Iraq’s National Security Advisor Dr. Mowaffak al Rubaie on Camp Ashraf,
Massoud Rajavi and ‘Detoxifying’ MEK Members

LONDON, April 6 /PRNewswire/ — In an interview with Anne Singleton of
Iran-Interlink, Dr. Mowaffak al Rubaie, Iraq ‘s national security advisor
clarified his approach to the Government of Iraq’s decision to remove the
Iranian terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, aka MKO, PMOI) from the country.
Responsibility for Camp Ashraf was handed over to the Government of Iraq
by the Coalition Forces in January this year. Since then, Dr. al Rubaie’s
plan for the difficult task of dismantling an extremist cult has revealed an
enlightened, humanitarian approach which could become a blueprint for
tackling similar organisations worldwide.
Dr. al Rubaie explained, “This is an indoctrinated and tightly
disciplined organization of extremist zealots who have employed terrorism and
at times even self-immolation to secure their aims. In normal everyday
language we can say that they have been “brainwashed”. He added, “The
Government of Iraq does not deal with the MEK as an organization. We deal
with the residents as individuals.”
Under observation by the ICRC and the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights, Dr.
al Rubaie has focused efforts to protect the individuals inside the camp
following allegations that human rights abuses are being perpetrated by MEK
leaders against the residents. To this end he said, “We believe that if we
can separate individuals from the all-encompassing domination by their
leaders, we can allow them to begin to exercise their rights as individuals
and make appropriate choices. That is, we hope to remove them from the toxic
effects of their indoctrination and leaders.”
In response to the many obstacles thrown up by the MEK to their removal
from Camp Ashraf, Dr al Rubaie told Iran-Interlink, “The Iraqi Army unit
posted to defend and secure Camp Ashraf has exercised patience and extreme
restraint in spite of the staged provocations and demonstrations that
Ashraf’s self-appointed leaders have launched in defiance of the legitimate
exercise by the Government of Iraq of its sovereignty.” “Ashraf is not above
the law,” said Dr. al Rubaie.
Asked what can the UK , European and other western governments do to help
resettle the MEK, Dr. al Rubaie replied, “These governments can agree to
allow their citizens and others who have status in their country to return.”
For the full interview see http://iran-Interlink.org

Contact:

Anne Singleton
+44-1132780503
+44-7876541150
editor@iran-interlink.org

By DANIEL GRAEBER, UPI Correspondent, February 20, 2009

The change in tone from Washington toward Tehran is complicated not only by historic acrimony but also by a complex relationship with Iranian opposition movements.

