March 28, 2024

Iranian exiles say Iraq poised to attack Camp Ashraf

Agence France Presse

(BRUSSELS) – Iraqi forces are preparing to attack the Ashraf Camp in Iraq housing thousands of outlawed Iranian dissidents, the leader of an Iranian opposition group, Maryam Rajavi, told AFP on Wednesday.

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

The attack is “imminent”, said Rajavi, who heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran. She warned of a potential “bloodbath” and added she was acting on information received “from within” Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.

She said that according to the information, Iraqi forces had finished training for an assault on the camp, home for the past 30 years to 3,400 Iranian dissidents, now facing expulsion by year’s end.

She called on the United Nations to send observers to the camp.

The camp, which has become a mounting international problem, has been in the spotlight since an April raid by Iraqi security left 34 dead and scores injured, triggering sharp condemnation. Iraq wants its closure by December 31.

It was set up when Iraq and Iran were at war in the 1980s by the then Iranian People’s Mujahedeen and later came under US control until January 2009, when US forces transferred security for the camp to Iraq.

The camp’s residents are being assessed individually by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees after applying for refugee status, to allow them to resettle elsewhere, but fears are that the process cannot be completed within the time-frame set by Baghdad.

At a gathering of hundreds of exiles in Brussels on Tuesday, Rajavi urged quick international action “to cancel the suppressive deadline set by the Iraqi government.”

“The US remains morally responsible for the people of Ashraf,” said former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean at the Tuesday protest.

“We have 74 days left until the deadline,” he added. “We have 74 days left until all the American troops are withdrawn and there is no protection left.”

http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/iraq-iran-us.czh

Iranian-Americans to Obama: “Thank you for foiling the terrorist plot, now stand with Iranian people in their quest for regime change”

PRNewswire

Urging America to get on the “Right Side of History”, Groups Ask Obama to Unshackle Main Democratic Opposition Against the Regime

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — Iranian-American communities in the United States are applauding the Obama administration and U.S. law enforcement agencies for their work in foiling the plot hatched by the Iranian regime to assassinate on U.S. soil the Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

Iran Freedom March across the White House, October 22, 2011, 11 AM. Click on the image for the high resolution PDF version.

“This brazen plot to murder the Saudi diplomat and plant bombs in public places in the nation’s capital show the extent to which Iran has undertaken a clandestine war on America’s streets,” said Nasser Sharif, of the Californian Society for a Democratic Iran. “It is clear that no amount of political concessions or economic incentives will seduce the regime into moderating its behavior. The mullahs are getting a message of weakness from the West. It’s time for the U.S. to lead in undermining and removing this hostile regime by untying the hands of the main Iranian opposition.”

Indeed, a range of concessions combined with ineffectual punitive measures such as economic sanctions applied by the west against regime have been met with increased domestic crackdowns in Iran, terrorist meddling in Iraq, the U.S. and elsewhere, and an unabated dash toward nuclear weapons.

“The current policy of ‘engagement’ rests on naïve hope rather than hard experience. The U.S. must expand its range of options in dealing with this irredeemable regime, which now include only ineffectual sanctions to unrealistic military strikes. The litmus test of this policy change is the unshackling of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which was a concession made by the U.S. to the regime 14 long and unproductive years ago.”

The MeK was put on America’s list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTO) in 1997. The highest courts in the United Kingdom, the European Union and France have struck down the terrorist designation of the MEK as perverse, resulting in the group’s delisting in the UK and the EU in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, rendered a judgment in July 2010, telling the State Department that it had erred in maintaining MEK’s designation. Some 450 days after the court remanded the case to the Secretary, the Department is yet to make a decision, flouting the rule of law in the process.

“The MeK is a key player to topple the regime and ensure a democratic, non-nuclear future in Iran.  The FTO designation has acted as a license to kill members and sympathizers of the MEK in Iran and Iraq. Several have been hanged by the Iranian regime; the government of Nuri al-Maliki has attacked its members in Camp Ashraf in Iraq twice, killing 47 and wounding more than 1,000 residents,” added Mr. Sharif,

The communities, which represent thousands of Iranians from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, will hold a major rally outside the White House on Saturday, October 22, to urge the administration to abandon the policy of engagement and embrace regime change by Iranians in dealing with the theocracy ruling Iran.

