The Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is an armed Iranian opposition group that was formed in 1965. An urban guerrilla group fighting against the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, it was an active participant in the anti-monarchy struggle that resulted in the 1979 Iranian revolution. 1

After the revolution, the MKO expanded its organizational infrastructure and recruited many new members. However it was excluded from participating in power sharing arrangements, and the new revolutionary government under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini forced it underground after it instigated an armed uprising against the government in June 1981. The majority of its top cadres went into exile in France . In France , the MKO continued its active opposition to Iran 's government. In 1986, under pressure from the French authorities, the MKO relocated to Iraq . There it established a number of military camps under the banner of the National Liberation Army and maintained an armed presence inside Iraq until the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003.

During the Iran-Iraq war, the MKO fighters made regular incursions into Iranian territory and fought against Iranian government forces. After the end of Iran-Iraq war, the group's armed activities decreased substantially as Saddam Hussein's government curtailed the MKO's ability to launch attacks inside Iranian territory.

The fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003 put an end to Iraqi financial and logistical support of the MKO. The MKO fighters remained neutral during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq . After the occupation of Iraq , the U.S. military disarmed the MKO fighters and confined them inside their main camp known as Camp Ashraf . 2 U.S. military sources told Human Rights Watch that as of March 10, 2005, there were 3,534 MKO members inside Camp Ashraf . 3

Some MKO fighters took advantage of an amnesty offer by the Iranian government. Since October 2004, 273 MKO members have returned to Iran . 4 The U.S. military has recognized the MKO fighters in Iraq as Protected Persons under the Geneva Conventions. 5 Their fate remains uncertain; the Iraqi government and the U.S. military appear not to have reached a decision regarding their future.

During Saddam Hussein's last year in power, some Iranians held in Abu Ghraib prison were repatriated to Iran in exchange for Iraqi prisoners of war (POWs). These were dissident members of the MKO who had been sent by the organization for “safekeeping” in Abu Ghraib. 6 The release of these prisoners in 2002-2003 provided a direct window into conditions inside the MKO camps that was previously inaccessible to the outside world.

Human Rights Watch interviewed five of these former MKO members who were held in Abu Ghraib prison. Their testimonies, together with testimonies collected from seven other former MKO members, paint a grim picture of how the organization treated its members, particularly those who held dissenting opinions or expressed an intent to leave the organization.

The former MKO members reported abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members. The MKO held political dissidents in its internal prisons during the 1990s and later turned over many of them to Iraqi authorities, who held them in Abu Ghraib. In one case, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani was held in solitary confinement for eight-and-a-half years inside the MKO camps, from September 1992 to January 2001.

The witnesses reported two cases of deaths under interrogation. Three dissident members—Abbas Sadeghinejad, Ali Ghashghavi, and Alireza Mir Asgari—witnessed the death of a fellow dissident, Parviz Ahmadi, inside their prison cell in Camp Ashraf. Abbas Sadeghinejad told Human Rights Watch that he also witnessed the death of another prisoner, Ghorbanali Torabi, after Torabi was returned from an interrogation session to a prison cell that he shared with Sadeghinejad.

The MKO's leadership consists of the husband and wife team of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi. Their marriage in 1985 was hailed by the organization as the beginning of a permanent “ideological revolution.” 7 Various phases of this “revolution” include: divorce by decree of married couples, regular writings of self-criticism reports, renunciation of sexuality, and absolute mental and physical dedication to the leadership. 8 The level of devotion expected of members was in stark display in 2003 when the French police arrested Maryam Rajavi in Paris . In protest, ten MKO members and sympathizers set themselves on fire in various European cities; two of them subsequently died. 9 Former members cite the implementation of the “ideological revolution” as a major source of the psychological and physical abuses committed against the group's members.

At present, the MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and several European governments. The MKO's leadership is engaged in an extensive campaign aimed at winning support from Western politicians in order to have the designation of a terrorist organization removed. 10

Methodology

Human Rights Watch interviewed by telephone twelve former members of the MKO living in Europe . These witnesses provided credible claims that they were subjected to imprisonment as well as physical and psychological abuses because they had either expressed criticism of the MKO's policies or had requested to leave the organization's military camps.

Each witness was interviewed separately several times between February and May 2005. All witnesses are currently living in Europe . More than twelve hours of testimonies were collected. All interviews were conducted in Farsi. Each witness provided independent accounts of their experience inside the MKO camps, and their testimonies corroborated other evidence collected by Human Rights Watch. A number of witnesses who were detained and tortured inside the MKO camps named Hassan Ezati as one of their interrogators. Hassan Ezati's son, Yasser Ezati, also interviewed for this report, confirmed his father's identity as a MKO interrogator.

Of the twelve former MKO members interviewed for this report, eight witnesses 11 left Iraq between 2002 and 2004. The remaining four witnesses 12 left Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991. In addition to being held in internal MKO prisons, five of the witnesses 13 were imprisoned in Abu Ghraib prison prior to their release.

[1] For a comprehensive history of the organization, see Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

[2] Camp Ashraf is located near the city of al-Khalis, north of Baghdad .

[3] Human Rights Watch e-mail interview with U.S. military officials, March 10, 2005.

[4] According to U.S. military sources, twenty-eight members were repatriated in December 2004, thirteen in January 2005, 100 on March 3, 2005, and 132 on March 9, 2005.

[5] “US grants protection for anti-Tehran group in Iraq ,” Reuters , 26 July, 2004.

[6] Former MKO members who were held in Abu Ghraib prison told Human Rights Watch that their cell doors bore a plaque with “Mojahedin Safekeeping” [Amanat-e Mojahedin] written on it.

[7] Mojahed , No. 241, April 4, 1985. Mojahed is the official publication of the MKO, and at the time it appeared weekly.

[8] See Masoud Banisadr, Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel ( London : Saqi Books, 2004). On self-criticism sessions, see pp. 210-230; on decreeing of divorce, see pgs. 307-311; on renunciation of sexuality, see pages 313-340. Immediately following Masoud and Maryam Rajavi's marriage, the MKO military command issued a directive stating: “In order to carry out your organizational duties under the present circumstances there is an urgent need to strengthen and deepen this ideological revolution. You must pay the necessary price by allocating sufficient time and resources for absorbing related teachings…” Mojahed , No. 242, April 12, 1985. The Social Division of MKO also issued a directive to the members stating: “To understand this great revolution …is to understand and gain a deep insight into the greatness of our new leadership, meaning leadership of Masoud and Maryam. It is to believe in them as well as to show ideological and revolutionary obedience of them.” Mojahed , No. 242, April 12, 1985.

[9] Arifa Akbar, “Human torches mark protest; 10 Iranian exiles become fireballs, two die martyrs,” The Independent , July 2, 2003.

[10] Maryam Rajavi, “Empower Iran 's opposition forces checking the Mullahs , ” International Herald Tribune , January 28, 2005. Katherine Shrader, “Iranian Group Seeks Legitimacy in U.S. ,” Associated Press , February 24, 2005.

[11] Farhad Javaheri-Yar, Ali Ghashghavi, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, and Akbar Akbari were repatriated by Iraqi officials to Iran on January 21, 2002. Amir Mowaseghi was repatriated on March 18, 2003. Alireza Mir Asgari was abandoned along the Iran-Iraq border in February 2003. Yasser Ezati left Iraq in June 2004. Abbas Sadeghinejad escaped the MKO military camp on June 20, 2002.

[12] Mohammad Reza Eskandari, Tahereh Eskandari, Habib Khorrami, and Karim Haqi.

[13] Farhad Javaheri-Yar, Ali Ghashghavi, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, Akbar Akbari, and Amir Mowaseghi were imprisoned in Abu Ghraib.

II. Background

The MKO was founded in September 1965 by three graduates of Tehran University : Mohammad Hanifnezhad, Saeed Mohsen and Asghar Badizadegan. 14 The three shared a history of political activism within the religious-nationalist movement and its affiliated Islamic Students Associations. They believed that opposition forces against the Pahlavi government lacked a cohesive ideology and required revolutionary leadership. They reasoned that peaceful resistance against the government was fruitless, and that only a revolutionary armed struggle could dislodge the monarchy.

The organization's founding trio focused their initial thrust on creating a revolutionary ideology based on their interpretation of Islam that could fuel an armed struggle by persuading masses of people to rise up against the government. This ideology relied heavily on an interpretation of Islam as a revolutionary message compatible with modern revolutionary ideologies, particularly Marxism.

Initially, the founding members recruited some twenty like-minded friends to form a discussion group. Their first meeting, on September 6, 1965, in Tehran , is considered the genesis of the MKO. The group's discussions centered on intense study of religion, history and revolutionary theory. In addition to religious texts, the group also studied Marxist theory at length. For its first three years, the group held regular secret meetings. By 1968, these discussions led to the creation of a Central Committee “to work out a revolutionary strategy” and an Ideological Team “to provide the group with its own theoretical handbooks.” 15

During its first five years, the MKO did not carry out any operations against the government. It primarily focused on developing a revolutionary ideology and training its members in urban guerilla warfare. In 1970, thirteen MKO members traveled to Jordan and Lebanon and received military training inside Palestinian Liberation Organization camps. They returned to Iran after a few months.

Prior to carrying out any armed activities, the group planned to focus on developing its ideology and training its new recruits. However, this strategy was thwarted by the emergence of a competing Marxist guerilla group, the Fadaian Khalq Organization. On February 8, 1971, members of the Fadaian launched their first operation by attacking a police station in the village of Siahkal in the northern province of Gilan. This incident marked the emergence of armed struggle against the shah's government.

The MKO's leadership, surprised by the Siahkal incident, decided to expedite their plans for armed operations by organizing a spectacular attack in Tehran . At this time, the government was in the midst of promoting a large-scale celebration marking 2500 years of monarchy in Iran . The MKO planned a series of bombings that would target Tehran 's electric power grids prior to the opening eve ceremonies.

During their efforts to acquire explosives, the MKO were infiltrated by the security forces who tracked their activities. On August 23, 1971, just days before the scheduled onset of their first operation, thirty-five members of the MKO were arrested by the authorities. Within the next few months, half of MKO's member were arrested and put on trial by a military tribunal. “They were all accused of possessing arms, planning to overthrow the ‘constitutional monarchy,' and studying such subversive authors as Marx, Mao, and Che Guevara.” 16

The three founding members of the MKO, along with six others from the group's Central Committee, were sentenced to death and executed on May 25, 1972. Only two members of the Central Committee, Masoud Rajavi and Bahman Bazargani, escaped firing squads when their death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.