U.S. officials have made it clear that the Obama administration represents a possible opening for Iran.
"With respect to Iran, there is a clear opportunity for the Iranians … to demonstrate some willingness to engage meaningfully with the international community," in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
This is in stark contrast to the previous administration and its policy of isolation. Gary Sick, a top White House aide on Iran during the Iranian hostage crisis and now senior research scholar at Columbia University, says though the administration of George W. Bush had hoped for a better relationship with Iran in the wake of the conflict in Afghanistan, that policy was largely abandoned when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.
Ali Safavi, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran — a Paris -based group calling itself the Iranian Parliament in exile — said the approach to the Iranian regime, as well as its opposition, would be a litmus test for the Obama administration.
"There has been no shortage of goodwill gestures from the Americans toward Iran with the goal of moderation, but so far this course has failed," he said.
The NCRI, which includes members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, a dissident group based in Iraq’s Diyala province, has lobbied the international community to back a 16-point plan for regime change in Iran. It led a successful campaign in January to remove the PMOI from the terrorist list adopted by the European Union.
Maryam Rajavi, the controversial leader of the NCRI, hailed the decision as a victory for the Iranian resistance, saying the move paved the way for democratic change in Iran.
But the group’s image as a cult with a storied history of terrorist activity, both in Iran and across the globe, makes courting the opposition as a viable avenue for regime change in Iran tenuous at best.
The PMOI and the NCRI are both listed by the United States as terrorist organizations for their links to violent opposition to the Iranian regime.
President Bill Clinton in 1997 included the PMOI on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations following the election of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. Sick says that effort was part of a broader policy of appeasement toward the moderate Khatami, adding the State FTO list is a reflection of who Washington likes as much as who it doesn’t.
The PMOI arrived on the scene in the 1960s as a movement opposing the Western-backed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, and supporting the Iranian Revolution in 1979 that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The ideology of the PMOI, centered on Marxism, was in contradiction to the Revolution, however, and the group was exiled to Paris in 1981.
With France recognizing the Iranian regime in 1986, however, the group established itself in various camps throughout Iraq from which it ran a campaign of violence against Tehran. Though largely targeting Iranian government officials, its killing of American contractors in Tehran in the 1970s, participation alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces in suppressing Kurdish and Shiite rebellions in Iraq in 1991 and its later attacks on Iranian embassies in 1992 earned it a spot on the terrorist lists of several nations.
Its reputation for militancy, however, was not supported by recognition as a major fighting force. The PMOI surrendered its tanks and heavy artillery to U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion. Its members are now considered protected persons in Iraq under the Fourth Geneva Convention and claim to have abandoned their militant agenda in favor of peaceful opposition.
The PMOI, and its representatives in the NCRI, claim to hold valuable intelligence on Iranian operations, including Iran’s controversial nuclear program. The group often touts its unveiling of the nuclear program at the Natanz weapons facility in Iran, though several analysts note developments at Natanz were all but flaunted by the Iranian regime.
Massoud Khodabandeh, a former member of the PMOI, said those claims, and the intelligence value of reports from the NCRI/PMOI in general, are at best questionable, at worst useless.
"It is widely believed that intelligence given out by the PMOI about Iran’s nuclear facilities was given to them by Western intelligence contacts," he said.
Meanwhile, allegations have mounted that the U.S. intelligence community has funneled money to the PMOI for operations against the Iranian regime. An article in The New Yorker magazine in 2008 suggested the Bush administration had set aside some $400 million for covert operations against Iran, with a portion going to the PMOI.
The NCRI’s Safavi, however, called those allegations "completely bogus," and U.S. intelligence officers contacted for this story said there was no evidence to support those claims, though the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he "wouldn’t be surprised if the allegation turned out to be true."
Meanwhile, with Iraq emerging from U.S. occupation with a shaky democracy, the relationship between Baghdad and the PMOI remains tense.
With the PMOI widely reviled in Iraq for supporting the violent suppression of the Shiite and Kurdish rebellions, and in Iran for its historic assassination policy, the group has few friends outside its groups of supporters in Europe and the United States.
Though Iraq does not have an extradition treaty with Iran, several top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, have said the group is no longer welcome in Iraq.
Both the NCRI and PMOI, through persuasive and astute campaigns aimed at generating sympathy both in the media and among world leaders, including those in the United States, have pushed for a delisting campaign with an effort to sever its ties to its terrorist past.
International lawyers in Washington, D.C., representing the PMOI filed a petition in July with the U.S. State Department seeking removal from the FTO list there, but U.S. officials say the FTO designation is appropriate.
Speaking to reporters following the Jan. 26 EU delisting, State Department deputy spokesman Robert A. Wood said "nothing has changed from our standpoint" concerning either group.
Meanwhile, the outcome of the January provincial elections in Iraq may indicate a subtle shift in Iraqi relations with Iran as the pro-Tehran Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council was trounced in the elections, largely by Maliki’s more secular State of Law slate.
Former Iranian President Khatami — widely seen as a moderate — has announced plans to run for president again in June, and though an appeal in the PMOI FTO listing case is expected to reach the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit this summer, with U.S. policy currently leaning toward courting moderates within Iran, rather than outside opposition groups, little seems likely to change in the future.

Open letter of the Sahar Family Foundation to Dr Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, Vice President of the European Parliament, regarding the members of the European Parliament visiting the base of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in Iraq called the Ashraf garrison.

Dr Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca

Vice President of the European Parliament

Brussels, Belgium

Sahar Family Foundation

Baghdad

November 2008

Dear Sir

Please accept our warmest regards as well as those of the families of the members captured in the terrorist cult of Rajavi called the Mojahiden-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in Iraq.

According to the news released by the websites of the MKO, some MEPs as a delegation headed by you visited the base of the organization called "Ashraf" and expressed some opinions relating the garrison of the terrorist cult of Rajavi in Iraq.

