Paris

It has been variously described as a cult and the only significant Iranian
resistance movement. The People's Mujahedeen is listed as a terrorist
organization in Europe and the United States, yet the group continues to
stage rallies and court lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Critics argue that supporting the People's Mujahedeen grants legitimacy to a
disreputable organization, dogged by allegations of human rights abuses and
undemocratic behavior.
"They've managed to convince more than a few unsuspecting members of
the European parliament and U.S. congressmen and women that they are a
legitimate democratic opposition group," said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert
on Iran at the International Crisis Group in Washington, DC, echoing the
view of a number of experts. "But in reality, anybody who has been to Iran
in the last 10 years would tell you they have little, if any, support on the
streets."
Rajavi moved to Iraq, where Saddam gave him shelter and millions of
dollars in funding. He established the group's military wing there, launching
terrorist attacks across the border in Iran, and targeting Iranian interests
overseas.
More worrying, perhaps, is the organization's reputation. The Mujahedeen
has long been described as a personality cult revolving around its leaders,
the Rajavis. Men and women at the Iraq camp sleep separately and are
barred from marrying. Last year, Human Rights Watch published a report
accusing the Mujahedeen of torturing and preventing some of its dissenting
members from leaving the camp, during Saddam's time.
"It would be a sign of desperation if Washington resorted to the Mujahedeen
as an instrument against the Iranian regime," added Abrahamian, a Middle
East history professor at Baruch College, in New York. "I can't imagine
anyone more discredited in Iran than the Mujahedeen."

52
Monsters Of The Left The Mujahedin al-Khalq...
Michael Rubin

1/25/06
…Unfortunately, hers is a mistake common to some on the left and the right
who care deeply about Iranian freedom but fail to understand the nature of a
group which, in public, says the right things about freedom and democracy
but, in reality is dedicated to the opposite. Maryam Rajavi and her husband
Masud are adept at public relations and adroit at reinvention, but the
organization over which they preside eschews democracy and embraces
terrorism, autocracy, and Marxism.
…In order to prepare itself for armed struggle, the MKO reached out to the
Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1970, several leading MKO,
including Rajavi received terrorist training in PLO camps in Jordan and
Lebanon. The group subsequently cemented links to the Libyan regime of
Mu‘ammar Qadhafi and to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, the
Soviet Union's Arabian Peninsula satellite.
…In May 30 and 31, 1972, shortly before President Richard Nixon's state
visit to Iran, the MKO launched a wave of bomb attacks which targeted the
Iran-American Society, the U.S. Information Office, the Hotel International,
Pepsi Cola, General Motors, and the Marine Oil Company. They failed to
assassinate General Harold Price, head of the U.S. Military Mission in Iran.
Less than three months later, they bombed the Jordanian embassy to revenge
King Hussein's September 1970 crackdown on their PLO patrons. In 1973,
the MKO bombed the Pan-American Airlines building, Shell Oil, and Radio
City Cinema in Tehran, and assassinated Colonel Lewis Hawkins, the
deputy chief of the U.S. military mission. They did not only target
foreigners. In a wave of bombings that continued into 1975, the MKO group
attacked clubs, stores, police facilities, minority-owned businesses, factories
it accused of having "Israeli connections," and symbols of state and
capitalism.

53
…The MKO drove its terrorist campaign to a fever pitch, assassinating
several hundred regime officials and Revolutionary Guards, and bombing
the homes and offices of clerics. The group also targeted judges who passed
sentence against their members. The MKO used suicide bombers with
deadly effect, killing in separate incidents the Friday prayer leaders of
Tehran and Shiraz. At its peak in July 1982, the group assassinated, on
average, three regime officials per day; publicly, the MKO has claimed
responsibility for the murders of over 10,000 people in Iran since 1981. But
while the terrorist campaign shook the Islamic Republic to its core, it also
claimed many innocent victims.
Still more MKO supporters fled to Iraq, where they accepted the protection
of President Saddam Hussein. What little support the group had once
enjoyed in Iran evaporated, as Iranians saw the MKO rally in support of a
dictator who launched a war that, by its conclusion in 1988, killed several
hundred thousand Iranians.
Nor did the MKO win Iraqi support. Iraqi intelligence coordinated MKO
activities. Iraqi Kurds and Shi‘a accuse the group of participating in reprisals
against Iraqi civilians following the March 1991 uprising. According to
Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, "Up until the fall of
the regime, they were part and parcel of the Iraqi military. And they were
heavily involved in suppressing the Kurdish uprising of 1991."
…The group has continued its petition drives. Congressional aides describe
how the group sends pretty young women into the halls of Congress and
various parliaments with innocuous petitions. Most lawmakers have little
idea of the baggage the group carries.
Well-dressed and well-spoken representatives of MKO front organizations
approach American writers, politicians, and pundits who are critical of the
regime.
The MKO have little in their record to suggest democracy to be a goal.
Today, Masud Rajavi—and his second wife Maryam—work to impose
totalitarian control over its membership. Portraits of Masud and Maryam
loom large in MKO demonstrations and facilities. In the West, the group
forbids its members from reading anything but MKO newspapers and
publications. Many MKO live in communal households and participate in
mandatory study groups. In Camp Ashraf, Iraq, where many members sit in
limbo following Saddam's fall, MKO minders enforce celibacy, employ cult
methods to break down individual will, and shield members from
unsupervised exposure to outsiders.
Terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians for political gain, should
never be acceptable. Mitigating factors do not exist.

