Moral Outrage at Camp Ashraf

By Clare M. Lopez

It’s a new era, alright: an era in which America’s moral compass is spinning aimlessly. While on an official visit to Baghdad Tuesday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, hailed a new era in Iraq and touted an improved security situation at the one-month mark since U.S. troops pulled back from Iraqi cities and towns at the end of June.

But even as the two crowed (along with their Iraqi counterparts), Iraqi police forces were assaulting the civilian population of Ashraf City north of Baghdad, home to some 3900 unarmed members of the Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK). At day’s end, the MEK death count stood at four, while the injured numbered in the hundreds, and dozens more had been snatched and carried off by the Iraqi forces.

The Iraqi assault, captured in graphic videos posted to YouTube, advanced with armored vehicles, front-loaders, fire engines, police vehicles, and other equipment and unleashed boiling water, pepper gas, barrages from water cannons, clubs, and eventually live fire against the unarmed inhabitants. YouTube footage shows MEK members massed passively at an entrance gate to the camp as Iraqi police beat those in front furiously with clubs and then sprayed pepper gas and water cannon directly into the crowd. Other films show police opening fire with assault weapons while the group began to chant “Allahu Akbar,” echoing the recent calls of their demonstrating compatriots on the streets of Tehran and elsewhere. Read more ...

Source: Human Events

Terrorists as Freedom FightersWhy the U.S. should not support the Mujahedeen-e Khalq

By Jacob Laksin

As Iran’s ruling regime sets about viciously crushing the protests on the streets of Tehran, vowing a “revolutionary confrontation” to silence those who dare to oppose what mounting evidence suggests was a stolen election, it’s tempting to search for an opposition that will respond in kind to the government-sponsored terror. For nearly 30 years that role has been filled by the Mujahedeen-e Khalaq (MEK), also known as the “People’s Mujahedeen,” the Marxist-Islamist militant group that has fought the Mullahs since the 1979 revolution that swept them to power.

In that time, the MEK and its political front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has cultivated a reputation as the “largest opposition movement against the Iranian regime.” Calling for the overthrow of “the mullahs’ inhuman regime,” the MEK advocates civil liberties, political and religious pluralism, free markets and free elections – in short, everything that the Iran’s theocratic regime stands against. This public relations strategy has borne fruit, and the MEK has been able to convince many in the West – from analysts like Daniel Pipes, to politicians like Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo – that it represents the best option for democratic regime change in Iran. Now, with the regime best by a popular uprising, there are calls once again for the United States to increase its support for the MEK, first of all by removing its name from the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations – a designation that Daniel Pipes calls “preposterous” in the case of the MEK. Read more ...

Source: FPM

Iran Buries the Past. The Islamic republic bulldozes the mass graves of political victims.

By Nir Boms & Shayan Arya

As preparations begin in Iran for the festivities marking the Islamic republic's 30 year anniversary, another somber Iranian anniversary is commemorated. Twenty years ago, some 10,000 political prisoners and regime opponents were brutally killed following a fatwa from then supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The executed, some as young as 15 or 16 years old, were buried in mass graves. Many of the political prisoners were affiliated with radical left-wing groups and the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (aka People's Mujahedin of Iran). Some of the prisoners were only a few weeks away from finishing their sentences and regaining their freedom when Khomeini gave his fatwa. Read more ...

Source: Weekly Standard

Will Washington Betray Anti-Regime Iranians?

MEK members display their flag as they pass
through a U.S. checkpoint in Iraq in 2003

By Daniel Pipes

As the United Nations mandate that legitimizes the presence of U.S forces in Iraq expires on December 31, 2008, a humanitarian and strategic disaster is coming into view. The fate of about 3,500 anti-regime Iranians will be decided in the course of status-of-forces negotiations between Washington and Baghdad.

They are members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK; it is also called the People's Mojahedin of Iran, or PMOI), the leading Iranian opposition group. Based at Camp Ashraf in central Iraq where they are recognized as "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva Convention, they have since 2004 been under the protection of U.S. military forces. According to the Convention Against Torture of 1984, to which the U.S. government is a party, expiration of the UN mandate does not end the American obligation to continue to protect MEK members in Iraq.

Further, the MEK's network of supporters inside Iran have provided invaluable intelligence. For example, it exposed Tehran's nuclear ambitions and its shipments of roadside bombs to Iraq. Recognizing this assistance, a "Memorandum for the Record" by Lt. Col. Julie S. Norman dated August 24, 2006, noted that "The PMOI has always warned against the Iranian regime's meddling and played a positive role in exposing the threats and dangers of such interventions; their intelligence has been very helpful in this regard and in some circumstances has helped save the lives of [U.S.] soldiers." Read more ...

Source: FrontPage Magazine