People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran

"MKO" redirects here. For the Nigerian politician, see Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola.

People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
Leader	Maryam Rajavi
Gegründet	1965
Hauptsitz	Ashraf, Iraq
Ideology	Islamic socialism
Website
Official Website of the PMOI

The People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI, also MEK, MKO) (Persian: سازمان مجاهدين خلق ايران sāzmān-e mojāhedin-e khalq-e irān) is a paramilitary Islamic Socialist organization that advocates the overthrow of Iran's current government.

Founded in 1965, the PMOI is the main organization in the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an "umbrella coalition" which was founded in 1981. NCRI claims to be a parliament in exile and aims to establish a democratic, secular and coalition government in Iran. Some parties with outside interest in PMOI and NCRI, including the FBI and Michael Axworthy, a senior public servant in the United Kingdom, maintain NCRI is merely a front group for the PMOI. The PMOI's armed wing is called the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA). The Iranian government officially refers to the organization as the Monafeqin (i.e., "Hypocrites"). The PMOI and the NCRI were the first entities that revealed Iran's clandestine nuclear activities in 2002, which has turned to be a major concern of the international community today. Recently on Feb 20, 08, the NCRI revealed another clandestine nuclear site of Islamic Republic.[2]

The PMOI is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, European Union, Iraq and Iran. Although the European Court of Justice has overturned this designation in December 2006, the Council of the EU declared on 30 January 2007 that it would maintain the organization on the blacklist. (See: Designation as a terrorist organization) Following the war 2003, several US agencies interviewed and screened every single resident of Ashraf, and eventually the “United States” recognized their status as the protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.[3] Following the investigations which lasted 16 months, senior American officials said extensive interviews by officials of the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had not come up with any basis to bring charges against any members of the group (New York Times, 27 July 2004) [4] On Nov 30, 2007 the British Court,The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission(POAC) ruled to the annulment of the terrorist designation and ordered the British government to remove PMOI off the terrorist list On Jan. 23, 2008, the European Council's Parliamentary Assembly, meeting in Strasbourg, backed a report attacking the methods used by the UN Security Council and the EU to blacklist individuals and groups suspected of having terrorist connections abuse basic rights and are "completely arbitrary". This issue covers the case of the PMOI too. [5]

Other names

The People's Mujahedin of Iran is known by a variety of names including:

• Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MEK)
• The National Liberation Army of Iran
• (Disputed) National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) - the PMOI is the founding member of a wide coalition of organizations called the NCRI, while others including the U.S. FBI claims that the NCRI is either an "alias" for or a front group for the PMOI.
• Monafiqeen-e-Khalq (MKO) - the Iranian government consistently refers to the People's Mujahedin with this name, meaning "hypocrites of the people."

Note: the MEK alias is often used when the PMOI is referenced in the media, or by national governments around the world. The term MEK and PMOI are therefore interchangeable throughout this article.

Membership

The PMOI was believed to have a 30,000 – 50,000 strong armed guerrilla force, based in Iraq before the war 2003, but a membership of between 15,000 – 20,000 is considered more likely. In 2005 the US think-tank, Council on Foreign Relations, believed that the PMOI had 10,000 members, one-third to one-half of whom were fighters. The think-tank claims PMOI membership has dwindled, the organization has had little success attracting new recruits. According to a 2003 article by the New York Times, the PMOI would be composed of 5,000 — many of them female — fighters based in Iraq. A recent census of Ashraf, where the aging population of "fighters" is located, has a little more than 3500 members with less than 900 women there.

History

The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran was founded by middle-class students at Tehran University, Mohammad Hanifnejad, Saied Mohsen and Ali-Asghar Badizadegan in 1965. The PMOI opposed the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, considering him corrupt and oppressive. In its first five years, the group primarily engaged in ideological work, combining their interpretation of Islam and the experiences of Marxist philosophy. Before the PMOI had carried out any military operations against the Shah's government, a raid by the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, arrested the entire leadership and 90 percent of its cadres. All but one of its leaders were executed. Other members remained incarcerated for many years, with the last group, including Massoud Rajavi, being released just before Khomeini arrived in Tehran in January 1979.

In May 1975 the PMOI had an ideological split. The majority of PMOI leaders who had not been imprisoned voted to accept Marxism and declare the organization Marxist-Leninist. This was expressed in a pamphlet entitled Manifesto on Ideological Issues, were the central leadership declared "that after ten years of secret existence, four years of armed struggle, and two years of intense ideological rethinking, they had reached the conclusion that Marxism, not Islam, was the true revolutionary philosophy." Mujtabi Taleqani, son of Ayatallah Taleqani was one of these converts to Marxism. Thus after May 1975 there were two rival Mujahedins, each with its own publication, its own organization, and its own activities. Immediately after the Iranian Revolution the marxist Mujahedin remained itself "Peykar".

