Iran Exiles to Protest at Attacks on Bases in Iraq

Iran Exiles to Protest at Attacks on Bases in Iraq
The Washington Post
April 17, 2003

An exiled Iranian opposition group said on Wednesday it would hold marches in Washington and across Europe on Saturday to protest against attacks by Iran on its bases in Iraq which it said killed 28 of its members.

The Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran -- political wing of the armed People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran -- plans marches at noon local time in London, Washington, Paris, Cologne, Brussels, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo.

"We want action from Europe to prevent the use of the war in Iraq by Iran's regime," Firouz Mahvi of the PMOI told Reuters in Stockholm. He said the Shi'ite Muslim clerics who dominate Iran were taking advantage of the U.S.-led war to "eliminate the Mujahideen" and build up links with Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

There was no independent confirmation of the report of attacks on the Mujahideen's bases in Iraq last Thursday and Friday, when Mahvi said 28 men and women had been killed, 43 injured and others captured by Iranian government forces.

Mujahideen bases have previously suffered rocket attacks and its office in Baghdad has survived mortar and bomb attacks.

The Mujahideen began as leftist-Islamist opposition to the late Shah of Iran but fell out with Shi'ite clerics who took power after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It uses Iraq as a springboard for attacks in Iran and was accused by Washington, which brands it a "terrorist" group, of supporting Saddam Hussein before his fall. The group is said by Western analysts to have little support in Iran because of its collaboration with Iraq during the 1980-88.