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PARIS (AFP) - Iran's exiled opposition movement said Thursday it had learned of two previously unknown sites in and near Tehran that are being used to build nuclear warheads. "Resistance sources have managed to uncover two centres that work directly on nuclear armaments and which were until now kept secret," Mehdi Abrihamtchi of the People's Mujahedeen told reporters in Paris, where his group is based. "They are places for research and production of detonation systems which is a major part of the mullah's atomic bomb project," he said, adding that his organisation had passed on the information to the UN...

In a letter to a British parliamentarian last month, a senior State Department official insisted that the United States was “doing its utmost” to ensure that Iraq’s government would treat 3,400 Iranian exiles living at Camp Ashraf in eastern Iraq “humanely.” Two weeks later, a clash between the exiles and Iraqi police left 11 Iranians dead, and 36 were taken into custody by Iraqi forces. Americans troops had guarded the camp since 2003, but recently handed over responsibility to Iraqi forces. Baghdad promised that the exiles would be protected. There is no authoritative version of events, but it does not...

Iraq's government acknowledged on Thursday that seven Iranian exiles were killed when Iraqi forces took control of their camp this week north of Baghdad. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh earlier denied anyone died in the clashes between Iraqi forces and protesters who tried to block their entry into Camp Ashraf, home to the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran Iraq, Iran and the United States call the dissident group a terrorist organization. Iraq's Shi'ite Arab-led government wants to close the camp and send residents back to Iran or to a third country. Dabbagh, on Thursday, said seven people had died but disputed...

TEHRAN/BAGHDAD - On Tuesday, Iraqi soldiers and riot police stormed Camp Ashraf, where Mojahedin Khalq Organization members had been based, triggering violent clashes that left at least 260 people injured. Iraqi officials say clashes broke out as they were trying to establish a police post in the camp. “After the failure of negotiations with the Mojahedin (Khalq) to enter peacefully, the Iraqi army entered Camp Ashraf with force and it now controls the interior and all entrances to the camp,” an Iraqi military source said. An Iraqi army spokesman in Diyala said two battalions of 400 soldiers each plus 200...

Iran's interior minister on Wednesday accused U.S. spy agency the CIA of helping to fund "rioters," stepping up accusations of Western involvement in street unrest following the country's disputed election. "Britain, America and the Zionist regime (Israel) were behind the recent unrest in Tehran," Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars News Agency. "Many of the rioters were in contact with America, CIA and the MKO and are being fed by their financial resources," he said. The MKO (Mujahideen Khalq Organization) is an exiled Iranian opposition group.

BRUSSELS - An Iranian opposition group called on Wednesday for the U.N. nuclear watchdog to immediately inspect facilities in Iran which it said were at the core of an accelerated nuclear weapons programme. The National Council of Resistance of Iran dismissed a December U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that Tehran stopped trying to make a nuclear warhead in 2003, shortly after the group first revealed the country's nuclear enrichment activity. It charged that Iran had established a new command and control centre for the programme coded-named Lavizan-2 at Mojdeh on the southeastern outskirts of Tehran last April, near the site of...

Paris, 1Sept. (IPS) By 1988, there was nothing left of the relatively free atmosphere people acquired for a short period after the Iranian revolution of 1979. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)’s brutal machine of repression had already uprooted a great number of other thinkers. Thousands of activists and sympathisers of the opposition groups had been already arrested, tortured, forced to repent or summarily executed, and their political rallies and media were banned. The peak of atrocity was however a death-fatwa in summer of 1988 issued by Grand Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, the founder of the IRI. The fatwa was initially...

Provo, Utah - The head of the Iranian opposition group in exile that supplied early intelligence on Iran's clandestine nuclear program says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has engineered a clever disinformation campaign to convince foreign experts that Iran is eight to 10 years away from developing a nuclear bomb. But in fact, she says, the regime is less than two years away from producing such a weapon, as part of its plan to "create an Iranian empire" in the Middle East. In a wide-ranging weekend telephone conversation from her base of exile in Paris, Maryam Rajavi told me that Mr. Ahmadinejad...