The Sahar Family Foundation which consists of the former members of this organization and the families of mental and physical captives in the Ashraf garrison in Iraq would welcome such actions provided they are not one-sided and they do not intend political purposes. We do hope that such visits would continue and would also end to the savior of the captives in that cult and rejoin them with their families who are anxiously waiting to see their beloved ones for over two decades.

Referring to your expressions as well as those of other MEPs reflected in the MKO sites; obviously this visit was aimed for fact-findings about the cult garrison of the MKO in Iraq. Such action is of course welcomed; but we would like to ask you that: shouldn’t a representative of those separated from the organization and those who have been subject to abuses or a representative of the families of those confined in that garrison and have no way to the outside world be present in such a visit?

Recently in a meeting in the European Parliament, Ms Nassrin Ebrahimi a former member of the MKO, talked about hysterectomy and castration of women. Surely this has drawn the attention of yours and that of the delegation that companied you in Ashraf. Also Ms Batool Soltani a former member of the leadership council of the MKO who is based in Baghdad and is the spokesperson of our foundation has listed the names of nearly 150 individuals (%10 of the total number of women in the organization) who have been castrated in the cult of Rajavi. Shouldn’t a physician be present in your delegation to examine these miserable women for fact-finding? It is worth mentioning that Ms Soltani in Baghdad has announced several times that she is ready to visit the Ashraf garrison along with any international delegation in order to find the truth about the MKO.

Your visit and that of the delegation along with you from the Ashraf garrison in Iraq is merely used as a propaganda tool in the hands of a cult to further manipulate its captive followers, since no representative from the opponents, critiques or defectors of the organization were present. Cults do need to justify their inhumane actions and that is why they try to whitewash their faces using well-known people. Our expectation from European politicians was that they act more rational and more reasonable.

For your information it is worth mentioning that the garrison that the MKO calls the "Ashraf city" has the following characteristics:

1. Lacks any families or offspring. Children do not exist there. Women and men live on two opposite sides of this so called city separately and have no contacts with each other what so ever. That is sex apartheid is imposed severely in there. Even gas stations are separated for men and women.

2. The inhabitants of this garrison do not have the right to love anyone but the spiritual leader i.e. Massoud Rajavi. Any kind of expressing love or emotions towards any other person is prohibited and is considered as committing a sin.

3. Followers must regard the members of their families as their main enemies and therefore hate them. Reminding of spouses, offspring or parents is considered as treason to the cult. This cult regards family as the "nest of corruption".

4. Those based in this cult garrison are deprived from facilities such as telephone, cell phone, post, radio, television, internet, satellite, daily papers, gazettes or any form of connection with the outside world and do not have the least of ideas to what is happening outside the garrison. They are only fed with the information provided by the MKO media. It is interesting to know that the organization is even showing its own television programs with delay and after being censored for these practically hostages in the Ashraf garrison. This is done for preventing pictures of the normal life be shown to the captives in order to avoid the awakening effects on them.

5. Members have no right to criticize the actions and the policies of the leader of the cult and the followers have no right to even doubt the political and strategic lines of the organization.

6. Individuals have to attend inhumane sessions called "current operations" and be damned for their deeds and thoughts and even their night dreams. In these sessions which are the most immoral methods of psychological pressures over people, the natural mental and emotional defense of one is shattered in such a way that one submits oneself to any unsound demand and has not the power to say "no".

7. Finally the MKO under the leadership of Massoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam is an established cult according to modern scientific psychological and sociological definitions which utilizes mind manipulation methods in order to recruit, preserve and control its forces. This organization is using brainwashing techniques to restore a kind of modern slavery where individuals are both mentally and physically captives. Cults do need an isolated remote place in order to impose their mental methods over their followers and the Ashraf garrison in Iraq has provided such facilities for over two decades for the MKO first under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and then under the protection of the US forces. In other hands the isolated European garrison of the MKO called the Maryam garrison in a suburban area in the north of Paris called Auvers-sur-Oise is used to theorize new mental implementation methods and is used to produce human robots.

If the politicians visiting the Ashraf garrison in Iraq have the least knowledge about the actions of a cult, they definitely know that what they did is to help a destructive terrorist cult to gain justification against its members which are its prime victims in order to brainwash them more and exploit them more.

