Responses of Mojahedin, Rajavi and National Council of Resistance of Iran to Allegations of Human Rights Abuses and War Crimes

The following are excerpts from many official websites of the Mojahedin-e Khalq and National council of Resistance of Iran; including

ncri-iran.org the official website of National Council of Resistance (also band in USA, still working in EU)
Iran-Interlink.info (deliberately named to copy www.Iran-Interlink.org),
Iranfocus.com (this has no association whatsoever to Menas' www.Iran-Focus.com which is a well respected Middle East on-line publication),
et al

This has been Massoud and Maryam Rajavi's only response to the allegations of human rights abuses and war crimes committed over a twenty-five year period, which have been consistently raised by former members of their cult, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, as well as human rights organisations, in particular, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and the governments across the globe which have added the Mojahedin to their lists of terrorist entities.

We apologies to Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and to Mr Win Griffiths, former MP for Bridgend, Wales, (not forgetting Mr Ebrahim Khodabandeh, outspoken critic of Rajavi and his cult), for again publishing the lies created by the Mojahedin about them and on their behalf. We believe that it is in the public interest to expose these lies.

The Rajavi cult has embarked on a campaign of misinformation to whitewash its record of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity under the protection of its benefactor Saddam Hussein. Rajavi believes that by doing so the Mojahedin may once more be used by some new masters as mercenaries against their own country (someone who would be willing to wear the dirty boots of Saddam and start paying them to carry out their terrorist acts).

For more information about the Mojahedin, Rajavi and the National Council of Resistance misinformation campaign (and their more serious criminal activities) in western countries  please contact:

Email:  info@iran-interlink.org
Telephone/Fax : 0044 113 278 0503

Post: Write to us in Farsi, English, French, German or Arabic at:

IRAN-INTERLINK
PO Box 148
Leeds LS16 5YJ
UK

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website Iran-interlink.info
(no date given):

Who is behind UK based Iran-Interlink Organisation?

"Iran-Interlink" identifies itself as:
Iran Interlink is a pressure group / support organisation which provides a point of contact for families and friends of members of the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq. It informs about the real nature of the Mojahedin as a religious/personality cult; exposes the Mojahedin's abuse of its members' fundamental human rights; pinpoints responsibility for the terrorist actions and human rights abuses of the Mojahedin on leader, Massoud Rajavi; helps individuals who wish to leave the Mojahedin to find refuge; assists those who leave the Mojahedin come to terms with their experiences within and re-establish themselves in the wider community; and reunites people who leave the Mojahedin with their family and friends. Iran Interlink is based in Leeds.

Massoud Khodabandeh and his British wife Ann Singleton run the site from their home in Leeds. Both were formerly associated with the dissident Iranian Mojahedin. Singleton was never a member it seems. She became affiliated with Mojahedin supporters in London in the late 80's and eventually tagged along with some supporters to go to Iraq to visit the Iranian opposition's National Liberation Army camp for a two month period in the early 90's. The NLA was in Iraq since 1986 for the purpose of offering viable resistance to the Iranian regime from the only neighboring state that was possible. Singleton left Iraq after finding herself out of place in a struggle she really didn't believe in.

Khodabandeh was with the Mojahedin until 1996 when he decided to quit the struggle of his own free will and associated with supporters for a brief period after that. Both had disassociated themselves from the organisation quite freely after finding that a life of struggle against the mullahs in Tehran was too difficult. The two married sometime after that. Little was it known that the Iranian MOIS would make an offer that they couldn't refuse.

A short period after leaving the Mojahedin, Khodabandeh was recruited by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) in a covert operation run by the Elteghat (Eclectic) directorate of the MOIS in Tehran. The aim of this operation was to entice, cajole, and bribe former members of the resistance who had quit the struggle to turn against their former comrades-in-arms.

They would initially provide intelligence for assassination attempts on resistance activists on European soil and would later lead a vast disinformation campaign to demonise the Mojahedin and ostracise them within Europe and the US where they had a large following.

It should be noted that possibly hundreds of former members and supporters have left the ranks of the Mojahedin in its 40 year history for personal reasons. But most still continue to support the Mojahedin by attending protest actions, providing financial support, and participating in grass-roots activities to raise awareness about the issue of democracy in Iran. The Khodabandehs however decided, like a handful of former members, to cast their lot with the Iranian regime and get involved in the MOIS covert operation.

Khodabandeh has a busy schedule making expensive trips to France, Netherlands, Belgium, Malaysia and other places. He uses the trips to militate against his former colleagues and present them as terrorists, brainwashers, murderers, torturers, and a host of other unproven allegations.

In the political struggle between the Iranian opposition and the Iranian regime of the ayatollahs, Khodabandeh likes to strike a neutral tone, never offering any criticism of his government's support for terrorism, its support of fundamentalist groups, its irresponsible policy of pursuing nuclear weapons, nor of the regime's human rights violations in Iran. Most would however say that his fervent attacks on the Mojahedin belie his skewed political sympathies and question his expensive lifestyle of jetting to various countries to attack a group which in the general balance of power offsets the mullahs' murderous rule over Iran.