Media Contact: Nasser Sharif California Society for Democracy in Iran, 562 221 8000, california.csdi@yahoo.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

 SOURCE California Society for Democracy in Iran

Iranian exiles urge delay of Iraqi Camp Ashraf closure

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BRUSSELS — Iranian dissidents, backed by Belgian, European and US politicians, Tuesday urged the international community to press Iraq to postpone the closure of a camp housing thousands of outlawed Iranians.

“The US remains morally responsible for the people of Ashraf,” said former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, referring to Camp Ashraf, home for the past 30 years to 3,400 Iranian dissidents, now facing expulsion by year’s end.

“We have 74 days left until the deadline,” he told a gathering of hundreds in Brussels. “We have 74 days left until all the American troops are withdrawn and there is no protection left.”

The camp, which has become a mounting international problem, has been in the spotlight since an April raid by Iraqi security left 34 dead and scores injured, triggering sharp condemnation. Iraq wants its closure by December 31.

It was set up when Iraq and Iran were at war in the 1980s by the then Iranian People’s Mujahedeen and later came under US control until January 2009, when US forces transferred security for the camp to Iraq.

The camp’s residents are being assessed individually by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees after applying for refugee status, to allow them to resettle elsewhere, but fears are that the process cannot be completed within the time-frame set by Baghdad.

Maryam Rajavi, who heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran, urged quick international action “to cancel the suppressive deadline set by the Iraqi government”.

Last month, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton appointed an advisor to help resolve the issue and the head of a European parliament group on Iraq, MEP Struan Stevenson, said “Ambassador De Ruyt should visit Ashraf as soon as possible”.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iCyMRHQf6W8oirE-6I9IKzx5tkag

USCCAR Demands US and UN Intervention as Iraq Sabotages Efforts to Resolve Camp Ashraf Humanitarian Crisis

PRNewswire

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR) deplores Iraqi government’s nefarious actions which pave the way for another massacre at Camp Ashraf through sabotaging the efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which seeks to ensure the safe and secure resettlement of the residents of Camp Ashraf in third countries.

Families and friends of Cam Ashraf residents in Washington, DC, call for immediate intervention of the United Sates following the April 8, 2011 massacre at the camp by the Iraqi forces.

USCCAR calls on President Obama to intervene immediately and compel the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to end the barbaric siege of Camp Ashraf and cooperate with the UNHCR.

Similarly, USCCAR calls on the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to declare null and void the December 2011 deadline set by Maliki to close down Camp Ashraf. The arbitrary deadline serves as a prelude to another deadly assault on Camp Ashraf.

Maliki’s goal is to carry out an all-out crackdown at the camp before the year’s end by creating a deadlock through impeding UNHCR’s efforts and ensuring that the residents have no other place to go.  The planned assault entails the occupation of another part of Ashraf.

Last month, UNHCR announced it had officially recognized the residents as “asylum seekers” and that it intended to interview each applicant as the first step to determine their refugee status. It called on the Iraqi government to extend the December 2011 deadline so that the interview process could be completed in accordance with UNHCR standards.

Alarming information, however, indicates that the Maliki’s government, in collusion with the Iranian regime, is working to obstruct the UNHCR’s humanitarian efforts. Instructed by Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s notorious Quds Force commander, and Hassan Danaifar, Tehran’s ambassador to Iraq, Maliki has refused to grant the extension demanded by UNHCR. It has also brazenly and publicly rebuffed all attempts by the European Union’s Special Envoy on Ashraf, Jean de Ruyt, to travel to Iraq and visit Camp Ashraf.

With the arbitrary deadline looming, President Obama and Secretary Ban Ki-moon must publicly call on Maliki to extend the December 31 deadline in order to allow UNHCR to complete its task.

Camp Ashraf is home to 3,400 unarmed members of the main Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) and their families who were recognized by the United States as “Protected Persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention in 2004.

 SOURCE US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR)

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usccar-demands-us-and-un-intervention-as-iraq-sabotages-efforts-to-resolve-camp-ashraf-humanitarian-crisis-132068668.html

Top US Security Officials Write Open Letter to President Obama: Delist MEK Now, Protect Camp Ashraf

FoxNews

Fox News: More than a dozen of countries top security officials wrote an open letter to President Obama last week in the New York Times about a group they say has been falsely designated as terrorist. Former Secretary of Homeland Security,TomRidge, and former Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, were two of the authors of the letter who have joined us now to explain this.