54
British MEP: MKO a threat to world peace

Brussels, Feb 13, 2003, IRNA -- Baroness Emma Nicholson, a British MEP
and deputy chairman of the European Parliament's Foreign Relations
Committee, has denounced the Iranian MKO as a 'criminals' who form a
private army for Saddam Hussein and called for a stop to their activities.
"The risk of terrorism is omnipresent now. The dour and brooding presence
of sudden unanticipated and violent death hangs over the military and
civilians alike, in all our nations. "But there is a much better established,
older terrorist organization working inside Iraq since 1986; the MKO, or
MEK as they are known inside the USA," Nicholson told the EP in plenary
debate on Iraq in Strasbourg Wednesday evening.
"The MKO have thousands of members inside Iraq and thousands outside,
financed, equipped, armed, trained by the Iraqi army, and fully engaged
militarily since 1986 in all of Saddam's many wars." Links have been found
recently between the al-Qaeda network and northern Iraq's, pro-Saddam
forces fighting the free Kurdish people," she said. The USA froze MEK
assets in 1994, declaring the group under its many aliases to be an
international terrorist organization. The EU followed the US example in
2001.
Yet last week The New York Times published a full page advertisement for
the MEK using Congressional names and photographs and claiming
Congressional support, noted the MEP.
"Here, our debates on Iraq have been attended by known members of the
MKO recently. These people are a threat to world security. Their
organization strikes silently and with lethal impact." This is Saddam's
private, international terrorist army, working against us all.
"Whatever our differences on the future treatment of Iraq, for the sake of our
citizens' and for global safety I urge far greater security attention is paid to
the MKO. "War or no war, the criminals who make up the MKO kill and
destroy the innocent. They must be stopped," she stressed.

55
State Department briefing on Terrorism

003/3/1
QUESTION: There's an organization in Iraq with military camps,
Mujahadein-e-Khalq, claiming to be liberators of Iran. People who have
come into those camps claim that some of them conceal weapons of mass
destruction for the Iraqi government. Do you have any knowledge of this?
Do you have any reaction to those reports?
MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't be able to talk about our knowledge of any
particular facilities or camps that the Mujahadein-e- Khalq has.
Obviously, anything we knew would come from intelligence, so I
wouldn't be able to talk about it. But this group in particular, this
is a terrorist group.
It's a group that's conducted terrorist attacks spanning three
decades. It's murdered American citizens. We designated this group as
a terrorist group in 1997, among the first, the first year in which we
used this authority to designate terrorist groups. They have several
thousand fighters located on bases scattered throughout Iraq.
They're armed with tanks, infantry, and fighting vehicles, artillery.
They also have a support structure overseas. The primary support comes
from the regime of Saddam Hussein, but its history is studded with
anti-Western attacks as well as anti-Iranian targets.
They have also been used by the Iraqi regime in the repression of the
Iraqi Shi'a community over the past 13 years, so they've, have a long
history that's been described in our literature.
QUESTION: What happens in the event of a conflict in Iraq if they
confront American Forces?
MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't advise anyone to confront American Forces.
QUESTION: If I could add –
MR. BOUCHER: And I would advise everybody who's in the terrorism
business to get out of it right away lest they face the consequences.
QUESTION: Could I ask one further question? Does the Department have
any decision on the fact that this organization recently as a few
months ago, in ads in prominent American papers, claimed to have
considerable amount of political support on Capitol Hill, 150 members
of Congress? Is there an official response to that?
MR. BOUCHER: Our view is that this has been, is, and continues to be a
terrorist organization, and that information has been transmitted to
the Congress and is readily available to all of them.