The motive behind Iran-Interlink is even more suspect to Iranian dissidents when it is learnt that Singleton travelled to Tehran in winter 2002, prior to launching the website. On arrival at Tehran's Mehrabad airport, she met with Intelligence Ministry agents who were interested in her background.

It seems Singleton volunteered to help save her new brother-in-law, Mr. Ebrahim Khodabandeh, who was later arrested and extradited to Iran by Syrian authorities while in Syria on the eve of the Gulf War. Ebrahim Khodabandeh has since recanted and is actively engaged in a propaganda war against the PMOI.

During her month-long visit to Iran, Ms. Singleton met her mother-in-law and asked her to exert pressure on her son (Ebrahim) to leave the Mojahedin. Ebrahim's mother later admitted to him that the regime allowed her to leave Iran for a visit to the UK to see Ebrahim the previous year on condition that she would “help” him leave the resistance and return to Iran. Ebrahim Khodabandeh had while in London filed an affidavit in court proceedings confirming that Ann Singleton and his brother had setup Iran-Interlink at the behest of MOIS.

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website Iran-interlink.info
(no date given)

Karim Haghi exposed, a MOIS agent in Europe

"Dissident" exposed as
Karim Haghi introduces himself as "the former head of personal protection of Maryam Rajavi and now a political refugee in the Netherlands" and claims that he was a "member of the People’s Mojahedin for 15 years."

Haghi has never been "the head of personal protection of Mrs. Rajavi" or a "member of the Mojahedin for 15 years". Haghi was in the NLA like thousands of other combatants and, like all the others, performed sentry and guard duties on a rotational basis.
During the bombings of Iraq in 1991, he said that for physical reasons he could no longer remain in the NLA and asked to be transferred to Baghdad to lead an ordinary life, a request that was granted.
In January 1993, Haghi and his wife and child were sent to France with their expenses for the trip and stay in France paid in full by the PMOI. Within a few months more than 67,000 French Francs were paid to him by the Mojahedin. But after a few months he decided to go to the Netherlands and apply for asylum in that country. After May 1993, he had no contacts with the Mojahedin.

In 1994, Haghi was recruited by the MOIS and from 1995 he was in regular contact with Maqsoudi, an MOIS handler working under diplomatic cover in the Iranian consulate in the Netherlands. It was then that three years after leaving Iraq, Haghi suddenly ‘remembered’ that he was imprisoned and tortured by the Mojahedin during the years he had been in Iraq.

The MOIS made Haghi the ringleader of its espionage network in the Netherlands. The network was set up around a journal called "Payvand" which had been launched by the Intelligence Ministry against the PMOI. Haghi receives money and other facilities directly from the Intelligence Ministry and is in contact with other known agents of the Intelligence Ministry in Europe.

On the instructions of his MOIS handlers, Haghi has raised a series of false allegations against the PMOI in the Netherlands, once accusing PMOI supporters of breaking into his home and committing theft. The Dutch Ministers of Justice and Interior, asked during a debate in a parliamentary committee about allegations of PMOI wrongdoing in the Netherlands, gave this joint response:

The Mojahedin are known in The Netherlands as an organization that organizes peaceful demonstrations. It is also apparent that they collect contributions in the streets under an affiliated charity called SIM. In that respect, there has been some conflict on the way the collectors deal with the people to raise contributions. But there is no record or document indicating that Mojahedin have been involved in smuggling people or committing any other serious illegal acts of a criminal nature.

In his revelations, Jamshid Tafrishi, a former MOIS agent who defected after 10 years, said: "In April 1996, Karim Haghi met with Saeed Emami in Singapore and Peyvand publications was used as a cover to receive money for members of the network. After releasing the first issue of Peyvand in July 1997, Amir Hossein Taqavi (Director general of MOIS for Europe and in charge of the office for special operations who directly guided the terrorist operations abroad) contacted me and asked for my views on the publication."

Karim Haghi was one of the organizers of the Intelligence Ministry's seminar on April 18, 2003 against the Mojahedin in Paris. During Mrs. Rajavi's detention in Paris, he was involved in a coordinated campaign trying to fill the empty judicial file with false propaganda against the Mojahedin. He told the French daily La Croix: "Having Mrs. Rajavi in jail gives us hope to live in Europe!"

Taken from "Enemies of the Ayatollahs" by Mohammad Mohaddessin, Foreign Affairs Committee chair of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult)  website Iran-interlink.info
(no date given)

A profile: Islamic Republic of Iran 's lobby in Europe, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Member of the European Parliament

The Baroness has for more than twelve years cooperated with Iranian authorities and received direct and indirect funding and support from the Iranian government for her efforts to supposedly provide humanitarian aide to refugees from Iraq who fled to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. However, it seems that the refugees mostly formed Iranian funded groups such as Hakim's force, who took refuge in Iran and were trained and funded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Iranian regime's extra-territorial Qods Force, believed responsible for coordinating parts of the insurgency in Iraq today. There is a serious conflict of interest, therefore, in her claims against Iranian opposition forces who seek to change the regime in Iran.

