March 28, 2024

President Obama; MEK Blacklisting Has Justified Murder Of My Daughter

OfficialWire.com

It is exactly 5 months since my daughter Saba was murdered, along with 35 others in a massacre lead by Al-Maliki forces at the behest of Tehran.
Global protest, sit-ins and campaigns are still ongoing.

The bloodbath in the Camp along with tens of clandestine arrests and kidnappings of MEK families in Iran is on also ongoing, justified by the US State Department’s blacklisting of MEK.

Furthermore, in July 2010, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia Circuit ordered that the State Department re-examine the decision to keep the PMOI in the FTO list. Thirteen months on, the Department’s unusual reluctance in complying with the court order is unjustified and a contravention of the Rule of law.

In early 2004 a 16-month investigation period at camp Ashraf,60 miles north of Baghdad and home to some 3400 members of the MEK, was performed by nine US agencies including the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Justice, the Immigration Office, the DIA.

The objective was to screen every single resident of the camp. According to the New York Times on July 27, 2004, the US government announced: “U.S. Sees No Basis to Prosecute Iranian Opposition ‘Terror’ Group Being Held in Iraq”.

Following the D.C circuit court of appeals on July 16th 2010 ruled that the case be reviewed, a strong voice in the US congress has urged Secretary Clinton to put an end to the flawed policy of appeasing the mullahs in Tehran and the blacklisting of the MEK.
 
Since 2008 twenty courts in Europe issued definitive ruling for delisting MEK due to lack of evidence, which was later carried out. France’s judiciary in 2011 announced there is no evidence of terrorism against the MEK.

Yet, while the US State Department is still tendentious towards appeasing the mullahs, the “vociferous mediatic rage” by Iranian regime’s supporters and pundits in capitol hill is at its highest to persuade the Whitehouse to keep the MEK on the terrorist list. 

The past 4 week engineered campaign with its thread back in Tehran has proved to any neutral bystander, that such efforts are part of a campaign to prevent regime change in Iran.
 
Meanwhile concerns by lawmakers and analysts worldwide is understating Whitehouse independent decision making regarding the delisting of MEK.
 
Both failed policy to push for dialogue or engage in change of attitude with a dead regime and using the terror tag on MEK as bate for the already dead and illegitimate clerics ruling Iran is a laid out chess game planned by Tehran .

Iranian officials’ interpretation of the policy to “engage” with the vicious tyrants in Iran has overtly been mocked as a sign of weakness on behalf of the Whitehouse.
 
Nevertheless my daughter, Saba, has paid the price for such misguided policy with her life. MEK is the only movement, whose rights according to international laws and principles of human rights have been deliberately overlooked under the pretext of “National Security” and the “US list of foreign terrorist Organizations.”
 
When it comes to understanding “realpolitik” the recent winds of change; ousting dictators one after the other will definitely reach the mullahs in Tehran.
 
The bitter truth for clerical regime pundits is that it is finally the opposition which will proceed to bring about a change in the turbulent country.  
 
Despite the push to keep the Iranian pro- democracy opposition (MEK/PMOI) in the US black list, and disregard of millions spent in a ferocious – but repetitious smear campaign against MEK , the latest show of legitimacy by the organization in its election of a new Secretary General as well as several last gatherings has proved efforts futile.
 
The fruit of the argument could be read between the lines of a speech given by Mr. Jean Ziegler, Vice-President of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council in a meeting in July this year: “Camp Ashraf is a source of inspiration and hope for the Iranian people in achieving democracy. If camp Ashraf doesn’t survive, one must say that for the Arab revolutions, for Arab revolutionaries who are looking for a reference, who are looking for an example, this would be a tragedy.”

He added that: “It is clear that from Egypt to the Nafous Mountains in eastern Libya and to Tunisia, all these youth are looking for a reference and an example. Ashraf is the illustration of what they are in search of.”

Any delays to end the policy of appeasement would come at the price of more lives being lost in camp Ashraf. The MEK must be delisted; the survival of human rights and democratic values is a necessity of the 21th century against dictators.  The US must change its policy towards the Iranian regime and side with the Iranian people and its resistance.

Saba Haftbaradaran , (born 21 February 1982 , was former student of Law graduate , who was killed in an attack on the refugee Camp Ashraf, April 8, 2011. Reza Haftbaradaran, one of the Ashraf residents and father of Saba is a politcal activist.

http://news.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=204689

Iranian opposition group not involved in terrorism

HOUSTON CHRONICLE

In recent months, the Iranian government in Tehran has waged an unprecedented misinformation campaign against its main organized opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, in order to influence the pending decision by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the status of the group.

The U.S. Court of Appeals-D.C. Circuit struck down the decision in January 2009 by the secretary to maintain the MEK on the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) as flawed and in violation of the due process rights of the group and ordered a new review. After 14 months, there has been no decision.

The court has made it very clear that unless there is substantial support in the administrative record to show that the group has engaged in the past two years in terrorism or terrorist activity or has the capability and intent to engage in such activity that threatens the national security of the United States, the secretary must vacate the designation.

The MEK ceased its operations targeting Iranian military figures in 2001, renounced violence and terrorism, and turned over all the weapons it had for its protection in 2003 to the U.S. military. In return, it was promised the protection of its 3,400 members at Camp Ashraf under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Since the U.S. handed over that protection to the Iraqi government in 2009, Iraqi forces have attacked the unarmed members of the camp, killing 47 and wounding 1,047 in what U.S. Sen. John Kerry described as a “massacre.”

