Deputy Chief of the Iranian Judiciary and head of the country's Human Rights Headquarters Kazzem Qaribabadi said that it is shameful for members of the European Parliament to turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by the anti-Iran Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK, NCRI or PMOI) terrorist group.
Qaribabadi on Friday lashed out at the European Parliament for supporting the MKO and referring to it as “political opponents”.
It is shameful for members of the European Parliament to pursue their own political interests and turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by the MKO, which has killed over 12,000 innocent Iranians and still continues its terrorist activities while freely traveling through European countries, he said.
“The Europeans should know that as their support for the ISIL has backfired on them in a way that more than 4,000 ISIL members were European citizens and created insecurity for them, their support for the MKO will equally be costly,” Qaribabadi said.
He added that the US and Europe have committed the most heinous crimes against Iran by supporting terrorist groups, sheltering them and excluding them from the list of terrorist groups as well as imposing or implementing unlawful and oppressive sanctions.
“The European Parliament and European countries must stand accountable for their human rights violations against Iranians. They are in no position to preach others in the field of human rights,” Qaribabadi stated.
He also denounced the recent European Parliament resolution on the death penalty in Iran, saying it is based on political goals and fails to represent the existing realities in the country.
"This resolution encompasses distorted and fabricated issues and is not consistent with the existing realities in Iran, but it has been prepared with completely political purposes."
The Iranian official said the execution penalty is being implemented in 55 countries throughout the world and urged the European Parliament and European countries to respect other nations’ laws and cultural diversity when it comes to human rights issues.
According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the death penalty is permissible when it comes to capital crimes, he said, criticizing the Europeans for imposing their own standards on other countries in contradiction to their sovereignty.
Europeans must learn to respect national sovereignty of other countries and know that they cannot support their criminal citizens and demand their release through threats, the Iranian official said.
Reports said in December that several members of the MKO terrorist group were detained in Europe for money laundering and drug and human trafficking.
Albanian newspaper 'Exit' reported that a document, addressed to a foreign diplomatic recipient, bearing the signature and stamp of the Director of the Criminal Police Department in the State Police, gives details of a serious rap sheet of offences, reportedly involving MKO members.
It added that two MKO members, along with their Albanian and Greek accomplices, were apprehended for direct involvement in human trafficking. On 11 July 2021, police stopped a car carrying Syrian, Iraqi, and Kurdish citizens. Further investigations led to the arrest of the main gang members.
Based on the document, it was discovered that between 2019 and 2021, the same smuggling gang attempted to transfer some 400 members of MKO from Albania to France.
Meantime, on 18 July 2021, a consignment of drugs was seized by the police and two MKO senior officials, Narges Abrishamchi and Hassan Nayeb-Aqa, were arrested. It is reported in the official document they confessed to playing a pivotal role in organizing and transporting a shipment of drugs to Italy.
This pattern of criminality, according to an official source who wished to remain anonymous, told 'Exit', dates back to 2015. The documents and the source claim that information on these crimes has also been handed over to the US embassy in Tirana.
'Exit' contacted the US embassy to comment but no formal response has been given.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community. Its members fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where they received support from then dictator Saddam Hussein.
The notorious outfit has carried out numerous attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials for several decades.
In 2012, the US State Department removed the MKO from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated to Saudi regime and other regimes adversarial to Iran.
A few years ago, MKO members were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former US military base in Baghdad, and were later sent to Albania.
Those members, who have managed to escape, have revealed MKO's scandalous means of access to money, almost exclusively coming from Riyadh.
The MKO terrorist group specified the targets as martyred Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, who commanded the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Iranian President Seyed Ebrahim Rayeesi.
The terrorist organization said it would “welcome” their assassination, adding that it desired for the ranking officials to “join” Asadollah Lajevardi, Tehran’s former chief prosecutor, and Ali Sayyad-Shirazi, a former commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces during Iraq’s 1980-88 war against Iran.
Earlier in June 2019, a leaked audio of a phone conversation between two members of MKO, revealed Saudi regime has colluded with the MKO elements to frame Iran for the tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf.
In the audio, which is being released by the Iran Front Page for the first time, Shahram Fakhteh, an official member and the person in charge of MKO’s cyber operations, is heard talking with a US-based MKO sympathizer named Daei-ul-Eslam in Persian, IFP news reported.
In this conversation, the two elements discuss the MKO’s efforts to introduce Iran as the culprit behind the tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf, and how the Saudis contacted them to pursue the issue.
“In the past week we did our best to blame the [Iranian] regime for the (oil tanker) blasts. Saudis have called Sister Maryam (Rajavi)’s office to follow up on the results, [to get] a conclusion of what has been done, and the possible consequences,” Fakhteh is heard saying.
“I guess this can have different consequences. It can send the case to the UN Security Council or even result in military intervention. It can have any consequence,” Daei-ul-Eslam says.
Attacks on two commercial oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on June 13, 2019 and an earlier attack on four oil tankers off the UAE’s Fujairah port on May 12, 2019, escalated tensions in West Asia and raised the prospect of a military confrontation between Iran and the United States.
The US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have rushed to blame Iran for the incidents, with the US military releasing a grainy video it claimed shows Iranian forces in a patrol boat removing an unexploded mine from the side of a Japanese-owned tanker which caught fire in 2019.
It later released some images of the purported Iranian operation after the video was seriously challenged by experts and Washington’s own allies.
The MKO which is said to be a cult which turns humans into obedient robots, turned against Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has carried out several terrorist attacks killing senior officials in Iran; yet the West which says cultism is wrong and claims to be against terrorism, supports this terrorist group officially.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the MKO began its enmity against Iran by killing over 17,000 Iranians and terrorist activities. Several members of the terrorist group and its leaders are living in France now, freely conducting terrorist activities.
The MKO terrorist group has martyred 17,161 Iranian citizens, including late president Mohammad Ali Rajayee, former prime minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, late Head of Supreme Judicial Council Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, late Deputy Chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff Ali Sayyad Shirazi, and 27 legislators, as well as four nuclear scientists.