As an MEP she has actively lobbied for Iranian interests with European governments and political parties. The Baroness played an instrumental role in brokering the inclusion of the PMOI in the EU terror list as part of a bargain with Tehran. In a meeting in Brussels on 19 March 2002, held on the initiative of the clerical regime and attended by then Tehran's deputy foreign minister, Emma Nicholson said that she would ask the EU to declare the PMOI as a terrorist group.

Baroness Emma Nicholson was quoted in Tehran on 13 February 2003, on one of her numerous trips to Iran, as saying:

"Here, our debates on Iraq have been attended by known members of the MKO recently… The MKO have thousands of members inside Iraq and thousands outside… These people are a threat to world security. Their organization strikes silently and with lethal impact. This is Saddam's private, international terrorist army, working against us all… For the sake of our citizens' and for global safety I urge far greater security attention is paid to the MKO. War or no war, the criminals who make up the MKO kill and destroy the innocent."

The Baroness has never criticised the Iranian government for its many abuses of human rights; nor for its support of terrorism throughout the Middle East and beyond; nor for its illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons in secret for 18 years; nor for its suppression of the Iranian people (ethnic, religious and dissident political groups); nor for its hateful words of threats to other UN member states recently.

Baroness Nicholson is a famed apologist of the Iranian regime, and a self-proclaimed "good friend" of some top officials in the Iranian government. In a debate in the House of Lords on 22 June 1999 she defended Iran's leaders against charges of violating the human rights of women, a fact attested to by 51 UN condemnations of Iran's human rights violations:

"Women in Islam have traditionally and historically had more rights than women in Christianity. I refer particularly to the rights of widows in Islam. But women in Iran had rights before and after the revolution of 1979…. Two successive presidents have done a great deal to strengthen the position of women in Iran. I understand that the current president had a very widespread vote from women, as did the previous president, whose daughter heads the women's organisation in Iran. She has been a friend of mine for a little while and has assisted me in finding women to set up a women's group of Europeans and women from a number of Islamic nations. The Iranian women who worry me most strongly both inside and outside Iran are members of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) Organisation, the anti-government terrorist group. It consists of 10,000 women who train in camps inside Iraq."

Baroness Nicholson issued a press release on 3 February 2003, on the eve of the Gulf War and claimed to have passed evidence to Hans Blix that Iraqi WMD were being hidden in "MKO bases." Claims of WMD in Iraq later proved to be totally false, but Baroness Nicholson was adamant at the time that her "impeccable sources" had provided clear information on the find, part of a string of allegations, that set the stage for the bombing of neutral Iranian resistance bases in the course of the war, and led to the death of scores of innocent Iranian dissidents.

Baroness Nicholson in an interview with Radio Farda on 18 April 2003, openly and hatefully engaged in incitement for the wholesale killing of Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) members and dissidents in Iraq on the eve of the Gulf War:

"I welcome bombing the bases of MKO by coalition forces and I warn the world that this group should be destroyed, otherwise they'll start their activities from another place in the world."

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website iranfocus.com
Saturday. May 6. 2006

Exiles warn of new offensive by Iran's secret police
Fri. 11 Nov 2005

London, Nov. 10 – Iran’s notorious secret police, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), is expanding its operations in Britain, an Iranian opposition figure said on Thursday.

Dowlat Nowrouzi, who represents the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Britain, told Iran Focus that over the past several years the MOIS had developed several “cells” in Britain whose main targets were Iranian opposition activists.

“The Intelligence Ministry runs a two-pronged strategy in dealing with the Iranian opposition; On the one hand, it has a policy of assassinating leading figures in the Iranian opposition; but it also runs a very sophisticated and coordinated demonisation campaign targeting the opposition [Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK)]”, she said.

The latter, Nowrouzi insisted, was designed to discredit the opposition movement as the viable alternative to the Iranian regime thus limiting international support for those struggling against Tehran and boosting support for the theocratic regime.

Nowrouzi, a U.S.-educated engineer who has garnered much support for the Iranian opposition among British politicians, identified two top MOIS cells in the UK as the husband-and-wife team of Iranian-born Massoud Khodabandeh and British-born Anne Singleton whom she said were in contact with Iranian intelligence officials in Tehran carrying out the orders of MOIS chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhei.

A small look into the backgrounds of the Khodabandeh and Singleton reveals what Nowrouzi termed their “true sinister side”.

On Wednesday, former Member of Parliament Win Griffiths announced in a statement that while he was on a humanitarian mission in Tehran’s Evin Prison last summer, he had seen Singleton walking around freely in the notorious prison, which had gained infamy as the place where thousands of opposition activists had been tortured or executed over the past 27 years.

Singleton has admitted to travelling to Tehran on several other occasions, though Nowrouzi contends she had made the trips to be briefed by senior MOIS officials on new methods to effectively demonise the MeK. Singleton along with her husband, a former MeK member, run a website called Iran-Interlink, generally viewed by Iranian exiles as a heavy propaganda organ aimed at demonising the group.