The PMOI conducted anti-Western attacks prior to the Islamic Revolution. Since then, it has conducted militant attacks against the interests of the cleric-dominated governmental system in Iran and abroad. According the U.S. Department of State and the presentation of the PMOI by the Foreign Affairs group of the Australian Parliament, the group has been accused of conducting several assassinations of U.S. military personnel and civilians working in Iran during the 1970s and of having actively supported the U.S. embassy takeover in Tehran in 1979. However, the organization claims the assassinations were carried out and conducted by a group which staged a coup inside the organization and killed some members of the PMOI.

Ideology: before and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution

The PMOI's ideology is based on a progressive interpretation of Islam, according to which elections and public suffrage are the sole indicators of political legitimacy. According to their publications, the Word of God and Islam are meaningless without freedom and respect for individual volition and choice. Their interpretation of Islam the Quran says that the most important characteristic distinguishing man from animals is his free will. It is on this basis that human beings are held accountable. Without freedom, no society can develop or progress. Although its leaders presents themselves as Muslims, the PMOI describes itself as a secular organization: "The National Council of Resistance believes in the separation of Church and State."

According to the U.S. Department of State' presentation of the PMOI, the philosophy of the PMOI is a combination of Marxism, Nationalism and Islam.

In more recent years under the guidance of Maryam Rajavi the organization has adopted strong principles in favor of women. Women have now assumed the most senior positions of responsibility within the ranks of the PMOI and although women make up only a third of fighters, two-thirds of its commanders are women. Rajavi ultimately believes that women should enjoy equal rights with men.

In 1981, the PMOI formed the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) with the stated goal of uniting the opposition to the Iranian government under one umbrella organization. The PMOI claims that in the past 25 years, the NCRI has evolved into a 540-member parliament-in-exile, with a specific platform that emphasizes free elections, gender equality and equal rights for ethnic and religious minorities. The PMOI claims that it also advocates a free-market economy and supports peace in the Middle East. However, the FBI claims that the NCRI "is not a separate organization, but is instead, and has been, an integral part of the [PMOI] at all relevant times" and that the NCRI is "the political branch" of the PMOI, rather than vice versa. Although the PMOI is today the main organization of the NCRI, the latter previously hosted other organizations, such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.

Repression under the Islamic government

The newly established theocratic government of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran began to feel threatened by the PMOI and launched a fierce campaign to crush it. Hundreds of PMOI supporters and members were killed from 1979 to 1981, and some 3,000 were arrested. Ultimately, the organization called for a massive demonstration on June 20 1981, to protest against the new leadership under the banner of Islam. At this demonstration, the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards) opened fire on the demonstrators and several hundred were killed.PMOI called this event a turning point in Iran’s contemporary history.

On 28 June 1981, two years after the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the PMOI detonated bombs at the headquarters of the since-dissolved Islamic Republic Party. Around 70 high-ranking officials, including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti (who was the second figure after Ayatollah Khomeini at the time), cabinet members, and members of parliament, were killed. Two months later, the PMOI detonated another bomb in the office of the president, killing President Rajai and Premier Mohammad Javad Bahonar. These are considered the most important attacks in the history of the PMOI against the Iranian government.

Eventually, the PMOI relocated to France, where it operated until 1986, when tension arose between Paris and Tehran over the Eurodif nuclear stake and the French citizens kidnapped in the Lebanon hostage crisis. After Rajavi flew to Baghdad, French hostages were released. The PMOI disclosed a tape of conversation by some Iranian official in the Iranian embassy in Paris showing the plot of repatriation of Massoud Rajavi to Iran. From then on, the PMOI resided in Iraq, protected by Saddam Hussein who had been at war with Tehran since 1980.

Over 30,000 political prisoners from the PMOI, and also from other opposition groups, were executed in 1988, following Operation Eternal Light. Dissident Ayatollah Montazeri has written in his memoirs that this massacre, deemed a crime against humanity, was ordered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and carried out by several high-ranking members of Iran's current government. Ahmad Khomeini son on Ayatollah Khomeini, whom Montazeri accused of collaboration in the killings, died mysteriously during the Chain Murders of Iran.

Relations with France in the mid-1980s

In 1986, after French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac struck a deal with Tehran for the release of French hostages held prisoners by the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the PMOI was forced to leave France and relocated in Iraq. Investigative journalist Dominique Lorentz has related the 1986 capture of French hostages to an alleged blackmail of France by Tehran concerning the nuclear program.