President George W. Bush and other senior administration officials confirmed that the MEK revealed the existence of Tehran’s nuclear program, which triggered, for the first time, the inspection of Iranian nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Organization. Senior U.S. military commanders have confirmed that MEK’s intelligence has exposed Iran’s deadly meddling in Iraq.

Seven European courts have voted unanimously that the MEK is not a terrorist organization; the group was delisted in 2008 and 2009 in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

In the United States, House Resolution 60, introduced by Congressman Ted Poe, R-Humble, is co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 93 members of the House, including in the Texas delegation Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green and Gene Green and Republicans Louie Gohmert, Ralph Hall, Kenny Marchant and Pete Olson. It urges the secretary of state to delist the MEK.

When the MEK was first designated in 1997, a House majority and 32 senators, including Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, protested the action, describing the MEK as a “legitimate resistance movement.”

While the Arab Spring has brought down dictators, the prospect of an empowered opposition in Iran with the imminent delisting of the MEK is a nightmare scenario for the ruling ayatollahs loathed by a vast majority of the Iranians. This explains why Iran has been waging a frenzied campaign to maintain the MEK on the terrorist list.

Absent evidence of terrorist activities, Tehran’s functionaries have been targeting journalists in Washington and elsewhere, posing as legitimate opposition and attacking the MEK with unfounded accusations, such as having “cult-like” behavior. If that were to be the standard, the cult of Mac (Apple) would have been designated as an FTO.

An independent study by a former assistant secretary of state, Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield, has unveiled an extensive operation by Iran’s intelligence service to disseminate misinformation. John Sano, the CIA’s former deputy for clandestine operations, told a National Press Club audience on Aug. 18 that through a sophisticated campaign, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has shaped U.S. public opinion about the MEK.

Tehran has widely propagated that MEK killed the Iraqi Kurds in 1991. However, the current foreign minister of Iraq told a European Court in 1999 that the MEK was in no way involved in suppression of the Kurds.

Independent studies have shown that the MEK had no links to the assassination of six Americans in Iran nearly 40 years ago and that a self-styled Marxist splinter group, which also murdered MEK members, was responsible.

Tehran’s lobby suggests that the MEK has funded the activities of Iranian-American communities; this completely disregards the extensive contribution of the Iranian-Americans to this nation, as many of them are prominent business owners, executives, academics, professionals, engineers and artists.

Now is the time for the Unites States to stand with the Iranian people and with the values upon which this country was founded.

To this end, delisting the MEK is the first order of business.

Ali Soudjani is president of Apple Finance Company and president of the Iranian American Society of Texas.

http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Iranian-opposition-group-not-involved-in-terrorism-2163611.php

Ignore Iranian regime’s lies on opposition group

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER 

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton edges closer to deciding to remove the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen e Khalq (MEK), from a U.S. list of banned organizations, the international media has been awash with Iranian regime propaganda attempting to demonize the group.

In an attempt to counteract this tendentious public relations campaign, the group’s supporters, including senior figures in U.S., British, and European political circles, have waged their own media campaign to counter the Iranian propaganda.

Indeed, a recent independent assessment by a former senior State Department official debunked virtually all of the stale allegations that have been regurgitated by Tehran’s lobby inside the Beltway in recent weeks.

In the midst of this punch and counterpunch media campaign, it is crucial that Clinton’s decision be based upon genuine evidence. De-listing the MEK is a legal issue and Clinton must act on facts within the correct legal framework.

The MEK has fought similar legal cases in the United Kingdom and the European Union, and after numerous appeals it has been successful in being removed from those entities’ lists of banned organizations.

The British courts found that allegations made against the group were untrue and in some cases were initially propagated from Iran’s intelligence ministry. WikiLeaks revealed that, lacking any credible claim to maintain the ban on the MEK, the British government’s continued defiance was more about how Tehran would react rather than what its legal system required it to do. In fact, the British Court of Appeal told us much about how the MEK had been mistreated, finding that the British labeling of the MEK as terrorist was “perverse.” This was a severe indictment of the government’s refusal to delist the organization.

For the EU, the embarrassment was even worse. It was dragged kicking and screaming through court after court until it had fought its last battle and succumbed to the legal reality that the MEK could not legally be labeled a terrorist group.

The judgments of the UK and EU courts are significant because the propaganda the Iranian regime wants us to believe about the MEK today is exactly the same as that replayed before those courts. Yet, in the end, those courts could not resist the evidence.

Now it is time for Secretary Clinton to make her decision. If she does so based on the facts, there is little doubt that she will conclude that in legal terms the ban on the MEK is no longer justified. However, if Iranian propaganda is allowed to muddy the water or the hope prevails that Tehran can be appeased by continuing to ban this Iranian opposition group, then things may not be so simple.

Clinton is credited as being a woman of principle who has the wisdom and foresight to recognize propaganda and withstand pressures inviting her to trample on the rule of law upon which all democracies are based. Our bet is that she will not fall into the trap set by the Iranian regime and its apologists and will stick to her principles in making the right decision and removing the MEK from the terrorism list. Only time will tell if we are correct.

Tom Ridge is a former secretary of Homeland Security and governor of Pennsylvania. Lord Alex Carlile of Berriew was Britain’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation

 http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20110908_Ignore_Iranian_regime_s_lies_on_opposition_group.html

US Rally Calls for Protection of Iranian dissidents

 THE HUFFINGTON POST

In an effort to prevent a humanitarian disaster, thousands of Iranians held a rally outside the US State Department to call for the protection of 3,400 Iranians resident in Camp Ashraf, Iraq and an end to the US ban on Iran’s largest opposition group, the Mujahedeen e Khalq (MEK). The issues are intertwined, because the residents of Camp Ashraf are supporters and members of the MEK.

