Friday, December 29, 2006

The West must recognize the constructive role of the PMOI in Iraq

Friday, 29 December 2006

NCRI – “In pursuit of this agenda, the Iranian regime has spread Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism - reeking havoc, destruction and misery upon the Iraqi people. In fact, Iran is behind most of the terrorist attacks that take place in Iraq on a daily basis,” said Dr Al-Jabouri at Westminster, London, on December 15. The chairman of the Board of Directors of Solidarity Congress and former Governor of Diyala province in Iraq was addressing a conference on the status of the main Iranian opposition movement, PMOI, in Ashraf City in Iraq. The following is the text of his speech:

It is always such a great pleasure to see so many people supporting the brave men and women of the Iranian Resistance based in Ashraf city, Iraq. By supporting the PMOI in Ashraf, you support the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and democracy. At the same time, you support the Iraqi people’s yearning for peace and stability and their struggle against the threats posed by the Iranian regime.

After the fall of the previous Iraqi regime, I spent two years as the Governor of the Iraqi province of Diyala, which is where Ashraf city is based. I therefore wish to concentrate my remarks on the persistent meddling of the Iranian regime in the internal affairs of Iraq. The Iranian regime has its own agenda for Iraq, which is in direct conflict with the hopes and dreams of the Iraqi people. Their aim is to create a theocratic and Islamic fundamentalist state over which they have full control. In pursuit of this agenda, the Iranian regime has spread Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism - reeking havoc, destruction and misery upon the Iraqi people. In fact, Iran is behind most of the terrorist attacks that take place in Iraq on a daily basis. They have dispatched thousands of armed operatives to Iraq and set up extensive intelligence and terrorist networks in the country. Not content on the devastation they have caused for Iran and Iranians, they are now doing the same to Iraqis.

The regime has also pursued a campaign of eliminating its opponents in Iraq, through the assassination of Iraqi dissidents. The regime’s agents have on at least three occasions attempted to assassinate me, resulting in injury to me and the deaths of some of my bodyguards. In the past couple of months alone, well known Iraqi dissidents who have been murdered include, Abdul-Rahim Nasrallah, leader of the National Justice and Progress Party and Ayatollah Mohammad Moussawi Qasemi, a prominent Shiite cleric and Secretary General of the Islamic Unity Party.

To counter Iran’s brand of Islamic fundamentalism, we have a force so powerful that it can change Iraq, Iran and the Middle East. This force is the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran and its members in Ashraf city, Iraq. They derive their power from their progressive and democratic interpretation of Islam, which is the antithesis of the Iranian regime’s fundamentalism. For the Iranian regime, the spread of the PMOI’s interpretation of Islam is like a stake through the heart of Dracula. This is why the mullahs in Tehran are so desperate to destroy the PMOI and conversely why we Iraqis will do everything in our power to protect and promote them. As 5.2 million Iraqis have said in a statement, Iraq has become the scene of a battle between democratic and patriotic forces with their various inclinations and thoughts on the one hand and affiliates of the Iranian regime on the other. We, the democratic and patriotic forces in Iraq, cannot succeed in this battle without the PMOI. This is because for the Iraqi people, the PMOI are the main barrier to the spread of Iran’s brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

Since the PMOI’s presence in Iraq, the Iranian regime and its agents have conducted hundreds of terrorist and military operations against the PMOI, resulting in hundreds of PMOI deaths. Since the beginning of the war, the Iranian regime has used its agents and those loyal to it in the Iraqi government to place pressure on the PMOI. Threats have been made to expel the PMOI from Iraq. Most recently, in July of this year, during a trip to Iran, the Iraqi Prime Minister stated as part of a deal done with the Iranian regime that he was looking for ways to end the presence in his country of the PMOI. Emboldened by this statement from the Iraqi Prime Minister, the Iranian regime instructed its agents to destroy, through the use of explosives, the water pipes delivering water to Ashraf City and its surrounding villages.

If the West wants to see peace in the Middle East, it must recognise the constructive role of the PMOI in Iraq and align itself with and support the nationalist and anti-fundamentalist forces in Iraq. The signatures of 5.2 million Iraqis, who supported a declaration seeking the expulsion of the Iranian regime from Iraq and support for the PMOI illustrates to you the level of support the PMOI enjoy in my country.

Friday, December 22, 2006

State of PMOI members residing in Ashraf, Iraq, must be kept in forefront of our minds – Lord Slynn

Friday, 22 December 2006

NCRI – Rt. Hon. Lord Slynn of Hadley, former judge at the European Court of Justice addressed the issue of proscription of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) in a conference held at the British Houses of Parliament on December 7. Excerpts of his speech follow:

The proscription of the PMOI has had political effects, restrictions on democratic rights not just in Iran and Iraq but in other countries as well, including our own. All these are very important matters to be kept on the boil in the movement to achieve democracy and freedom inside Iran, but in addition to that there is a group, although it hasn’t been mentioned this morning and that isn’t a criticism. The group of people, members of the PMOI and supporters of the NCRI from Iran who are in Ashraf in Iraq must be kept in the forefront of our minds, because what is relevant for them is not the immediate restrictions they may face, it is the threats they are occasionally mooted against.

We all know, all of you in this room I am aware know of the way in which the supply of water and electricity to that camp have been cut off. We all know that from time to time there have been restrictions on the ability of the people in Ashraf, for whom I have the highest admiration, to get food and medicines at the prices which are available to everybody else and which are manageable.