56
QUESTION: This is on the same subject. You were asked what their fate
would be if they confronted U.S. troops. Well, that's fairly clear.
But what is their fate if they actually welcomed U.S. troops and
cooperate with them and –
MR. BOUCHER: The goal is to, for groups who are involved in terrorism,
to put themselves out of business or definitively abandon terrorism. I
remind you of the statute that we have on groups that have to be
listed for terrorism reasons, and only if a group were to suddenly no
longer meet those criteria would it be unlisted, delisted.
QUESTION: So what would U.S. troops do with their bases, close them
down?
MR. BOUCHER: I don't know. You can ask U.S. troops, and ask at the
Pentagon.
QUESTION: Well, I think it's a political matter, really.
MR. BOUCHER: I don't think it is, Jonathan. I think if, the political
matter is that these are terrorists supported by the Iraqi regime.
What to do with them in a military sense, if the military encounters
them, is a question for the Pentagon.
QUESTION: When you are listing them, the terrorist group on your
terrorist group list. How do you explain that they have, apparently, a
representative in the U.S. and they are able to, at news conferences
here in Washington, to explain their case, and --
MR. BOUCHER: I think that question has been dealt with many times
before at the Department of Justice, in the courts, and I'd refer you
to that.

57
US anti-terrorism policy
Manila Times
The US Council on Foreign Relations Q & A on Mujahedeen-e-Khalq
(MEK)
Does the recent cease-fire agreement undermine the USA’s antiterrorism
policy?
Opinion is divided. Some US officials have said that Washington’s decision
to sign a ceasefire with Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iran militant
group based in Iraq, doesn’t run counter to the US war on terror. But some
experts are skeptical.
The US military reportedly signed the ceasefire with MEK, a State
Department-designated terror organization, on April 15. Earlier in the
month, US forces bombed at least two MEK bases in Iraq and rounded up
some of its operatives.
US officials said MEK, a force of several thousand fighters blamed for
attacks on civilians and Iranian military and government facilities, was a
legitimate military target because it threatened coalition forces and received
support from Saddam Hussein’s regime. But the United States stopped short
of dismantling the group–perhaps, some analysts say, to warn Tehran not to
interfere in postwar Iraqi politics.
Some US officials have reportedly called the ceasefire a justifiable
battlefield accord and others have noted that MEK, apparently a past
provider of valuable intelligence on Tehran, can shed light on Iran’s ties to
terror.
According to the New York Times, the ceasefire included a promise from
the US that it would not attack the group or damage its property; in return,
MEK vowed not to attack US forces and property or position its artillery and
antiaircraft guns for battle. MEK is permitted to retain its weapons, but use
them only in self-defense against Iranian-backed fighters.
But MEK’s status as a US-designated foreign terrorist organization has
raised questions about the accord–reportedly the first the United States has
signed with a terror group.
Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, says that the ceasefire appears inconsistent with US antiterror policy,
which states that Washington will “strike no deals” with terrorists and will
“bring terrorists to justice for their crimes.” Levitt says that legal
complications could arise if the Bush administration develops a relationship
with the group or turns a blind eye to future terrorist activity. He adds,
though, that “it’s too early to say [the ceasefire] is a double standard.” How
it plays out in practical terms will be what’s important, he says.

58
Iraq Council Votes to Throw Out Iranian Opposition Group

By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Iraq's Governing Council voted yesterday to expel the leading Iranian

opposition group and confiscate its assets, a surprise move that could alter
the regional balance of power. The resolution calls for the eviction of the
group's 3,800 members by the end of the month.
The move came as the American governor of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, headed
to Washington for talks at the White House about several unresolved and
thorny issues in the U.S. exit strategy, particularly the transfer of power to a
provisional Iraqi government to be concluded by July 1.
The Iraqi council's unanimous decision against the People's Mujaheddin, or
MEK, is a significant political and security gain for Iran and could
marginalize the group or even eliminate it as an effective opposition
movement. The MEK, which was supported by former president Saddam
Hussein, has launched hundreds of attacks against Iran over the past two
decades.
The move also marks a turning point for U.S. policy. The future of the
Iranian opposition group has been heatedly debated within the Bush
administration. The MEK, which mixes Marxism and Islam, has been on the
U.S. list of terrorist organizations since 1999, but some administration
hawks had argued that the group could form the basis for an effort to
pressure or change the regime in Tehran.
The administration has been under mounting pressure for months from
European and other allies to crack down on the MEK and treat it like a
terrorist group, according to U.S. officials and European diplomats. The
MEK, born in the 1960s to limit Western influence in Iran and now tied to
anti-American attacks, is surrounded by U.S. troops, but it has continued
anti-government broadcasts into Iran and other activities.