Massoud Khodabandeh has also been implicated as a veteran operative of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. According to a witness statement filed with British Courts on 12 November 2002, by his brother Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Massoud Khodabandeh was recruited by the MOIS in the mid-1990s. There are allegations that he had repeatedly travelled to Tehran and East Asia for face-to-face briefings by MOIS officials on how to tackle the MeK.

Iran-Interlink had organised a parliamentary press conference against the MeK and its leadership this morning, which was cancelled due to complaints by several MPs and human rights activists. The conference lost its parliamentary status and was instead held this afternoon at a hotel in central London.

“I think this ultimately turned out to be a disaster by the MOIS agents in Britain. Of the half dozen people that turned up half turned out to be Iranian exiles that supported the [MeK] cause”, Nowrouzi said.

“I think it came as a shock to Khodabandeh and Singleton, who weren’t expecting to be confronted with embarrassing questions such as ‘since when have you been an MOIS agent’ and ‘how much does MOIS pay you and is it legal’”, she added.

Another blow to the Khodabandeh-Singleton duo came when Baroness Emma Nicholson who had registered the original session in her name failed to turn up at the conference, leaving the pair empty-handed in claiming political legitimacy.

Further political embarrassment for the conference organisers came when Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, Chair of the Labour Peers in the House of Lords and the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Iran Freedom, issued a statement denouncing the motives of the conference. “It is incredible that those using terror at home, sponsoring and inciting it abroad should think anyone sensible in London wants to listen to them”, the statement said.

“Their wild allegations about the [MeK] show the success of the Iranian Resistance in exposing the mullahs’ nuclear deception, their aid to those killing British troops in Iraq and their escalating abuse of human right”, it added.

Nowrouzi warned of an increasing use of British soil by MOIS entering from European countries such as Holland.

One of the speakers at the conference was Karim Haqi, who has had a history of involvement with the MOIS in Holland. In February 2002, Dutch security services warned Haqi over his links to the MOIS and for being on the payroll of the Iranian secret services involved in a disinformation campaign against the MeK.

Nowrouzi claimed their existed “irrefutable evidence” that Haqi had travelled frequently to Asian countries to meet with MOIS handlers and receive money and instructions for his operations in Europe.

Another MOIS agent at the conference was French-born Alain Chevalérias, according to Nowrouzi.

According to Iranian exiles, Chevalérias travelled to Tehran on several occasions at the expense of an MOIS front organisation called House of Labour.

House of Labour was set up and is operated by Ali Rabei, the former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a former MOIS deputy director.

Nowrouzi said that British security agencies had an obligation to prevent the MOIS from infiltrating British soil, cautioning that Tehran usually preceded the assassination of Iranian exiles in Europe with activities by its undercover operatives.

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website ncr-iran.org
(may 26, 2006)

NCRI - An agent of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), identified as Mohsen Abbaslou, has been dispatched to France to pose as a former member of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). MOIS has purported that this agent has recently escaped from Camp Ashraf (main base of PMOI forces in Iraq), in a bid to make use of him in espionage and terrorist activities. News of the arrival of the MOIS agent in France comes as the clerical regime has come under extensive international condemnation for the brutal execution of Mojahedin member Hojjat Zamani and its intensified pressure on other political prisoners. The move is seen as retaliation for revelations of the mullahs’ ominous nuclear ambitions by the Iranian Resistance and the referral of its file to the UN Security Council.

Abbaslou was sent to Iraq in 2003 in a bid to infiltrate into PMOI ranks. Many of his family members and relatives are members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the paramilitary Basij force. Abbaslou was identified as an MOIS agent after five months in the PMOI’s entry facility and was subsequently expelled from the PMOI and transferred to the exit facility under control of US forces stationed at Camp Ashraf. A short while later, he escaped from the facility with the help of MOIS agents and went to Iran. Abbaslou was briefed in Iran by the head of MOIS, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, who gave him orders for his terrorist and espionage mission before sending him to Europe.

Abbaslou had written that his orders from the MOIS included, “Surveillance of the PMOI leadership’s residence, identifying PMOI cadres, gaining intelligence on the venue and time of PMOI gatherings, strength of PMOI forces, types of equipment, and communications systems with forces inside of Iran, methods of recruitment from Iran and transfer of forces to Iraq, etc.”

Abbaslou has never been a PMOI member or even a candidate for membership. He appeared in a ridiculous repeat performance with other known MOIS agents, Karim Haghi, Massoud Khodabandeh, Javad Firouzmand, and Behzad Alishahi. The show was boycotted by the press and there were no attendants other than the MOIS agents. Entrance to the show was limited by invitation, which was issued to those trusted by the MOIS, due to fear of protests by Iranians opposed to the clerical regime and its agents.

The Iranian Resistance draws the attention of European governments, and in particular France, to the plots of MOIS agents and the Iranian regime’s espionage and terrorist networks against Iranian refugees and members and supporters of the Iranian Resistance. These agents provide political cover for the regime’s terrorist activities by engaging in a disinformation campaign to demonize the Iranian Resistance. They also gather intelligence against Iranian refugees and dissidents and act as terrorist links with the Iranian regime. The Iranian Resistance, therefore, calls on European countries to identify, prosecute, and expel these agents from their soil.

