Pars Brief - ISSUE 15

Number.
15
9. Jun.2005
• Exiled Armed Group Abuses Dissident Member

• Mojahedin in Oil-for-Food scandal
• Iran Wants the Return of Mojahedin
• MKO in Canadian Blacklist
• Neocons' Pet Iranian Revolutionaries Accused of Torture
NO: 15 www.nejatngo.com 9.jun.2005
Exiled Armed Group Abuses Dissident Member
Opposition Group Seeks Recognition and Support in Western Capitals

Human Rights Watch
Full Report
(Paris, May 19, 2005) -- An armed Iranian opposition group in exile, the Mojahedin Khalq
Organization, has subjected dissident members to torture and prolonged solitary confinement,
Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 28-page report, “No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps,” details how
dissident members of the shadowy Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) were tortured,
beaten and held in solitary confinement for years at military camps in Iraq after they criticized
the group’s policies and undemocratic practices, or indicated that they planned to leave the
organization. The report is based on the direct testimonies of a dozen former MKO members,
including five who were turned over to Iraqi security forces and held in Abu Ghraib prison
under Saddam Hussein’s government.
“Members who try to leave the MKO pay a very heavy price,” said Joe Stork, Washington
director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. “These testimonies
paint a grim picture of what happened to members who criticized the group’s leaders.”
One former high-ranking MKO member, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, was held in solitary
confinement for eight-and-a-half years, from September 1992 to January 2001. The MKO then
turned him over to Iraqi authorities. He was held in Abu Ghraib prison until 2002, when he was
forcibly repatriated to Iran. The witnesses also reported two cases of deaths under
interrogation by MKO operatives.
Stork said “it would be a huge mistake to promote an opposition group that is responsible for
serious human rights abuses.”
Mojahedin in Oil-for-Food scandal

The Weekly Standard
May 30, 2005
Republican senator Norm Coleman, is leading one of eight investigations into the corruption
and mismanagement of the U.N.'s largest-ever humanitarian relief effort.
The basic outline of the scandal is simple: Saddam Hussein used the Oil-for-Food program to
circumvent U.N. sanctions imposed after the Gulf war and to enrich himself and his allies. He
did this by bribing leading journalists and diplomats and demanding kickbacks from those who
profited from selling Iraqi oil.
...The Coleman-Levin reports base their conclusions on a wide variety of evidence including
documents from the Iraqi Oil Ministry and the State Oil Marketing Organization that record the
transactions in detail. Investigators also conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iraqi
officials, including Aziz and Ramadan, who supported and in many cases expanded upon the
documentation.
In early June, the Coleman-Levin committee will make available a ... report on the Iraqi
regime's funding of terrorist entities. They will lay out a case study of the allocations provided
to the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), a terrorist group Hussein funded to conduct operations
against Iran. Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and author of
Imperial Hubris, described some of the work the MEK did for Hussein in his 2002 book,
Through Our Enemies' Eyes. Osama bin Laden "may have trained some fighters in Iraq at
camps run by Saddam's anti-Iran force, the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK)," Scheuer writes. "The
first group of bin Laden's fighters is reported to have been sent to MEK camps in June 1998;
MEK cadre were also then providing technical and military training for Taliban forces and
running the Taliban's anti-Iran propaganda." ...
Iran Wants the Return of Mojahedin
Mehr News
Zebari: Iraq agreed to add to the charges of Saddam.
“Baghdad has agreed with Iran to add invading Iran to the charges of Saddam and his aides,”
Iraqi foreign ministry announced yesterday.
According to AFP, two sides have agreed that Iraqi former leaders should be tried for war
crimes, crimes against humanity and military invasion against Iran and Kuwait.
In addition to the request for adding these charges to Saddam’s case, Iran has asked for the
return of hundreds of MKO members, still under the supervision of the US in Iraq. Washington
claims that they have been disarmed and are no longer considered a threat for Iran.
Besides, Iraq has asked Tehran to give back fighter planes that has been sent to Iran before
the Gulf War.
It’s notable that Saddam and 11 of his Ba’th party leaders are in US custody. They’re charged
with attacking Kuwait, suppressing Kurds and Shiites and … but nothing had been mentioned
of attacking Iran.
MKO in Canadian Blacklist
Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada

OTTAWA , May 24, 2005 -- Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and
Emergency Preparedness, the Honourable Anne McLellan today announced that the
Government of Canada has listed the following entities, pursuant to the Criminal Code:
The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) is an Iranian terrorist organization that was based in Iraq until
recently. This group is determined to overthrow the current regime in Iran and establish a
democratic, socialist Islamic republic. They support the use of physical force, armed struggle or
jihad if necessary.
The Kahane Chai (Kach) is a group of Jewish terrorists whose overall aim is to restore the
biblical state of Israel . To this end, the group aims to intimidate and threaten Palestinian
families and mount sustained political pressure on the Israeli government.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the group Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), espouses an
Islamist, anti-Western ideology whose political or religious objective is to overthrow the
administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and to create an Islamist fundamentalist
state. Since 2002, Hekmatyar has reportedly established a base, recruited new members and
initiated mobile training camps with Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan .
The Government of Canada has determined that these entities knowingly engaged in terrorist
activity. This brings to 38 the number of listed entities under the Criminal Code.
“Canada is committed to taking all necessary steps as part of the international effort to bring
terrorists to justice and to ensure terrorists are denied access to funding,” said Deputy Prime
Minister Anne McLellan. “The listing of entities is an important part of that ongoing effort.”
Any person or group listed may have its assets seized and forfeited. There are severe
penalties, including up to ten years imprisonment, for persons and organizations that deal in
the property or finances of any listed entity. In addition, it is a crime to knowingly participate in,
contribute to, or facilitate the activities of a listed entity.
Under the Criminal Code, the Governor in Council may list an entity on the recommendation of
the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
Recommendations made by the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness are
based on a rigorous evaluation of the facts and the Governor-in-Council must approve the
listing. Once approved, the decision is published in the Canada Gazette.
The Act also provides an explicit appeal process, including a provision that a listed entity can
apply to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to be removed from the
list.
A separate mechanism for listing entities exists pursuant to Canada’s United Nations
Suppression of Terrorism Regulations (UNSTR) under the responsibility of the Minister of
Foreign Affairs. These regulations enable Canada to comply with UN Security Council
Resolution 1267 and 1373, which, among other things, calls on states to freeze terrorist assets
without delay.
Like the Criminal Code, the UNSTR requires all Canadian financial institutions to freeze the
assets of a listed entity and places a prohibition on fundraising activities. Entities are added to
the schedule to the UNSTR where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the entity is
associated with terrorist activity.
Regardless of whether an entity is listed under the Criminal Code or the UNSTR, any individual
participating in terrorist activities as defined in the Criminal Code can be investigated and
prosecuted under the statute.
The names of listed entities under the Criminal Code, and background information can be
found on the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada website at
www.psepc.gc.ca under National Security, Listing Process.
Neocons' Pet Iranian Revolutionaries Accused of Torture
Antiwar.com
Jim Lobe
An Iranian rebel group that is aggressively campaigning for Washington's support as part of a
"regime change" strategy in its homeland has committed serious abuses, including torture and
prolonged isolation, against dissident members, according to a leading human rights
watchdog.
The group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), insists that it should lead a U.S.-backed effort to
bring what it has termed democratic rule to Iran. Last month, it organized a rally, attended by
several powerful Republican lawmakers and billed as the "2005 National Convention for a
Democratic, Secular Republic in Iran," at Washington's historic Constitution Hall.
But MEK's own human-rights record during its almost 20 years as an armed group sheltered
and supported by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein belies its professed commitment to
democratic rule, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a 28-page report, "No Exit: Human Rights
Abuses Inside the MEK Camps," released Thursday.
Joe Stork, Washington director of HRW's Middle East division. " it would be a huge mistake to
promote an opposition group that is responsible for serious human rights abuses."
The report comes amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran focused primarily on
U.S. charges that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, a development that President George W.
Bush has described as "unacceptable."
The U.S. administration has not yet explicitly endorsed "regime change" in Iran, but hardliners
based primarily in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and at the Defense Department have
made little secret of their belief that such a policy should be adopted. Their only question is
how best to achieve that goal.