We urge all MEPs who visited the Ashraf garrison in Iraq to ask the MKO leaders that why they do not allow free and without intervention visits of families with their beloved ones in the Ashraf garrison to take place and why they prevent them using all sorts of excuses.

Best regards

Sahar Family Foudation

Baghdad, Iraq

Copy to:

The European Parliament’s Presidential Committee

A number of MEPs

The public media

Deciding the fate of the Mujahedin

The Bush administration inherited many of Iraq’s problems when it invaded that country, including an Iranian terrorist organization funded and armed by Saddam Hussein, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO). Though in the midst of a war on terror, the Bush administration chose in 2003 to protect 3,000 of the organization’s militants and house them in a camp given to the group by Saddam — Camp Ashraf just north of Baghdad.

By: Washington Times
Tags: Hot Topics | The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq | MKO’s terrorist activities | Camp Ashraf Inhabitants | Mujahedin Khalq Declining

The Bush administration inherited many of Iraq’s problems when it invaded that country, including an Iranian terrorist organization funded and armed by Saddam Hussein, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO). Though in the midst of a war on terror, the Bush administration chose in 2003 to protect 3,000 of the organization’s militants and house them in a camp given to the group by Saddam — Camp Ashraf just north of Baghdad.

Ever since, the faith of this State Department-listed terrorist organization has been unclear. Hated by Iraqis for its involvement in Saddam’s crimes against the Iraqi people, the Baghdad government wants to expel the group. But no country is willing to take them.

Though the Iranian government wants to put the group’s leadership on trial in Iran, it seems less interested in the organization’s rank and file. The European governments have little interest in taking in 3,000 battle-hardened Muslim militants, fearing that they will use Europe as a base to plan and execute further terrorist attacks.

The U.S., on the other hand, has already contradicted its own principles by giving preferential treatment to an organization on the State Department’s terrorist list — even though President Bush himself pointed to the organization’s patronage under Saddam Hussein as evidence of Iraq’s support for international terrorists in his speech to the United Nations in September 2002.

"Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran," President Bush said.

To complicate matters further, if reports that the U.S. has used MKO terrorists for cross-border raids into Iran are true, then Washington certainly doesn’t want these militants to end up in Iranian hands.

Washington seems doomed if it does, doomed if it doesn’t.

Members of the terrorist organization have protested outside the White House this past week, angered by the Bush administration’s decision to hand over Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi government. The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will surrender the MKO members to Tehran, they argue, who in turn will imprison and execute them.

Though approximately 500 MKO fighters have been repatriated to Iran and no reports of abuse have emerged according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversaw their return, sending rank-and-file Mujahedin members to Iran against their will would be irresponsible.

Hated by the Iranian people for having fought on Saddam’s side in the Iraq-Iran war, the Iranian Mujahedin is understandably fearful of the fate awaiting them in Iran.

Yet, contrary to the protesters outside the White House, the issue is not a choice between freedom in Camp Ashraf and captivity in Iran.

The Mujahedin is not an effective opposition to the government in Iran as the organization’s defenders in Washington claim, but a politico-religious cult that brainwashes its members, places children of Mujahedin members with other families in order to prevent parents from defecting, and who according to Human Rights Watch, maintains control by torturing its rank and file. "Members who try to leave the Mujahedin pay a very heavy price," according to Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch.

Its involvement in terrorism is undisputed. It assassinated several Americans in Iran in the 1970s. It supported the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Iran and blasted Ayatollah Khomeini for releasing the American diplomats in 1981, arguing instead that the hostages should have been executed. It made a pact with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and fought alongside his army against their Iranian countrymen. Later in the 1990s, they became Saddam’s most trusted henchmen, tasked with quelling Kurdish and Shiite uprisings against the Iraqi dictator.

According to defectors, Mujahedin members in Camp Ashraf celebrated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In 2004, French authorities descended upon the Mujahedin headquarters in France, arresting the leader of the cult, Maryam Rajavi. Immediately, zealous Mujahedin members staged hunger strikes and several set themselves ablaze. Hardly the behavior of a democratically oriented opposition group.