The 1971-72 waves of arrests, executions and imprisonments dealt a severe blow to the MKO, but its remaining members who escaped detection by the security forces continued to recruit new members as well as carrying out a number of armed operations. In 1975, intense ideological differences among the MKO members led to the departure of a sizable number of members, who argued that religious thought was incompatible with revolutionary struggle. This offshoot of the MKO was briefly known as the Marxist Mojahedin and was later renamed Peykar Organization. The MKO members who stayed loyal to the group's original ideology referred to this event as an internal coup.

On the eve of the 1979 Iranian revolution, the imprisoned MKO members were released along with other political prisoners. The group quickly turned its attention to building a nation-wide organization. Masoud Rajavi emerged as the top MKO leader. The group was particularly successful in gaining the sympathies of middle class educated youth. It established offices throughout Iran and built a network of militia that were highly active inside university campuses and high schools.

While supporting the leadership of Khomeini in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the MKO leaders never managed to gain his trust, and as a result were excluded from power-sharing arrangements in the post-revolutionary government. An intense rivalry developed between the MKO and the Islamic Republican Party (IRP), formed by Khomeini's disciples.

The first president of the republic, Abol-Hasan Banisadr, elected in 1980, also faced serious opposition from the IRP. In the first months of 1981, differences among competing political factions reached a critical juncture. President Banisadr came under intense political pressure from the IRP, which controlled the parliament and most branches of the government and security forces. The MKO and Banisadr formed an alliance to try and thwart the IRP's drive to consolidate its control over every part of the state.

The MKO started its armed conflict against the Iranian government on June 20, 1981. Thousands of its members inside Iran were imprisoned, tortured and executed during the 1980s. 17 In 1988, the Iranian government summarily executed thousands of political prisoners, many of them MKO members. 18

On June 19, 1981, Banisadr and Rajavi called for massive demonstrations nationwide. They hoped to duplicate the pattern of the anti-shah revolution by instigating a popular uprising. On June 20, 1981, large-scale street demonstrations were held in Tehran and many major cities. However the authorities used Revolutionary Guards to suppress the uprising, killing hundreds of demonstrators in street clashes.

In the aftermath of the June 20 uprising, the MKO was forced underground and both Banisadr and Rajavi went into hiding. A few weeks later, on July 29, 1981, Banisadr and Rajavi fled Iran and went into exile in Paris . From this point on, the MKO moved its headquarters to Paris and continued to fight the Iranian government by carrying out assassinations and bombings targeting government officials and the IRP leadership. 19

In Paris , Rajavi and Banisadr consolidated their alliance by declaring the establishment of the National Council of Resistance (NCR) as a coalition of opposition forces, advertising itself as “the democratic alternative” to Iran 's government. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and a number of prominent intellectuals and individuals also joined the NCR.

However, the NCR's role as a broad coalition was diminished within a year of its founding. Banisadr's disagreements with Rajavi led to his departure in April 1984. 20 The KDPI followed suit and withdrew in 1985. 21 According to Masoud Banisadr, who served as the NCR's chief representative in Europe and the United States until 1996, the NCR has since functioned primarily as the political wing of the MKO, serving the MKO's lobbying efforts in Europe and North America :

It was obvious to everyone but ourselves that politically the Mojahedin had failed to create the broad coalition Rajavi had promised….We repeated to each other that the NCR was Rajavi's means of staying on the political scene in Europe and America and nothing more. Its main use was to deceive the Americans and Europeans against thinking of us as the same Mojahedin responsible for assassinating American citizens in Iran … 22

The MKO's leadership was transformed when Masoud Rajavi announced his marriage to Maryam Uzdanlu on March 18, 1985. 23 The husband and wife team became co-leaders of the MKO. The organization hailed their marriage as an “ideological revolution” that was the result of an immense sacrifice made by Masoud and Maryam Rajavi. Prior to this, Maryam Rajavi had been married to Masoud Rajavi's deputy, Mehdi Abrishamchi. The leadership asked all its members to undertake their own “ideological revolution” by identifying their personal shortcomings in self-criticism sessions. 24 Immediately following Masoud and Maryam Rajavi's marriage, the military command of the MKO issued a directive stating:

In order to carry out your organizational duties under the present circumstances there is an urgent need to strengthen and deepen this ideological revolution. You must pay the necessary price by allocating sufficient time and resources for absorbing related teachings…Thus in your daily routines give priority to listening to radio messages and explanations provided by your commanders. Believe in the central committee's proclamation that “this ideological revolution will enhance the Mojahedin's capacities enormously; it will ever more unify and cleanse our ranks.”…Be certain that your deep belief in the novel leadership of the new democratic revolution of the heroic Iranian people, meaning Masoud and Maryam Rajavi, and by making a direct connection with this leadership and setting it as your example….you will be able to correct your work habits and be able to deal with and resolve personal, organizational, and military difficulties. 25

The Social Division of MKO also issued a directive to the members initiating the self-criticism tradition within the organization:

To understand this great revolution…is to understand and gain a deep insight into the greatness of our new leadership, meaning the leadership of Masoud and Maryam. It is to believe in them as well as to show ideological and revolutionary obedience of them…By correcting your old work habits and by criticizing your individual as well as collective shortcomings, we shall gain much awareness in confronting our enemies…Report to your commanders and superiors in a comprehensive manner your progress, its results and outcomes that you gain from promoting and strengthening this ideological revolution. 26

In 1986, the French government engaged in direct talks with the Iranian government to normalize ties. As a result of these negotiations, the French government asked Masoud Rajavi to leave France . On June 7, 1986, he left Paris for Baghdad . The MKO relocated many of its resources from Paris to Iraq . On June 20, 1987, the MKO announced the formation of National Liberation Army (NLA) inside Iraq . 27 For the next year, the NLA made several incursions into Iran as the Iran-Iraq war was entering its eighth year. The largest operation, code-named “Eternal Light,” took place in the immediate aftermath of Iran 's acceptance of the U.N.-brokered cease fire agreement on July 18, 1988 (see below). 28

After the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein limited the MKO's military activities against Iran . The lack of military activity inside the MKO camps in Iraq coupled with an acceleration of the “ideological revolution” led to a rising tide of dissent inside the organization.

[14] “For the first time in the history of the Iranian people's liberation struggle, an organization with a monolithic ideology, populist ideals, and a policy of revolutionary armed resistance was founded in September 1965.” Mojahedin Khalq Organization Bonyangozaran, downloaded on March 10, 2005, http://www.iran.mojahedin.org/books.htm . See alsoErvand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin ( New Haven : Yale University Press), 1989.

[15] Abrahamian , The Iranian Mojahedin, p. 89.

[16] Abrahamian , The Iranian Mojahedin,

[17] “ Iran : Violations of Human Rights 1987-1990,” Amnesty International , Index: MDE 13/2/90.

[18] “ Iran : Political Executions,” Amnesty International , December 1988, Index: MDE 13/29/88. See also Ayatollah Montazeri's letters protesting summary executions in 1988, published in his memoirs. Ayatollah Montazeri was Ayatollah Khomeini's heir apparent in 1988. Ayatollah Montazeri, Khaterat, http://www.montazeri.ws/farsi/khaterat/fehrest.htm , last accessed March 18, 2005.

[19] Among the most spectacular attacks include the bombing of the IRP headquarters in June 28, 1981 and the assassination of President Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar in 1981.

[20] “Khomeini's Foes Split,” Washington Post , April 4, 1984.

[21] Mojahed , No. 240, March 14, 1985.

[22] Masoud Banisadr, Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel ( London : Saqi Books, 2004), p. 219. Masoud Banisadr is a relative of former president Abolhasan Banisadr.

[23] Mojahed , No. 241, April 4, 1985.

[24] See footnote 8.

[25] Mojahed , No. 242, April 12, 1985.

[26] Ibid .

[27] “ Iran rebels form Iraq-based army,” Chicago Sun-Times , June 20, 1987.

[28] “ Iran accepts UN truce call in eight year war with Iraq ,” Associated Press , July 19, 1988.

V. Testimonies

Mohammad Hussein Sobhani

Mohammad Hussein Sobhani spent eight-and-a-half years in solitary confinement inside the MKO's main camp in Iraq , Camp Ashraf , from September 1992 to January 2001. He was subsequently held in Abu Ghraib prison and left Iraq in 2002. 49

Sobhani first came in contact with the MKO in 1977, a year before the anti-monarchy revolution. By 1979, he was working “professionally and full time” with the organization. When the headquarters of the armed wing of the organization relocated inside Iraq , he followed suit. By 1991, he had risen in the ranks of the organization and had become a member of the Central Committee. However, ever since the “ideological revolution,” when divorces were mandated, he became uncomfortable with the path pursued by the leadership. His differences with the leadership of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi and other members of the Central Committee reached a climax in 1992. Masoud Rajavi argued for remaining in Iraq regardless of the end of the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam Hussein's defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991, he said. Rajavi still hoped that fighting between Iran and Iraq would resume, and based the organization's strategy on such a development. Sobhani says he found the possibility of a new war highly unlikely given the dismal state of Iraq 's armed forces. Other members of the Central Committee saw his arguments as a challenge to the Rajavis' leadership:

As long as my criticisms were mild, I was left alone. But as soon as I persevered in my questioning, their behavior changed dramatically. In the beginning, I discussed my concerns personally with the leadership, Maryam and Masoud Rajavi. I also brought up my concerns with other members of the Central Committee. These discussions reached a dead-end. Once they became certain that I didn't share their views, on August 28, 1992, they convened a meeting ( neshast taiin taklif ) to determine my faith and to decide if I was staying with the organization or not. The process began with intimidation, verbal abuse, and beatings. Of course, since I was a high ranking official I was treated better than ordinary members. I was told that my criticisms and questions were just an excuse to quit the struggle. Their conclusion was that I was a quitter ( borideh) and didn't have the strength to continue the struggle any longer. 50

On August 31, 1992, Sobhani was moved to a prison and kept under solitary confinement for the next eight-and-a-half years.

After the first two months in prison, all of my beliefs in the organization fell apart. Up to that point I considered my differences with them as a matter of divergent political views; I wasn't questioning the MKO's underlying essence. I used to mark my prison walls each time I was subjected to severe beatings. There were many occasions of lesser beatings, but on eleven occasions I was beaten mercilessly using wooden sticks and thick leather belts. 51

Sobhani was handed over to Iraqi officials in January 2001. He spent one month in mukhabarat prison and then transferred to Abu Ghraib. He was held in Abu Ghraib until January 21, 2002, when he was repatriated to Iran in exchange for Iraqi POWs. In Iran , he was detained and interrogated by the Iranian government. After three days, he escaped from a low security detention center and fled Iran . He is currently living in Europe .