There have been recently suggestions although the government does not seem to be mercifully has not found to be determined or united about it, there have been suggestions that the people in the camp Ashraf will have to leave Iraq and indeed the suggestion that some of them will be sent back to Iran. I do not need to speak the words as to what would happen if those people were sent back to Iran. You are well aware of the risk which they would run and so what is important and this is the one point I wish to make. What is important is that in addition to the great political movement which is represented by this policy paper and by the speech of Mrs. Rajavi. What is important is that we should continue to pressurize.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Covenant of Solidarity of Iraqi Sheikhs With People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI)

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Iran regime makes accusations against PMOI to cover up its crimes, meddling in Iraq

Sunday, 03 December 2006

NCRI – The following is a statement by the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran on December 2, 2006:

Citing the Undersecretary on Security Affairs of Iraq and the Governor of Diyala Province, Iran's ruling religious fascism claimed, “The PMOI cooperates with Al-Qaeda.” It added, “Activities of the U.S. forces has led the terrorist Monafeqin group (mullahs' reference to the PMOI) to murder Shiites in Diyala Province in cooperation with Takfiri groups (referring to Islamic extremist groups)."

The Iranian regime's Kurdish-language Television Sahar also said, “The armed individuals of the American occupier use them (the PMOI members) for terrorist operations.”

It appears that the Iranian regime’s preposterous claims against the PMOI is primarily fabricated with the intention of covering up its crimes and meddling in Iraq, particularly its widespread infiltration of the Revolutionary Guards forces into Iraq through Mehran and Khaneqin border regions to stir up sectarian violence and generate civil war.

On November 30, Baghdad Television reported that the U.S. forces had seized Iran-made weapons, manufactured in 2006, from Iraqi militias.

It is the Iranian regime’s usual practice to cover up and overshadow its unbridled terrorism and crimes by accusing its main opposition of involvement in terrorist activities.

In response to the regime's absurd allegations against the PMOI of being involved in bombings, kidnappings, terrorist operations and killing of Iraqi citizens, as raised previously by the mullahs’ regime, the MNF-I spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said in a press conference in Baghdad on July 20, 2006, “The MEK [PMOI] is out at Ashraf in a secure military facility that the coalition forces, in fact, guard on a 24-by-7 basis. They're under continuous surveillance and control. Their future status does need to be eventually determined, but currently, they're not operating within the country of Iraq.” The MNF-I spokesman added, “They're in a fenced-in facility, a very large facility out there, and there is quite a few coalition forces that are there continuously guarding that facility to make sure they in fact are not allowed access out of it, and if it is, it's a controlled access, where they are in fact are (sic.) escorted the entire time.”

By signing a declaration in June 2006 which was published in the local Iraqi and international media, 5.2 million Iraqis announced, “Iran’s rulers want to dominate this part of the world and have turned Iraq into a hunting ground and the frontline of their war with the international community. They are trying to stifle the war between democracy and dictatorship in Iraq before its reverberations reach Iran."

People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
December 2, 2006

Iran regime makes accusations against PMOI to cover up its crimes, meddling in Iraq

Sunday, 03 December 2006

NCRI – The following is a statement by the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran on December 2, 2006:

Citing the Undersecretary on Security Affairs of Iraq and the Governor of Diyala Province, Iran's ruling religious fascism claimed, “The PMOI cooperates with Al-Qaeda.” It added, “Activities of the U.S. forces has led the terrorist Monafeqin group (mullahs' reference to the PMOI) to murder Shiites in Diyala Province in cooperation with Takfiri groups (referring to Islamic extremist groups)."

The Iranian regime's Kurdish-language Television Sahar also said, “The armed individuals of the American occupier use them (the PMOI members) for terrorist operations.”

It appears that the Iranian regime’s preposterous claims against the PMOI is primarily fabricated with the intention of covering up its crimes and meddling in Iraq, particularly its widespread infiltration of the Revolutionary Guards forces into Iraq through Mehran and Khaneqin border regions to stir up sectarian violence and generate civil war.

On November 30, Baghdad Television reported that the U.S. forces had seized Iran-made weapons, manufactured in 2006, from Iraqi militias.

It is the Iranian regime’s usual practice to cover up and overshadow its unbridled terrorism and crimes by accusing its main opposition of involvement in terrorist activities.

In response to the regime's absurd allegations against the PMOI of being involved in bombings, kidnappings, terrorist operations and killing of Iraqi citizens, as raised previously by the mullahs’ regime, the MNF-I spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said in a press conference in Baghdad on July 20, 2006, “The MEK [PMOI] is out at Ashraf in a secure military facility that the coalition forces, in fact, guard on a 24-by-7 basis. They're under continuous surveillance and control. Their future status does need to be eventually determined, but currently, they're not operating within the country of Iraq.” The MNF-I spokesman added, “They're in a fenced-in facility, a very large facility out there, and there is quite a few coalition forces that are there continuously guarding that facility to make sure they in fact are not allowed access out of it, and if it is, it's a controlled access, where they are in fact are (sic.) escorted the entire time.”

By signing a declaration in June 2006 which was published in the local Iraqi and international media, 5.2 million Iraqis announced, “Iran’s rulers want to dominate this part of the world and have turned Iraq into a hunting ground and the frontline of their war with the international community. They are trying to stifle the war between democracy and dictatorship in Iraq before its reverberations reach Iran."

People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
December 2, 2006