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website Iran-interlink.info
(no date given)

Statement issued by the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers in London

The Iranian regime's news agency, IRNA, reported yesterday that a press conference will be held on Thursday by a number of Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) operatives in the London office of Emma Nicholson, an MEP who has close relations with the Iranian regime, as well as MOIS past and current ministers, Ali Younessi and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei. The aim of the meeting is to accuse the "hypocrites (the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran) of being a party to the crimes perpetrated by Iraq's deposed dictator and call for the prosecution of this group." In addition to Massoud Khodabandeh, his wife, Ann Singleton, and Emma Nicholson, Alain Chevalerais, and a Dutch woman, Judith Neurink, will also take part in the meeting.

This transparent tactic of the MOIS that failed miserably in the past in France, Washington, DC and The Hague, is being planned in London after a series of major political achievements by the Iranian opposition, including the 35,000-strong rally outside the European Commission Headquarters in Brussels. In that rally, the Resistance's supporters called for the referral of Tehran's nuclear file to the Security Council for the adoption of comprehensive oil and technological embargoes, and the removal of the unjust terror tag from the PMOI. British lawmakers from all three major political parties voiced their support for the PMOI as a legitimate resistance movement. They, along with a number of Euro MPs raised the demands of the Iranian people and those in the rally directly with the EU's presidency.

Facing global censure and outrage over what Prime Minister Blair described as "the revolting and totally unacceptable" remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about the destruction of Israel, the Iranian regime is bidding to divert attention from its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and its increasingly terrorist and fundamentalist meddling in Iraq, including financing and arming groups responsible for the deaths of British troops, that has been acknowledged by many world leaders and officials, including the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Defence secretaries of Britain, the EU's rotating Presidency.

Fearful of the presence of witnesses and Iranian victims of MOIS who had in similar meetings exposed the nature of the regime and its conspiracies, the organisers have made attending the 10 November meeting conditional on having an invitation, which it has already issued to its own operatives.

According to a witness statement filed with the British Courts on 12 November 2002, by Ebrahim Khodabandeh, the brother of Massoud Khodabandeh (one of the main organisers of the press conference) Massoud Khodabandeh was recruited by the MOIS in the mid-1990s. He has repeatedly travelled to Tehran and East Asia for face-to-face briefings by MOIS officials as regards actions against the opposition People's Mojahedin.

Ebrahim Khodabandeh also set out in his witness statement the long record of cooperation between Ann Singleton (the wife of Massoud Khodabandeh), whom IRNA has introduced as "Mojahedin's former British member" and MOIS, including her many travels to Iran. Former Labour MP, Win Griffiths, issued a letter about his humanitarian visit to the notorious Evin Prison in the summer of 2004. Evin prison is the place in which tens of thousands of political prisoners have been tortured and executed, and the Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi was brutally tortured, raped and then murdered. In his letter, Mr Griffiths expressed surprise at having seen Anne Singleton sitting next to interrogators and waiting to meet him in Evin.

Emma Nicholson is a discredited figure, whose ties with the Iranian regime and MOIS have been reported by Iran's state-controlled media. In a letter published on 16 March 2005, the Iranian regime's daily 'Kayhan' revealed the contacts between Nicholson and the head of MOIS, Ali Younessi. It stated, "Given her role in the British Parliament and the European Union, Baroness Nicholson has initiated special action in recent years to collect credible and irrefutable documents and evidence to have the name of the terrorist grouplet, the hypocrites, in the list of terrorist and anti-human groups. The MOIS has used this opportunity and has raised some issues with her in a meeting."

In the course of the adoption of a recent resolution in the European Parliament against the vile human rights abuses of the Iranian regime, she claimed that Iran was the most democratic country in the Middle East region and that women have the most rights in Iran compared with the rest of the region. Her remarks drew outrage among Euro MPs.

The state-controlled daily 'Abrar' also wrote on 1 March 2003, "Nicholson said in 1999 and 2000 [the PMOI] transferred some of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and buried them beneath the southern marshes". Of course this allegation, like many others levelled by Nicholson against the PMOI, have in the fullness of time proved to have been completely untrue. Another example of her involvement in MOIS' misinformation campaign against the PMOI related to the murder of three Christian leaders in Iran in 1994, which was initially blamed on the PMOI, but later transpired to have been the work of the second in command at MOIS. On 21 June 1995, the Iranian daily 'Iran' wrote, "An anti-Iran meeting in the British House of Commons was exposed after the Secretary of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group revealed the Mojahedin's conspiracy in murdering three Christian priests. Emma Nicholson, MP, from the Conservative Party referred to her meeting with the murderers of the priests in Iran and said after her meeting, it became clear to her that the Mojahedin are responsible for these murders…Ms Nicholson told MPs that she has "met with two women who had been arrested and confessed." She said in her meeting with the two women no one else was present and that they confessed to having committed this crime on the orders of Rajavi's group."