The rally was addressed by US politicians and former national security officials who called on Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to listen to the thousands of Iranians gathered and end the US ban on the MEK. Their call was made not only because an end to the ban would allow the Camp Ashraf residents to be better protected, but because the ban is unjustified and lacking any legal basis.

Undoubtedly the US attitude towards the MEK has given the Iranian regime and its Iraqi counterparts the green light to carry out atrocities against the group. In the last two years, over 50 residents have been killed in Iraqi military assaults on the defenseless Camp and many more have been executed in Iran for their links to the group. The current US ban on the MEK has allowed the Iraqi government to do Tehran’s bidding on Iraqi soil on the US watch in that country.

Thousands of Iranian-Americans from 41 states took part in a huge rally outside the State Department on August 26, 2011, urging Secretary Clinton to act swiftly and remove the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Ensure Protection for Camp Ashraf.

My personal story of having suffered the Iranian regime’s terrorism tells us much about the great lengths this regime in Iran will go to silence its opponents.

I narrowly escaped death in 1990 in Istanbul, Turkey, where I was assisting Iranian refugees. The regime’s terrorists ambushed our car, and I was shot several times, once very close to my heart. My liver was pierced and has suffered permanent damage. It is currently being held together in a plastic mesh. Even after the assassination attempt, the regime twice tried to end my life in hospital where I was being treated. On one occasion, the regime sent its terrorists under the cover of Turkish police officers and on another they pretended to be friends visiting me. But on both occasions my colleagues who were in the hospital and police officers at the scene managed to foil the plot at the last minute.

At that time it was I who suffered the consequences of western misguided policies and today it is the residents of Camp Ashraf. These residents are today being slaughtered on Iraqi soil with the justification that the MEK is banned in the US, a ban which has been proven in the UK and EU courts to be perverse and flawed.

For the past 14 years the MEK has been unjustifiably banned to placate the Mullahs regime, in a vain hope that the Mullahs in Iran can be moderated. The time has come to end this illegitimate ban, because it is this ban today that is being used by Iran to carry out executions and this ban which the Iraqi authorities seek as justification for the massacring of unarmed civilians at Camp Ashraf.

Now Secretary of State Clinton must do what is just. She must do what the legal system of the United States requires her to do and what the courts of the UK and EU have shown to be the legally correct path in immediately removing the MEK from the US list of banned organizations. The judgments of the British and European courts have unequivocally proven that no case exists for maintaining a ban on the MEK.

The issue of delisting the MEK and hence preventing the massacre of Ashraf residents as Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President elect of the National Council of Resistance has said “is the very test for the universal values that President Obama has committed himself to.”

Hilary Clinton must now answer the calls of the Iranian people and delist the MEK, sending a clear message to the people of Iran that we support their battle for freedom and democracy.

 Hossein Abedini is a Member of Parliament in exile of Iranian Resistance

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/hossein-abedini/us-rally-calls-for-protec_b_949818.html

Clinton should de-list MEK as terrorist group

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” – John Adams.

These words by one of the U.S. founding fathers should be the only criteria for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she reviews whether to remove the main Iranian resistance movement, Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK,) from the State Department’s terror list.

As Americans, Southern Californians should care about this because America’s greatness, first and foremost, stems from its values and principles. Our values inspired many nations to stand up against tyranny and to challenge the status quo imposed on them by dictators. Over the years, our words and our commitments have been as solid as gold. And this is exactly the U.S. that the tyrants loathe, with the ruling mullahs in Iran at the top of the list.

Yet, due to the injustice imposed on Iranian dissidents by a misguided policy, not only our values and prestige are on the line, but also 3,400 innocent, defenseless dissidents are on the verge of being massacred at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where they are at the mercy of a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad. None of us wants to see a humanitarian crisis because of a wrecked policy that should have been rectified a long time ago.

After the European Union’s and the British highest courts found no relationship between the MEK and terrorism, the E.U. and U.K. removed the terror designation.

On July 16, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., reviewed the MEK case and, similar to the high courts in Europe, found the terrorism allegations and label against MEK unfounded, ordering the State Department to review the designation.

As admitted by its original designers in 1997, this designation was made not on the basis of facts and the law but as part of a political decision for appeasing the religious fascist rulers of Iran in search of “moderates” who were never found.

In Iran, this policy provided the Islamic regime with an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate its nuclear bomb efforts and to prepare the grounds for Ahmadinejad’s faction to further the extremist policies of the Tehran government.

The State Department’s unjust designation of MEK as a foreign terrorist organization has been invoked on many occasions by the Iranian clerical regime as a justification for execution of political prisoners in Iran.

It is also providing an excuse for the Iraqi government’s approach to the residents of Camp Ashraf, who are “protected persons” under Geneva Fourth Convention, on behest of the Iranian regime.

In a total disregard for the legal process, the State Department has dragged its feet for more than a year.

In recent months, dozens of prominent Americans from both parties and more than 100 members of Congress, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA,) have insisted that the law must be respected and the unlawful designation of MEK must be annulled, calling on Secretary Clinton to reverse the unjust listing. Mr. Rohrabacher has joined 93 other colleagues, including the Armed Services and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairs, Howard McKeon and Darrel Issa, as well as democrats Loretta Sanchez and Bob Filner, in co-sponsoring H.R. 60, which urges the secretary to de-list the MEK.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government and its lobby in the U.S. are understandably quite nervous over the possibility that the Secretary could delist MEK in the next few weeks. They have embarked on a propaganda campaign against PMOI and the Americans who support the MEK and respect for the law.

