This picture released by the People's Mujahedeen of Iran shows an Iraqi woman addressing Iranian exiles and Iraqi supporters in the Iraqi town of Ashraf during a rally to support French presidential candidate Segolene Royal.
Posted on 04/28/2007 5:50:12 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Baghdad - French presidential candidate Segolene Royal received a campaign endorsement from an unexpected quarter on Saturday when an Iraq-based Iranian rebel movement held a rally to support her.
The People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), which is listed by the European Union and United States as a terrorist group, claimed that about 4 000 Iranian exiles and Iraqi supporters had gathered in the Iraqi town of Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad.
The organisation has a long-standing enmity for the outgoing French President Jacques Chirac and his favoured successor, the Socialist Royal's right-wing opponent Nicholas Sarkozy.
Photographs released by the group appeared to show a crowd of thousands in a hangar-like hall, and a panel of women behind a banner reading "Women of Iraq, Iran and France: with Segolene, for peace, against fundamentalism."
The women sat in front of three flags - those of Iran, France and Iraq.
'Better ally'
PMOI spokesperson Shahria Kia said the rally was attended by his group and by Iranian and Iraqi opposition groups who felt Royal would be a better ally than previous French presidents in their battle with the Tehran regime.
A statement from the groups, released to AFP, read: "We ask all of our friends, particularly all the French Muslims, to vote for Ms Royal."
"We are certain that with this choice France will retrieve its values, and will stand beside the oppressed people of Iraq and Iran against fundamentalism and terrorism exported by Iran," it added.
Socialist Party flag-bearer Royal will face Sarkozy in the final round of France's presidential election, which will choose a successor to the PMOI's original nemesis Chirac.
In June 2003, when Sarkozy was French interior minister, French police raided several alleged PMOI safe houses in France and arrested 160 suspects.
Sarkozy warned that the group was trying to make France its rear base.
Idiots. If the MEK would have a real interest in regime change in Iran, they wouldn’t support the appeasing socialist Royal.
But that’s probably the reason... The MEK are Marxists themselves...
Woe to those who think the MEK to be a legitimate and respectable Iranian resistance organisation. They may come up with valuable information from time to time... but they still are terrorists, who killed Americans, who sided with Saddam, and just happen to be the revolutinary rivals of the Mullahs.
Syrian Reformists: The Damage from Pelosi's Visit Will Be Felt for Years
A statement from the Reform Party of Syria about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s disgraceful visit to the Baathist regime, and what it means to women struggling for rights in the Islamic world:
"As a Muslim, I fully understand respect of our religion by visiting US officials and I applaud that respect. Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women’s rights in the Middle East. Pelosi just reversed the work of the Syrian civil society and those who aspire for women’s freedom in the Muslim countries many years back with her visual statement. Her lack of experience of the Middle East is showing."
"Assad could not have been happier because Syrian women, seeing a US official confirming what their husbands, the Imams in the Mosques tell them, and the society at large imposes on them through peer pressure will see in her wearing a Hijab as a confirmation of the societal pressures they are constantly under. No one will ever know how many women took the Hijab on after seeing Pelosi wearing it. The damage Speaker Pelosi is causing with her visit to Syria will be felt for many years to come."
Gov’t urged to take Iranian group off terrorist list
Opponents to Tehran regime seek democratic change:
The protesters, many of them Iranian emigres, said the PMOI, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, offers secular opponents of the theocratic Iranian regime a political option for change.
The group is banned by the government as part of a larger terrorist organization called Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK.
Raymonde Folco, a Liberal MP from north of Montreal who spoke to the group, said she believes the group was originally placed on the blacklist because of its use of the word mujahedeen.
“I think that, quite frankly, the appellation, the title that they have given themselves, the mujahedeen, which means the fighters, has an extremely bad reputation in North America and, I think, all over the world,” she said.
“They are not terrorists.”
Paul Forseth, a former Reform and Conservative MP who also addressed the demonstration, said he believes the group was first labelled terrorist by Washington in an ill-fated attempt to appease Tehran. Canada then followed suit, he added.
Folco said Iran needs a political opposition to stand up to the present regime and the world should show its support for the group.
“I have talked to these people extensively,” she said. “It is very clear that they’re not out there to put up bombs and that sort of thing. They’re out there to bring democratic change in the country.”
MEK was placed on the list of banned groups in May 2005 and its status was reviewed last November.
The Public Safety Department describes the group as “an Iranian terrorist organization that was based in Iraq until recently. It subscribes to an eclectic ideology that combines its own interpretation of Shiite Islamism with Marxist principles. The group aspires to overthrow the current regime in Iran and to establish a democratic, socialist, Islamic republic.”
The department also says MEK is believed to have had ties to Saddam Hussein, as well as a number of Palestinian factions and is suspected of working with the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/04/19/4068822-cp.html
Good post. Unfortunately, what matters most to Pelosi is stoking her own ravenous ego, and pretending that she has the authority to set U.S. foreign policy.
Most polls show Nicolas Sarkozy winning the vote next Sunday, around 51 per cent to Royal’s 47 per cent. Even supporters have the sense this weekend that Royal’s campaign is losing momentum.-Sunday April 29, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2067952,00.html
People’s Mujahedin of Iran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People’s_Mujahedin_of_Iran
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI, also MEK, MKO);
sazmaan-e mujahedin-e khalq-e Iran) is a militant political
party that advocates overthrowing the government in the Islamic Republic of Iran and replacing it with its own
leadership.
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran is known by a variety of names including
Monafiqeen-e-Khalq (MEK) - the Iranian government consistently refers to the People’s Mujahedin with this name, meaning “traitors of the people”.
Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO)
The National Liberation Army of Iran
(Disputed) National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) - the PMOI is the founding member of a wide coalition of organizations called the NCRI, while others including the
FBI claim that the NCRI is either an “alias” for or a front group for the PMOI.[6][7]
Note: the MEK alias is often used when the PMOI is referenced in the media, or by national governments around the world. The term MEK and PMOI are therefore interchangeable throughout this article.
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