Judge Mukasey and Governor Ridge on Fox News

Gentlemen, this is an interesting group of leaders that came together to write a letter. They were Republican like yourself, along with Rudy Giuliani plus Democrats like Howard Dean and Governor Ed Rendel … What was so important that you all wanted to write to President Obama?

Mukasey: This group was designated as a terrorist group back in 1990s as a kind of strategic device trying to open dialogue with the Iranian regime, and obviously that has not worked.

They were kept on the list afterwards in the belief that if they were taken off the list the Iranian regime would get upset and would do things like support the terrorists inIraqand send IEDs intoIraq, and of course the regime is doing it anyway.

This group has been persecuted inIran. They have a group of 3400 of them who are living in acampIraqand are now in danger of being obliterated by the Iraqi Army.

Fox News: In fact we have seen some evidence that may already be happening. I just want to define for our viewers what this is? This is a group called MEK. They are committed to a secular, democratic and non-nuclearIran. They sound important toIran’s future.

Tom Ridge: They certainly are. This designation has lasted for almost 15 years with the naive hope that keeping them on the terrorist list would encourageIran to negotiate with theUS around many issues. But the real terrorist organization frankly is the State of Iran.

It is the world’s leading exponent and export of terrorism. The regime is responsible for a lot of de-stabilization and death not only in their own country but in theMiddle East.

Frankly, these 3400 man and women atcampAshrafhave been vetted by the FBI and Justice back in 2003 and 2004. They found no evidence of any terrorist connections whatsoever.

We promised them, theUSgovernment promised them, that we would protect them. Yet, in spite of our promise, in 2009 and 2011, Iraqi forces using equipments, vehicles, weapons, and unfortunately training from theUS, have invaded the camp, killed 36 people and wounded 300 others.

They have to be taken off this list. We have to get Blue Helmets from the UN to protect them. We have to live up to our promise. Our creditability is at stake here.

Fox News: Absolutely.  That video that we were just watching, I believe, is from the day in 2009 from the clashes there with Iraqi forces.

What happened? Why we have not kept our promise to the 3400 women, children, and men who we believe in to keep them out of the harms way? 

Mukasey: The Iraqi government is more and more adjusting its policies to please its neighborIran because our presence there is diminishing.

The Iranian regime obviously wants these people stamped up. As the result, the Iraqis have been cracking down on them, and we are not in a position to do anything about it.

Fox News: Have you got a response to your open letter to President Obama yet?

Secretary Ridge: We have not got a response and frankly what we hear from the State Department on a regular basis is that it continues to be under advisement.

We need to understand that the EU looked at the available evidence. TheUKassembled a group of jurists who said that the designation of this group as a terrorist organization is perverse.

Our DC Court of Appeal here in theUSsaid about 15 months ago that we see no evidence of any kind that these individuals should be listed as a terrorist organization.

Frankly, it has been a license to kill these people, because the designation is the rational that the Iraqi government uses to wind on the two assaults in the 2009 and 2011.

We are fearful that there will be an assault within the next couple of weeks, because the Iraqi government has already blocked the main road in, and is denying some of the UN official access to the camp.

We need to delist them. We need to get monitors there. We need to live up to our promise. We promised personally to the 3400 people that theUSwould protect them. It is naive and morally bankrupt for us to think that we can continue to negotiate with 3400 lives at stake.

Fox News:TomRidge and Michael Mukasey. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming in and bringing this to all of our attention, and we hope you get a response to this soon.

http://video.foxnews.com/#/v/1220813454001/iran-opposition-group-friend-or-foe-to-us/?playlist_id=87485

 

Bi-Partisan Members of Congress Deplore 450-Day Delay by State Department in Completing Court-Mandated Review of MEK Designation

PRNewswire

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-iReach/ — In a Congressional briefing on Wednesday, several Members of Congress deplored the State Department’s unjustified 450-day delay in completing the Court-mandated review of the designation of Iran’s main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), according to California Society for Democratic Iran.

In a Congressional briefing on October 12, 2011, several Members of Congress deplored the State Department's unjustified 450-day delay in completing the Court-mandated review of the designation of Iran's main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

The briefing, moderated by Dr. Allan Gerson, former Chief Counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and Deputy Assistant Attorney General (for Office of the Legal Counsel), featured Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, John Lewis (D-GA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Co-Chair, Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus, Judy Chu (D-CA) and Ted “Judge” Poe (R-TX). Congressional staffers and delegations representing Iranian-American communities in the United States also attended the conference.