Tehran’s rulers recognize that the designation of MEK has been the cornerstone of the defunct policy of appeasement and has been the main obstacle that has impeded democratic change in Iran.

“National Iranian American Council” (NIAC,) reportedly the Iranian regime’s primary lobbying arm in the U.S., the has been consistently calling for a soft policy, to the point of even opposing sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards, known to be the godfathers of terrorism in the Middle East and the world. NIAC is now spearheading the demonizing campaign of MEK and tries to discredit prominent senior former U.S. government officials who have supported justice and delisting of the MEK as well as calling for U.S. fulfillment of obligations to protect the residents of Camp Ashraf.

Secretary Clinton should make her decision on MEK based solely on the evidence and the facts, the “stubborn things.” Then we all can claim rightly that this is the U.S. we inherited from John Adams.

http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-09-01/news/30107354_1_terror-list-camp-ashraf-mek

Iranian Media: How to Tell a Lie – A Big Lie?

StopFundamentalism.com
 
The presence of a crowd of thousands of Iranian exiles in front of the State Department in Washington, calling on the Secretary of State Clinton to remove the main Iranian opposition movement, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from the U.S. terror list, has certainly drawn considerable media attention during the past few days.  But one article, coming from a peculiar Iranian daily can be considered as a satire piece rather than a news article.

The Iranian daily, Keyhan reported on 29 August that only 25 showed up at the said demonstration siding with those in Washington who say MEK has no popular support!

Iranian media are known worldwide to not have any credibility for the news they blare out and this one seems to be just that. But it seems that the Iranian media, for their outrageous claims to be considered as at least to be partly true, resort to a Goebbels style, ‘Big Lie’ propaganda technique: “to tell a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Nevertheless, it is said that a picture speaks a thousand words, or may be a few thousand considering the picture above in this case.

According to reports, the Secretary of State Clinton will be making her decision soon whether to keep the main Iranian opposition group, MEK on the US terror list or remove it once and for all.

On the other hand MEK’s main home in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, has been the center of major international attention after it was raided by Iraqi forces last April leaving 36 MEK members who resided in Ashraf dead and over 350 wounded. 

The Ashraf residents are unarmed Iranian refugees considered as Protected Persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention who have lived in Ashraf, Iraq for the past 25 years but the Iraqi government refuses to recognize their status and threatens to extradite them back to Iran.

Since the reports of decision by Secretary Clinton surfaced, a media war began in the United States between on one side the supporters of the MEK in the US calling for the removal of the group from the US black list and on the other side, the Iranian well known lobby, National Iranian American Council – NIAC run by an Iranian established collaborator, Trita Parsi.

The rally in Washington on Friday was part of efforts by supporters of the MEK to show their solidarity and draw the attention of the State Secretary to another human catastrophe at hand if the group is not removed from the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organization.  Iranian and Iraqi authorities have repeatedly referred to US blacklist as reason to justify crackdown on the Iranian opposition members in Ashraf.

http://www.stopfundamentalism.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1169:iranian-media-how-to-tell-a-lie–a-big-lie&catid=74:iranian-american&Itemid=93

A Rally Never Seen At U.S. State Department

OfficialWire.com

In an unprecedented political move, thousands of Iranian expatriates supporting the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) movement converged on the State Department on Friday, August 26, to join voices with former U.S. Congressmen and senior officials to call the U.S. Government to take the MEK off its list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) addressed the rally in front of the State Department headquarters. The event also featured speeches by former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA), former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former CIA Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations John Sano.

It might have been the first time in the history of the State Department that such a rally holds on its doorsteps in regards to a decision by the Department. It certainly marks a point in democratic values, where victims of a decision on “security measures” have the opportunity to express their feelings for the world to see it. It can certainly show the way to regimes like the one in power in Tehran, that know no way other than shooting defenseless demonstrators back home.

But at the same time the event shows flaws in the decision-making procedure permitting a wrong decision to prevail for long periods of time in support of a wrong and perverse policy, and shows the whole world how vulnerable democratic principles can be in the face of political interests.

The MEK was blacklisted in Washingtonin 1997 as a “goodwill gesture” to Iran in the hope that the mullahs could be placated to abandon terrorism and repression. The Clinton administration was looking for a way to establish “special” relations with Mohammad Khatami, then newly-elected president in Iran and pretending to incarnate “those who stand for reform” inside the clerical regime. A senior White House official said to the Los Angeles Times on October 9, 1997, that the listing was a “goodwill gesture” towards Iran’s new president. Martin Indyk, then Assistant Secretary of States for Near East Affairs, was quoted in September 2002 by Newsweek confirming that the listing was part of Clinton administration’s policy of rapprochement with the Iranian regime.  

Putting Iranian politics’ considerations parallel to those concerning foreign terrorist organizations is unethical in the first place, and is detrimental to US anti terrorist policy in the second.  At the end, it undermines democratic principles of coherent state behavior.

Great care should be taken to keep there only those who merit a place on that list, thus isolating the real terrorists and those who support them. Tehran’s regime is the world’s first sponsor of State terrorism, according to State Department’s categorical definitions. Listing the main opposition movement to the same regime in the FTO list sends a wrong signal to all parties. It suggests that everything, including FTO lists, can be subject to opportunistic bargaining when it comes to short or middle term political interests. Other countries might be influenced by US policy. The UK and the EU followed Clinton administration’s tracks to include, in 2001 and in 2002 consecutively, and again on specific demand byTehran, the MEK in their own “terrorism” lists. It took the movement seven years of legal fight to get off those lists. In fact, the evidence presented by the State Department’s lawyers to justify the ban is a virtual copy of the Iranian regime’s misinformation against the group. All of these allegations were introduced as evidence by various European governments to justify their blacklisting of the MEK but were subsequently dismissed as Iranian state-propaganda by the courts, and the MEK was delisted in the UK and Europe.