What could the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) possibly have in common? CAIR founders had close ties to Hamas, Palestinian Sunni Islamic extremists. NIAC and its main spokesman, Trita Parsi, have become apologists for the regime in Tehran, which exports a rival Shiite brand of Islamic extremism. Sunnis and Shias. We all know the story. They hate each other worse than Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. Right? Well, no. As I pointed out in Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, Sunnis and Shias get along just fine when it...

A National Post investigation has found the outlawed terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq recruited teenagers in Canada and sent them abroad to overthrow the Iranian government by force. Today, part three of a five-part series about a Canadian family that got deeply involved with the guerrillas -- and now regrets it.- - - At 11 o'clock in the morning on June 19, 2003, Mustafa Mohammady stopped his car on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, opened the driver's door and headed toward the French embassy. He held a gasoline canister in one hand and a lighter in the other. Two days earlier, French...

LE BOURGET, France, July 1 — Thousands of Iranians from across Europe gathered here today in support of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and its leader, Maryam Rajavi, who was recently freed from French judicial restrictions that limited her movement. Ms. Rajavi's message to the assembled crowd of 10,000 or more was that Iran needed neither nuclear weapons nor nuclear power but secular democracy, presumably led by Ms. Rajavi herself — or her husband, Massoud Rajavi, who is now presumed to be in hiding in Iraq. But the meeting's deeper message was that the Rajavi organization is still...

Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran's Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France.[1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked "Sister Maryam."[2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization.[3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman...

Few terrorists groups garner the bipartisan endorsement and support that Iran’s Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization [MKO] has. On October 20, 2005, several congressmen and many aides attended a briefing in Congress. Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the group and self-styled president-elect of Iran, addressed the gathering by video from France.[1] She received a warm reception. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) thanked “Sister Maryam.”[2] A bipartisan group of U.S. Congressmen have signed petitions calling for the U.S. Department of State to lift its 1997 classification of the group as a terrorist organization.[3] In an April 8, 2003 interview, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman...

It was September 2002. (Robert Torricelli's) re- election campaign had turned into a referendum on his ethics.............. He .....pulled out his cell phone, and punched in the number of his friend Bill Clinton. He was through......Clinton tried to talk him out of it. With that, Torricelli ended his lifelong passion for climbing the political ladder. He was 51 years old. Torricelli remains a busy man. With two former Senate staffers he formed a consulting business, Rosemont Associates, that advises the government of Taiwan, along with a list of corporate clients. He invests in real estate, including a handful of apartments,...

Iranian Ambassador to the European Union Dr. Ali Ahani has criticized what he said were the EU's "double standards" with regard to the fight against terrorism. In an interview with the Belgian VRT television Monday night, Ahani said the permission given to the terrorist MKO grouplet to hold rallies and continue their activities in European countries shows that the EU is not serious in the fight against terrorism. About 300 supporters of the MKO held a rally near the EU's headquarters in Brussels Monday to call on EU foreign ministers to remove the group from the EU's terror list. The...

LONDON, November 2 (IranMania) - Terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) was involved in car bombing in the southern port city of Basra on Monday, Iraqi security official told IRNA. The car bombing on Monday killed at least 20 Iraqi civilians and injured more than 50 in Basra. Several of those injured are in critical condition. The security official said that the number of deaths will probably rise. "The car bombing took place in Basra following suspicious contacts between MKO elements and British military officers based in the Iraqi city," he said. Iraqi police arrested two British nationals accused of bombing...

No news is at hand in recent days on the fate of 250 members of the terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK/NCR-Iran.org/Iranfocus.com and many more phony names by MKO, the most hated people among Iranians) who have been urging to leave Iraq and return to Iran as a priority, according to former MKO officials who have fled to Europe from Iraq. The former MKO officials believe that probably the group might have either been trapped in MKO detention camps inside the US army protected garrisons in Iraq or might have been subject to organizational duels and been killed. The commander of...