Washington is prepared to allow the Iraqis to act against the MEK, U.S.
officials said yesterday.
The timing is interesting. The Iraqi council's decision comes as Jordan's
King Abdullah has been quietly trying to mediate the hand-over of about 70
al Qaeda operatives held by Iran -- in exchange for action by the United
States on the MEK.

59
The move may also be linked to the Iraqi council's efforts to improve
relations with Iran, another predominantly Shiite Muslim country that shares
Iraq's longest border.
Ahmed Chalabi, a leading council member with close ties to both the United
States and Iran, proposed the resolution. A Shiite Muslim, he recently visited
Iran, according to Iraqi sources. Most of the 24 Governing Council members
have been to Iran in recent months.
The MEK has been spurned by Iraqi Shiites, even though many of its
members are Shiites, because Hussein used the Iranian group to help put
down the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
according to U.S. officials. Thousands of Iraqis were killed.
The move, which will assuage Iranian concerns, will deprive the MEK of its
only direct access to Iran. There are now no major opposition groups
operating on any of Iran's borders.
An unanswered question is what will happen to the MEK. The Iraqi
council's resolution calls for the closure of the MEK headquarters in
Baghdad and a prohibition on its members' engaging in any political
activities until their departure. It also calls for the seizure of all MEK funds
and weapons, both of which will be turned over to a fund to compensate
victims of Hussein's regime.
But the council did not discuss where the group would go. "It's up to them,"
said Entifadh Qanbar, a senior official of Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National
Congress. "They can seek refuge in other places. We don't care where
they're going to go."
Qanbar said Iran had offered the MEK an amnesty. The United States,
however, will not turn the MEK over to Iran, which is on the State
Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Several senior MEK officials fled to Europe shortly before the U.S.
invasion. More than a dozen were arrested in France several months ago for
plotting terrorist activities.
"It's the same problem as dealing with [former president] Charles Taylor in
Liberia. These are really bad guys who have to be dealt with in a fair and
transparent way that holds them to account for what they've done. But how
that is carried out has yet to be worked out. . . . At the moment they're
confined to camps and not doing anyone any harm," a senior State
Department official said yesterday.
Iraqis denied that they were pressured by the United States to act. "The
council based its decision on the black history of this terrorist organization
and the crimes committed against our people and our neighbor," the council
said in a statement yesterday.

60
British MEP: MKO a threat to world peace

Brussels, Feb 13, 2003, IRNA -- Baroness Emma Nicholson, a British MEP
and deputy chairman of the European Parliament's Foreign Relations
Committee, has denounced the Iranian MKO as a 'criminals' who form a
private army for Saddam Hussein and called for a stop to their activities.
"The risk of terrorism is omnipresent now. The dour and brooding presence
of sudden unanticipated and violent death hangs over the military and
civilians alike, in all our nations. "But there is a much better established,
older terrorist organization working inside Iraq since 1986; the MKO, or
MEK as they are known inside the USA," Nicholson told the EP in plenary
debate on Iraq in Strasbourg Wednesday evening.
"The MKO have thousands of members inside Iraq and thousands outside,
financed, equipped, armed, trained by the Iraqi army, and fully engaged
militarily since 1986 in all of Saddam's many wars." Links have been found
recently between the al-Qaeda network and northern Iraq's, pro-Saddam
forces fighting the free Kurdish people," she said. The USA froze MEK
assets in 1994, declaring the group under its many aliases to be an
international terrorist organization. The EU followed the US example in
2001.
Yet last week The New York Times published a full page advertisement for
the MEK using Congressional names and photographs and claiming
Congressional support, noted the MEP.
"Here, our debates on Iraq have been attended by known members of the
MKO recently. These people are a threat to world security. Their
organization strikes silently and with lethal impact." This is Saddam's
private, international terrorist army, working against us all.
"Whatever our differences on the future treatment of Iraq, for the sake of our
citizens' and for global safety I urge far greater security attention is paid to
the MKO. "War or no war, the criminals who make up the MKO kill and
destroy the innocent. They must be stopped," she stressed.