Relations with Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the Iranian government

The PMOI transferred its headquarters to Iraq in 1986, during the Iran-Iraq war. According to the US State Department, the PMOI received all of its military support and most of its financial assistance from Saddam's government until the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. But the PMOI denies these accusations and insists that it had always remained independent of Iraq. PMOI declared its impartiality in Gulf wars in 1991 and 2003. The PMOI also has used front organizations to solicit contributions from expatriate Iranian communities.

The PMOI's decision to move its headquarters to Iraq in the middle of the war, caused the PMOI to lose most of its supporters in Iran, regardless of their views towards the Iranian government. A report by the Foreign Affairs group of the Australian Parliament states "[The PMOI] is believed to have lost much of its popular support within Iran since siding with Iraq". The PMOI claims it has always maintained its independence from its Iraqi host and denies "siding with Iraq" during the Iran-Iraq War.

National Liberation Army of Iran

Further information: Operation Mersad

Near the end of the 1980-1988 war with Iran, a military force of 7000 members of the PMOI, armed and equiped by Saddam's Iraq and calling itself the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA), went into action. On July 26, 1988, six days after the Ayatollah Khomeini had announced his acceptance of the UN brokered ceasefire resolution, the NLA advanced under heavy Iraqi air cover, crossing the Iranian border from Iraq. It seized and razed to the ground the Iranian town of Islamabad-e Gharb. As it advanced further into Iran, Iraq ceased its air support and Iranian forces cut off NLA supply lines and counterattacked under cover of fighter planes and helicopter gunships. On July 29 the NLA anounced a voluntary withdrawal back to Iraq. Tehran claims to have killed 4500 NLA and Iraqi troops during the operation. The operation was called Foroughe Javidan (Eternal Shining) by the PMOI and the counterattack Operation Mersad by the Iranian forces.

Post-war

According to presentations of the PMOI by the U.S. Department of State and the Foreign Affairs group of the Australian Parliament, the PMOI are also accused of having assisted the Iraqi Republican Guard in suppressing the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings in Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Maryam Rajavi, who assumed the leadership role of the PMOI after a series of years as co-leader alongside her husband Massoud Rajavi, has been reported by former members of the PMOI as having said: "Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards." This has been formally denied by the PMOI.

In the following years the PMOI conducted several assassinations of political and military figures of the Islamic Republic, including Asadollah Lajevardi, who was known as the "butcher of Evin," in 1998 and deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyad Shirazi, who was assassinated on the doorsteps of his house on April 10 1999.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Main article: Surrender of People's Mujahedin of Iran (2003)

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, PMOI camps were bombed by coalition forces because of its alliance with Saddam Hussein. On April 15, the leaders of the PMOI entered into a ceasefire agreement with the coalition after the attack. Each compound surrendered without hostilities. In the operation, the US reportedly captured 6,000 PMOI fighters and over 2,000 pieces of military equipment.

After a four-month investigation by several U.S. agencies, including the State Department, only a handful of charges under U.S. criminal law were brought against PMOI members, all American citizens. The PMOI remains listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the Department of State. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared PMOI personnel in Ashraf protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. They are currently under the guard of US Military. Defectors from this group are housed separately in a refugee camp within Camp Ashraf, and protected by the Bulgarian Army.

2003 French raid

Further information: Irano-French relations

In June 2003 French police raided the PMOI's properties, including its base in Auvers-sur-Oise, under the orders of anti-terrorist magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière, after suspicions that it was trying to shift its base of operations there. 160 suspected PMOI members were then arrested. In response, 40 supporters began hunger strikes to protest the arrests, and ten immolated themselves in various European capitals. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy (Union for a Popular Movement) declared that the PMOI "recently wanted to make France its support base, notably after the intervention in Iraq", while Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of France's domestic intelligence service, claimed that the group was "transforming its Val d'Oise centre [near Paris]... into an international terrorist base".

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on South Asia, then accused the French of doing "the Iranian government's dirty work". Along with other members of Congress, he wrote a letter of protest to President Jacques Chirac, while longtime PMOI supporters such as Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, criticized Maryam Radjavi's arrest. However, the PMOI members were quickly released.

A "bargaining chip" between Tehran and Washington?