As the first speaker, Rep. Chu said, “450 days have passed, and yet the state department still has not given a response, every day of delay, means another day where peaceful democratic leaders and activists are at risk… It’s well past the time to heed the federal courts order and to remove Iran’s largest opposition group from that terrorist list.”

Rep. Bob Filner concurred, adding, “I don’t know what the State Department is scrambling around with. They are still working on this thing after 450 days now.  This is irresponsible; it’s countered the law. You can announce it [delisting] today, you can announce it tomorrow, you could have announced it a year ago.”

“It has been 450 days since our government was given the mandate to explain why they have designated the MeK as a terrorist organization and our government has not responded. What’s the hold up? What’s holding things up is the fact that our government is treating a gangster regime in Iran with kid gloves… We are afraid to actually conduct ourselves honestly and openly here for fear of someway insulting or enraging the mullah regime in Iran. What can be more ridiculous than that?… The first way to show that we stand strong is to back those people in the MEK who are right on the border of Iran and who are standing tall telling the Iranian people that there is an alternative to this brutal regime that’s stamping out your freedom,” emphasized Rep. Rohrabacher

John Lewis, the distinguished representative from Georgia added his voice to the delisting campaign. “450 days after court ruling. Why did the delay? Justice delayed is justice denied,” Mr. Lewis said, stressing, “We cannot wait, we cannot be patient. We want our freedom and we want it now.”

Rep. Poe added, “We must make sure that we also create safety, long term safety, for the good folks in Camp Ashraf… Those who continue to delay and delay and delay, they are not going to wear us down, and make us give up.  The delay, if anything should cause us to be more encouraged and more passionate about the safety of the folks in Camp Ashraf and the delisting of the MeK.”

“If you have criminal penalties the rule of law requires due process, and it’s not only the US constitution that requires it, but it is also the past decisions of the US court of appeals, so one has to ask the question why would the state department, with all of its legion of lawyers, refuse to comply with something so elementary that we learned in high school civics,” Dr. Gerson said.

Media Contact: Nasser Sharif California Society for Democracy in Iran, 562 221 8000, nsharif@californiasdi.org

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

 SOURCE California Society for Democracy in Iran

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bi-partisan-members-of-congress-deplore-450-day-delay-by-state-department-in-completing-court-mandated-review-of-mek-designation-131896283.html

Ending hypocrisy of terrorist designation

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Friends are branded as enemies while real enemies are appeased

As two current high-profile cases demonstrate, the U.S. government’s practice of listing “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) has become an increasingly dangerous and hollow political exercise rather than a sober assessment of the real threats to America.

llustration: Terrorist by Linas Garsys for The Washington Times

Last month, Afghanistan’s ruthless Haqqani Network reportedly staged a brazen attack against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. The Haqqanis, who conduct grisly terrorist attacks on hotels, embassies and other targets to advance their agenda to become power brokers in a future political settlement, reportedly are responsible for hundreds of American deaths since 2001. Some American military officers apparently are furious that the Obama administration decided not to designate the Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization because it was feared that listing the group would make it harder for the Afghan government to negotiate with the Haqqanis.

At the same time, the United States continues to list the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), Iran’s main opposition group and a declared democratic ally, as an FTO even though it meets none of the criteria and long ago renounced violence. Importantly, the group was the first to reveal Iran’s 20-year clandestine nuclear program and provided invaluable intelligence to the U.S. military in Iraq, which not only helped identify and neutralize Iran’s proxy terrorist groups operating in that country but undoubtedly saved American lives in the process.

What gives? Listing organizations like the MEK and not listing groups like the Haqqanis sends the wrong message to friends and foes alike.

In the case of the MEK, the group was put on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 1997 to appease the Tehran regime. The mullahs, who hate and fear the MEK, demanded that the group be listed as a precondition for potential negotiations with the United States. Those negotiations never materialized, and today, Iran remains the most dangerous player in the region. Ironically, the misguided FTO designation has given Iran and its proxies in Iraq a license to kill thousands of MEK members, including a massacre on April 8 that killed or wounded hundreds of unarmed men and women in their Iraqi base known as Camp Ashraf. The current drawdown of protective U.S troops in Iraq means that almost certain annihilation awaits a group that has dedicated itself to a democratic, non-nuclear Iran.