Yasser Ezati

Yasser Ezati was born on May 27, 1980, to Hasan Ezati and Akram Ghadim-al-ayam. He said that his father, also known as Nariman, was a well-known interrogator inside the MKO prisons. Yasser's mother died during one of the MKO's military operations. 52

Ezati moved to Iraq with his family at the age of three and grew up inside the MKO military camps. During the 1991 Gulf war, Ezati and other children inside the camps were separated from their parents and sent outside Iraq . During the next three years, Ezati lived with three different families in Canada . These families were MKO sympathizers. In the summer of 1994, the MKO moved Ezati to Cologne , Germany , where he lived in a group-house for the MKO children. The organization recruited Ezati for military training when he was seventeen years old and sent him to Iraq in June 1997.

After the first six months in Iraq , I realized I had no desire to stay. In Europe I had an image of a democratic organization, but in Iraq I realized the extent of censorship and control. I wanted to leave. I was repeatedly told the only way out was to go to Iran . I was too afraid to go to Iran . 53

Ezati was extremely uncomfortable with the many means of thought control enforced inside the camps. He said there were many gatherings where high ranking officials lectured members not to think of any issue except those relating to internal MKO operations. “We had to write self-criticism reports on a regular basis. If we had any thoughts outside of the organizational framework we had to report them,” he said. Ezati's most daunting experience took place in summer of 2001:

It was a gathering called to'emeh [lure, or bait] that lasted four consecutive months. All of the camp members were present during these sessions. At this time the number of dissidents who wanted to leave the organization was growing daily. First, Masoud Rajavi talked about the Mojahedin's basic ideology. He then talked about the organization's strategy, and finally he addressed the issue of those members wishing to separate from the organization. His purpose was to intimidate members and to say that anyone who wants to leave is a traitor. These sessions were held from morning to evening. Dissident members were brought in front of the audience and forced to self-criticize their actions and thoughts. They were expected to conclude by saying that they will remain with the organization. As soon as someone would speak their minds or criticize the organization, the attendees would attack him/her mercilessly using harsh verbal abuses. Anyone who dared to ask to leave the organization would immediately be labeled an agent of the Iranian government. It was psychologically devastating. I had to pledge my allegiance to the MKO numerous times during these gatherings. After four consecutive months of psychological pressures, I ended up signing documents that I would stay with the organization. 54

After the American occupation of Iraq , Ezati managed to escape Camp Ashraf in June 2004. He is living in Europe .

Farhad Javaheri-Yar

Farhad Javaheri-Yar is a former fighter with the MKO in Iraq . 55 He served in various capacities in intelligence and security operations. In 1995, he became aware of dissident members being imprisoned inside the MKO camps in Iraq . He wrote a letter to his superiors requesting to be released from his duties and expressed his desire to leave the organization. His superiors tried repeatedly to intimidate him into staying. After his refusal, he was incarcerated in various prisons inside the MKO camps in Iraq from November 1995 to December 2000. He was subsequently turned over to the Iraqi officials and held in Abu Ghraib prison until January 2002, when he was repatriated to Iran .

Javaheri-Yar joined the MKO in August 1982 in Tehran and became active in their underground armed resistance. He was arrested in October 1984 by the Iranian authorities and spent the following four years inside Evin, Ghazal Hisar, and Gohardasht prisons in Iran . Upon his release, he contacted MKO operatives in Europe and was smuggled to Karachi and from there to Iraq . He entered Iraq in 1989 and became an active member of the MKO's armed wing.

Javaheri-Yar became disillusioned with the MKO in 1995 after learning from a number of other MKO cadres that they had been recently imprisoned by the organization:

In July 1995, I returned to Camp Ashraf from a reconnaissance mission. During the preceding months, I had noticed a number of my friends had “disappeared.” I was told that they were inside Iran to carry out missions. I met two of them, Akbar Akbari and Ali Taleghani, who told me that they were imprisoned inside Camp Ashraf during this period and were forced to sign false confessions indicating their ties to Iranian intelligence agents and [promising] that they would never leave the MKO.

I could not believe that the Mojahedin would engage in acts of torture and forced confessions similar to what the Iranian government used. I wrote a number of reports for my superior. In these letters I expressed my disapproval of the mistreatment of members and submitted my resignation. My request was repeatedly ignored. 56

Javaheri-Yar persevered with his request to leave the MKO, but was told that the organization could not relieve him of his duties because of his extensive knowledge of MKO's activities. Once Javaheri-Yar realized he would not be free to leave, he escaped from Camp Ashraf on November 28, 1995 and attempted to reach the Jordanian border. On November 30, 1995, he was arrested by Iraqi security forces near the city of Tikrit . He pleaded with the Iraqi forces not to return him to the MKO camp, but his pleas were ignored and he was handed over to the MKO forces in Camp Ashraf . During the next five years he was held in solitary confinement in various locations inside the MKO camps, from November 1995 to December 2000.

During the first two months, I was kept inside a pre-fabricated trailer room called a bangal . I was told that I could not leave the camp but could resume life inside the camp if I chose to do menial labor, such as making bread or sweeping streets. I refused their offer, and their response was harsh. I was moved to a prison cell in Avenue 400 of Camp Ashraf. The cell's dimensions were three by two-and-a-half meters [nine feet by eight feet]. It was connected to a narrow hallway— one meter [three feet] wide and three-and-a-half meters [ten feet] long—that led to a small toilet and sink.

In February 1996, I made very loud verbal protests from inside my cell. To punish me, they confined me inside a bathroom for three consecutive weeks. I was miserable. There was no room to stretch or lie down. The tiled floor was wet and cold. It was a terrifying experience. 57

The MKO's leadership, including Masoud Rajavi, promised Javaheri-Yar that he would be released “soon,” but each time they broke their promise. Javaheri-Yar was imprisoned in solitary confinement inside Camp Ashraf , as well as Camp Parsian , until December 2000, when he was turned over to the Iraqi intelligence forces ( mukhabarat ). He spent one month in a mukhabarat prison before being transferred to Abu Ghraib prison. He was repatriated to Iran on January 21, 2002. He left Iran and is living in Europe .

Ali Ghashghavi

Ali Ghashghavi joined the MKO as a fighter in Iraq in 1989. He was arrested in February 1995 during the “security clearance” phase and was imprisoned for four months in Camp Ashraf . He told Human Rights Watch of his experience during this period: 58

One night in January 1995, I was called over by my superior and told that a member of the Central Committee wanted me in her office. I was excited to be meeting such a high level official at such an unlikely hour. I assumed there was much importance attached to this meeting. We got into a military vehicle; it was around midnight. They took me to a place inside Camp Ashraf called Iskan . It is at the far corner of the camp where a series of apartment buildings were used to house families [before they were forcibly broken up]. It was a rather isolated spot—barren desert and frighteningly secluded.

There were a few people inside, five or six. I was taken to an empty room and told to wait. A few minutes later, another member, Hussein Nizam, was brought in. Hussein Nazim had spent many years inside the Islamic Republic's prisons, so he knew something else was happening. I was somewhat naive and didn't have much of a clue.

Suddenly the door opened and a group of people attacked us mercilessly, blindfolded us, tied our hands behind our backs, and put us inside a car. We were driven around for half an hour. We stopped inside an area that was approximately at the center of the camp. I didn't know this was a prison until I was taken there. The prison was on Avenue 400 of Camp Ashraf near the water tanker. Until then, I had assumed that explosives or sensitive documents were guarded inside.

Our clothes were taken from us and we put on prison garb. We were led to a large cell holding nearly twenty-five prisoners. The prison cell was on the ground floor of the building; there was a small window near the ceiling for air circulation. A small toilet and shower were built at one end of the cell.

There was a period when prisoners were taken on a daily basis for interrogations and beatings. One method was to kick the prisoner's legs and knees repeatedly with military boots with metal covers on the front. Another method was to put a thick rope around the prisoner's neck and drag him on the ground. Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks—their head and neck as big as a pillow.

I experienced the pain of leg-beatings firsthand. During one of my interrogation sessions, the interrogator told me that if I don't give them guarantees that I will stay with the leaders forever, he would kill me right there and then. I asked him “what worthier guarantee there could be than my coming here to join your ranks and fight against Khomeini?” He replied that now that the ideological revolution had been instituted and life was harder, people like me couldn't bear it and wanted to leave. He said, “I can see it in your eyes that you are dying to quit the organization.”

He went to the next room while he told me how he was going to beat me up badly. He changed his shoes and put on a pair of these military boots. He came back, and two hefty guards held me. He began kicking my legs repeatedly. My legs are still unbalanced from these beatings. Interrogations sometimes lasted for up to thirty or thirty-six hours non-stop.

Ghashghavi was released in May 1995, after a meeting with Masoud Rajavi who told him, “The judicial branch of the National Liberation Army has acquitted you.” After this experience Ghashghavi, explored ways to escape Camp Ashraf . On March 20, 1998, he was imprisoned for forty-five days and then turned over to Iraqi intelligence agents. He spent another forty-five days inside the mukhabarat prison in central Baghdad before being transferred to Abu Ghraib. He was repatriated to Iran on January 21, 2002. In Iran , he was interrogated and brought before a court that sentenced him to nine years in prison. After sixteen months of imprisonment, he was given a forty-eight hour release to visit his family. He used this opportunity to escape and leave Iran . In August 2003, he fled Iran and is currently living in Europe .

