EXCLUSIVE-Iraq tribunal sets sights on Iran opposition group(MEK or MOK)

[maddezmom]

BAGHDAD, March 12 (Reuters) - A top Iraqi prosecutor plans to bring charges against senior members of an exiled Iranian opposition group over its alleged role in oppressing Iraqi Shi'ites and Kurds under former president Saddam Hussein.

Jaafar al-Moussawi, chief prosecutor of the Iraqi High Tribunal, said on Sunday the Mujahideen Khalq helped Saddam suppress Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north during a 1991 uprising after Iraq's defeat in the first Gulf War.

"We have full evidence implicating the Iranian group in siding with the former regime in committing crimes against humanity," Moussawi told Reuters. A spokesman for the Mujahideen denied the accusations.

The Mujahideen once fought the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran but soon after the 1979 Islamic Revolution quarrelled also with the new rulers in Tehran, whom they sought to overthrow from bases set up in the 1980s in Saddam's Iraq, then at war with Iran.

more:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO234303.htm

some links:

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9158/


The State Department says MEK is a terror group. Human Rights Watch says it’s a cult. For the White House, MEK is a source of intelligence on Iran.

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:51 p.m. ET May 20, 2005
May 18 - A controversial exile movement cited by President George W. Bush as a source of information on Iran's nuclear ambitions is condemned for psychologically and physically abusing its own members in a new report by Human Rights Watch.

~snip~

MEK has long been controversial because of its history of violent attacks in Iran, its relationship with Saddam's regime and its background as a quasi-religious, quasi-Marxist radical resistance group founded in the era of the late Iranian shah. In 1997, the Clinton administration put MEK on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups. MEK's U.S. supporters, among whom at one point numbered dozens of members of Congress, charged that the Clinton administration only labeled MEK as a terrorist group as part of an ill-conceived attempt to improve relations with the ayatollahs who currently run Iran. However, the Bush administration added two alleged MEK front organizations to the State Department's terrorist list in 2003.

Despite the group's notoriety, Bush himself cited purported intelligence gathered by MEK as evidence of the Iranian regime's rapidly accelerating nuclear ambitions. At a March 16 press conference, Bush said Iran's hidden nuclear program had been discovered not because of international inspections but "because a dissident group pointed it out to the world." White House aides acknowledged later that the dissident group cited by the president is the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the MEK front groups added to the State Department list two years ago.

In an appearance before a House International Relations Subcommittee a year ago, John Bolton, the controversial State Department undersecretary who Bush has nominated to become US ambassador to the United Nations, was questioned by a Congressman sympathetic to MEK about whether it was appropriate for the U.S. government to pay attention to allegations about Iran supplied by the group. Bolton said he believed that MEK "qualifies as a terrorist organization according to our criteria." But he added that he did not think the official label had "prohibited us from getting information from them. And I certainly don't have any inhibition about getting information about what's going on in Iran from whatever source we can find that we deem reliable."

much much more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7902719/site/newsweek/


Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO)
National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA)
People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI)
National Council of Resistance (NCR)
National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
Muslim Iranian Student's Society
The fall of Saddam Hussein‘s regime affected the circumstances of the designated foreign terrorist organization Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The MEK was allied with the Iraqi regime and received most of its support from it. The MEK assisted the Hussein regime in suppressing opposition within Iraq, and performed internal security for the Iraqi regime. The National Liberation Army was the military wing of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/mek.htm

[doublethink]

1. Thanks for posting this ...

MEK, MKO, NCRI ... believed to be working closely (with the Bush administration) inside Iran covertly to upset the apple cart there so to speak. But didn't the U.S. work with Al-Queda at one time too? Probably still do, but what do I know? :shrug: Peace. K&R.

[maddezmom]

2. yes, I think you're correct

The US gov't are users, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

[Roland99]

3. Which invariably leads to the law of unintended consquences

[TheBaldyMan]

4. MEK is the WH source for all those "Iran has WMD" claims

although they have officially forsworn the gun as a means of political change the reality doesn't bear much scrutiny. They are still armed and quartered at US expense within Iraq and are allegedly conducting covert operations inside Iran from bases inside Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The WH is very keen on them, they speak their language (i.e. totally divorced from reality-ese).

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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