The same year that the French police raided the PMOI's properties in France, Tehran attempted to negotiate with Washington DC, proposing to withdraw military backing for Hamas and Hezbollah as well as give open access to their nuclear facilities in return for Western action in disbanding the PMOI, which was revealed by Newsnight, a BBC current affairs program, in 2007. The BBC uncovered a letter written after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 where Tehran made this offer The proposition was done in a secret letter given to Washington through Switzerland's help. According to the BBC and to what had been understood by the US State Department, the letter had received authorization from the highest levels of the Iranian government. According to Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of State secretary Colin Powell, interviewed by the BBC, the State Dept would first have positively considered the offer. But it would ultimately have been rejected by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Designation as a terrorist organization

On Nov 30, 2007 the British Court,The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission(POAC) ruled to the annulment of the terrorist designation and ordered the British government to remove PMOI off the terrorist list. There are a number of British Lords and MPs who believe PMOI should be taken off the list.[6][7][8]

The PMOI was designated as a terrorist organization by the United States (since 1997), Canada, and Iran. According to Wall Street Journal "senior diplomats in the Clinton administration say the PMOI figured prominently as a bargaining chip in a bridge-building effort with Tehran." The PMOI is also on the European Union's blacklist of terrorist organizations, which lists 28 organizations, since 2002. The enlistments included: Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States in 1997 under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and again in 2001 pursuant to section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224; as well as by the European Union (EU) in 2002. Its bank accounts were frozen in 2002 after the September 11 attacks and a call by the EU to block terrorist organizations' funding. However, the European Court of Justice has overturned this in December 2006 and has criticized the lack of "transparency" with which the blacklist is composed. However, the Council of the EU declared on 30 January 2007 that it would maintain the organization on the blacklist. The EU-freezing of funds was lifted on December 12, 2006 by the European Court of First Instance. In 2003 the US State Department included the NCRI on the blacklist, under Executive Order 13224.

According to a 2003 article by the New York Times, the US 1997 proscription of the group on the terrorist blacklist was done as "a goodwill gesture toward Iran's newly elected reform-minded president, Mohammad Khatami" (succeeded in 2005 by more conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). In 2002, 150 members of the United States Congress signed a letter calling for the lifting of this designation. The PMOI have also tried to have the designation removed through several court cases in the U.S. The PMOI has now lost three appeals (1999, 2001 and 2003) to the US government to be removed from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and its terrorist status was reaffirmed each time. The PMOI has continued to protest worldwide against its listing, with the overt support of some US political figures.

Past supporters have included Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Rep. Bob Filner, (D-CA), and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, "who became involved with the [PMOI] while a Republican senator from Missouri." In 2000, 200 U.S. Congress members signed a statement endorsing the organization's cause.

PMOI is– legally or at least well tolerated – active in Germany, Denmark and many other countries of the European Union. The NCRI maintained an Information Office in Washington DC, USA until August 2002, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell issued an order to shut down the offices. Recently, Dick Marty, Swiss investigator working for the human rights body the Council of Europe, called this designation a violation of human rights.

In April 2007, CNN reported that the US military and the International Committee of the Red Cross was continuing to protect the group, with the US army regularly escorting PMOI supply runs between Baghdad and its base, Camp Ashraf. On Nov 30, 2007 the British Court,The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission(POAC) ruled to the annulment of the terrorist designation and ordered the British government to remove PMOI off the terrorist list.

Alleged human rights abuses

In May 2005, Human Rights Watch claimed the PMOI were running prison camps within Iraq and were committing severe human rights violations. The report described the PMOI as a cult held under the tight control of Maryam Rajavi. The report prompted a response by the PMOI and friendly MEPs (European MPs), who published a counter-report in September 2005. They noted that HRW had "relied only on 12 hours interviews with 12 suspicious individuals", and stated that "a delegation of MEPs visited Camp Ashraf in Iraq" and "conducted impromptu inspections of the sites of alleged abuses." Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca (PP), one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament, alleged that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) was the source of the evidence against the PMOI.

Prompted by the FOFI document, Human Rights Watch re-interviewed all 12 of the original witnesses, conducting private and personal interviews lasting several hours with each of them in Germany and the Netherlands, where the witnesses now live. All of the witnesses restated their claims about the PMOI camps from the 1991-2003 period, saying PMOI officials subjected them to various forms of physical and psychological abuses once they made known their wishes to leave the organization.

See also

• 1988 Massacre of Iranian Prisoners
• Arms sales to Iraq 1973-1990
• Iran-Iraq War
• Massoud Rajavi
• Maryam Rajavi
• Camp Ashraf
• Masoud Banisadr
• MEK Compound (Fallujah, Iraq)
• Richard Perle
• Saddam's Trial and Iran-Iraq War

External links

Official

• Official Website of the PMOI
• Website of the National Council for Resistance (NCR)
• National Council of Resistance of Iran - Foreign Affairs Committee
• U.S. Department of State: MEK Profile

Other

• Template:Fa icon News and Information on Mujahedin-e Khalgh (MEK/MKO/NCR)
• MKO Watch
• Brian Binley (British MP) argues for removing the PMOI from terror lists
• Iran Interlink
• Washington Times Article