There is a growing movement to delist the MEK. It includes a bipartisan group of 96 members of Congress, including chairmen of the House Select Intelligence and Armed Services committees and an impressive roster of former high-level intelligence, law enforcement and security officials from the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

As for the Haqqanis, sources indicate that during high-level discussions last year, Obama administration officials debated listing the group as an FTO, which would have allowed for assets to be frozen and could help dry up the pool of financial donors supporting the group. Though some political leaders and military commanders pushed for the designation in response to the group’s escalating attacks on Americans, the administration decided that such a move might alienate the Haqqanis and drive them away from the negotiating table. It also would have been perceived as another “provocation” in the already tenuous U.S.-Pakistani relationship. In late September, Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a compelling case for Pakistani complicity in the attack against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

What began as a coordinated effort to identify, list, delegitimize and defang terrorist groups has instead become a symbol of appeasement: America put the MEK on the list to appease the Iranians and has kept the Haqqanis off the list to appease Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, which will have to deal with the network long after Americans leave.

Today, there is once again a fierce debate inside the Obama administration on whether to put the Haqqani Network on the terrorist list. At the same time, a debate rages over whether to delist the MEK. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ordered the U.S. State Department to evaluate the designation as pressure mounts within the department for a new strategy for dealing with the Iranian regime, which it acknowledges is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.

It appears we are dangerously inconsistent when it comes to the FTO list. Potential friends are branded as terrorists, and avowed enemies avoid a stigmatized identity that could help sap their mystique, funding and support. Both decisions should be reversed immediately, and the whole FTO strategy needs to be examined. The FTO list should be an instrument for counterterrorism, not a tool of negotiation in which hundreds of lives – not to mention American prestige – are used as leverage.

Gen. Hugh Shelton is a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/13/ending-hypocrisy-of-terrorist-designation/

Tehran’s Foes, Unfairly Maligned

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Click on the image to view the commentary in the paper

Washington – As the United States tries to halt Iran’s nuclear program and prepares to withdraw troops from Iraq, American voters should ask why the Obama administration has bent to the will of Tehran’s mullahs and their Iraqi allies on a key issue: the fate of 3,400 unarmed members of the exiled Iranian opposition group, Mujahedeen Khalq, who are living in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, has brazenly murdered members of the Mujahedeen Khalq. Mr. Maliki justifies his attacks by noting that the group is on the United States’ official list of foreign terrorist organizations.

In April, Iraqi forces entered Camp Ashraf and fatally shot or ran over 34 residents and wounded hundreds more. Mr. Maliki has now given the Mujahedeen Khalq until Dec. 31 to close the camp and disperse its residents throughout Iraq.

Without forceful American and United Nations intervention to protect the camp’s residents and a decision by the State Department to remove Mujahedeen Khalq’s official designation as a terrorist group, an even larger attack on the camp or a massacre of its residents elsewhere in Iraq is likely.

This situation is the direct result of the State Department’s misconceived attempt to cripple the Mujahedeen Khalq by labeling it a terrorist organization, beginning in 1997. At the time, I was director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I concluded that this was part of a fruitless political ploy to encourage a dialogue with Tehran. There was no credible evidence then, nor has there been since, that the group poses any threat to the United States.

Tragically, the State Department’s unjustified terrorist label makes the Mujahedeen Khalq’s enemies in Tehran and Baghdad feel as if they have a license to kill and to trample on the written guarantees of protection given to the Ashraf residents by the United States. And Tehran’s kangaroo courts also delight in the terrorist designation as an excuse to arrest, torture and murder anyone who threatens the mullahs’ regime.

For better or worse, the State Department often makes politically motivated designations, which is why the Irish Republican Army was never put on the list (despite the F.B.I.’s recommendation). Similarly, Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq and the Haqqani terrorist network in Pakistan — both of which have murdered many Americans — have successfully avoided being listed.

During my tenure as F.B.I. director, I refused to allocate bureau resources to investigating the Mujahedeen Khalq, because I concluded, based on the evidence, that the designation was unfounded and that the group posed no threat to American security.