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The United States can designate foreign organizations as terrorist groups and bar Americans from financially backing them, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday. "Leaving the determination of whether a group is a 'foreign terrorist organization' to the executive branch ... is both a reasonable and a constitutional way to make such determinations," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote for a three-judge panel. "The Constitution does not forbid Congress from requiring individuals, whether they agree with the executive branch determination or not, to refrain from furnishing material assistance to designated terrorist organizations." The ruling by the...

PARIS, 19 Oct. (IPS) On the eve of the trial of the toppled Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, some former members of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organsation (MKO) demanded that the leader of the outlawed Organisation and some of his close associates be also tried for “crimes against both the Iraqi and Iranian peoples”. “The toppled regime of Saddam Hussein actively supported international terrorism and committed crimes against Iraqi and Iranian peoples and the Mojaheedin Khalq Organisation, led by Mas’oud Rajavi, were at the top of the list of these terrorist organizations”, Behzad Alishahi, a former member of the group said in...

An Iranian group has killed American civilians, allied itself with Saddam Hussein, and holds a spot on the State Department’s terrorist watch list. So why might it become America’s newest friend in the Middle East? Hint: Tehran. In August 2002, intelligence reports revealed secret nuclear facilities in the Iranian cities of Natanz and Arak. The revelation left officials in Tehran speechless, in large part because the evidence was not gathered by the United States or any of its allies. Rather, the courier of such sensitive intelligence was the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), a decades-old Iranian dissident group. In most cases, dissident...

I. Summary The Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is an armed Iranian opposition group that was formed in 1965. An urban guerrilla group fighting against the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, it was an active participant in the anti-monarchy struggle that resulted in the 1979 Iranian revolution.1 After the revolution, the MKO expanded its organizational infrastructure and recruited many new members. However it was excluded from participating in power sharing arrangements, and the new revolutionary government under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini forced it underground after it instigated an armed uprising against the government in June 1981. The majority of its...

The bomb had been detonated in Tehran's central Imam Hussein Square. Reports of the number of dead ranged from one to 20. Evidently, this was not a weapon of great sophistication. However, four simultaneous blasts in Ahvaz, which had killed as many as 30 people, had evidently been the work of sophisticated extremists, with most suspicion focusing on the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization, MKO (also called MEK). Among those with whom I spoke, in and out of government, the consensus was that the bombings in Tehran and Ahvaz were intended to deter voting in the presidential election. MKO, formed in the...

All the information the Mojahedeen provides the western media is pure lies and fabricated to discredit the Iranian regime and help the United States and Israel to put more pressures on Iran”, a former senior member of the outlawed, Baghdad-based Mojahedeen Khalq Organisation (MKO) told Iran Press Service. Referring to recent press conferences held by the MKO spokesmen in various capitals, including Paris, Vienna, London, Berlin and Washington “revealing” secret nuclear sites or the number of centrifuges undeclared to the international nuclear watchdog, the source who asked for anonymity said the MKO has no information about Iran’s sensitive military projects...

Over the past few years, influential officials in the American government have utilized information received by news agencies associated with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in order to persuade the American government that Iran poses a security threat to American interests. The end sum of these objectives is to force a military confrontation between the two governments, wherein MKO confidants and proxy organizations would replace existing political structures in Iran. In order to accomplish this task the MKO is engaged in an intensive campaign to force governments to remove their terrorist label in order to gain both political influence and...

The U.S. Government is now openly supporting the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian resistance movement designated as terrorist organization by the US State Department. On June 20th of this year, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq held a conference at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which is where many foreign journalists stay and is under the full protection of the U.S. Army. I was in the area of the hotel that day, and saw at least 10 U.S. tanks heading in the direction of the hotel to provide additional security. I knew of the conference in advance, because of a report issued to all NGO's working...

