Pressure on Canada to take 'terror cult' recruits -
Rajavi's ransom hostages will not leave Iraq without him

TORONTO - Fifty volunteers who left Canada to join a ''cult-like'' militant group called Mujahedin-e-Khalq are being detained by the U.S. military in Iraq -- more than twice the number previously thought, the National Post has learned.

Twelve Canadian citizens are being held at Camp Ashraf, as well as another 38 with landed immigrant or refugee status in Canada, according to Ottawa immigration lawyer Warren Creates, who visited the former military base in February.

They are among 4,000 who were living at the headquarters of the Mujahedin -- also known as the MEK or People's Mujahedin of Iran -- when it was seized by the U.S. Army during the war in Iraq last May. ''They are all members of the Peoples Mujahedeen of Iran,'' Mr. Creates, who represents some of the detained Canadians, wrote in a recent letter.

Next Tuesday on Parliament Hill, Conservative MP Paul Forseth and Liberal MP Colleen Beaumier are co-sponsoring a conference to address the fate of the MEK-Canadians at Camp Ashraf. Conservative foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day also confirmed he plans to speak.

But just what is the MEK? How did so many Canadians end up at its military headquarters in Iraq?

And why are Canadian politicians of all stripes coming to the aid of a militant group that has been likened to a cult and that Canadian counter-terrorism agents have targeted for more than a decade?

Camp Ashraf is not really a camp. Blooming out of the Iraqi desert, near the border with Iran, it has a convention centre, two museums, a pool, park, garden, hospital and university. It covers about 50 square kilometres, and has its own electrical substation.

Visitors arriving to see the detainees are put up at the Hotel Iran. ''It's a city,'' said Mr. Creates. But it is a besieged city. When Mr. Creates travelled there by car from Jordan in February to visit his clients, he passed some of the 600 U.S. troops and Bradley tanks guarding the perimeter. Another 200 U.S. military police patrolled within the camp, he said.

When U.S. forces took control of the base as part of a truce agreement, they seized the MEK's 300 tanks, 250 armoured personnel carriers, 250 artillery pieces and 10,000 small arms. While they have been disarmed, the MEK members ''still firmly believe in the calling that they have all risen to,'' the lawyer said.

During his visit, he photographed MEK members parading in their military uniforms -- green fatigues adorned with scarlet berets, scarves and sashes. As they marched, they held black and white portraits of martyrs who had died for the cause.

The MEK was secretly founded in 1965 by Iranian youths who thought their leadership too pro-Western. They advocated an armed struggle to depose the Shah and bring in a new government that blended Marxism with Islamic ideals. Inspired by guerrilla movements in Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam, the MEK adopted violence as a strategy for change and began a series of attacks in Iran that were carried out in concert with the rising political dissident Ayatollah Khomeini.

Massoud Rajavi began his climb to the MEK leadership while serving time at Iran's Qasr prison.

''Qasr was the seedbed for the cult of personality that was to grow around Rajavi,'' according to a report on the MEK that Mr. Forseth said he got from Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents. ''Those rejecting this cult were pushed aside and many supporters from the tightly knit prison network were promoted by Rajavi to the top echelons of the MEK organization after the revolution.''

In 1979, the MEK announced that, ''After the shah, it's America's turn.'' And that same day, MEK members took part in the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. American hostages were held captive, with MEK help, for 444 days.

But the MEK held little influence after the Islamic revolution that brought Khomeini to power, and following clashes with government forces and the execution of MEK supporters, Mr. Rajavi fled to France to establish the headquarters of his exile movement.

Forced to leave France in 1986, Mr. Rajavi went next to Iraq and set up the National Liberation Army (NLA), the military wing of the MEK. His wife, Maryam, served as secretary general of the MEK and deputy commander of the NLA.

Saddam Hussein, who was at war with Iran, welcomed Mr. Rajavi as an ally, and armed his forces.

During the 1980s, the MEK underwent a radical shift in ideology. It reversed its anti-Western posture and instead began lobbying Europe and North America to support its cause. ''The MEK has also evolved into a form of cult, strongly devoted to its chief, Rajavi,'' the CSIS report says. ''The organization has granted unlimited powers to Rajavi. He has resolved that the ultimate objective is revolution in Iran and that the ends justify the means. Internally, Rajavi runs the MEK autocratically, suppressing dissent and rejecting differing viewpoints.''

The MEK/NLA units in Iraq conducted cross-border raids, assassinations and bombings in Iran. But the heart of the MEK effort is its political campaign. CSIS estimates the group has 13 large offices and 170 smaller ones worldwide. One of them is in Canada, CSIS says. ''The [propaganda] unit's main function is to establish the MEK as the alternative to the current Iranian regime and in so doing gain both new adherents and Western political and financial support.''

But despite its popularity among Iranian exiles, adds CSIS, the MEK appears to have little public support in Iran itself. And despite its stated intention to democratize Iran, ''The MEK's 29-year record of behaviour does not substantiate its capability or intention to be democratic.''