I did, however, object to the State Department’s politically motivated insistence that the F.B.I. stop fingerprinting Iranian wrestlers, and intelligence operatives posing as athletes, when the wrestlers were first invited to the United States in a good-will gesture. And the F.B.I. did try, unsuccessfully, to focus the Clinton administration on the threat posed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which exported terrorism and committed or orchestrated acts of war against America, including the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 American airmen. We learned from prosecutors on Tuesday that a unit of the corps plotted to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

Some critics call the Mujahedeen Khalq a dangerous cult. But since leaving office, I have carefully reviewed the facts and stand by the conclusion that the Mujahedeen Khalq is not a terrorist organization and should be removed from the State Department’s list immediately. Many of the most knowledgeable and respected terrorism experts in the world have come to the same conclusion. (Though I have on some occasions received speaker’s fees or travel expenses from sympathizers of the Mujahedeen Khalq, my objective analysis as a career law enforcement officer is the only basis for my conclusions.)

Britain and the European Union have already acted on the evidence, removing the Mujahedeen Khalq from their sanctions lists in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The British court reviewing the Mujahedeen Khalq dossier went so far as to call the terrorist designation “perverse.”

The Mujahedeen Khalq is now led by a charismatic and articulate woman, Maryam Rajavi, who enjoys significant support in European governments. In 2001, the Mujahedeen Khalq renounced violence and ceased military action against the Iranian regime. And in 2003, the group voluntarily handed over its weapons to American forces in Iraq and has since provided the United States with valuable intelligence regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. By the State Department’s own guidelines, Mujahedeen Khalq should be delisted.

Yet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the White House have balked at delisting the group and protecting its members at Camp Ashraf, despite bipartisan calls for action.

Incredibly, as our duty to protect the camp’s residents reaches a critical stage, the State Department offers only silence and delay. The secretary is still “reviewing” the designation nearly 15 months after the United States Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that the department had broken the law by failing to accord the Mujahedeen Khalq due process when listing it as a terrorist group. Mrs. Clinton has not complied with the court’s order to indicate “which sources she regards as sufficiently credible” to justify this life-threatening designation. The reason is clear: there is no evidence.

Louis J. Freeh was director of the F.B.I. from 1993 to 2001.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/tehrans-foes-unfairly-maligned.html

New York Times: Delist MEK (PMOI) Now, Protect Camp Ashraf

(Click on the image for the PDF version of the letter)
 

NEW YORK TIMES: 14 Senior US National Security and Policy figures write an open letter to President Obama to Delist MEK (PMOI) and Protect Camp Ashraf

Taking Iranian Opposition Group Off U.S. Terror List

THE NEW YORK TIMES

It is a valid observation that a majority of Iraqis, including Shiites, hate the Iranian regime (“Vacuum Is Feared as U.S. Quits Iraq, but Iran’s Deep Influence May Not Fill It,” news article, Oct. 9). Yet Tehran, worried about the consequences of the Arab Spring and faced with a growing domestic crisis and isolation, still seeks to manipulate Iraq by controlling its security apparatus and supporting paramilitary groups.

Under the circumstances, the regime and the pro-engagement crowd are paranoid over the likelihood of the removal of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, from the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

In July 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that there was no legal basis for the designation. And a bipartisan Congressional initiative and a growing roster of former senior political, military, and national security officials have urged delisting of the MEK. In a demonstration in August in front of the State Department, thousands of Iranians echoed the Iranian people’s disdain for the designation. The European Union and Britain delisted MEK in 2009 and 2008.

An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends,” by Elizabeth Rubin (Sunday Review, Aug. 14), repeated discredited allegations against the MEK in urging maintenance of the designation, which senior American officials acknowledged had been a good-will gesture to Tehran in 1997.

Scores of independent reports, including those by several delegations of the European Parliament, the Iran Policy Committee in Washington and Dick Armey, the former majority leader of the House of Representatives, clearly show that these allegations, particularly those implicating MEK in suppressing Iraqi Kurds in 1991, are unfounded.

Despite repeated denials by the Iranian resistance, the Op-Ed writer claimed that the Iranian resistance’s president-elect, Maryam Rajavi, ordered crushing the Kurds under tanks. This is another desperate attempt to discredit the person who is a point of hope for Iranians seeking freedom, and a major part of Tehran’s demonizing campaign against the MEK.

Hoshyar Zebari, foreign minister of Iraq, stipulated in an affidavit in 1999, when he was the head of international affairs for Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, that MEK had no role in suppressing Iraqi Kurds.

SHAHIN GOBADI
Paris, Oct. 10, 2011

The writer is spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which includes the MEK.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/opinion/taking-iranian-opposition-group-off-us-terrorist-list.html