But the vast majority of the Camp Ashraf residents are not so much members of a terrorist cult as they are victims of it. The camp is itself a prison. It may have provided Mujahedin militants with protection against ordinary Iraqis who sought to avenge their relatives killed by the Mujahedin at the behest of Saddam Hussein, but the prison has primarily enabled the leaders of the terrorist organization to prevent the rank and file from defecting.

Rather than debating where to expel the Mujahedin terrorists, help should be provided to the rank and file to break with the cult and make free choices about their future. It’s the only humanitarian solution to this dilemma – and one that defeats rather than protects this anti-American terrorist group.

Trita Parsi

The tension in the audience was apparent last Saturday as it waited for Emanuel Rozin, presenter of the popular Israeli television Channel Two, to announce the channel’s "man of the [Hebrew] year".

To heighten the audience’s suspense, Rozin listed the personality’s achievements before announcing his name.

"He’s the man who has only done good deeds… He’s the person who is famed for cutting off Palestinians’ heads with a Japanese knife… He’s the man who was born with a knife between his teeth… He’s the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan!" The hall thundered with applause when Rozin announced Dagan as man of the year.

Rozin made sure to mention some of Dagan’s "secret" achievements, especially the assassination of Hizbullah operations commander Imad Mughniyah, and providing the intelligence information that allowed the Israeli air force to bomb a research station in northeast Syria, among others. After announcing Dagan man of the year, the station broadcast a profile of him that addressed his achievements during his military service and as the head of Mossad.

All of Dagan’s colleagues and acquaintances that were interviewed heaped praise on his creativity in killing Palestinians and Arabs. Retired General Yossi Ben Hanan, who was a colleague of Dagan’s, was witness to his insistence on killing Palestinians himself once they were turned over to him. Ben Hanan praised his close friend effusively for this.

Just before and after Dagan was chosen man of the year, a number of press reports were published about atrocities he committed against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. These reports, written by top Israeli journalists, confirm that Dagan was promoted as a result of these atrocities.

Aluf Ben Ahed, a senior commentator in Haaretz newspaper, published a report on Dagan on 26 September in which he wrote that former prime minister Ariel Sharon himself insisted that Dagan be appointed head of Mossad, "due to his immense experience and his hobby of cutting off Arabs’ heads," as he put it.

Ben Ahed wrote that the relationship between Sharon and Dagan went back to the early 1970s when Sharon was commander of the southern region and Dagan was commander of the death squad Rimonim and Sharon entrusted Dagan with arresting and killing Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip.

Sharon greatly enjoyed watching Dagan personally sever the heads of Palestinian resistance fighters after killing them. Ben Kasbit wrote that a number of soldiers who served under Dagan in the Gaza Strip during that period later suffered from psychological complexes due to their execution of Dagan’s orders to kill Palestinians in atrocious manners. After leaving the military service, some of them later committed criminal murders, and when they were tried they said that they had been affected by the atrocities they had committed against Palestinians under Dagan’s orders.

Journalist Gideon Levy published an article 2 October in which he revealed that the military censors had barred the publication of a report that journalists had prepared years ago on atrocities Dagan had committed against Lebanese civilians when he was commander of the Israeli army in southern Lebanon in the 1980s. If Israeli military censors allow the publication of reports that confirm Dagan’s hobby of cutting off Palestinians’ heads, it can be assumed that what they barred publication of was even more appalling.

Al-Ahram Weekly has collected Palestinian testimonies from witnesses to Dagan’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip during the 1970s when he was commander of the Rimonim unit. Rabia Abu Samheh, 63, who lives in the Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp, was one such witness.

In July of 1971, Abu Samheh was on her way home to the western quarter of the camp after a visit to a friend in the eastern quarter when she noticed that the camp’s main street was completely empty: it had been raided by members of the Rimonim unit, who wore red military caps. When she drew near to the camp’s main mosque, she witnessed a scene she would never forget. Soldiers opened fire on three young Palestinian men, and then a soldier placed one of the dead men in a garbage pit near the mosque. Abu Samheh was overwhelmed by the scene and forgetting her fear rushed towards the soldiers to prevent them from placing the other two men in the pit. They beat her with their rifle butts until blood streamed down her face.

