AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BAGHDAD — Searches of Iranian opposition members have delayed their departure from a camp in Iraq for a UN-approved site near Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer and a legal adviser to the exiles said on Friday.

A group of some 400 Iranians opposed to the regime in Tehran was to depart on Friday from Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, for a new location called Camp Liberty, as part of a process that aims to see them resettled outside Iraq.

The planned move is part of a December 25 deal between the UN and Iraq, which was reached after extensive talks, under which around 3,400 members of the opposition People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) are to leave Camp Ashraf, which the Iraqi government has said will be closed in April.

“Four hundred is a big number, and we are still searching them and their belongings,” an Iraqi army major told AFP by telephone on Friday evening.

“We are also calling for backup for security reasons because we are worried about moving them from Diyala (province) to Baghdad with a small number of soldiers,” the major said.

Behzad Saffari, the legal adviser for residents of the camp, told AFP by telephone that the seaches began around 2:00 pm (1100 GMT), and that more than 300 people had been searched as of 10:30 pm (1930 GMT).

It was not clear when they would depart the camp.

“They search all the bags, every single item,” said Saffari, who arrived in Ashraf ahead of the US-led invasion of 2003 and is to travel with the group to Camp Liberty, near Baghdad airport.

He said that Iraqi forces had raised objections to items including cameras and cooking knives, making for a lengthy process.

“It shows that they just want to be difficult,” Saffari said. “It’s been a long wait.”

Now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein allowed the PMOI to set up Camp Ashraf during his 1980-88 war with Iran.

The left-wing PMOI was founded in 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran, but took up arms against Iran’s new clerical rulers after the Islamic revolution of 1979.

According to the US State Department, which has blacklisted the PMOI as a terrorist organisation since 1997, members of the group have carried out a large number of attacks against Iranian targets, and also against Americans.

The PMOI announced in 2001 that it had renounced violence, and is seeking to have the terrorist designation lifted.

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THE HUFFINGTON POST (UK)

The mysterious assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist on 12 January, raised questions on who was responsible for a series of similar killings.

Rumours initiated by pro-Iran bloggers made headlines claiming it was a “joint Mossad-MEK” operation. None of the claims were backed by anything beyond an unnamed “secret Israeli source.”

A month later, the NBC news ran a piece with the same headline: Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists. A story that seemed designed to pour fuel on an almost extinguished fire.

When asked about a possible MEK involvement, an unnamed US official told NBC “All your inclinations are correct.” Another unnamed official in the same story cautioned “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.”

The MEK had rejected any involvement right after the attack. So why would this suddenly be a news story again?

It is very obvious the NBC pitch is designed primly to demonise the MEK/PMOI which constitutes the principal opposition to the Iranian regime today.

The story prompted a series of articles both in favour and against the assassinations. The common denominator remained MEK-bashing, as intended. The mullahs and their US lobbies were pleased as Punch.

A CNN report who tried to verify the NBC claim ended quoting other senior US officials that “they are not sure of the [MEK] connection.”

What would the MEK gain from such terror acts? An organisation that stopped its military operations more than a decade ago, showed extreme cooperativeness with US-led coalition forces in Iraq in handing in all its weapons, was successfully removed from European terrorist lists after years of thorough legal investigations; and has won a similar U.S. Federal Court of Appeals’ ruling – pending implementation by the State Department for nearly 20 months.

Getting involved in assassinations would certainly be the last thing they need at this stage.

While the MEK remained committed to non-violent means, the Obama Administration abandoned their share of the written commitment which was to protect the unarmed MEK members in Iraq until their final disposition. This has so far cost the lives of some 50 MEK members who were cold-bloodedly murdered during Iraqi army raids on their camp since 2009, while US troops were standing by and watching.

The State Department, unable to produce a shred of evidence to back MEK’s Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) designation nearly two years after the D.C. Court told them to do so, obviously feels frustrated by a growing number of high ranking former officials publicly questioning the Administration’s hypocrisy when it comes to respecting the rule of law.

These renowned personalities, who served the United States honourably for many years, include former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Patrick Kennedy and Governor Ed Rendell from the Democrats as well as Rudy Giuliani, Andrew Card, John Bolton and others from the Republicans, plus Former FBI and CIA Directors and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I call on the State Department of the United States to be honest, to be truthful, and to follow the facts,” Kennedy told a conference in New York on Feb. 14, referring to MEK’s bizarre FTO designation.

With the elections coming up in a few months, the last thing the State Department needs is the embarrassment of being seen insincere and even incapable of responding to demands of its own courts to provide facts for its claims.

Attributing assassination of Iranian scientists to the MEK which no doubt would serve, most of all, Iran’s state of terror, could also serve the US State Department with the following:

A – Short of any proofs, it would help justify MEK’s FTO designation with fiction rather than facts.

B – Sending an indirect warning to those former officials who don’t buy Tehran-orchestrated defamation of the Iranian resistance that: If you continue, we’ll charge you with providing support for terrorism.