Since the March, 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, where the MEK had been based since 1986,
the group has tried to persuade Washington that it holds the key to overthrowing the Islamic
Republic next door.
It has been backed in this quest by right-wing lawmakers, a group of hardline neoconservatives
and retired military officers called the Iran Policy Committee (IPC), and some U.S. officials –
particularly in the Pentagon – who believe that the MEK could be used to help destabilize the
Iranian regime, if not eventually overthrow it in conjunction with U.S. military strikes against
selected targets.
While the group's supporters in the Pentagon so far have succeeded in protecting the several
thousand MEK militants based at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border from being dispersed or
deported, they have failed to persuade the U.S. State Department to take the group off its
terrorist list, to which it was added in 1997 based on its attacks during the 1970s against U.S.
military contractors and its participation in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
The European Union (EU) also cites the MEK as a terrorist organization.
After a year-long tug-of-war between the two U.S. agencies, a truce between State and the
Pentagon was apparently worked out. MEK members at Camp Ashraf were designated
"protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions.
Since then, the Pentagon has recruited individual members of the MEK to infiltrate Iran as part
of an effort to locate secret nuclear installations, according to recent articles published in The
New Yorker and Newsweek magazines. At the same time, nearly 300 members have taken
advantage of an amnesty in Iran to return home, leaving a total of 3,534 MEK members inside
Camp Ashraf as of mid-March, according to the HRW report.
In this context, the MEK and its supporters have been campaigning hard for the group to be
"de-listed" by the State Department as a terrorist group. That appeared to be the principal
demand of last month's rally, which was addressed via video-conference by MEK's co-
president, Maryam Rajavi.
The group, one of whose Washington representative, Ali Safavi, described it as "Tehran's
greatest and most feared nemesis" in a recent Washington Times column, also claims a
commitment to democracy.
In another column published by the International Herald Tribune in January, Rajavi, who also
heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a MEK front group, stressed that she
was "committed to holding free and fair elections within six months of regime change, to
electing a constituent assembly and handing over affairs to the people's elected
representatives."
Those claims are likely to invite greater skepticism in light of the new HRW report, which is
based on a series interviews between February and May 2005 with 12 former MEK members
currently living in Europe.
They testified to a pattern of torture, beatings, and prolonged detention in solitary confinement
at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group's policies and what they called its
undemocratic practices, or indicated that they planned to leave the organization. Two of the
interviewees said they had personally witnessed the deaths of two prisoners under
interrogation.
Those who wished to leave the organization were held incommunicado in special units in the
camps, they said. If they held a high rank in the MEK, they were held for years; one of the
interviewees reportedly was held for a total of eight and a half years; another for five years.
The most brutal treatment was meted out to suspected dissidents in secret prisons located
within the MEK camps, according to the report. Four of the witnesses, who were suspected of
dissident views, testified that they had all been severely tortured and forced to sign false
confessions asserting that they had links to Iranian intelligence agents.
Three of them witnessed the death of Parviz Ahmadi, a former unit commander, in February
1995, shortly after a particularly severe beating. His death was reported three years later in the
MEK's publication, Mojahed, which described him as a "martyr" killed by Iranian intelligence
agents.
Five of the witnesses were eventually transferred to Abu Ghraib prison during the 1990s and
released by Saddam Hussein's government in 2001 or 2002.
The testimonies included in the report also lend weight to the view that the MEK is more of a
cult than a political movement. They suggest that the group's exile in the early 1980s, followed
by the marriage of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi in 1985, set off a series of phases in what the
husband-and-wife team declared was a permanent "ideological revolution" that the couple
embodied.
These included compulsory divorce of married couples, regular self-criticism sessions,
renunciation of sexuality, and absolute mental and physical dedication to the leadership. "The
level of devotion expected of members was on stark display in 2003 when the French police
arrested Maryam Rajavi in Paris," HRW said. "In protest, 10 MEK members and sympathizers
set themselves on fire in various European cities; two of them subsequently died."

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Number.

• Exiled Armed Group Abuses Dissident Member

Exiled Armed Group Abuses Dissident Member

Opposition Group Seeks Recognition and Support in Western Capitals

Mojahedin in Oil-for-Food scandal

Iran Wants the Return of Mojahedin

MKO in Canadian Blacklist

Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada

Neocons' Pet Iranian Revolutionaries Accused of Torture

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