U.S. investigates abduction of Iranian dissidents in Iraq

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http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3329

London, Aug. 15 - The US military says it is investigating the apparent kidnapping of two Iranian opposition members who disappeared earlier this month in Baghdad and it is demanding their release, the Associated Press reported from Baghdad.

The People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, or Mujahideen Khalq (MeK), had said two of its members were kidnapped by Iraqi interior ministry special forces troops, but ministry officials said they had no information about the abductions.

The US military has now confirmed the abduction and said it was working to release the men, adding that it had checked interior ministry units and stations for information.

The MeK named the abducted men as Hossein Pouyan and Mohammad-Ali Zahedi. The group called for immediate action on the part of the Multinational Force in Iraq to secure the release of the two men.

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1. Sounds like an "extraordinary rendition" to me.

The U.S. Government is now openly supporting the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian resistance movement designated as terrorist organization by the US State Department. On June 20th of this year, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq held a conference at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which is where many foreign journalists stay and is under the full protection of the U.S. Army. I was in the area of the hotel that day, and saw at least 10 U.S. tanks heading in the direction of the hotel to provide additional security. I knew of the conference in advance, because of a report issued to all NGO’s working in Iraq, which mentioned that the conference would take place. The report warned of an increased danger of attacks against the hotel, as anti- U.S. insurgents were likely to attempt to disrupt the conference <1>.

The Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) is a Marxist oriented Iranian resistance organization founded in the 1960’s to topple the pro- western regime of Reza Shah. Since that time, MEK has carried out scores of attacks and assassinated a number of Iranian government officials. MEK killed several American military and civilian personnel in Iran during the 1970’s, and assisted in the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 where American civilians were held hostage. Though MEK participated in the 1979 revolution, which toppled the Shah, once the Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated power in Iran, MEK moved their headquarters to Paris and continued resistance activities against the Islamic Republic. In 1981, MEK bombed the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, killing 70 high-ranking Iranian officials. MEK established its military headquarters in Iraq in 1986, where Saddam Hussein became their main source of funding and protection. In return, the MEK fought alongside Iraqi forces during the war against Iran in the 1980’s, and assisted Saddam’s security forces in putting down the Kurdish and Shiite revolts after the first Gulf War in 1991. The majority of Saddam’s recently discovered mass graves are filled with the Shiite and Kurdish dead from this uprising. MEK military operations against Iranian targets continued through the 1990’s. The U.S. Department of State added the MEK to its official list of terrorist organizations in 1997, and shut down the organization’s Washington, DC office in 2003 <2>.

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7199