C – Fabricating links between MEK and Israel would also fuel the liberal and the left to produce anti-MEK sentiments which help bringing the State Department out of isolation in the public opinion in this case.

D – Justify abandoning protection of the refugees in Camp Ashraf.

Whichever of the reasons, producing phony fiction stories about MEK death squads teaming up with Israel, make those unnamed US Administration officials look more ridiculous than right.

It will certainly further add salt to the wounds of those in Iran who had hopes in President Obama when they poured in millions into the streets of Tehran following the 2009 sham presidential elections only to be disillusioned with Obama’s “non interference” which was equal to a green light for their cruel suppression.

Even many Iranians who are not necessarily in love with the MEK see USA’s forsaken promise to protect Ashraf and letting the unarmed refugees to be slaughtered by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s thugs as a betrayal.

The least expected from this Administration is to distance itself from such ludicrous disinformation by publicly denouncing these baseless accusations.

Firouz Mahvi, Iranian Opposition Activist

PRNewswire

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On Wednesday, 8 February 2012, the NBC Rock Center TV program website ran a provocative story, “Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News.” The article claims, “Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.”

In conducting covert operations against Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers, the NBC story asserts that Israel’s intelligence service supposedly uses as a proxy the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK), an Iranian dissident group the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization.

According to Professor Raymond Tanter, former member of the National Security Council staff in the Reagan-Bush White House and now President of the Iran Policy Committee, “Left out of the NBC story is that the State Department categorizes the MeK as a terrorist group despite the law and facts.” Tanter added, “Tehran’s anti-MeK propaganda machine also routinely blames the MeK for terrorist actions, irrespective of evidence to the contrary.”

Consider an October 2011 criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department against Iranian agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force charged with involvement in a foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. In discussing Tehran’s role in the plot, the former head of the Department of Justice 2007-2009, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, made an assessment of the law and facts concerning the MeK terrorist designation. General Mukasey said on 14 October 2011, “Continued listing [of the MeK] is totally unjustified as a legal matter. There are no facts that justify maintaining MeK on the terrorist list.”

And what is Tehran’s response when confronted with evidence of its own complicity in the Saudi assassination plot? Professor Tanter said, “The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security blames Israel and the United States and asserts MeK involvement. Even the State Department promptly denied MeK responsibility in the plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador and accused Tehran of fabricating news stories to exploit skepticism about the scheme.”

Tanter added, “A similar pattern is apparent in the accusation reported in the NBC story by Mohammad Javad Larijani, a senior aide to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, of alleged collusion between the MeK and Israel to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. “Larijani simply fabricated a narrative associating Israel with the MeK to exploit uncertainty about the nature of those who are engaged in assassinating Iranian scientists,” according to Tanter.

The NBC story claiming to connect Israel to the MeK also alleges an association of the MeK to al Qaeda. Supposedly, the MeK cut a deal with Pakistani-born terrorist Ramzi Yousef a year after he masterminded the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. Yousef also built a bomb that MeK agents allegedly placed in a shrine in Mashad, Iran, in June 1994. 

The IPC book, Terror Tagging authored by Professor Tanter with the Foreword by General Mukasey, refers to the bombing of the Mashad shrine mentioned in the NBC report implicating the MeK and linking it to one of the operatives in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—Yousef. Tanter stated, “Contrary to the NBC anonymous U.S. government source, an open Pakistani source accuses a Pakistani militant not the MeK as having connections to Yousef to carry out the 1994 shrine bombing.”

Although [the Iranian] government blamed the Mujahedin-e-Khalq in a TV show to avoid sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni, the Pakistani daily “News” of March 27, 1995 reported, “Pakistani investigators have identified a 24-year-old religious fanatic Abdul Shakoor residing in Lyari in Karachi, as an important Pakistani associate of Ramzi Yousef. Abdul Shakoor had intimate contacts with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and was responsible for the June 20, 1994, massive bomb explosion at the shrine Imam Ali Reza in Mashhad.

At the time of the 1994 Mashad bombing, the MeK denied any role. And a few years later, during one of the regime’s regular factional feuds, a former member of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence asserted that the bombing had been perpetrated by the Ministry, and in particular, by Saeed Emami, then one of its deputies.

A main theme of the NBC story is its assertion, anonymously backed by American officials, of collusion between Israel and the MeK. That claim provides a convenient rationale for the Iranian regime to engage in terrorist attacks against Israeli diplomats. “Accusing Israel of using as a proxy a ‘terrorist’ organization to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists provides false legitimacy for Iranian assassination plots in Washington as well as a trio of plots and bombings against Israelis in New Delhi, Tbilisi, Georgia, and Bangkok, Thailand,” according to Professor Tanter.

Regarding the anonymous leak that lends a veneer of credibility to the NBC story, on 11 February 2012, former Director of the FBI, Judge Louis Freeh, called for an investigation of the leak to NBC because it damaged U.S. national security; and former Governor of Vermont and presidential candidate, Howard Dean, said, “Either the source committed treason or committed the usual Washington sin of lying to the press.”

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SOURCE: Iran Policy Committee