But even if we were putting foreign policy considerations first, the worst policy is to continue a failed policy with no reason. Mohammed Khatami never delivered the promised “reforms”. On the other hand,  Hassan Rohani, his chief negotiator in nuclear affairs, later admitted that the “open” Western attitude towards Khatami permitted Iran to quietly construct its array of enrichment centrifuges needed to produce more than necessary enriched uranium to bring the country close to making its first Bomb, creating one the most serious foreign policy challenges of all US administrations thereafter.  After eight years of Khatami, we are now witnessing the second four year term of Ahmadinejad.

The brutal regime in power in Iran has definitely not changed its behavior, nor has the State Department in listing the MEK.

Finally, several courts, including the US Appeal’s court have studied every bit of “proof” presented against the MEK, and concluded that it is not a terrorist organization. Among Washington DC’s speakers on August 26 was Brian Binely, conservative member of the British House of Commons, giving the complete ordeal of the British and European  judiciary who studied, in long hearings over more than seven years, the case of the MEK and consecutively deciding that terrorist allegations against the movement were, ‘perverse’ and ‘flawed’. But more than mere judicial and legal aspects are at stakes.

Thousands of MEK members have repeatedly come under deadly attack in their main base in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, by Iraqi armed forces at the behest ofIran’s fundamentalist regime. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki uses the terror label as an excuse to murder the residents. On April 8, 2011, 36 MEK members were slaughtered by Iraqi forces and hundreds of others were injured. Eleven people had lost their lives in similar attacks carried out by Maliki’s forces in July 2009. Maliki has now threatened to close the camp and expel the residents by force at the end of the year. An urgent humanitarian task would now be saving those lives, with the United Nations and the US bearing the main responsibility. A situation which would normally not have occurred were it not for the FTO listing.

This is now a matter of life and death. Maintaining this illegitimate ban on the MEK will lead to the massacre of all Camp Ashraf residents.

In an unprecedented political move, thousands of Iranian expatriates supporting the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) movement converged on the State Department on Friday, August 26, to join voices with former U.S. Congressmen and senior officials to call the U.S. Government to take the MEK off its list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) addressed the rally in front of the State Department headquarters. The event also featured speeches by former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA), former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former CIA Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations John Sano.

It might have been the first time in the history of the State Department that such a rally holds on its doorsteps in regards to a decision by the Department. It certainly marks a point in democratic values, where victims of a decision on “security measures” have the opportunity to express their feelings for the world to see it. It can certainly show the way to regimes like the one in power in Tehran, that know no way other than shooting defenseless demonstrators back home.

But at the same time the event shows flaws in the decision-making procedure permitting a wrong decision to prevail for long periods of time in support of a wrong and perverse policy, and shows the whole world how vulnerable democratic principles can be in the face of political interests.

No decision is more legitimate. No other foreign policy issue has in the past gathered so much opposition back home. An array of former American administrative, military and state officials, including a former Attorney General, FBI director, Homeland Security Secretary, two CIA directors, three former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former NATO commander, two former US envoys to the UN, President Obama’s ex-National Security Advisor, and political heavyweights Howard Dean, Rudi Giuliani, and Patrick Kennedy support the call for the de-listing of the MEK.

A number of bipartisan US legislators from the Senate and House of Representatives, through sending messages, expressed their solidarity with the rally of thousands of Iranians in Washington DC on August 26 calling for delisting of MeK and protection of Ashraf. They represent a Congress that has insisted since long time ago on the necessity of delisting the movement. American lawmakers are not alone in such endeavor. More than 500 British Parliamentarians from all parties and both Houses of Parliament and a total of 4,000 lawmakers globally, stand on their side.

Apart those politics, there are the Iranian people as well.

MEK leader Maryam Rajavi, speaking to the rally from France via a video message on a big screen, echoed those people’s view in reference to the April massacre in Ashraf:  “The terror listing in the U.S. is openly used as a justification to legitimize such bloodletting, by both the cruel mullahs as well as their proxy government in Iraqi,” she said. “Therefore, the Iranian people are asking the United States, ‘Why are you not annulling the license to kill our children?'”

Nooredin Abedian taught in Iranian higher-education institutions before settling in France as a political refugee in 1981. He writes for a variety of publications on Iranian politics and issues concerning human rights.

http://news.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=176645

Truth will trump fiction in Iran opposition case

SCOOP INDEPENDENT NEWS

On August 13, 2011, an article written by Elizabeth Rubin appeared in NYT’s Sunday review. The highly biased article which lacks the slightest notion of neutral reporting cites allegations emanating from Iran’s rulers against their main opposition, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK/PMOI). As the US Department of State is due to review its decision on FTO designation of MEK, the Iranian regime and its lobbyists have been hard at work to influence Secretary Hillary Clinton’s decision.

Elizabeth Rubin’s allegations against MEK are a duplication of what has filled websites and media known to be affiliated with the Iranian regime for the past 10 years. The article, which repeats the same allegations she made in 2003, was well received by the Iranian regime’s media. Her July 2003 article was used as propaganda material by Iranian embassies throughout the world and widely distributed for some time. The source of her misinformation is certainly not any of the residents of Camp Ashraf, where she visited in April 2003; rather the propaganda seems to come from MEK adversaries working with Iran’s infamous Ministry of Intelligence.