Alireza Mir Asgari

Alireza Mir Asgari was a deputy director of one of the MKO's military units in 1994 when he started to have concerns about the organization's links with the Iraqi military. In January 1995, he was arrested and imprisoned. In June 1995, he was released after signing a contract promising to remain with the MKO's forces. He was arrested again in 1998 and spent eight months in solitary confinement. In 2001, he arranged to escape, but his plan was discovered and he was imprisoned again until 2003, when he was turned over to Iraqi forces who then abandoned him along the Iran-Iraq border. He described his sudden arrest in 1995: 59

I was arrested without notice on January 29, 1995. I was told to go to a meeting with a team who were preparing for operations in Iran . These kinds of discussions were a regular part of my duties. I was taken to a room and told to wait. Hasan Mohasel, one of the MKO's top intelligence officers, came into the room and put a note in front of me saying that I had been arrested because I was an agent of Iranian intelligence and had infiltrated the Liberation Army. I couldn't believe what was happening; I thought it was a joke and started to laugh. But Hasan Mohasel cursed me and told me to stand against the wall. Suddenly two or three more people entered the room and began to blindfold me and to tie my hands behind my back. I was in total shock. They put me in a car and drove around for forty-five minutes inside the camp. I was taken to a building; I didn't know where it was. Hasan Sadat Darbandi, also known as Adel, removed my blindfold and threw me into a cell with many other prisoners. I could not believe it; I thought there had been a coup inside the organization. Each day, a number of prisoners were taken for interrogation. They were beaten badly; after they were brought back, their heads and faces were tremendously swollen.

After a couple of days, it was my turn to be taken for interrogation. They asked me why I had joined the MKO. I told them I came here to fight Khomeini's government, but they said that wasn't true. During the first couple of days of interrogation, they beat me mercilessly. It was very depressing; I really wanted to commit suicide. I was only seventeen years old when I left Iran and came to Iraq to join the MKO. I had spent my entire adult life in their camps.

Eventually, I gave up and agreed to sign the forced confessions stating that I had ties to Iranian intelligence. I was taken to a meeting with Masoud Rajavi, who told me that if I stayed for another two years, they would release me and send me to Spain .

Mir Asgari was released in June 1995. He spent the next two years waiting for the organization to release and transfer him to Spain . However, he was told that because of his wealth of information, he could not be released. His protests led to his imprisonment again:

On March 25, 1998, I was taken to a prison where my old case from 1995 was reopened. They said that based on my own confession, I was an Iranian agent and could not be trusted. I spent eight months in solitary confinement. During this period, I was told that my sister in Iran had been arrested and executed. Later I found this to be untrue. 60

After recanting his request to leave Iraq , Mir Asgari was released. Since the organization was not going to allow him to leave, he started to design an escape plan. His plan to escape was discovered, and he was arrested again. He was kept in solitary confinement for nearly two years, from 2001 to 2003. A few months prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq , in February 2003, Mir Asgari was turned over to the Iraqi forces who took him to the Iran-Iraq border along the Arvandrood River [Shatt al-Arab] and released him there. He is living in Europe .

Akbar Akbari

Akbar Akbari became familiar with the MKO on the eve of the Iranian revolution in 1978. He started his professional association with the MKO in February 1979. In June 1984, he was arrested by the Iranian authorities and was imprisoned in Iran for more than four years. Within a few months of his release in September 1988, Akbari left Iran to join the MKO operations in Iraq . 61

In 1993, he decided to leave the organization and wrote a number of letters to his superiors asking to be released.

My supervisor was Mehdi Abrishamchi, who was one of the high ranking members of the Central Committee. After I wrote him a letter expressing my intention to leave the organization, he called me to his office, tore the letter into pieces, threw it in a garbage basket, and said, “I don't want to hear of this anymore. You are not to discuss it with anyone.” I was also called to private meetings with other high ranking members who reinforced the same message. 62

Akbari was supervisor of a section in Communications Department ( Setad Ravabit ). He carried out many sensitive tasks for the organization, including working as a personal body guard of Masoud Rajavi. Akbari was arrested in December 1993 and held inside a prison in Camp Ashraf .

The interrogators were extremely rough. From the moment I entered the room, I was subjected to beatings. I was put on a chair that was fixed to the floor. My hands and feet were tied to the chair, I couldn't move at all. I was beaten with a thick hose and kicked repeatedly with a military boot. My interrogator also used a pair of heavy plastic slippers to hit me in the face and head.

I was asked to confess to being an agent of the Iranian government. After a few interrogation sessions, the interrogator dictated a confession letter that he asked me to sign. Then he told me, “Now it is proven that you are an agent who has infiltrated our organization.” 63

Akbari was then taken with a group of prisoners to meet Masoud Rajavi. Rajavi told them that he had “forgiven” them and they could return to their duties. He was let out of the prison in June 1995. Akbari escaped Camp Ashraf in February 1998 and set out for the Jordanian border. He was arrested by Iraqi security forces in Ramadi and handed over to the MKO.

When I was returned to Camp Ashraf , I was taken to a room where Hasan Mohasel told me I would be imprisoned because I was an infiltrator. High ranking members of the organization were present. I was taken to a fort called Ghaleh Afsaneh and kept in solitary confinement for a full year, from February 1998 to March 1999. 64

In March 1999, Akbari was turned over to Iraqi security forces who took him to Abu Ghraib. Akbari was in Abu Ghraib until January 21, 2002, when he was repatriated to Iran in exchange for Iraqi POWs. He was detained and interrogated by the Iranian authorities. He said that during a weekend release to visit his family, he escaped and fled Iran . He is now living in Europe .

Sayed Amir Mowaseghi

Sayed Amir Mowaseghi joined the MKO in 1984 and was imprisoned by the Iranian authorities from 1984-1987. After his release, he went to Pakistan , and from there was able to travel to Iraq , where he joined the MKO forces in June 1988. 65

In 2001, he chose to leave the organization, but was not allowed. A “court session” was convened in September 2001 in the presence of Maryam and Masoud Rajavi, who refused to grant him permission to leave. Subsequently, he was subjected to verbal abuse and humiliation:

I was taken to a large gathering of nearly 600 people. They led me through the crowd; I was spat on, kicked and verbally abused. I was moved to a trailer, they called it bangal , and kept there in solitary confinement until June 2, 2002, when I was handed over to the Iraqi forces. The Iraqis took me to Abu Ghraib, and I remained there until I was repatriated to Iran on 18 March 2003. 66

[49] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, February 14, 2005 and May 6, 2005.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Yasser Ezati, February 9, 2005.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Farhad Javaheri-Yar, February 3, 2005 and February 25, 2005.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Ali Ghashghavi, February 9, 2005 and May 6, 2005.

[59] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Alireza Mir Asgari, February 10, 2005.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Akbar Akbari, February 27, 2005 and May 6, 2005.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Bid.

[65] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Seyd Amir Mowaseghi, February 4, 2005.

[66] Ibid.

MKO DISSIDENTS DEMAND THAT MAS'OUD RAJAVI ALSO BE PUT ON TRIAL

http://www.iran-press-service.com/ips/articles-2005/october-2005/mko_trial_191005.shtml

By Safa Haeri
Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2005

PARIS, 19 Oct. (IPS) On the eve of the trial of the toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, some former members of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organsation (MKO) demanded that the leader of the outlawed Organisation and some of his close associates be also tried for “crimes against both the Iraqi and Iranian peoples”.

“The toppled regime of Saddam Hussein actively supported international terrorism and committed crimes against Iraqi and Iranian peoples and the Mojaheedin Khalq Organisation, led by Mas'oud Rajavi , were at the top of the list of these terrorist organizations”, Behzad Alishahi , a former member of the group said in a press conference held in Paris on Tuesday 18 October 2005.

The Mojahedeen, as part of Saddam ' s military establishment, played a decisive role in the suppression of the internal uprisings in Iraq .

Created in the sixties, the MKO, a mix of radical Islam and Stalinism, took an active part in operations against the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and is suspected to have assassinated at least six American military advisors.

Mr. Rajavi sided with Grand Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini in the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but was declared outlaw after he attempted a coup against the leader of the Revolution and along with Mr. Abolhasan Banisadr , the first president of the Islamic Republic, fled to Paris .

In 1886 and at the height of Iran-Iraq War, Mr. Rajavi and his Organisation left France for Baghdad , where he started an active cooperation with the Iraqi army and intelligence not only against Iran , but also the Kurds and the Sh'ias.

“The Mojahedeen, as part of Saddam ' s military establishment, played a decisive role in the suppression of the internal uprisings in Iraq in 1991, and are responsible for the massacre of many Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurds who opposed Saddam. The best documented of these being the massacre of the Kurds in their uprising in March 1991”, the dissident claimed.

Mr. Alishahi said he is in possession of some of the “crimes” the MKO committed against both the Kurds and the Shi'ites, adding that he had sent the documents to Mr. Jalal Talabani , the former leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who is now the President of Iraq.

“Acting as Saddam ' s Private Army, the Mojahedeen have actively participated in the war which Saddam Hussein waged against Iran between 1980 and 1988, engaging themselves in intelligence gathering for the Iraqi army as well as participating in joint operations with them”, the former MKO members said.

“On direct orders from Hasan al-Majid , better known as Ali the Chemical , (then Governor of the province of Basra and latter Saddam's Representative in Kuwait after the occupation of the oil-rich country by Iraqi forces), we organised military maneuvers in Basra and paraded with tanks for days just to frighten the Shi'a population of the town, known for their hate of Saddam”, Mr. Alishahi recalled.

“Each and every military and terrorist operation carried out by the Mojahedeen in Iran has been ordered directly by Saddam Hussein and his intelligence and secret services in Iraq”, he went on, adding that on occasions, the Organisation would carry espionage operations in Iran, mostly from Ahvaz, the capital city of the oil-rich Iranian province of Khouzestan.

“On orders from the Iraqis and against receiving a monthly sum of 27 million US Dollars, not only we would fight, kill and arrest the Kurds and the Shi'a insurgents, but any ordinary Iraqi suspected of opposing Saddam and hand them to Iraqi intelligence, of which the MKO was a special unit. We would even arrest Iraqi soldiers who would desert the army”, another dissident told reporters.

Accusing Mr. Rajavi of “murdering” several members of the group suspected of “not sharing his views”, Mr. Alishahi said of the 3.000 to 4.000 mojahedeens now living in the Shraf Camp near Baghdad, “all except a very few would leave in a plane from the International Red Cross would land there”.

Each and every military and terrorist operation carried out by the Mojahedeen in Iran has been ordered directly by Saddam Hussein.

An anchorman of the MKO's television that would broadcast from both Baghdad and Basra, Mr. Alishahi said had been jailed for five months and tortured on orders from Mr. Rajavi some eleven years ago, but was latter pardoned and stayed with the group until the Americans toppled the Iraqi regime.

Then, he said, he took refuge at the huge Ashraf Camp, which is now under American protection and went to Iran with the help of the International Red Cross, but had to leave the country because of the pressures he endured from the Revolutionary Guards and other Iranians. From Turkey , Mr. Alishahi came to France where he enjoys political asylum.