The MEK presence in Canada came to public attention on April 5, 1992, when about 40 people armed with sticks, crowbars and mallets attacked the Iranian embassy in Ottawa, hours after Iranian bombers struck the MEK's base in Iraq.

The following year, Robab Farahi-Mahdavieh, who CSIS called a ''leading female member of the MEK'' and the alleged mastermind of the Ottawa embassy raid, was deported for security reasons.

''Mahdavieh's involvement with the MEK in Canada was deemed to have been substantial,'' CSIS wrote.

Another MEK leader, Mahnaz Samadi, was arrested in Ottawa in 1999. A CSIS report says she ''was responsible for directing some MEK operations in Iraq'' and that she was sent to Canada ''to act in an organizational capacity.'' She was deported in 2000.

Among the Canadians drawn to the MEK cause was Ali Reza Hassani. Although he was only three when he fled Iran for Canada with his parents, after graduating from an Ottawa high school four years ago, he felt so strongly about his homeland that he set off on a mission to liberate it from the fundamentalist mullahs in power since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

A guitarist who writes his own songs and worships Elvis, Mr. Hassani made his way to Camp Ashraf. ''He went there and he decided he wanted to stay,'' his mother Froogh Hassani, an Ottawa bus driver, said this week, calling the MEK a legitimate resistance group and ''the only hope'' for freeing Iran from its repressive rulers. ''I am proud of him.''

But she is also worried. She has already lost a daughter to the cause. After French counter-terrorism authorities arrested MEK leader Maryam Rajavi last summer, Neda Hassani, 25, went to the French embassy in London and set herself on fire in protest.

Now Ali risks becoming another family martyr.

The Iranian regime has jailed and killed thousands such dissidents, many in the same fashion as Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-born photographer from Montreal who was killed while in custody in Tehran.

The Iranian intelligence services have also sent operatives around the world to assassinate leaders of the dissident movement.

Sara Mirzakhani of Ottawa, who works for the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, one of the groups behind next week's event on the Hill, said she is not an MEK member.

''I support the organization. Mujahedin don't have an organization here. It's mostly a network of supporters.''

She said the CSIS allegations about a propaganda campaign made her laugh. ''I wonder how many Canadian [political] parties we can say that about? It is normal. You work, you try to bring people to your cause, you try to organize things, you try to bring people in.''

She feels the same about another section of the CSIS report that lists the MEK's ''methods of operation'' as assassinations, bombings, hijackings, ambushes, suicide attacks, border raids, street demonstrations and propaganda.

''It is true,'' Ms. Mirzakhani said. ''Actually it is a matter of pride that Mujahedin did that ... Why not? And for the assassination, the organization has not done armed operations for the last two years.''

One of the last was the 1998 assassination of an Iranian prison official considered a ''butcher'' because he oversaw the rape and killing of political prisoners, she said. Iranians were happy when he was killed, she said.

''He was evil, so they killed him.''

The MEK's tactics, however, have landed the group on the U.S. and European Union lists of banned terror groups. The MEK is not one of the 34 groups outlawed under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, but Canada has frozen its assets under terror financing regulations, and Canadian courts and immigration tribunals have ruled the group is a terrorist organization.

CSIS named the MEK in 2000 as one of the organizational targets of its counter-terrorism program, and said its Canadian operatives had been ''providing logistical support for terrorist operations.''

CSIS apparently continues to harbour concerns about the group. After Mr. Forseth spoke at a Jan. 24., rally in Washington, D.C., that U.S. lawmakers alleged was linked to the MEK, CSIS agents stopped by his office and gave him a report describing the MEK as a militant, Marxist, Islamic movement.

Mr. Forseth said he appreciated the visit but he still does not believe the MEK are terrorists.

The MEK campaign has created strange political bedfellows in Ottawa. Conservatives, normally hawkish on terrorism, are sympathetic to the MEK because its target is Iran, itself a major state sponsor of terrorism, as evidenced by its current incursions into Iraq.

Indeed, some analysts in Washington believe the MEK should be used to weaken the Iranian regime, the same way the Northern Alliance was used by the Americans to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan. But Stockwell Day not only wants the MEK outlawed but says those who left Canada to join the group are not welcome back.

''If they are claiming to be members of a terrorist group, in this case MEK, they should absolutely not be allowed to come back to Canada,'' Mr. Day said. He said he is attending next week's event in Ottawa to hear the concerns of family members worried that those detained at Camp Ashraf might be shipped to Iran, but added, ''They may not like what I have to say in terms of MEK.''

Mr. Creates said the terrorist label does not fit the MEK because their attacks are focused on Iranian regime targets. The MEK is just fighting Iranian state terror its own way, he said.

''As soon as the MEK, however, arm themselves -- as they are perfectly allowed under international law to do in order to overthrow a prosecutory regime that will not allow free and democratic regime change -- some leaders of North America and Europe brand them as terrorists.''