The famous investigative journalist Akbar Ganji is said to be dying. He has been urgently transferred from his cell in Evin to a hospital in Tehran. On July 16 it was the 36th day of his hunger strike as a protest not just against his own and his fellow-prisoners’ illegal detention, but also against the undemocratic Islamic Republic and its unelected Supreme Leader-for-Life, a harsh dictator with absolute power. Ganji’s hunger strike is a scream for the world’s attention for the persistent violations of the most fundamental human rights in his country. And for the fate of the vast number...

U.S. Policy Options for Iran: Sham Elections, Disinformation Campaign, Human Rights Abuses, and Regime Change Excerpt from Executive Summary While the Bush administration has been reluctant to adopt an unambiguous policy of regime change for Iran, the outcome of the Iranian electoral process, disinformation campaign, and violations of human rights require adoption of an explicit regime change policy for Iran.  An ambiguous American policy was somewhat effective prior to the June 2005 Iranian elections. That policy allowed Washington to support the European diplomatic initiative toward Iran without fear of being blamed for sabotaging negotiations by threatening the regime’s existence....

Minister of Information Ali Younesi said that US is involved in forming networks for sabotage against Iran citing Abdul Malik terrorist networks as an example. "We have evidences to support link between Abdul Malik terrorist group with US and Israeli intelligence services," he said. "It is likely that US and Israeli intelligence services have infiltrated into certain terrorist networks in Arab states including Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and even European states. It is not unlikely that what happened in London is from that category," Younesi said. He said that certain extremist elements of al-Qaeda especially the financial supporters of the...

An armed Iranian opposition group in exile, the Mojahedin Khalq Organization, has subjected dissident members to torture and prolonged solitary confinement, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 28-page report, “No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps,” details how dissident members of the shadowy Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) were tortured, beaten and held in solitary confinement for years at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group’s policies and undemocratic practices, or indicated that they planned to leave the organization. The report is based on the direct testimonies of a dozen former MKO members,...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Congress has been examining the prospect of granting U.S. support to an Iranian opposition group on the State Department's terrorist list. Congressional sources said several key House and Senate members have been discussing the removal of the Mujahadeen Khalq, or MEK, from the State Department's list of terrorist groups. They said the United States has not obtained evidence of MEK's involvement in terrorism for nearly 30 years. ''Work with the group that the regime dislikes the most,'' Raymond Tanter, co-founder of the Iran Policy Committee and former National Security Council member, said. Tanter, a former Reagan administration...

US State Department Report Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service. The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, by Kenneth Katzman. Washington, Nov 1992. 6 p. Doc. call no.: M-U 42953-1 no.92-824F Announcement of US about Mojahedin United States Department of State Washington, D.C 20520 UNCLASSIFIED DECL: OADR Dear Mr. Chairman: In accordance with section 523 of the FY 1994-95 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Public Law No. 103-236, I am pleased to submit on behalf of the secretary of state the report, "people's Mojahedin of Iran." The Administration has welcomed the opportunity to conduct a comprehensive review of the people's Mojahedin of...

-snip- In a document scheduled for public release this week, Human Rights Watch alleges that the Iranian exile group known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) has a history of cult-like practices that include forcing members to divorce their spouses and to engage in extended self-criticism sessions. More dramatically, the report states, former MEK members told Human Rights Watch that when they protested MEK policies or tried to leave the organization, they were arrested, in some cases violently abused and in other instances imprisoned. -snip- while the MEK has occasionally come up with accurate information about Iran's nukes, the group has come up...

(Paris, May 19, 2005) -- An armed Iranian opposition group in exile, the Mojahedin Khalq Organization, has subjected dissident members to torture and prolonged solitary confinement, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 28-page report, “No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps,” details how dissident members of the shadowy Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) were tortured, beaten and held in solitary confinement for years at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group’s policies and undemocratic practices, or indicated that they planned to leave the organization. The report is based on the direct testimonies of...