As the MKO dissidents were talking to correspondents and showing films about Mr. and Mrs Rajavi, the so-called “co-leaders” of the MKO, Afshin Molavi, a spokesman for the Organisation sent e-mails, describing Mr. Alishahi as “a member of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry”. ENDS MKO TRIAL 191005

Iran Opposition Group Seeks US Legitimacy

October 25, 2005
The Financial Times
Guy Dinmore in Washington

Even by the standards of Washington politics it was an unusual spectacle – the veiled leader of a Middle East group banned in the US as a terrorist organisation delivering a speech by live video-link to applauding members of Congress inside the Capitol itself.

But since the organisation is dedicated to the overthrow of Iran 's theocracy, the People's Mujahideen Organisation and its political co-leader, Maryam Rajavi, are given leeway in the US as they campaign to have the “terrorist” tag removed and to become eligible for US funding of Iranian opposition groups.

In suit and matching headscarf, Mrs Rajavi spoke from France . She thanked six congressmen by name for their support, praised President George W. Bush and called for an end to western “appeasement” of the “engine of Islamic fundamentalism”.

The audience – a mix of Iranian-Americans, politicians and staffers filling a conference room in the Capitol last Thursday – gave her a standing ovation. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat congresswoman from Texas , spoke warmly of “sister Maryam”.

Known by its acronyms MKO and MEK, the group led by Mrs Rajavi and her husband Massoud, was outlawed by the US for its killing of Americans before the 1979 Iranian revolution; alleged collaboration with Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaigns against Iraqi Kurds; and attacks on civilians inside Iran.

The MKO denies the charges of terrorism, saying it was banned by then-president Bill Clinton in an attempt to engage the Iranian government.

Despite its attraction to the US – and particularly to some Pentagon planners – as an armed force inside Iraq ready in opposition, analysts in Washington doubt the group will regain legitimacy. The MKO has few followers inside Iran and has been described as a cult by some former members.

Nonetheless, its lobbying reflects the ferment inside the Bush administration as it grapples with producing a coherent policy towards Iran , working out – in the words of one European diplomat – whether to “engage, isolate or disrupt”.

Stephen Hadley, national security adviser, commissioned 10 briefing papers exploring various options. A National Security Council meeting was cancelled this month after one of the papers, which proposed expanding diplomatic contacts with Iran , was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Some officials suspect that someone senior wanted to sabotage the idea.

Diplomats and two US officials said the latest review was prompted by the conclusion reached by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, and others that an effective sanctions option did not exist, and that they had been misled by the predictions of neoconservatives who saw the Iranian regime ripe for overthrow by a restless populace.

Recent statements by Ms Rice point to an effort to broaden diplomatic contacts with Iran .

Diplomats also say there is a new effort to find a settlement, negotiated through European allies, to the standoff over Iran 's nuclear programme. But officials say any such pragmatic tendencies would be tempered by the conviction that the Bush administration should do nothing that would be seen to confer legitimacy on the regime while actively supporting the democratic aspirations of Iranians.

Iranian-American sympathisers of the MKO, who are active donors to US politicians, remain hopeful their group will be de-listed.

Iraqi Kurds Want MKO Leader Tried

October 26, 2005
Radio Free Europe
Bill Samii

Iraqi Kurds want Masud Rajavi, leader of an Iranian opposition organization based in Iraq , to be arrested and tried, Radio Farda reported on 20 October. Rajavi ' s group, the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MEK), settled in Iraq in the 1980s, where it received assistance from and cooperated with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The Kurds say they want Rajavi to be tried because of the role his organization played in their repression by the Hussein regime.

Mohammad Tofiq Rahim, an official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said in an interview with Radio Farda that his organization has documentary evidence of Rajavi ' s role. He said that when the Kurds seized control of northern parts of Iraq with U.S. assistance at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the MEK cooperated with the Iraqi Army in retaking control of the city of
Kirkuk . In the process, he charged, hundreds of the city ' s residents were killed by the MEK.

"Everyone in Iraqi Kurdistan knows that Masud Rajavi cooperated with the Mukhaberat [intelligence] and security forces of Saddam Hussein not only in the suppression of the Kurds, but all the opponents of the regime of Saddam," Rahim added.

Rajavi The terrorist leader of MEK

admits to the Kurdish massacre.

Please turn your speakers on

and click on the URL below to listen to his voice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2005/11/051110_mf_interlink.shtml

Monsters of the Left: The Mujahedin al-Khalq

By Michael Rubin
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 13, 2006

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20780

Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran ' s Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran , addressed the gathering by video from France . [1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked "Sister Maryam." [2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization. [3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House International Relations Committee ' s Central Asia and Middle East Subcommittee said, "This group loves the United States . They ' re assisting us in the war on terrorism; they ' re pro-U.S. This group has not been fighting against the U.S. It ' s simply not true." [4] Ros-Lehtinen is wrong. 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.

Origins

The roots of the MKO lie in the early 1960s. For years, clerical and feudal interests had blocked real reform in Iran . Society was paralyzed. In 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Shah appointed as prime minister ‘ Ali Amini, an Iranian aristocrat and former ambassador to the United States , whom Washington respected as a reformer. Amini began to challenge the traditional classes and interest groups who had long hampered reform. In January 1962, the Shah decreed Iran ' s first real land reform. The Shah assumed the mantle of reforming crusader. He launched "the Shah-People Revolution," better known as the "White Revolution." Its six points were: land reform, nationalization of forests, sale of government-owned factories to finance land reform, women ' s suffrage, a Literacy Corps in which conscripts could serve as an alternative to the army, and distribution to workers of part of factories ' profits. Such reform cut deep into the fabric of Iranian society, angering social conservatives, clerics, and xenophobic nationalists.

Against this backdrop and angered by both the growing secularization of Iranian politics and the influx of foreigners, engineer and Islamic activist Mehdi Bazargan formed the Liberation Movement of Iran. His goal was to combine Iranian nationalism with Islamism. "We refuse to divorce religion from politics… because Shi‘i Islam is an integral part of our popular culture," [5] the group stated in its inaugural declaration. Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani, a free-thinking and modernizing cleric introduced to Marxist thought while imprisoned in the 1930s, became a mentor to Bazargan who, in turn, would become provisional prime minister during the first days of the 1979 revolution.

In July 1962, Amini resigned in anger over both the Shah ' s military spending and anger at what he considered the stinginess of other U.S. aid. Chaos reigned supreme. The ayatollahs seized the initiative. Islamic groups marched against social reforms and the new laws which restricted the clergy ' s traditional privileges. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to prominence as the head of the clerical opposition.

By 1963, what little tolerance the Shah had for the opposition evaporated. On June 5, 1963, he ordered Khomeini ' s arrest. Rioting erupted and ended only after the police killed several hundred students and demonstrators.

Ironically, even as the Shah ' s crackdown sent oppositionists underground, his reforms catalyzed their growth. State scholarships enabled a far greater range of Iranians to receive higher education than at any previous time in history. University campuses became incubators of opposition. Young radicals looked abroad and drew inspiration from revolutionary movements in Algeria , Vietnam , Cuba , and elsewhere.

The Birth of the Mujahedin-i Khalq

Following the 1963 crackdown, Bazargan ' s Liberation Movement splintered. While older members drew inspiration from the left-leaning nationalist and ousted Prime Minister Muhammad Musaddiq who flirted with mob violence but did not sanction terrorism, many younger members argued political reform impossible and embraced armed struggle. These younger members, including a University of Tehran political science student named Masud Rajavi, coalesced into a discussion group which, in 1965, would form the Mujahedin al-Khalq. It would be another seven years before the MKO would emerge from its self-imposed veil of secrecy and declare itself to the wider world.

The MKO preached a combination of Marxism and Islamism. They argued that not only did God create the world, but he also set forth a historical evolution in which a classless society would supplant capitalist inequity. Such a radical re-interpretation of Islam bred division, not only with the secular and capitalist state, but also with the traditional, conservative clergy which resented the MKO argument that "Shi‘i ‘ulama [religious scholars], just like the Sunnis, have failed to grasp the real essence of Qur‘anic dynamism." [6] Rajavi and other MKO ideologues reinterpreted religion to justify terrorism. Death during armed struggle, they said, was consistent with traditional Shi‘i glorification of martyrdom. They created a precedent from which they and later terrorist groups like Lebanese Hizbullah could and did justify suicide bombing, a plague which afflicts the region to the present.

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.

The MKO ' s first attempt to create a terrorist spectacle failed. A prison informant betrayed their plans to blow up a power station to disrupt the 1971 celebrations surrounding the 2500 th anniversary of the Persian monarchy. An attempt to kidnap the Shah ' s nephew also failed. However, the subsequent trial and execution of those involved bolstered the prestige of the organization. At his trial, Rajavi gave a rousing anti-imperialist speech in which he accused the United States , western banks, and multinational corporations of most of Iran and the developing world ' s ills. "The main goal now," Rajavi declared, "is to free Iran of U.S. imperialism." [7] The military tribunal was harsh: They condemned 11 MKO leaders, including Rajavi, to death. The Iranian government commuted the sentences of one co-conspirator and Rajavi to life imprisonment after Rajavi ' s brother launched an international clemency campaign. The execution of the MKO ' s founders and so many early members positioned Rajavi well to consolidate organization control upon his January 1979 release.

While dealt a mighty blow, the MKO rebounded. It recruited new members in Iranian high schools, universities, prisons, and among the thousands of Iranian university students studying in Western Europe and the United States . The group also established a radio station in Baghdad from which to broadcast anti-regime propaganda into Iran . The MKO latched onto the teachings of the left-leaning Ayatollah ‘ Ali Shariati, who openly preached a similar but less radical message. They used Shariati ' s preaching as a launching point for underground discussion and indoctrination.

The imprisonment and execution of its leadership did not eviscerate the organization. It soon struck again. 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.

Not all was well within the MKO leadership. In 1975, the group divided into a Marxist faction that eschewed Islam, and a Muslim faction which did not. Baruch College historian Ervand Abrahamian , whose dispassionate and academic study of the MKO is the most thorough, argued that the shift of many MKO leaders to Marxism stemmed had three causes: Disillusionment with Ayatollah Khomeini, inability to win over the secular intelligentsia, and the influence of other radical groups like the Feda ' iyan. [8] Rajavi headed the Muslim Mujahedin branch in Qasr prison. Both groups continued their attacks on government and Western targets, all the while striking at each other. While the Marxist MKO was unsuccessful in an attempt to assassinate a senior U.S. diplomat, it killed three American employees of Rockwell International.