61
State Department briefing on Terrorism

2003/3/1

QUESTION: There's an organization in Iraq with military camps,

Mujahadein-e-Khalq, claiming to be liberators of Iran. People who have
come into those camps claim that some of them conceal weapons of mass
destruction for the Iraqi government. Do you have any knowledge of this?
Do you have any reaction to those reports?
MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't be able to talk about our knowledge of any
particular facilities or camps that the Mujahadein-e- Khalq has.
Obviously, anything we knew would come from intelligence, so I
wouldn't be able to talk about it. But this group in particular, this
is a terrorist group.
It's a group that's conducted terrorist attacks spanning three
decades. It's murdered American citizens. We designated this group as
a terrorist group in 1997, among the first, the first year in which we
used this authority to designate terrorist groups. They have several
thousand fighters located on bases scattered throughout Iraq.
They're armed with tanks, infantry, and fighting vehicles, artillery.
They also have a support structure overseas. The primary support comes
from the regime of Saddam Hussein, but its history is studded with
anti-Western attacks as well as anti-Iranian targets.
They have also been used by the Iraqi regime in the repression of the
Iraqi Shi'a community over the past 13 years, so they've, have a long
history that's been described in our literature.
QUESTION: What happens in the event of a conflict in Iraq if they
confront American Forces?
MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't advise anyone to confront American Forces.
QUESTION: If I could add –
MR. BOUCHER: And I would advise everybody who's in the terrorism
business to get out of it right away lest they face the consequences.
QUESTION: Could I ask one further question? Does the Department have
any decision on the fact that this organization recently as a few
months ago, in ads in prominent American papers, claimed to have
considerable amount of political support on Capitol Hill, 150 members
of Congress? Is there an official response to that?
MR. BOUCHER: Our view is that this has been, is, and continues to be a
terrorist organization, and that information has been transmitted to
the Congress and is readily available to all of them.

62
QUESTION: This is on the same subject. You were asked what their fate
would be if they confronted U.S. troops. Well, that's fairly clear.
But what is their fate if they actually welcomed U.S. troops and
cooperate with them and –
MR. BOUCHER: The goal is to, for groups who are involved in terrorism,
to put themselves out of business or definitively abandon terrorism. I
remind you of the statute that we have on groups that have to be
listed for terrorism reasons, and only if a group were to suddenly no
longer meet those criteria would it be unlisted, delisted.
QUESTION: So what would U.S. troops do with their bases, close them
down?
MR. BOUCHER: I don't know. You can ask U.S. troops, and ask at the
Pentagon.
QUESTION: Well, I think it's a political matter, really.
MR. BOUCHER: I don't think it is, Jonathan. I think if, the political
matter is that these are terrorists supported by the Iraqi regime.
What to do with them in a military sense, if the military encounters
them, is a question for the Pentagon.
QUESTION: When you are listing them, the terrorist group on your
terrorist group list. How do you explain that they have, apparently, a
representative in the U.S. and they are able to, at news conferences
here in Washington, to explain their case, and –
MR. BOUCHER: I think that question has been dealt with many times
before at the Department of Justice, in the courts, and I'd refer you
to that.

63
US anti-terrorism policy
Manila Times
The US Council on Foreign Relations Q & A on Mujahedeen-e-Khalq
(MEK)
Does the recent cease-fire agreement undermine the USA’s antiterrorism
policy?
Opinion is divided. Some US officials have said that Washington’s decision
to sign a ceasefire with Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iran militant
group based in Iraq, doesn’t run counter to the US war on terror. But some
experts are skeptical.
The US military reportedly signed the ceasefire with MEK, a State
Department-designated terror organization, on April 15. Earlier in the
month, US forces bombed at least two MEK bases in Iraq and rounded up
some of its operatives.
US officials said MEK, a force of several thousand fighters blamed for
attacks on civilians and Iranian military and government facilities, was a
legitimate military target because it threatened coalition forces and received
support from Saddam Hussein’s regime. But the United States stopped short
of dismantling the group–perhaps, some analysts say, to warn Tehran not to
interfere in postwar Iraqi politics.
Some US officials have reportedly called the ceasefire a justifiable
battlefield accord and others have noted that MEK, apparently a past
provider of valuable intelligence on Tehran, can shed light on Iran’s ties to
terror.
According to the New York Times, the ceasefire included a promise from
the US that it would not attack the group or damage its property; in return,
MEK vowed not to attack US forces and property or position its artillery and
antiaircraft guns for battle. MEK is permitted to retain its weapons, but use
them only in self-defense against Iranian-backed fighters.
But MEK’s status as a US-designated foreign terrorist organization has
raised questions about the accord–reportedly the first the United States has
signed with a terror group.
Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, says that the ceasefire appears inconsistent with US antiterror policy,
which states that Washington will “strike no deals” with terrorists and will
“bring terrorists to justice for their crimes.” Levitt says that legal
complications could arise if the Bush administration develops a relationship
with the group or turns a blind eye to future terrorist activity. He adds,
though, that “it’s too early to say [the ceasefire] is a double standard.” How
it plays out in practical terms will be what’s important, he says.