On 9 February 1996, the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Tolerance stated, "The Iranian government had apparently decided to execute those Protestant leaders in order not only to bring the Mojahedin organisation into disrepute abroad by declaring it responsible for those crimes, but also, at the domestic level, partly to decapitate the Protestant community and force it to discontinue the conversion of Muslims…"

The Daily Telegraph also wrote on 5 March 2004 that Nicholson having set up a charity in the name of Ammar, who was a young Iraqi war victim, had in fact then abandoned the boy who was by then 23 years old.

Another participant in this press conference is Alain Chevalerais. In many trips to Iran, he has been accused of being the guest of the MOIS and his expenses having been paid by a MOIS front Labour outfit called the "House of Labour." Ali Rabi'e, former MOIS deputy and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council under Mohammad Khatami, founded the House of Labour.

The other participant is a Dutch woman named Judith Neurink. Her interview with a Farsi language radio on 7 November 2005, unveils her motives for taking part in this demonization campaign against the PMOI. She said, "contrary to what the U.S. is saying, the Mojahedin is not the de facto alternative for the current regime. Our main conclusion is that beware, this organisation is dangerous."

The Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers draws the attention of the public in Britain and relevant officials, particularly the British security services to the activities of MOIS and its foreign operatives in London. It underscores that European soil must not be turned into the roaming ground for Iranian and non-Iranian MOIS agents. This is an issue of immense concern for Iranian dissidents, especially bearing in mind the Iranian regime's record of assassination of Iranian dissidents in the heart of Europe. In this regard, the Committee points to the book published in 1996 by the Parliamentary Human Rights Group entitled 'Iran: State of Terror', which underscored, "Another method is using the small number of defectors who had at one stage co-operated with opposition organizations and individuals. These persons, due to their low or non-existent motivation to continue the struggle and maintain their principles, allowed themselves to be bought by the regime at a later stage. Such people have so far provided regime's terrorist in Europe with the most extensive intelligence and political services. In addition to providing information on the assassination targets to the regime, they prepare the political grounds for the murders of dissidents by spreading propaganda against the individuals or organizations they had previously co-operated with, defaming them and accusing them of being worse than the ruling regime."

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website ncr-iran.org
(may 26, 2006)

Front associations for disseminating false propaganda against the Resistance
Tuesday, 14 June 2005

Forming cultural associations to disseminate false propaganda against the Iranian Resistance is another MOIS tactic. These associations are purported not to be in contact with the regime and in fact even criticize it.  One such association is Damavand Cultural Association, which uses a Canadian address...

Others are Payvand Association in the Netherlands and Dena organization in Germany. Mahdis and Iran-Interlink websites are among other outlets set up by the MOIS to disseminate propaganda against the PMOI. All these associations and websites focus their propaganda against the PMOI while using the cover of independent or even anti-regime entities.

For example, Iran-Interlink website, run by a British convert, Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), is entirely controlled by MOIS. Prior to setting up Iran-Interlink, she travelled to Iran and stayed there for a month. Iran-Interlink is closely connected with the Intelligence Ministry's branches in the Netherlands and Germany. One of the website's information sources is Dena organization in Germany.

In introducing itself, the website states, “our objective is to further expose the real nature of the Mojahedin and act as a pressure group... This site has been formed as an outlet for families and persons the status of whose friends and acquaintances as disaffected members and cadres of the People's Mojahedin Organization in Iraq are unsettled and whose lives are in danger...”

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website ncr-iran.org
(may 26, 2006)

Iran:Tehran's Intelligence Ministry repeats its stale, transparent tactic against Iranian opposition
NCRI, November 10 – The following is a statement released by the Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers (CAIL) yesterday, November 9:

The Iranian regime's news agency, IRNA, reported yesterday that a press conference will be held on Thursday by a number of Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) operatives in the London office of Emma Nicholson, an MEP who has close relations with the Iranian regime, as well as MOIS past and current ministers, Ali Younessi and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei. The aim of the meeting is to accuse the "hypocrites (the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran) of being a party to the crimes perpetrated by Iraq's deposed dictator and call for the prosecution of this group." In addition to Massoud Khodabandeh, his wife, Ann Singleton, and Emma Nicholson, Alain Chevalerais, and a Dutch woman, Judith Neurink, will also take part in the meeting.


This transparent tactic of the MOIS that failed miserably in the past in France, Washington, DC and The Hague, is being planned in London after a series of major political achievements by the Iranian opposition, including the 35,000-strong rally outside the European Commission Headquarters in Brussels. In that rally, the Resistance's supporters called for the referral of Tehran's nuclear file to the Security Council for the adoption of comprehensive oil and technological embargoes, and the removal of the unjust terror tag from the PMOI. British lawmakers from all three major political parties voiced their support for the PMOI as a legitimate resistance movement. They, along with a number of Euro MPs raised the demands of the Iranian people and those in the rally directly with the EU's presidency.

Facing global censure and outrage over what Prime Minister Blair described as “the revolting and totally unacceptable” remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about the destruction of Israel, the Iranian regime is bidding to divert attention from its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and its increasingly terrorist and fundamentalist meddling in Iraq, including financing and arming groups responsible for the deaths of British troops, that has been acknowledged by many world leaders and officials, including the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Defence secretaries of Britain, the EU's rotating Presidency.  