The Islamic Revolution

While both MKO factions participated in the Islamic Revolution, the Muslim MKO found shelter under the banner of Taleqani and rode the Revolution to prominence. They claimed some credit for the seizure of the U.S. embassy and subsequent hostage taking, and later demonstrated against their release. The Muslim faction did not eschew Marxism. Rajavi and the MKO supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan , and opposed the Afghan mujahedin struggling against it.

In the wake of the Islamic Revolution, Rajavi consolidated his control over the organization. [9] Rajavi divided the leadership into a Politburo and a Central Committee, and created a number of organizations to recruit and train new members. This proliferation of front organization, all serving an ideological and disciplined leadership, remains characteristic of the group today.

It was not long before Rajavi and the MKO came into conflict with the clerical circles surrounding Khomeini. Relations between the MKO and Khomeini had been long strained. While Khomeini ' s theological justification of clerical rule was a radical reworking of traditional Shi‘i jurisprudence, he was otherwise conservative. He considered the MKO ' s blending of Islam with Marxism, as well as the group ' s denial of past jurisprudence, to be anathema. When an MKO delegation had visited Khomeini in Najaf in 1972, rather than offer the support they sought, he lectured them on true Islam.

Within a year of Khomeini ' s return to Iran , his followers began to label Rajavi and the MKO "unbelievers" and "hypocrites." The MKO, in return, accused Khomeini of hijacking the revolution and imposing dictatorship. Prior to the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini promised the masses Islamic democracy, even as he consolidated dictatorship. The MKO sought to replicate his strategy, for practical, not idealistic, aims.

Khomeini had the upper hand, though. He closed the group ' s offices, banned its papers, and forced the MKO underground. The MKO was not his only target, though. As he consolidated power, he moved against President Abulhasan Bani Sadr [10] whose independence and moderation undercut Khomeini ' s theocratic ambitions. While Bani Sadr did not join the MKO, he formed a tacit alliance with the group which, in turn, benefited from the President ' s prestige.

Both Bani Sadr and the MKO called for national protests on June 20, 1980, and demonstrators heeded their call. Perhaps a half million poured into the streets in Tehran ; many more turned out in cities across Iran . But Khomeini and his supporters in the Islamic Republic Party were ready. They labeled anyone marching in support of the MKO to be enemies of God, subject to summary execution. They kept their word. Khomeini ' s followers killed hundreds. The warden of Evin Prison, Tehran ' s main political prison, bragged of his execution of teenage girls.

Khomeini ' s opponents responded. Terrorists—their affiliation unclear—blew up the Islamic Republic Party headquarters, killing hardline Ayatollah Mohammed Hosseini Beheshti, founder of the Islamic Republic ' s judiciary, and 72 party members. Khomeini used the attack as reason to accelerate his purge. A reign of terror began. Thousands perished before Islamic Republic firing squads and upon its gallows. As Khomeini consolidated control, Iranians ' willingness to support for the MKO evaporated.

The MKO did not surrender, though. It 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.

Rajavi and Bani Sadr both fled to Paris during Khomeini ' s crackdown. While Bani Sadr and others had joined with the MKO under the banner of the National Council, such formal ties were short-lived. By 1984 the former president and many other groups left the umbrella, upset with the MKO ' s ideology and Rajavi ' s dictatorial tendencies.

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. Ordinary Iranians are quite vocal in their hatred of the Islamic Republic and ridicule its current Supreme Leader ‘ Ali Khamene‘i. Many ask about Reza Pahlavi , the U.S.-based son of the late Shah. Others speak of other opposition groups, and many more rally to the names of the Islamic Republic ' s own dissidents. But, without exception, all spew venom toward the MKO. The group violence and its betrayal of Iranian nationalism lost it all popular support in Iran .

Nor did the MKO win Iraqi support. Iraqi intelligence coordinated MKO activities. [11] 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." [12]

Reinvention

While the MKO lost both its revolutionary power struggle and the battle for Iranian hearts and minds, Rajavi has worked tirelessly to reinvent the MKO ' s image. Again, he sought power in and sympathy from so many members ' martyrdom. At first, the group reached out to its old leftist and Arab nationalist patrons in Algeria , Lebanon , and among the PLO. It also sent delegations to the Italian and Greek Communist Parties, the Indian Socialist Party, and the British Labour Party. It found a sympathetic audience among left-leaning human rights organization and academics. The group targeted European parliamentarians. More than 3,000 parliamentarians signed a 1986 petition of support. [13]

The admission of Ayatollah Hossein ‘ Ali Montazeri, long-time Khomeini deputy, that Khomeini ordered the executions of 3,000 incarcerated MKO allowed the organization to further play the martyr card. [14] The National Council of Resistance ' s website describes an international organization with "official contacts with most European countries… [and] amicable relations with Middle Eastern nations." 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. The MKO devotees get results. The group brags, "In 1992, in a joint global initiative, 1,500 parliamentarians declared their support for the NCR as the democratic alternative to the Khomeini regime. This included a majority in the US House of Representatives." [15] Abrahamian speculated that the MKO sought to replicate the PLO ' s strategy of winning recognition as the representatives of the Palestinian people through the international community. It continues to post endorsements, many taken out of context, on its website. [16]

Within the United States , MKO members tell Congressmen, their staffs, and other policymakers what they want to hear: That the MKO is the only opposition movement capable of ousting the unpopular and repressive Islamic Republic. They are slick. Friendly lawmakers and commentators get Christmas baskets full of nuts and sweets. Well-dressed and well-spoken representatives of MKO front organizations approach American writers, politicians, and pundits who are critical of the regime.

The enemy of an adversary is not necessarily a friend, though. Such is the logic that caused State Department realists in the Reagan administration to support a dictator like Saddam Hussein. The MKO have little in their record to suggest democracy to be a goal. While they opposed the Islamic Republic only after Khomeini purged them from power, the group sought to replace Khomeini ' s dictatorship with its own. They omit and often deny their past anti-U.S. and anti-Western terrorism.

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. [17]

How the Left Empowers the MKO Today

Prior to Iraq ' s liberation, there was rare interagency agreement about the MKO within the U.S. government. From Foggy Bottom to the Pentagon to the Old Executive Office Building , there was rare unanimity. As a terrorist organization closely allied with Saddam ' s regime, the MKO should be considered combatants if they raised arms, and prisoners if they did not. The Islamic Republic might want the group for crimes both real and imagined, but the fate of MKO stranded in Iraq would ultimately rest with the new Iraqi judiciary, which might want to try individual members for atrocities committed in 1991.

During Iraq ' s liberation, U.S. troops surrounded Camp Ashraf , the main MKO base in Iraq . Those MKO who did not flee during the war stood down. The U.S. military confined 3,800 MKO "security detainees" in the Camp. [18] The Iranian government demanded forced repatriation and, through intermediaries, offered to trade al-Qaeda members sheltering in Iran for MKO members captured in Iraq . This offer was refused for three reasons: The priority of the Iraqi judiciary in the matter, Iran ' s own lack of due process, and the fact that belief that Iran should turn over al-Qaeda terrorists in the interest of justice, not for a quid pro quo .

How did the Left subsequently bolster Rajavi and empower the MKO? On May 10, 2003 Agence France Presse quoted General Ray Odierno, commander of the 4 th Infantry Division, as saying, "I would say that any organization that has given up their equipment to the coalition clearly is cooperating with us, and I believe that should lead to a review of whether they are still a terrorist organization or not." Odierno ' s statement was unwise. He had no authorization to make such a comment nor did it reflect anything but his own opinion. The MKO are masters of propaganda; he was unaware of the group ' s history. Complacency in the face of an opponent ' s overwhelming firepower makes an adversary smart, not democratic.

The gaffe made, the Pentagon fumbled its response. Its policy hierarchy and public affairs machinery were more effective at editing each others ' grammar than at damage control. Despite subsequent interagency clarifications, left-wing pundits and academic conspiracy theorists went into overdrive. They knowingly conflated a single general ' s off-hand remark into a statement of policy, and then they conflated the uniformed services with civilian staff. "…The Neocons in the Pentagon have some sort of weird alliance with the MEK [MKO] mad bombers," University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole wrote. [19] Cole ' s anti-Semitic and partisan-driven conspiracy theories played into Rajavi ' s hands by enabling the group to project a false image of support where none existed. Partisan bloggers like Laura Rozen, off-kilter academics like Cole and Brown University anthropologist William O. Beeman, Knight-Ridder and Washington Post correspondents, and New York Times ' columnists, repeated the story, substituting hypothesis for fact, citing each other and justifying their beliefs with anonymous sources. None can produce an iota of evidence. While the MKO has the support of a handful of congressmen and a small number pundits, Rajavi has no support in the power centers of Washington . Nevertheless, he bolsters his supporters ' morale and basks in the claim of support, however false.

Even in the era of resurgent realism, some issues should remain absolute. Terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians for political gain, should never be acceptable. Mitigating factors do not exist. True, in August 2003 the MKO exposed Iran ' s covert nuclear enrichment program. It continues to penetrate Iran ' s defenses and assassinate its opponents. This, though, is more a result of corruption and the Islamic Republic ' s crumbling control over its periphery. The MKO—and any other group—can bribe officials and penetrate defenses. This should not give reason, on the hundredth anniversary of Iran ' s Constitutional Revolution, to advance or reward Rajavi ' s life-long megalomaniacal quest for power and his backward blend of Marxism and Islamism. Many "monsters of the left" use the rhetoric of democracy to realize their ambition. Masud and Maryam Rajavi, and the organization over which they exert dictatorial control, are no exception. The Islamic Republic of Iran victimizes its people and threatens U.S. and regional security. The solution to the problem rests, not with empowering a group or individuals just as bad, but rather in supporting the Iranian people in their quest for liberty, freedom, and democracy.

