Iraq's interim leaders offer Mujaheeden expulsion as a gift to Iran

Agence France Presse
December 10, 2003
BY: BERTRAND ROSENTHAL

BAGHDAD, Dec 10 - The decision by Iraq's interim leaders to expel thousands of members of the Iranian opposition People's Mujahedeen is a move that will be appreciated in Tehran as the two neighbours set aside old enemities and look for common ground.

"The Governing Council unanimously decided to expel from Iraq by the end of the year the People's Mujahedeen because of the dark history of this terrorist organisation," said an official statement released Tuesday.

The statement did not say where the people would be sent when they are expelled, but that its offices would be closed and its arms and financial resources confiscated.

The Mujahedeen, some 4,000-5,000 of whom had been regrouped and disarmed at a sprawling base northeast of Baghdad following the March-April invasion, have since September been considered prisoners by the US-led coalition

US ground commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez announced that 3,856 members of the Mujahedeen had been detained.

The fate of the leading armed Iranian opposition movement was discussed in November when the Kurdish factional chief Jalal Talabani went to Teheran as president of the rotating Governing Council.

Iran, which has long sought the removal of the group classed a terrorist organisation by the US State Department, the European Union and the Teheran government, stepped up its campaign after the US invasion.

Talabani paved the way for the expulsion decision by asking Teheran to offer a general amnesty to the bulk of the force on humanitarian grounds.

"They are prepared to offer it to those who return to Iran," Talabani announced.

Kurdish parties in particular also accused the Mujahedeen of working as auxiliaries in waves of repression waged by Saddam Hussein's troops.

"Iraqi individuals and bodies have the right to bring complaints against this organisation for its crimes and ask to be compensated by the funds this organisation has both inside and outside the country," the council said

Washington maintained an amibiguous stance on the The People's Mujahedeen, or Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), classifying it as terrorist but striking a disarmament deal with the group in the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.

Mujaheeden representatives told AFP that relations had been good with the occupation forces and claimed to have been behind intelligence supplied ot the United States of Iran's nuclear industry.

The MKO set up base in Iraq in 1986 and carried out regular cross-border raids in Iran, with which Iraq fought a bloody war between 1980 and 1988.

The group kept out of the US-led war, although their bases were bombed by US warplanes.

The People's Mujahedeen were created in 1965 as a splinter group of Mehdi Bazargan's Iran Freedom Movement. All of its founding members died behind bars under the shah.

A Shiite and Marxist-inspired movement, the group took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution to overthrow the shah but was then forced into exile after clashes with the new regime that cost thousands of lives.

After France expelled its leader Massoud Rajavi, the Mujahedeen set up bases in Iraq in 1986 following an agreement with Saddam, who was then in the midst of an eight-year war with Iran.

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, it had some 15,000 fighters, who lived under stringent rules and revered their leader and his wife, Maryam, presented as "the future first lady of Iran".

The whereabouts of Massoud Rajavi remain unknown, according to diplomatic sources, but Mujahedeen spokesmen had insisted he was still in Iraq.