To its supporters, the MEK is the only organization standing up against an Iranian regime that they see as repressive, radical and harbouring nuclear intentions, as well as political ambitions that spread far beyond its borders.

''It's a very dangerous regime,'' said Mr. Forseth. ''If they ever get a combination of nuclear weapons and a delivery system, they have an ideological system that is without constraint and they would be willing to use it.''

In a photograph taken by Mr. Creates during his trip to Iraq, the male Canadian MEK members at Camp Ashraf wear suits and ties, and 15 are women in headscarves. Many of them appear quite young. The Canadians range in age from 19 to 59.

''Despite their situation, I found their spirits to be very positive. They were very thankful for all that we're doing. They're healthy, they're well-fed, they are well-clothed. Life goes on for them.''

The fate of the self-styled ''people's combatants'' is uncertain. The Iraqi administration set to take over from the Americans on June 30 wants to expel them because they cooperated with Saddam, but the question is: to where?

Tehran has offered to hand over wanted al-Qaeda operatives in exchange for the MEK members. But if they are sent to Iran, they could be prosecuted, or worse. They also face possible arrest by the U.S. and European Union, where the MEK is outlawed for terrorism.

In February, Mrs. Hassani and her husband left Ottawa and flew to Jordan, then took a car across the empty desert highway to Baghdad, stayed the night and then drove all day to Camp Ashraf to see their son for the first time in 18 months. The trip took 50 hours.

She checked in at the Hotel Iran, and Ali was allowed to come for visits. ''It was good to see him,'' she said.

But it was an emotional reunion. It was the first time they had met since Neda's death by self-immolation.

''I kind of understand why she did that,'' her mother said. ''Not that I approve of that, and I wish I was there to stop her but I totally understand why she did it and I am proud of her because she was very strong and she had a good head on her shoulders.''

Her photograph is now on display at the Martyr's Museum at Camp Ashraf, where her younger brother is studying law while he waits for the Americans, Iranians and Iraqis to decide his fate.

She said her son does not want to leave Camp Ashraf until the safety of all its MEK inhabitants has been assured, but when he is ready, he should be allowed to come home.

''He is a Canadian. He has a right to be here and he hasn't done anything wrong. Even if he is a member of MEK, MEK is not on a terrorist list in Canada.

''My son had the courage to stand for what he believed,'' she added. ''They are legitimate opposition, the only opposition.''

She said the Americans at the camp told her the MEK members were safe. ''But I'm a mother. I worry sick every day.''

CANADIAN CITIZENS DETAINED AT CAMP ASHRAF

Ali Reza Hassani, 23.

Bita Safa, 19.

Fereshteh Fakhari, 52.

Yaghoub Torabi, 52.

Homayoun Tabrizi, 38.

Mohamad-Reza Khaleghi, 51.

Bahador Vahimi Kiasarai, 46.

Jalil Jafari Toussi, 35.

Mohammad Taebi, 59.

Hamid-Reza Najmi, 42.

Ahmad Dolati, 44

SOURCE: "Request for Consular Visit," March 16, 2004,

Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall LLP.

CHRONOLOGY OF MEK ATTACKS

Aug. 1971 After plots to bomb a Tehran electrical plant and kidnap Prince Shahram are foiled, the MEK hijacks a plane from Jordan to Baghdad. May 30, 1972 The Iranian-American Society and U.S. Information Office are bombed, as well as the Hotel International and offices of Pepsi and General Motors. That same day the MEK attempts to assassination of the chief of the U.S. military mission in Iran. Aug. 3, 1972 Jordanian embassy is bombed. Aug. 13, 1972 Tehran police chief is assassinated. June 2, 1973 American Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Hawkins is assassinated. Ten buildings are bombed that same year, including the offices of Pan Am Airlines and Shell Oil. May 21, 1975 Two U.S. military advisors are assassinated. Aug. 28, 1976 Three American businessmen are assassinated. Aug. 11, 1981 A suicide bombing kills 17 people and a religious leader. July 2, 1982 Thirteen members of the Islamic police and a religious leader are killed in a suicide bombing. That same year assassinations claim the lives of Iran's chief prosecutor, chief of police and prison warden. July 6, 1983 An Iranian airliner with 372 passengers and 18 crew is hijacked. April 5, 1992 Demonstrators, most of them MEK members, storm the Iranian embassy in Ottawa. That same day Iranian embassies in Switzerland, the U.S., Britain, Australia, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are attacked. December, 1993 A Turkish diplomat is assassinated in Iran after being mistaken for an Iranian official. November, 1994 Three die in a suicide bombing in Tehran. April, 1995 Thirteen are injured in a tehran suicide blast. April, 1999 Assassinated the deputy chief of Iran's armed forces. February, 2000 MEK launches mortar attack on the Tehran offices of the Iranian supreme leader and president. The Iranian chief of staff was assassinated. 2000 and 2001 Frequent mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids on Iranian military, police and government buildings near the Iran-Iraq border.