[1] For the text of Rajavi ' s speech, see: http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/476/1/
[2] Guy Dinmore. "Iran Opposition Groups seeks US Legitimacy." Financial Times . October 6, 2005.
[3] For the State Department background and justification of the MKO terrorist classification, see: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/31711.htm . For the U.S. Treasury Department ' s Office of Foreign Asset Control designation, see: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/actions/20030815.shtml
[4] The Hill . April 8, 2003. http://www.hillnews.com/news/040803/roslehtinen.aspx
[5] Quoted in Ervand Abrahamian . The Iranian Mojahedin . (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 83. Much of this article ' s description of the MKO ' s early history is drawn from Abrahamian ' s account.
[6] Cheguneh Qur‘an Biamuzim ( How to Study the Qur‘an ), as quoted in Abrahamian, 97.
[7] As quoted in Abrahamian, 135.
[8] Abrahamian, 149.
[9] U.S. Department of State. "Background Information: National Council of Resistence, Moslem Iranian Students Society, Iran Relief Fund, People ' s Mojaheddin Organization of Iran, Mojahedin-e-Khalq, Iran Liberation, Iranian People ' s Resistance." March 13, 1986.
[10] Bani Sadr ' s website: http://www.banisadr.com.fr/
[11] Ibrahim al-Marashi. " Iraq ' s Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis." Middle East Review of International Affairs . September 2002. http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html
[12] Eli Lake . "Iranian Group Asks State To Lift Terror Designation." New York Sun . April 15, 2005.
[13] Abrahamian, 245.
[14] Grand Ayatollah Hossein ‘ Ali Montzeri. Khatarat-i Ayatollah Montazeri. ( Spanga , Sweden : Baran, 2000), 243-251.
[15] See: "International Support" on the official website of the National Council of Resistance of Iran http://www.iran-e-azad.org/english/ncri.html#intsup
[16] See: "Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran." http://www.ncr-iran.org/
[17] Elizabeth Rubin. "The Cult of Rajavi." The New York Times . July 13, 2003.
[18] Agence France Press, Sept. 18, 2003.
[19] http://www.juancole.com/2004/08/republican-convention-we-did-not-seek.html

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/888

The question is, why has the FBI not shut down the MEK front organizations that still operate in this country? The FBI's official response, in red below, falls short of a real explanation...

For more links/articles on the MEK and why they matter, see www.iran.org and search “MEK”
- KRT

When Making a Revolution, Allies Matter

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.kentimmerman.com/2006_01_19fp-mek.htm

FrontPageMagazine.com | January 19, 2006

An Iranian opposition group that figures prominently on the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations will openly flaunt U.S. law today, when supporters demonstrate in Lafayette Park in Washington , DC , just across the street from the White House.

Organizers of the January 19 demonstration openly refer to the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, banned from operating in the United States , as the "largest and most popular resistance group inside Iran ."

The former Shah called them "Marxist-Islamists," because they had been trained by the Soviet Union in guerilla warfare and supported Khomeini.

The FBI has been tracking the activities of the Mujahedin, known in Persian as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), since the mid-1970s, when MEK members assassinated U.S. military officers then working in Iran . MEK members actively took part in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran , according to a U.S. government report.

Despite this track record, the FBI has refused to ban demonstrations by supporters of the banned group, who have formed a variety of organizations ostensibly headed by U.S. citizens.

An FBI spokesman in Washington , DC told FrontPage magazine on the eve of the White House protest that the demonstrators were "exercising their 1st Amendment Rights. Whether they have been acknowledged by the United States Government as a terrorist group is a separate matter. Any gathering of people to protest is Constitutionally-protected and we acknowledge that and will do nothing to quash it."

Why does any of this matter? Because the MEK has convinced many Members of Congress that they are the "democratic alternative" to the clerical regime in Tehran and deserve U.S. government support.

MEK supporters roam the halls of Congress asking unsuspecting twenty-something aides if their Member will sign a "Dear Colleague" letter calling for freedom and democracy in Iran . They have conducted similar influence operations in Britain , France , Sweden , Norway , the Netherlands , Canada , and elsewhere.

Iranian-Americans openly refer to MEK leader Massoud Rajavi as the "Pol Pot" of Iran , because they believe he would conduct wholesale massacres of his political opponents should the current regime implode and the MEK seize power through organized street violence. In the group's "16 points" for a future "democratic" Iran , they promise political freedom to all &endash; except their political enemies.

Rajavi has insisted that MEK members divorce their spouses, and live in communist-style collective houses. In 1983, he divorced his own wife &endash; the daughter of former president Abolhassan Banisadr, with whom he had a political falling out &endash; and married the wife of a political rival.

In 1986,the Rajavis and the top MEK leadership left France for Iraq , where Saddam Hussein extended a warm welcome to the group and gave them weapons and financial assistance.

Following the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam used MEK military forces as shock troops to attack dissident Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq , an experience that Iraq 's democratically-elected president, former Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, has never forgotten.

According to the definitive 1993 Department of State report that led to the banning of the organization's activities in the United States, the MEK not only killed Americans, but provided hit teams during the 1979 revolution against the Shah that allegedly assassinated thousands of senior Iranian military officers.

Members of Congress worried by the Islamic Republic of Iran's terrorist record and its nuclear weapons programs in August 1993 (yes, 1993) petitioned then Secretary of State Warren Christopher to open an official U.S. dialogue with the main MEK front organization, the National Council of Resistance.

Christopher's September 20, 1993 reply was devastating.
"Concerning contacts with Iranian opposition groups, there are numerous such groups in the United States and abroad that do not espouse violence and whose political aims range from supporting a return of the monarchy to establishing a constitutional democracy. Many focus their efforts on Iranian human rights abuses, and work closely with the UN. Human Rights Committee and private human rights groups. We do meet with representatives of such groups at their request, and believe these contacts are useful as an informational exchange.

"However, the National Council of Resistance is closely linked to the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Both groups are led by Masud Rajavi. The Administration maintains a policy of no contacts with the PMOI and, by extension, the NCR. This decision is based on our opposition to the PMOI's use of terrorism."

Operating under a number of fronts following the Christopher letter, Mujahedin supporters bundled more than $204,000 in campaign contributions to U.S. Representatives Robert Torricelli (D, NJ) Gary Ackerman (D, NY) and others in Congress, in a failed effort to lift the State Department designation of the group as an international terrorist organization.

Over the past year, a new pro-MEK group known as the "Iran Policy Committee" has sought endorsements from well-known former policy makers, including respected FoxNews commentators Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and Lt. Gen. Tom McInerny.

IPC chairman Ray Tanter, a former Reagan administration NSC official, regularly appears at pro-MEK press conferences and has likened a proposed U.S. alliance with the MEK against the mullahs in Tehran to FDR's alliance with Stalin to defeat Hitler.

Allying with terrorists is not just wrong for strategic reasons. It is just plain wrong. The Rajavi cult has a known track record. They have murdered Americans. They have murdered their fellow Iranians. And their dedication to democratic principles is as thin as the ether of the Internet, created for public consumption.

Promoting the Mujahedin in Iran is no different from supporting former Baathists in Iraq in the vain hope they will do the heavy lifting the U.S. policy and intelligence community is unwilling or unable to do.

Pro-democracy groups are struggling to be heard and to organize inside Iran , and they deserve urgent and massive U.S. support. President Bush has repeatedly pledged his support for their cause, but until now the State Department has blocked funds appropriated by Congress from reaching groups inside Iran .

As we skate ever-closer to a nuclear showdown with Iran, we must not in our impatience make the mistake of helping a violent group to overthrow a dedicated and dangerous enemy, in the vain hope they will shed their violent ways once they have achieved victory.

When making a revolution, it is critical to choose one's allies well. The future depends on it.

Copyright©2006, Kenneth R. Timmerman

MKO Influence in U.S. Politics

http://home.att.net/~b.hernlem/MKOLobby.html

"We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one agains t a nother, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

President George W. Bush September 20, 2001 Address to Joint Session of Congress

"... MEK hold fundraising events, where like-minded individuals are invited to contribute funds ultimately meant for terroris t a ctivities."

Assistant Secretary Juan C. Zarate, Terrorist Financing, Department of the Treasury February 1, 2005 Harper's Bazaar/International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition Summit

Who are the Mojahedin and wha t a re they up to?

Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the President of the United States issued Executive Order 13224 . This order ostensibly blocked the assets of terrorist organizations and individuals associated with terrorism. The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organziation (aka MKO, MEK, National Council of Resistance of Iran, NCRI, People's Mojahedin of Iran, PMOI, et al.) is one such listed terrorist organization . Several years before, however, Congress passed the 1996 Antiterrorism Act which d ir ected the State Department to draw up a list of foreign terrorist organizations. Such a list was produced by then Secretary Albright in 1997 and has been updated each two years or as requ ir ed ( 1999 info ). Additional information on the terrorist list is found in The "FTO" List and Congress . It is a common assertion of the MKO that they were listed during the Clinton administration as a "gesture" to Iran . As evidence of this, an article in the 09 October 1997 issue of the L.A. Times is cited which paraphrases an un-named Clinton administration official as stating that the listing was intended as a goodwill gesture. Whether or not there were persons in the Clinton Administration who held this view, it was made clear to me in my conversations with the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department that no such political considerations were made in drawing up the list. The fact is that the MKO were included in the very f ir st list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act and this determination was consistent with prior assessments by the State Department that the MKO was an organization involved in terrorism and this view was expressed even during the first Bush Administration . Indeed, in its decision on docket No. 01-1465 the United States Court of Appeals found:

Perhaps surprisingly, however, the MKO has some supporters in Congress and this is evidently the result of a long lobbying effort. The effect of this lobbying effort is primarily seen in the repeated claims that some large number of members of Congress have signed on to some statement endorsing the MKO. The statements never have been published in the Congressional Record and the identities of the alleged co-signers are closely guarded by the handful of sponsors tha t a re apparently well paid for the ir efforts (as you will see). The investment of the MKO has no t a lways been well-placed, however. Two of the ir champions and targets of much money were Congressman (and then Senator) Robert Torricelli and Congressman James Traficant, both of whom were driven from office over corruption and influence peddling charges. Traficant was convicted and sent to prison. Gary Ackerman has also been the recipient of substantial contributions but these seem to have dried up since he told the Village Voice, in response to questions about his support of the MKO, "I don't give a shit if they are undemocratic" ... "OK, so the [MKO] is a terrorist organization".