Iran's 'terrorists' helped disclose nuke program By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY 4/14/2005 TEHRAN, Iran — Tall and handsome, Arash Sametipour could be living a very different life in Northern Virginia if he hadn't joined the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). As U.S. troops watch, an MEK member, right, guards a road to the group's training camp in Iraq. By Brennan Linsley, AP Sametipour, 29, of Burke, Va., says he became involved in the Iranian opposition group in the late 1990s when he developed a crush on one of its members. In love and convinced that the group was working for the good...

Thousands attend Iran convention in US Capital Iran Focus Fri. 15 Apr 2005 Washington, D.C., Apr. 14 - Iranians from across the United States gathered in the Constitution Hall here today to take part in what they called Iranian-American National Convention for Democratic Change in Iran. Congressman Bob Filner (D-CA), joint-chair of the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the U.S. House of Representative; Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress and Co-chair of the Caucus; Congressman Dennis Moore (D-KS); and Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) were among the speakers who offered their support...

TEHRAN, IRAN – Clutching flowers, chewing fingernails, and nervously holding their faces in their hands, 31 Iranian families awaited a reunion they thought would never come. They were reuniting with sons who had joined anti-Iran militants, officially tagged "terrorists" by both the US and Iran. The journey of one of those sons, Hamid Khalkali, is typical: He went to Turkey five years ago for work, but ended up at a military training camp in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He was recruited by the Mujahideen-e Khalq, the "People's Holy Warriors," or MKO, Iran's largest opposition group, which aims to overthrow the government....

TEHERAN - One hundred members of Iran’s exiled armed opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen, have quit their base in Iraq and returned to the Islamic republic, press reports said Tuesday. “These people had requested the Red Cross officials to return to Iran after fleeing the camp in Iraq,” the governor of the Iranian border town of Qasr Shirin was quoted as saying. Press reports said a further 233 members of the group had also asked to return to Iran, with the next group due to enter the country next week. But the People’s Mujahedeen said “75 percent” of those seeking...

Ali Reza Jafarzadeh, frontman for the MKO and the NCRI in the United States, is still being introduced by the Fox News Network as their independent Iran analyst. Fox News' insistence on using this individual has prompted ridicule by many in the media and in political circles. Fox News has clearly decided that using this notorious man is more important for their pay masters than maintaining their reputation as a serious broadcaster. Or it could be that the Network has no other choice in its decision making except to consent to this scandal. Whatever the reason, Fox News has refused...

President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address issued a not-so veiled warning to Iran, for pursuing its nuclear weapons program. Earlier this week, Condoleezza Rice also warned Iran while on her first European tour as secretary of state. A number of Washington think tanks are jumping into the fray, calling either for dialogue or more muscle to be applied. The Iran Policy Committee, a new Washington group of former Middle East experts, offers a third alternative to negotiations, which they say are getting nowhere, or the military option, which they view as adventurous. The IPC supports...

In recent weeks, the Bush administration has toughened its stand against the fundamentalist Shiite Muslim government of Iran, calling it one of America's key enemies. But the administration has not yet presented a clear-cut strategy for dealing with Iran, instead hinting alternately that the solution may be European-led negotiations with Tehran, an Israeli military attack or a rebellion led by the Iranian opposition. The debate has echoes of the fight two years ago over Iraq, and some critics are saying the administration is making the same mistake -- relying on dubious intelligence sources to justify the case for overthrowing a...

LONDON, Feb 12 (IranMania) - German police banned Thursday's rally by Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) in Berlin, fearing possible violent acts by the Iraq-based terrorist group, a police spokeswoman told IRNA. "The demonstration was cancelled by police because they had doubts about the peaceful slogans of the rally which was supposed to be about Iran's human rights situation and its nuclear program," she said. The MKO organizers wanted to begin the gathering at noon in downtown Berlin. She pointed out that MKO supporters were told via police loudspeakers that the rally has been banned and that they should leave the...

