Following the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MeK)’s New Round of Violence including the terrorist attack in Tehran on July 1, 2022, The Families of Iranian Victims of Terrorism penned an open letter to the international assemblies and urged them to abandon political considerations in dealing with terrorist groups.
The letter reads as follows:
“The MeK claims that it formally rejected the use of violence in 2001 although there is limited documentary proof of this decision in either English or Farsi.”
This is part of the US National Defense Research Institute’s report on the MeK terrorist group published in 2009. Before then, they were counted as part of Saddam’s private army from 1986 to 2003, which played a significant role in suppressing Iraqi ethnic and religious minorities, as well as a destructive terror machine of thousands of Iranian citizens in 80s and 90s.
It is written in the same report that, “Despite the MeK’s public renunciation of violence in 2001, its previous history of violence and the leadership’s requests for the return of its weapons during OIF made it highly unlikely that the UNHCR would grant refugee status to the entire group”.
In fact, the MeK never abandoned the use of violence and had no desire for doing so. Even when they were forcibly disarmed by the international coalition forces in Iraq in 2003, they continued to promote violence in Iran and Iraq. The verdict of the Columbia Court of Appeal in 2010 clearly demonstrates how this group, despite having been disarmed, had been training its members in Karbala, a religious city in Iraq, to conduct suicide attacks.
After 2003, the MeK has sought in Europe and the US to pose itself as a political group opposing the Islamic Republic. However, thousands of kilometers away and hidden to the eyes of western politicians, it has resumed its militant activities in Iran through establishing new terror cells called Rebel Centers.
Being surprisingly removed from the US, EU and UK terror lists assured them that, due to the Iran-West political relations, their violent anti-human rights acts will not be noticed by the west.
When removing the MeK from the list, the US and Europe were not confident about whether the group had actually abandoned violence and their reports confirm this suspicion. However, MeK’s recommencement of violence and incitement of its members to use weapons indicate that America and Europe have acted hastily in the case of delisting the group.
It is clearly evident that there are political considerations in play when making a terror list, but terrorism is a dangerous phenomenon whose negative effects on peace, security, and human rights are undeniable in all parts of the world. Acting politically toward terrorism is irrational and will have dire consequences. By claiming responsibility for the terrorist attack on July 1, 2022 in Tehran, the MeK showed that it has returned to violence and has no intention of hiding it. Therefore, international institutions and countries committed to fight with terrorism must act responsibly against this group.
The fact that this group has officially accepted responsibility on its website for this operation and a few others in the past months signifies that the reasons proposed for delisting the group by the US State Department are entirely unfounded.
The US Department of State delisted the MeK in September 28, 2012 based on the group’s official declaration of not having conducted terror attacks in the past ten years (up to 2012) and having renounced violence. In that same report, the State Department mentions that despite MEK’s delisting, it has not shut its eyes to the group’s previous terrorist operations.
Since 2018, the MeK has entered a new phase of violence and has been actively conducting acts of terror through its so-called rebel centers violating the premise based on which they were delisted. This issue must be brought to the attention of international assemblies, peace activists and those combatting terrorism.
We, the Families of Iranian Terror Victims, condemn the Western governments’ appeasement with terrorist groups like the MeK and ask international institutions for abandoning political considerations in dealing with such organizations.