For some introductory information on the MKO and the ir friends in Congress, it is suggested that you read the following articles:

"A Very, Very Bad Bunch"

Don't Confuse This Group with Freedom Fighters

Iran "terrorist" group finds support on Hill

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen defends Iranian group labeled terrorist front for Saddam Hussein

U.S. bombs Mujahedin; backers hide

Terrorists plan D.C. fundraiser

Richard Perle Supports Terrorism. He spoke at a terrorist fundraiser

In The Money: Congressman James Traficant And His Campaign Contributors

Opponents Hit Torricelli On National Security

Data on political contributions

In an effort to discover some of the MKO lobbying activity in the U.S. I have compiled some data from public sources and posted it here. The Federal Election Commission keeps records of donations made to political candidates and to political committees. There are a number of sites that provide search tools and resources to research this information on line. Two suggested sources are:

FEC Campaign Finance Reports and Data

Campaign Contribution Search at Newsmeat

An Excel File of Political Contributions can be viewed (if you have Excel) by clicking on the highlighted link. This file contains data arranged in tabs according to year in which the contributions were made. Readers are cautioned that the list is almost certainly incomplete and inclusion of a contribution does not necessarily imply a link to the MKO. The file includes data that was collected according to one or more of the following criteria:

Where there is an asterisk placed after the name of a contributor in the Excel file, this indicates a known association with the MKO/NCRI and specific information of such affiliations can be reviewed in the list of reference data .

OK, so what does this mean?

Well, let's look at one example and see how the facts tie together. On one day this year (May 11, 2004) the Ros-Lehtinen for Congress committee (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is a Representive from the 18th Congressional District in Florida ) reported contributions totalling $8,500 from 9 residents of California :

OK, well enough. It is possible that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen came to California to raise money for her campaign. It is possible tha t a ll these people just happened to want to donate to her campaign in a different state, all on the same day. There may be other explanations. It just seems odd. So let's look at things more closely.

According to the FEC records, Mr. M ir abdal is affiliated with Copy Express. There is a Copy Express at 1164 Solano Avenue in Albany , CA . This business not only sells copying services and greeting cards bu t a lso rents post boxes. In this store was found a stack of business cards printed:

So now we have established a business relationship between two of the contributors in the list. What else? Well, with the help of some additional information we realize that two of the post boxes rented at that store are being used as registration addresses for web sites used by the MKO:

WWW.IRANNTV.COM is the web site of MKO television, Sima-yeh Azadi, and the registrant of that site, Nasrin Saifi, is found to have been a contributor in coordinated donations in past years to pro-MKO candidates Robert Torricelli and Gary Ackerman. WWW.IRAN-SOLIDARITY.ORG is the web site that was used by the MKO to announce the ir fundraiser in Washington DC earlier this year (see introductory articles). Hamid Azimi was registrant for other MKO web sites including www. ir an-e-azad.org and used his contact information in one of the registrations of the site www.mojahedin.org.

Now we have established a business relationship between four persons, two in the above list, two with clear MKO links and one a prior contributor. But there is more. The names of two more persons in the above contributor list, Farideh Sedighi and Ensieh Yazdanpanah, appeared on a MKO letter to Jacques Chirac in response to the arrest of the MKO leader, Maryam Rajavi, in France . And one must truly wonder what a person listing their affiliation as " Shahid-Chamran University " (Ali Kashani) is doing making political contributions in the U.S.

Recent Events

On October 14 2004 a web site was registered with the domain CFDIRAN.COM. A check of the registration shows an address which matches that reported on the receipt for Mr. Ensieh Yazdanpanah's donation to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as noted above:

The purpose of this web site seems to have been to announce the protest event which took place in Washington DC on 19 November 2004. The Washington Post reports that the event was organized by "the Council for Freedom and Democracy in Iran and the Global Coalition Against Fundamentalism". This "group", the Council for Freedom and Democracy in Iran , had hitherto been unknown and seems to have been created solely for the purpose of obfuscation and to give the appearance of broad support for the MKO. Its creation just prior to an important MKO event is similar to the sudden appearance of the site WWW.IRAN-SOLIDARITY.ORG weeks before the MKO fundraiser in January of this year. Looking into the other reported organizer, Global Coalition Against Fundamentalism, shows that it has a web site, too:

The registrant, Sh ir in Nariman, is reported to have been an organizer also of the fundraiser. But she denies any link to the MKO , said that there were no MKO members at the event bu t a dmitted that there might have been "supporters" there . Interestingly, in other c ir cumstances, defending the MKO, she proudly proclaimed that she had been an MKO supporter for over 24 years . Some of those who witnessed the 19 November event had interesting comments not reported in the media and it was observed that the protest was unusually orchestrated and appeared to have participants flown in from overseas . This may well be, the Washington Times reported 30 November 2004 that a delegation of Iraqis came to Washington for the event and to press for the removal of the MKO from the terrorist list. But we should not forget that in making its case for going to war in Iraq the White House put the MKO at the head of its list of terrorist groups receiving support from Saddam Hussein in violation of UNSCR 687, viz.:

[NOTE (20 Jan 2005): According to a Homeland Security report obtained by Cryptome the Secret Service reported an Iranian from Germany suspiciously videotaping near the White House on 18 November 2004. The man claimed to be in Washington DC for the demonstration. Also, it was reported that on 19 November 2004, 25 Mujahedin e-Khalq linked persons were denied entry at the Alexandria Bay Port of Entry from Canada . The 25 were planning to attend the rally.]

The group isn't quite so benign in its operations in the U.S. since the 1970s, though. While the focus of the organization is no longer generally against American targets since the ir falling out with Khomeini, the fanaticism of the MKO remains and this from time to time comes through in extreme acts such as the self-immolations in Europe in 2003 (example reference articles 1 and 2 ). The last major act of violence committed by the MKO in the U.S. known to this author was the seizure and hostage taking at the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York in April 1992 (reported in the New York Times, 06 April 1992). This was part of a concerted terrorist operation on a global scale. In its report on the threat of terrorism to Canada , the Canadian Security Intelligence Service writes :

More Coincidences

The web site of the Council for Freedom and Democracy in Iran , which one reporter stated was "Virginia based" , lists a mailing address at:

which is evidently a typo, as there is, rather, a Burke, VA and a 5765-F Burke Center Pkwy. The address is that of a mailbox facility and no t a business office. Several names in the FEC database immediately come to attention in reviewing those from the 22015 Zip code. One is Sh ir in Nariman, the organizer of the January 2004 fundraiser. Another is that of Hossein Panah. In 1996 Hossein Panah made a contribution to Ed Towns, listing his address as " 6338 Draco St. , Burke , VA 22015 ". Interestingly, Sh ir in Nariman also used this address once in an on-line posting .

And last but not least, i t a ppears that Bob Filner, who spoke at the 19 November event, was the recipient of an infusion of donations just weeks before, from an interesting group of Californians all residing outside his district:

Several of these names (Farhad Parsay, Massood Taheri and Matthew Tasooji) repeat throughout the FEC records . Farhad Parsay's name was on the 2003 MKO letter to Jacques Chirac .

The Foreign Agents

The U.S. Department of Justice list four persons under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as registered foreign agents of the National Council of Resistance of Iran:

Of this group, Mahin Filabi and Hedayatollah (aka "Hedayat") Mostowfi have recorded political contributions with the FEC. Recently, Mr. Mostowfi is shown to have made donations to the FED Political Action Committee on 8/20/2004 and on the same day (7/20/2004) with Mr. Mehdi Ghaemi, donations were made to the Republican Party of V ir ginia. He lists his address and affiliation as:

The CSRI is the "Committee in Support of Referendum in Iran " ( www.referendum-iran.org ) whose board lists Hedayat Mostowfi as Executive Director. All the other names on the list will be recognizable from the FEC files cited above (Mr. Sharifi's name appears under a number of permutations, most often as "Nassersharifi"):

The domain registry for the website of this group shows that it was created 26-Nov-2003. A t a bout this same time several other persons who have served as officials or spokespersons of the MKO/NCRI set up web sites and/or corporations with an assortment of names. For example, the "National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates" ( www.ncpda.com ) was domain registered 06-oct-2003 by Haydar Akbari. Nasser Rashidi is identified as the group's Executive D ir ector. Nasser Rashidi has registered an additional web site on Aug 18 2003, www.prusa.us , for a corporation offering lobbying services and giving an address in V ir ginia . However, no such corporation appears in searching the V ir ginia State Corporation Commission records:

The web site domain registry, however, lists a differen t a ddress and it is exactly the same address as used by Hedayat Mostowfi in the FEC records of his donations this year:

And then there is the case of Ali Safavi, who was known to have been outside the country in the middle of last year. He is cited as the NCRI London spokesman in a CNN interview aired June 17, 2003 . Prior to that he had served in various other locations including Paris , Dubai and Baghdad according to news reports in which he is quoted. Although U.S. law bars entry of non-citizen members of terrorist organizations, barring the possibility of a failure by Homeland Security, Mr. Safavi must have entered the U.S. some time toward the end of 2003 with a U.S. passport. We know this because the Virginia State Corporation Commission records that he established on 11/05/03 a corporation:

[Note: one report states that Ali Safavi has political assylum in the United States . He also travelled to London again in Dec. 2004 to speak on behalf of the Mojahedin.]

Similarly, Al ir eza Jafarzadeh, who we will remember from the list of NCRI foreign agents above, set up a corporation with web site ( www.spconsulting.us ) giving an address:

The V ir ginia state records list the corporation as being effective 10/07/2003 and with the following address information:

This is probably a typo, however, as there IS a 2101 CRYSTAL PLAZA ARCADE in Arlington , VA. Actually, it is the address of a mailbox rental f ir m; Plaza Mailboxes ( phone: 703-415-0400 ). Searching the address "2101 Crystal Plaza Arcade, Arlington , VA " turns up dozens of different organizations. Similarly for " 1101 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W. Suite 600 ". Presumably tha t a lso is a mailbox rental facility.

Mr. Mohamad Alafchi is a prominent contributor in the FEC records. On 6/28/2004 it is recorded that he made a $1000 contribution to the Committee to Re-elect Ed Towns. Mr. Alafchi is cited on the ncpda.com web site as the President of American Iranian Association- New York . This organization, along with others which you will recognize, cosponsored a Conference at UN Plaza, December 17, 2003 . The list of sponsors included:

If one did not know better, it migh t a ppear that this had been a broadly organized event!

Soona Samsami, who has long served as a spokeswoman of the Mojahedin's NCRI and was appointed in 1998 as the ir U.S. Representative, is now identified as "President" of the Women's Freedom Forum ( www.womenfreedomforum.org ) and makes appearances as the ir "Spokeswoman" . Another spokeswoman of the Women's Freedom Forum, Zolal Habibi, participated in the 19 November 2004 rally (link is to CFDI site that includes Washington Times coverage) in Washington DC .

The National Coalition of Pro-Democracy Advocates, Women's Freedom Forum and Women's Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran all share common U.S. hosts and Australian Registrars for the ir web sites:

There are certainly more manifestations that I have failed to list.