Salem Sarirat, 58, lives near the Gaza Strip-Israel border. He says that he was herding sheep in the pasture by his house when he heard military vehicles nearby. He rushed home and watched what happened from his window, seeing Rimonim soldiers take two young Palestinian men out of one of the vehicles and tie them to a tree. Then a soldier Sarirat claims was Dagan approached them with a knife in his hand. He sank it into one of the youth’s necks as he screamed and then violently jerked it in all directions until his head was cut off. Then he did the same thing to the other boy.

Ben Aluf and Ben Kasbit agree that Dagan won the award for boldness in his achievements as commander of the Rimonim unit. Gideon says that no one else has headed Mossad who committed atrocities, crimes, and bloodletting like Dagan.

Ronin Briegman, intelligence correspondent for the widely circulated Yediot Aharonot newspaper, published a report 7 August that said that Sharon was annoyed by the approach of Ephraim Helevi, Dagan’s predecessor as head of Mossad, because the agency did not commit assassinations during his term that would have proven Israel’s strength and reach. Sharon was also irritated that it did not undertake the mission of thwarting the Iranian nuclear programme, a mission that Dagan brought back to Mossad.

Briegman says that the list of operations executed by Mossad during Dagan’s term was warmly welcomed by Sharon and his successor Olmert. These operations included assassinating Mughniyah, bombing an alleged chemical weapons factory in Syria and killing dozens of Syrian and Iranian experts, and providing intelligence that facilitated the bombing of a research station in northeast Syria that Israel claims was a Syrian nuclear reactor built by experts from North Korea. Briegman says that during Dagan’s term, Mossad killed Ramzi Nehareh, a merchant connected to Hizbullah, Ghalib Awaleh, an activist in Hizbullah’s military wing, Ali Hussein Saleh, a driver for the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, Abu Hamza, leader of the Islamic Jihad in southern Lebanon, and others.

All the journalists who have written on Mossad under Dagan have told how taken Olmert is with the list of operations executed by Mossad. These journalists report that Dagan goes to Olmert’s office every Thursday carrying a list of operations he wants Olmert to approve, and that Olmert approves all of Dagan’s proposals. There is consensus in Israel that Dagan is currently the most influential personality among decision-makers in Tel Aviv, and that due to his achievements, Olmert has twice insisted that his term as head of Mossad be extended.

It’s ironic and inexplicable that as the world rushes to label Arab and Palestinian liberation movements as terrorists, it overlooks the fact that Israel has produced terrorists much more sadistic and criminal. Moreover, the excessive killing of innocents has become a standard for promoting military figures and granting them additional responsibilities.

Israel is hampering agreements on a prisoner exchange with Hamas that aim to free captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on the pretext that it can’t agree to free Palestinian prisoners who killed occupation soldiers and settlers. Meanwhile, it celebrates those who excel in cutting off Arab heads.

A human rights activist says US support for the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is a proof of Washington`s hollow promises regarding the war on terror.

Seyyed Mohammad Javad Hasheminejad, head of Habilian Association, said here on Saturday there are indications that MKO is in collusion with US military forces in Iraq and remnants of Saddam’s Baath regime to “address the interests of America”.

Hasheminejad was addressing participants in the international conference on “alternative global perspectives on terrorism” here in London.

“The US has entered into a contract with the MKO, declaring this terrorist organization as being protected by the international law,” he said, adding that US double standards in the war on terror has resulted in the protection of terrorists in the past five years.

He said the MKO camp in Iraq is being guarded by American soldiers, adding that MKO members are waging a propaganda war against Tehran.

“They manipulate information to portray Iran as the cause of instability in Iraq,” he said.

Hasheminejad noted that the West and United States in particular should revise “their behavior towards terrorism”.

He said American double standards “will finally lead to the disadvantage of the West.”

Habilian Association is an Iran-based non-governmental organization seeking to preserve the rights of families who have been exposed to terrorism. The NGO has recently released a list of people who have been assassinated by MKO after the 1979 revolution.

It says the MKO is behind the slaughter of 12,000 Iranians in the past three decades.

The international conference on terrorism was held in London Saturday, with Muslim scholars and international experts from different countries presenting papers on terrorism in the one day event.