Needless to say that Elizabeth Rubin has links to some circles and elements within the Iranian regime, devoted to helping the regime stay in power. She has reportedly visited Iran in 2003 and again in 2007 where she met and interviewed many of the so-called moderates inside the ruling dictatorship.

The MEK was placed on the FTO list in 1997 for political reasons to appease the so-called moderates inside the ruling dictatorship in Iran. Now that the myth of moderation in Iran has faded, the players have resorted to another ploy, advocating for a “green movement” in Iran and purporting to represent Iranian protesters.

US military personnel and commanders who have worked closely with MEK members in Camp Ashraf from 2003 to 2009 are certainly more qualified to judge MEK. In contrast, Mrs Rubin who has spent only a few hours in the camp has spent more time with Iranian officials in Tehran and their Washington based lobbyists.

Captain Vivian Gembara, an attorney for the U.S. military for 4 years, was deployed in Iraq for 12 months, beginning in April 2003. During that time, she participated in negotiations with the MEK. She was a member of the 4th Infantry Division team that negotiated and drafted the “voluntary consolidation” agreement between the United States and the MEK. In an article published in Global Politicianon April 11, 2005 she writes that the U.S. Special Forces were first to encounter the MEK in April 2003, when the MEK “offered to work alongside the U.S. to stabilize the country.”

Describing the MEK as a resistance movement which aims “to overthrow Iran’s current Islamic fundamentalist regime and replace it with a democratic government,” Captain Gembara added “classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997, the [MEK] bears the burden of an outdated and inaccurate label.”

After Ashraf residents submitted their arms to the US forces in 2003, General Ray Odierno, who was then the commander of 4th Infantry Division was quoted by the French News Agency 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.”

Court rulings in the UK, France, and EU have also indicated that the terrorist allegations against MEK are unfounded.

On Nov. 30, 2007, a British court ordered MEK to be removed from the British government’s list of terrorist organizations. MEK was subsequently removed from the UK list and was later removed from the European list in January 2009, following a 7-year court battle. The Washington DC Circuit of the US Federal Appeals Court has also ordered the US State Department to review MEK’s FTO listing.
Elizabeth Rubin’s article gives the Iranian regime and the Maliki government in Iraq the excuse they need to massacre the residents of Camp Ashraf, home to 3400 unarmed and defenseless members of MEK in Iraq. The Iraqi army has conducted two separate raids on the camp in July 2009 and April 2011. In the recent deadly attack 35 residents of the camp were murdered in cold blood.

Many Iranian-Americans concerned at the listing and the legacy of appeasement of the current Iranian regime have organized to voice their opposition to the State Department’s FTO listing of the MEK. They have held numerous seminars and public events to educate the public about the facts of the case. In a large rally opposite the State Department on August 26, thousands of Iranian Americans joined former US officials to call again on Secretary Hillary Clinton to delist the MEK.

There have been strong calls by former US officials from both parties to delist MEK from the State Department’s FTO listing and provide protection for Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The appeals by three joint chiefs of staff of the U.S. armed forces, a former commander of NATO, a former national security adviser to the president, a former attorney general, two former directors of the CIA, two former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N., a former Homeland Security secretary, a former White House chief of staff, a former commandant of the Marine Corps, a former policy planning director of the State Department, a former FBI director, and a director of Counterterrorism at the State Departmenthas apparently troubled the Iranian regime forcing it to launch the recent disinformation campaign against its main opposition.

Recently, a bi-partisan panel was held in Washington D.C. on July 18, 2011. The panel was joined by General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1997-2001) and Howard Dean, former Chair, Democratic National Committee and other US former officials. The speakers expressed dismay over the administration’s failure to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and its failure to review delisting of MEK from FTO list.

General Hugh Shelton stated, “The State Department has failed to provide any, either classified or declassified, information that states why the MEK should have been placed on the list in the first place. They also last week, exceeded the 180 days that they had been given by the Court to produce evidence to substantiate their reasons why the MEK is on the list. I say, Wake up, State Department, take the MEK off the FTO list today.”

Referring to the recent heightened campaign by the Iranian regime and its U.S.-based lobby to overshadow the growing consensus in the U.S. Congress and among policy and political circles on the need to immediately de-list the MEK, Governor Dean stated: “These people are not terrorists. You see in the paper the pro-Iranian lobbyist saying, well, they’re a cult and they’re this and they’re that. Well, first of all, I don’t believe that’s true, but even if it were, does that justify the murder in cold blood of people who are under American protection? I think not. Let’s stop the name calling and the foolishness and look at this for what it is. This is genocide, and we will not have it.”

Many members of the US Congress have also joined the calls for removing MEK from FTO list and protection of Ashraf. On July 28, 2011 a bi-partisan panel was held by members of U.S. Congress and senior former public officials.

The panel, held at the U.S. House of Representatives, praised the unanimous adoption of a language to H.R. 2583 to make it the policy of the United States to “prevent the forcible relocation of Camp Ashraf residents inside Iraq and facilitate the robust presence of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq in Camp Ashraf.”

The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said, “Now, the government of Iraq knows full well what the position of the U.S. House of Representatives is as stated by our committee … and it’s time for the Obama administration to follow suit and to make sure that Ashraf residents receive the protections that they were promised, that they are entitled to. There is no time to waste.”