Fearful of the presence of witnesses and Iranian victims of MOIS who had in similar meetings exposed the nature of the regime and its conspiracies, the organisers have made attending the 10 November meeting conditional on having an invitation, which it has already issued to its own operatives.

According to a witness statement filed with the British Courts on 12 November 2002, by Ebrahim Khodabandeh, the brother of Massoud Khodabandeh (one of the main organisers of the press conference) Massoud Khodabandeh was recruited by the MOIS in the mid-1990s. He has repeatedly travelled to Tehran and East Asia for face-to-face briefings by MOIS officials as regards actions against the opposition People's Mojahedin.

Ebrahim Khodabandeh also set out in his witness statement the long record of cooperation between Ann Singleton (the wife of Massoud Khodabandeh), whom IRNA has introduced as "Mojahedin's former British member" and MOIS, including her many travels to Iran. Former Labour MP, Win Griffiths, issued a letter about his humanitarian visit to the notorious Evin Prison in the summer of 2004. Evin prison is the place in which tens of thousands of political prisoners have been tortured and executed, and the Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi was brutally tortured, raped and then murdered. In his letter, Mr Griffiths expressed surprise at having seen Anne Singleton sitting next to interrogators and waiting to meet him in Evin.

Emma Nicholson is a discredited figure, whose ties with the Iranian regime and MOIS have been reported by Iran's state-controlled media. In a letter published on 16 March 2005, the Iranian regime’s daily ‘Kayhan’ revealed the contacts between Nicholson and the head of MOIS, Ali Younessi.  It stated, "Given her role in the British Parliament and the European Union, Baroness Nicholson has initiated special action in recent years to collect credible and irrefutable documents and evidence to have the name of the terrorist grouplet, the hypocrites, in the list of terrorist and anti-human groups. The MOIS has used this opportunity and has raised some issues with her in a meeting."

In the course of the adoption of a recent resolution in the European Parliament against the vile human rights abuses of the Iranian regime, she claimed that Iran was the most democratic country in the Middle East region and that women have the most rights in Iran compared with the rest of the region. Her remarks drew outrage among Euro MPs.

The state-controlled daily ‘Abrar’ also wrote on 1 March 2003, "Nicholson said in 1999 and 2000 [the PMOI] transferred some of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and buried them beneath the southern marshes".  Of course this allegation, like many others levelled by Nicholson against the PMOI, have in the fullness of time proved to have been completely untrue. Another example of her involvement in MOIS’ misinformation campaign against the PMOI related to the murder of three Christian leaders in Iran in 1994, which was initially blamed on the PMOI, but later transpired to have been the work of the second in command at MOIS.  On 21 June 1995, the Iranian daily ‘Iran’ wrote, “An anti-Iran meeting in the British House of Commons was exposed after the Secretary of the Parliamentary Human Rights Group revealed the Mojahedin’s conspiracy in murdering three Christian priests.  Emma Nicholson, MP, from the Conservative Party referred to her meeting with the murderers of the priests in Iran and said after her meeting, it became clear to her that the Mojahedin are responsible for these murders…Ms Nicholson told MPs that she has “met with two women who had been arrested and confessed.”  She said in her meeting with the two women no one else was present and that they confessed to having committed this crime on the orders of Rajavi’s group.”

On 9 February 1996, the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Tolerance stated, “The Iranian government had apparently decided to execute those Protestant leaders in order not only to bring the Mojahedin organisation into disrepute abroad by declaring it responsible for those crimes, but also, at the domestic level, partly to decapitate the Protestant community and force it to discontinue the conversion of Muslims…”  

The Daily Telegraph also wrote on 5 March 2004 that Nicholson having set up a charity in the name of Ammar, who was a young Iraqi war victim, had in fact then abandoned the boy who was by then 23 years old.

Another participant in this press conference is Alain Chevalerais. In many trips to Iran, he has been accused of being the guest of the MOIS and his expenses having been paid by a MOIS front Labour outfit called the “House of Labour." Ali Rabi'e, former MOIS deputy and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council under Mohammad Khatami, founded the House of Labour.

The other participant is a Dutch woman named Judith Neurink. Her interview with a Farsi language radio on 7 November 2005, unveils her motives for taking part in this demonization campaign against the PMOI. She said, "contrary to what the U.S. is saying, the Mojahedin is not the de facto alternative for the current regime. Our main conclusion is that beware, this organisation is dangerous."

The Committee of Anglo-Iranian Lawyers draws the attention of the public in Britain and relevant officials, particularly the British security services to the activities of MOIS and its foreign operatives in London. It underscores that European soil must not be turned into the roaming ground for Iranian and non-Iranian MOIS agents. This is an issue of immense concern for Iranian dissidents, especially bearing in mind the Iranian regime’s record of assassination of Iranian dissidents in the heart of Europe.  In this regard, the Committee points to the book published in 1996 by the Parliamentary Human Rights Group entitled ‘Iran: State of Terror’, which underscored, "Another method is using the small number of defectors who had at one stage co-operated with opposition organizations and individuals. These persons, due to their low or non-existent motivation to continue the struggle and maintain their principles, allowed themselves to be bought by the regime at a later stage. Such people have so far provided regime’s terrorist in Europe with the most extensive intelligence and political services. In addition to providing information on the assassination targets to the regime, they prepare the political grounds for the murders of dissidents by spreading propaganda against the individuals or organizations they had previously co-operated with, defaming them and accusing them of being worse than the ruling regime.”
 

