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The People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran is set to be taken off the UK terrorism blacklist. It’s a mistake - this is a violent, criminal group

We are now used to seeing British newspapers and commentators look to the US in amazement and at times with more than a bit of smugness. Perhaps it’s difficult not to be smug when the leader of the so-called free world carries out torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and secret CIA prisons.

The phrase "land of the free and home of the brave" rings hollow when set alongside extraordinary rendition as well as the curtailing of civil rights in the US after the atrocities on September 11 2001. America has lost its moral compass, they say, rather self-righteously at times, implying that these things just do not happen in the UK.

Well, many unfortunate things have happened in the UK during the past few years, but one of the most disgraceful of them all was yesterday’s court of appeal ruling that the people’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI - also known as a the Mujahedin-e Khalq organisation, MeK or MKO) should be removed from the government’s blacklist of terrorist organisations.

The Home Office has argued that the temporary cessation of terrorist acts by this organisation was quite possibly for pragmatic reasons and that these attacks might be resumed in the future. Of course, one could ask the government why it has allowed this terrorist organisation and its affiliated bodies to carry their activities - including organising, propaganda, and fundraising - with impunity in this country over the last two and a half decades.

The British government said that it is opposed to the removal of the PMOI from the blacklist, in order to protect the public. Its stance, in other words, has nothing to do with protecting the people of Iran or Iraq from this ruthless organisation.

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Quiet US Confession

CASMII Press Release

12/05/08 "ICH" — - In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq , the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all.

According to a report by the LA Times correspondent Tina Susman in Baghdad: "A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was cancelled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all."

The US, which until two weeks ago had never provided any proof for its allegations, finally handed over its "evidence" of the Iranian origin of these weapons to the Iraqi government. Last week, an Iraqi delegation to Iran presented the US "evidence" to Iranian officials. According to Al-Abadi, a parliament member from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance who was on the delegation, the Iranian officials totally refuted "training, financing and arming" militant groups in Iraq . Consequently the Iraqi government announced that there is no hard evidence against Iran.

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We are former members of MKO who are appealing to you and your colleagues to use your influence and contacts to allow members of MKO in camp Ashraf the opportunity to see their families.

Some politicians and lawmakers have chosen to stand with the MKO and have spoken on their behalf in different occasions (like removing them from the terrorist list, falsely presenting them as a “third alternative”, and so on).

We are asking that you make an appeal on behalf of people who are left without a voice in their plight.

As you know there are more than 3000 members of MKO stationed in Iraq on an isolated location called Camp Ashraf (or Ashraf City as is also known). Here they have been imprisoned since 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

As relations between the governments of Iran and Iraq got better, some attempts were made by families of MKO members in camp Ashraf to arrange for a visit with their sons & daughters. These attempts were made primarily by the parents or siblings of the members in camp Ashraf. The very first attempts started as early as 2003, some months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Family members had to travel on very harsh and dangerous roads to reach Camp Ashraf which at that point was under the control of the United States Army.

Today however the MKO have made it impossible and downright dangerous for family members to get anywhere near Camp Ashraf. Parents and siblings who haven’t met their loved ones in years or decades are turned away at the gates under threats and abuse. The Mojahedin accuse them of being “spies” for the Iranian regime, even though all they want to do is meet their sons and daughters after years of separation.

This matter goes beyond politics and is just a basic matter of human rights. We ask respectfully that you make any effort possible to convince the leaders of the MKO to do the right thing in this matter and allow the families to visit their loved ones in camp Ashraf.

Please voice your concern on this matter to the MKO and demand that they allow the families of their own members to reconnect with their parents and siblings.

Here are some articles and videos highlighting this issue:

Children of ‘the resistance’ – Canadian National Post article from 2006

Parents of MKO members in Camp Ashraf - Baghdad 2003 - YouTube Video / Parents getting denied to enter Camp Ashraf and accused of being agents of the Iranian Regime

With regards

Karim Haggi

Iran Peyvand Association

Asia Times

By Gareth Porter 
WASHINGTON - The George W Bush administration has long pushed the "laptop documents" - 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop - as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear program.

But those documents have also been regarded with great suspicion by US and foreign analysts. German officials identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the US

State Department as a terrorist organization.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad.

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An Iranian envoy also addressed the council, accusing the United States of supporting the Iraq-based People’s Mujahideen (MKO) guerrilla group. The MKO is banned as a terrorist group in Iran, the United States and the European Union.
"Its elements and members continue to enjoy support and receive safe haven in the U.S. and some European countries, including some member states of the EU," the envoy said.

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