The Florida lawmaker added, “There’s no guarantee that the government of Iraq and their security forces will not repeat their past unacceptable behavior [the April 8 massacre] because they have paid no price for it in the international community. The safety of the residents of Camp Ashraf is in jeopardy. It’s in jeopardy right now, right this moment. It will be in jeopardy until the international community says that this is unacceptable. This is the critical time for the U.S. to stand up and do the right thing.”

Judge Ted Poe (R-Texas) who is a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee stated: “I have seen everything that they [State Department] have to offer and I am not convinced that the MEK should stay on the foreign terrorist organization list. So I introduced a resolution, along with about 80 cosponsors — republicans and democrats — to delist the MEK. It’s time to do that because as long as the MEK is designated as an FTO it will be harder to preserve freedom for those people in Camp Ashraf. [Iraq’s Prime Minister] Mr. Maliki and his government and the Iranian government both use that designation by the United States as a reason to oppress those residents,”

The fact is that the MEK listing has been a main stumbling block against democratic change in Iran. The Iranian regime has used this label to arrest demonstrators in Tehran’s streets during 2009 uprisings and has executed prisoners supporting the MEK. Ali Saremi, 63 was executed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on December 28, 2010 for affiliation with MEK and visiting his son in camp Ashraf. Jafar Kazemi, 47 and Mohammad Ali Haj-Aghaii, 52 were hanged in Evin prison on the same basis on January 24, 2011. There are many other prisoners in Iran, whose lives are endangered by continued MEK designation as a terrorist organization.

The injustice against MEK must end; the continued listing of MEK will result in more killings in Camp Ashraf and of MEK supporters in Iran. Secretary Hillary Clinton should remove the MEK from the US Department of State’s FTO list based on facts and evidence as demanded by many Iranian-Americans and prominent US dignitaries.

Joseph Omidvar is an Iranian Scholar in Middle Eastern Studies now living in exile.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1109/S00004/truth-will-trump-fiction-in-iran-opposition-case.htm

MEK FTO List Has Put Innocent Lives At Risk

OfficialWire.com

My name is Hanif Hosseindost born in 1980 in Rasht in northern Iran.  All my family members are in Camp Ashraf. 
 
I was active in the student protests during Khatami’s presidential period in 1382.  In the universities, these protests ended in clashes between protesters and the Revolutionary Guards ( Pasdaran).  I was arrested and taken to the notorious Evin prison.  After months of psychological torture and interrogation, I was transferred to section 209.
 
From my early ages, I was always harassed and intimidated by Mullahs’ thugs, because I had relatives in Camp Ashraf.  After my arrest, monthly meetings were organized for my wife and I, to force us join a smear campaign against the MEK (PMOI Mujahedin) in different countries and poison public opinion. They told us they are enlisting families of Camp Ashraf to work in a massive campaign under supervision of the Mullahs Intelligence.
 
During this time, I was deprived of basic needs as a citizen. I was banned from education, the opportunity to work or even associate with other people. More than that, having no social status according to the Mullahs; I was not allowed to acquire the licence to set up my own business and make ends meet. Once in a while we were summoned and interrogated.

Most other people who had a similar situation were kept after being summoned for days on end, only to be bribed for money and released. Others were hanged; Jafar Kazemi and Haj Aghaii, or tortured to death; Mohsen Doghmechi and many are still in the dungeons.

The animosity of regime thugs and Bassijis against MEK supporters and families has been a known fact in the public. This fear is depicted through dozens of TV serials, programs and Political speeches each day slurring abuse against the MEK.

The simple reason for all the hardship we faced was that I had family members in Camp Ashraf and having been active against the Mullahs dictatorship in various humanitarian campaigns. I was unwilling to succumb to pressure. 
 
I was one of the protesters during the 2009 sham election protests which led to an uprising.  I was arrested and released on bail a number of times, since there were numerous attempts to buy and cow me. 

According to a number of witnesses, including my grandmother, on March 5, 2010, my brother was tricked into the woods in Gilan (a town in northern Rasht province) where he was subsequently lynched by Intelligence agents of the Mullahs.
 
His death was intended to intimidate and break down our resistance. They had tortured him out of shape before they had put the rope around his neck. This savage act was to send a clear message to anyone who dared speak out against the Velayat Fagih (one man representing God on Earth founded by Khomeini and ruled by Khamenei).

In no time, the whole town had found out through a huge psychological campaign led by the Mullahs to quash their sympathy towards my family.
I embarked to file a legal complaint against my brothers’ murderers, but  the remaining witnesses refrained from supporting my claim out of fear, including my own grandmother.

They continued to exert pressure on me to return to Iran and cooperate with the regime even when I had escaped.  The Iranian regime agents have so far carried out more than 450 assassinations of MEK supporters, families and members and other dissidents outside Iran.
 
With the hundreds of thousands and more like me, who have sacrificed for ”Freedom” it is now the US Secretary of State’s fair and just decision that could draw a red line between our butchers and us. 

For all of us who have had a hand in the 2009 protests and who make the basic girds of the social movement in Iran, one definite step is crucial: De-list the MEK that has been the main threat only to the butchers in Iran. 

We are those with firsthand experience of taming the Mullahs. It is time for the US to side with us.
 
My uncle, Saeed Chavoshi , was one of the 36 massacred on 8 April 2011. He was a kind, responsible, tolerant and loving uncle. However, the Iraqi’s pieced his heart with US provided bullets and crushed his friends to death with US Humvees.

I and many more in Iran could not understand where US humanitarian values stood with regards to this scene:

Accountability for neglected moral, ethical and International obligations on one side, elongating the decision to delist the MEK on the other will only embolden our killers in Iran and in Iraq.