Excerpt from Mojahedin (Rajavi cult) website ncr-iran.org
(may 26, 2006)

NCRI, November 10 - The following is a Statement by Win Griffiths, former Labour MP for Bridgend, issued on November 9, 2005 on the agents of the Iranian regime in Britain:

The Iranian regime is currently under immense international pressure due to its brutal oppression at home, its export of Islamic fundamentalism and sponsorship of terrorism, its widespread interference in the internal affairs of Iraq and its aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons.  This pressure has rightly intensified since the call by the mullahs’ President for the state of Israel to be wiped off the world map - nothing short of a call to terrorism. There can be no doubt that the Iranian regime, whose Revolutionary Guards General, Mohammad-Reza Jaafari, told an Iranian newspaper recently that the newly formed ‘Lovers of Martydom’ garrison would recruit individuals willing to carry out suicide operations against Western targets, represents a real threat to peace and stability in the Middle East and the wider world.    


Therefore, in a desperate attempt to divert attention from its precarious situation, the Iranian regime has, directly or indirectly, resorted to its old and much used policy of spreading misinformation against its main opposition, the PMOI. Part of this past much tried and failed policy is the planning of a series of press conferences in the US and Europe aimed at falsely accusing the PMOI of being “Saddam Hussien’s private army” and calling for the prosecution of its members. However, the organisers of these conferences conveniently forget that the PMOI played no part whatsoever in the recent war in Iraq, that the entire organisation and every one of its members were investigated by Coalition forces over a 16 month period and given a clean bill of health, leading to the recognition of their status as ‘protected persons’ under the Fourth Geneva Convention.    

Despite the recent conference in Washington having been a huge flop, and having been incensed by the regular meetings held in Parliament by the British Committee for Iran Freedom condemning the Iranian regime’s rogue actions at the same time as expressing support for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian regime is being given comfort by the press conference tomorrow morning.  

The press conference is due to be addressed by Massoud Khodabandeh and Anne Khodabandeh (nee Singleton). Some three years ago, Massoud’s brother, Ebrahim (currently being illegally held by the Iranian regime), made allegations about the involvement of his brother and sister-in-law with the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence in a statement given to the Courts in London. In a trip to Iran last year seeking the return to Britain of two Iranian refugees illegally sent to Iran by the Syrian authorities, one of whom was Ebrahim Khodabandeh, the brother of Massoud Khodabandeh, I was surprised to see Anne Khodabandeh in Evin prison. After this visit I had to engage in lengthy correspondence with Anne Khodabandeh about this matter because of misleading and inaccurate statements that she and her website, Iran-Interlink, had made about my trip to Iran.  

The press conference is also due to be addressed by Baroness Nicholson. Regrettably, Baroness Nicholson has for many years had close relations with the Iranian regime and as such has on occasion made unjustified statements in support of the Iranian regime and against the PMOI. She travels to Iran regularly and was recently reported by the Iranian regime’s media to have met the head of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (‘Kayhan’ 16 March 2005).  

Baroness Nicholson has in the past made scathing attacks on the PMOI, which have later been proved to be entirely false. By way example, she told the House of Lords on 26 February 2003, just prior to the beginning of the war in Iraq that, “I have evidence from others that the MKO [PMOI] has actively hidden weapons of mass destruction from the earlier inspectors…I have clear evidence of the ways in which the MKO shifted around weapons of mass destruction. Their commanders pushed them away, hid them, and boasted afterwards of having been successful in fooling the inspectors.” (Source: Hansard)

She also directly involved herself in a rather ugly episode in which the Iranian regime having brutally murdered three Protestant leaders in Iran in the mid-1990, attempted to apportion blame for the murders on the PMOI. In respect of this matter, the Catholic Herald stated on 10 March 2000, “At the time of their deaths [Bishop Haik Hovsepian-Mehr, the Rev Taratous Michaelian and Pastor Mehdi Dibaj] were blamed on the People’s Mojahedin…But the recent ferment in the Iranian press prompted former Revolutionary Guard commander Akbar Ganji to confirm the suspicions of Amnesty International and the Jubilee Campaign; last December he admitted that the Ministry of Intelligence had not only killed the clerics to smear its enemies, but had also bombed pilgrims at Muslim shrines (such as that in Imam Reza) to achieve the same objectives.”

At the same time as wishing to make clear my concern about the activities of Massoud Khodabandeh and his wife, Anne, in trying to divert attention away from the dangerous dictates of the mullahs’ regime and the activities of the Iranian regime in democratic countries like the United Kingdom, I believe that these acts are a sign of weakness on the part of Iran’s medieval and theocratic regime, which knows it has no place in the 21st century.
 

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