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

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

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

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD (AP) — The departing head of the U.N. mission in Iraq on Monday bluntly disputed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s account of their farewell meeting, saying he did not embrace the government’s efforts to deport a group of Iranian exiles by the end of the year.

The public disavowal was rare for the U.N. office in Baghdad, which goes to great lengths to avoid engaging in political disputes.

At issue is a group of several thousand Iranian exiles who live at the remote Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province. The Ashraf residents were formally allied with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in resisting Tehran’s clerical regime, and have been a thorn in al-Maliki’s side as he bolsters ties with Iran.

A deadly April raid on the camp by Iraqi forces drew international criticism of Baghdad’s treatment of the group, and al-Maliki responded by pledging to deport the Ashraf residents by the end of the year.

U.N. monitors have been among the only people the Iraqi government has allowed to go inside the camp since the April raid. But they have made very few, if any, public comments about the raid or the government’s plan to deport the Ashraf residents.

In a statement after they met to say goodbye Sunday, al-Maliki said U.N. envoy Ad Melkert affirmed U.N. support on a bevy of matters, “including the issue of Camp Ashraf and the necessity of implementing the Cabinet’s decree to deport its residents outside Iraq by the end of this year.”

In one of his last acts after two years as envoy to Iraq, the mild-mannered Melkert flatly said that was not true.

“The U.N. continues to advocate that Camp Ashraf residents be protected from forcible deportation, expulsion or repatriation,” Melkert’s office said in a statement Monday. It said Melkert reiterated the position during his meeting Sunday with the prime minister.