My pregnant wife was kicked unconscious in Iran, and we lost a child not because the MEK is seeking regime change, but because the Mullahs have been given a wrong message by the FTO list, a blank cheque against dissidents.

The moral and ethical question is: Does the US endorse butchers and State terrorism and nuclear warmongers?

The legal question is: is the State Department above US law?

Other looming questions that boggle the mind and fuel ones impetus to strive for more “Rights” are: 

How many more scenes of loved ones butchered to death do we have to see?

Have you ever lived with the conscience of your brothers’ innocent hanging haunting you all the time?

Would you endorse such murders?

Are innocent lives important to you?

Would it matter for any of you, if you knew that taking one step would stop or at least limit all this bloodshed?

Is Human Rights betrayed? This is the question.
 
Dear Mrs. Clinton,

Millions in Iran have already chosen out of dire need for Freedom to support the MEK. This choice cannot be seen on websites or polls.

It will not be conveyed to you through Mullah Pundits posing as the movement in Iran; it is in our hearts until we obtain our rights .The same right bravely protected by US President Abraham Lincoln, who guided his country through the most devastating experience in its national history.

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, we await your sincere decision. It is the right thing to de-list the “freedom movement.

Hanif Hosseindost, student activist and 2009 protester and also familly member of MEK, whos uncle was shot dead in Camp Ashraf by Iraqi troops. He has escaped a death penalty in Iran for having relatives in camp Ashraf.

http://news.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=173598

Obama’s Iran Appeasement Syndrome

TOWNHALL.COM

Calling President Obama’s approach toward Iran “bad policy” is like calling a rotten egg a failed omelet.

The Iranian regime is an avowed enemy of the US and the West by virtue of its stated goals and its violent actions. The Iranian government’s visceral, unmitigated hatred of the United States and its hostile intentions are manifest in every speech by President Ahmadinejad and every edict from the mullahs of the ruling Islamic High Council. No American should doubt that Iran is at war with the US and the West and will escalate its hostilities as new weapons and new resources become available.

None of this is new or controversial among people who have followed Iran’s actions since the mullahs seized power in 1979; the most potent and portentous symbol of the Iranian revolution were the 52 Americans held hostage there for 444 days. Indeed, virulent anti-Americanism has been a source of national identity for the Iranian regime from its inception. What should worry Americans more than Iran’s posture is that such commonsense statements are heresy in the Obama White House.

The naïve hand of friendship extended by President Obama to this hostile regime has led to a series of humiliations and increasingly dangerous strategic threats. Since President Obama took office and sent Nowrouz greetings to the Iranian people, the regime has responded by — holding three innocent American youths hostage, accelerating their nuclear weapons program, violently suppressing democratic movements, providing weapons and materiel to terrorists who attack American troops in Iraq, and coddling enemies of America including Hamas, Hezbollah, Hugo Chavez, and Bashir al Assad.

But nowhere is President Obama more out of touch with the reality of the Iranian threat than in his treatment of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (or MEK), the Iranian dissident movement.

The MEK was put on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 1997 by the Clinton administration as a sop the Islamist regime. It was a condition demanded by the ruling mullahs in Tehran because they hated and feared the MEK. Thousands of MEK members have been killed by the regime. Tehran maintains a constant propaganda barrage attacking the MEK and millions of dollars have been spent to curry resistance to the MEK in the West.

In recognition of the changed, democratic character of the MEK, both Great Britain and the European Union have taken the MEK off their terrorist lists. The list of American foreign policy experts calling for the de-listing of the MEK is impressive: a former Attorney General, two former US Ambassadors to the UN, a former Director of the FBI, and a former Secretary of Homeland Security, to name only a few. Additionally, almost 100 members of Congress have signed a resolution calling for removal of the MEK from the terrorist roster.

While the continued blacklisting of the MEK is unreasonable and illogical, it is eerily consistent with Obama’s selective indignation when civilians are bludgeoned to death by police in Islamic regimes. Obama’s lack of support for the massive democratic dissent in the streets of Tehran in 2009 was shocking, but he welcomed the recent uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria despite the prominent presence of radical Islamists in the leadership of those protests. Obama committed American forces to help topple the dictator Gaddafi, but has not committed America and prestige and power to help the pro-democracy forces in Iran.

What is the thread that ties Obama’s strange and inconsistent policies together? The consistency lies in the peculiar ideology Obama brings to foreign policy decisions.

President Obama pledged during his campaign that an “open hand” would be extended by his administration to all nations, friend or foe. Disastrously enough, he has kept this promise. This has required overlooking mortal threats such as those posed by the Iranian regime, and ignoring potential allies like the MEK. It also explains why President Obama and his appointees in the US State Department have resisted firmer measures against Iran. In plain language, Obama’s ideology blinds him to the serious danger a nuclear-armed, anti-democratic Iran poses to the United States and our allies.

The United States urgently needs to confront and oppose Iran’s terrorist agenda through strong diplomatic and economic measures. A simple first step to signal our serious intentions would be to support Iran’s internal dissidents, a strategy which should begin with lifting the outdated and invalid terrorist stigma from the Mujahideen-e Khalq.

When Iran’s internal democratic forces see that the United States will no longer tolerate that nation’s backing for international terrorism, we will begin to see an unraveling of that regime’s despotic grip on its people.

Tom Tancredo represented Colorado’s 6th Congressional District from 1999 until 2009 where he chaired the 100+ member bipartisan Immigration Reform Caucus. He currently serves as co-chairman of Team America PAC and president of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. He authored “In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security.

http://townhall.com/columnists/tomtancredo/2011/08/30/obamas_iran_appeasement_syndrome