64
Iraq Council Votes to Throw Out Iranian Opposition Group

By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Iraq's Governing Council voted yesterday to expel the leading Iranian

opposition group and confiscate its assets, a surprise move that could alter
the regional balance of power. The resolution calls for the eviction of the
group's 3,800 members by the end of the month.
The move came as the American governor of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, headed
to Washington for talks at the White House about several unresolved and
thorny issues in the U.S. exit strategy, particularly the transfer of power to a
provisional Iraqi government to be concluded by July 1.
The Iraqi council's unanimous decision against the People's Mujaheddin, or
MEK, is a significant political and security gain for Iran and could
marginalize the group or even eliminate it as an effective opposition
movement. The MEK, which was supported by former president Saddam
Hussein, has launched hundreds of attacks against Iran over the past two
decades.
The move also marks a turning point for U.S. policy. The future of the
Iranian opposition group has been heatedly debated within the Bush
administration. The MEK, which mixes Marxism and Islam, has been on the
U.S. list of terrorist organizations since 1999, but some administration
hawks had argued that the group could form the basis for an effort to
pressure or change the regime in Tehran.
The administration has been under mounting pressure for months from
European and other allies to crack down on the MEK and treat it like a
terrorist group, according to U.S. officials and European diplomats. The
MEK, born in the 1960s to limit Western influence in Iran and now tied to
anti-American attacks, is surrounded by U.S. troops, but it has continued
anti-government broadcasts into Iran and other activities.

Washington is prepared to allow the Iraqis to act against the MEK, U.S.
officials said yesterday.
The timing is interesting. The Iraqi council's decision comes as Jordan's
King Abdullah has been quietly trying to mediate the hand-over of about 70
al Qaeda operatives held by Iran -- in exchange for action by the United
States on the MEK.

65
The move may also be linked to the Iraqi council's efforts to improve
relations with Iran, another predominantly Shiite Muslim country that shares
Iraq's longest border.
Ahmed Chalabi, a leading council member with close ties to both the United
States and Iran, proposed the resolution. A Shiite Muslim, he recently visited
Iran, according to Iraqi sources. Most of the 24 Governing Council members
have been to Iran in recent months.
The MEK has been spurned by Iraqi Shiites, even though many of its
members are Shiites, because Hussein used the Iranian group to help put
down the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
according to U.S. officials. Thousands of Iraqis were killed.
The move, which will assuage Iranian concerns, will deprive the MEK of its
only direct access to Iran. There are now no major opposition groups
operating on any of Iran's borders.
An unanswered question is what will happen to the MEK. The Iraqi
council's resolution calls for the closure of the MEK headquarters in
Baghdad and a prohibition on its members' engaging in any political
activities until their departure. It also calls for the seizure of all MEK funds
and weapons, both of which will be turned over to a fund to compensate
victims of Hussein's regime.
But the council did not discuss where the group would go. "It's up to them,"
said Entifadh Qanbar, a senior official of Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National
Congress. "They can seek refuge in other places. We don't care where
they're going to go."
Qanbar said Iran had offered the MEK an amnesty. The United States,
however, will not turn the MEK over to Iran, which is on the State
Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Several senior MEK officials fled to Europe shortly before the U.S.
invasion. More than a dozen were arrested in France several months ago for
plotting terrorist activities.
"It's the same problem as dealing with [former president] Charles Taylor in
Liberia. These are really bad guys who have to be dealt with in a fair and
transparent way that holds them to account for what they've done. But how
that is carried out has yet to be worked out. . . . At the moment they're
confined to camps and not doing anyone any harm," a senior State
Department official said yesterday.
Iraqis denied that they were pressured by the United States to act. "The
council based its decision on the black history of this terrorist organization
and the crimes committed against our people and our neighbor," the council
said in a statement yesterday.

66