LONDON, Feb 9 (IranMania) - The US State Department has singled out the Iranian Mujaheedin Khalq Organization (MKO) as a terrorist group, but some administration hawks think its members could be useful, Newsweek said in its latest edition. According to Iran Daily, at a camp south of Baghdad, known as Ashraf, 3,850 MKO members have been confined but gently treated by US forces since the 2003 invasion of Iraq (once they were allies of Saddam against their own country in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war). Now the administration is seeking to cull useful MKO members as operatives for use against Tehran,...

The Iran Connection US News & World Report - by Edward T. Pound Nov 14, 2004 In the summer of last year, Iranian intelligence agents in Tehran began planning something quite spectacular for September 11, the two-year anniversary of al Qaeda's attack on the United States, according to a classified American intelligence report. Iranian agents disbursed $20,000 to a team of assassins, the report said, to kill Paul Bremer, then the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq. The information was specific: The team, said a well-placed source quoted in the intelligence document, would use a Toyota Corona taxi and a...

As thankful as we are that Moqtada al-Sadr's rebellion did not end in a bloody and destructive battle for the Imam Ali Grand Mosque in Najaf, our gratitude is tempered by the realisation that this revolt was not an isolated event. Like al-Sadr himself, the Najaf stand-off was created by Iran and was only part of Iran's latest effort to destabilise Iraq and achieve strategic dominance in the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran's strategic ambitions and its prominence in global terrorism are nothing new. Despite the hopes of many governments, the widespread popular unrest and internal power struggles of...

This is what I wrote in 1994 following the Mashhad tragedy. When a friend's relative dies of old age and you attend the services, you say condolences, but what can you say to people who have lost a loved one in the Mashhad tragedy of bombing Imam Reza Shrine in 1994 killing the pilgrims? I once was in this kind of situation. The sister of a friend of mine with her three kids died in a very similar tragedy. I was speechless. I did not know what to say. After thinking it over, the following were my thoughts. I think...

WASHINGTON - Iran, a country that has bedeviled the United States for decades, could prove to be the biggest foreign policy challenge facing whoever is the next president. The messy Iraq war and a spy scandal linking Pentagon and Israeli officials could complicate U.S. hopes of halting Iran's nuclear ambitions. Both President Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry say they want to use diplomacy — although with different approaches — to prevent what could be a nightmare scenario for the United States: a nuclear-armed, hostile Islamic state in the volatile Middle East. But the United States' ability to sound an...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has arrested dozens of spies, including several who passed secrets about its nuclear program to the country's enemies, Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said on Tuesday. Yunesi said most of those arrested were linked to the Iraq-based Iranian opposition group the People's Mujahideen Organization (MKO), the official IRNA news agency reported. He did not say when the arrests had taken place.

Mojahedine Khalgh Organization (MKO) Sam Ghandchi This is what I wrote in 1994 following the Mashhad tragedy. When a friend's relative dies of old age and you attend the services, you say condolences, but what can you say to people who have lost a loved one in the Mashhad tragedy of bombing Imam Reza Shrine in 1994 killing the pilgrims? I once was in this kind of situation. The sister of a friend of mine with her three kids died in a very similar tragedy. I was speechless. I did not know what to say. After thinking it over, the...

The US State Department officially considers a group of 3,800 Marxist Iranian rebels - who once killed several Americans and was supported by Saddam Hussein - "terrorists." But the same group, under American guard in an Iraqi camp, was just accorded a new status by the Pentagon: "protected persons" under the Geneva Convention. This strange twist, analysts say, underscores the divisions in Washington over US strategy in the Middle East and the war against terrorism. It's also a function of the swiftly deteriorating US-Iran dynamic, and a victory for US hawks who favor using the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization (MKO) or...

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. military has granted "protected status" under the Geneva Convention to members of an exiled Iranian opposition group interned in Iraq, France-based exiles and U.S. officials said on Monday. The U.S. head of detainee operations in Iraq, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, told the People's Mujahideen Organization (MKO) its members held at a base in eastern Iraq had been recognized as "protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention." "(This is a) triumph for the Iranian Resistance and the Iranian people," Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said in a statement. The United...