Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO)
From: Patterns of Global Terrorism, 2000. United States Department of State, April 2001

Comments on the content of the material should be sent to the U.S. Department of State

Other Names
The National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA, the militant wing of the MEK)
The People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI)
National Council of Resistance (NCR)
Muslim Iranian Student's Society (front organization used to garner financial support)

Description
Formed in the 1960s by the college-educated children of Iranian merchants, the MEK sought to counter what it perceived as excessive Western influence in the Shah's regime. Following a philosophy that mixes Marxism and Islam, has developed into the largest and most active armed Iranian dissident group. Its history is studded with anti-Western activity and, most recently, attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad.

Activities
Worldwide campaign against the Iranian Government stresses propaganda and occasionally uses terrorist violence. During the 1970s the MEK staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several US military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. Supported the takeover in 1979 of the US Embassy in Tehran. In April 1992 conducted attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, demonstrating the group's ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. The normal pace of anti-Iranian operations increased during the "Operation Great Bahman" in February 2000, when the group claimed it launched a dozen attacks against Iran. During the remainder of the year, the MEK regularly claimed that its members were involved in mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids on Iranian military, law enforcement units, and government buildings near the Iran-Iraq border. The MEK also claimed six mortar attacks on civilian government and military buildings in Tehran.

Strength
Several thousand fighters based in Iraq with an extensive overseas support structure. Most of the fighters are organized in the MEK's National Liberation Army (NLA).

Location/Area of Operation
In the 1980s the MEK's leaders were forced by Iranian security forces to flee to France. Most resettled in Iraq by 1987. In the mid-1980s the group did not mount terrorist operations in Iran at a level similar to its activities in the 1970s. In the 1990s, however, the MEK claimed credit for an increasing number of operations in Iran.

External Aid
Beyond support from Iraq, the MEK uses front organizations to solicit contributions from expatriate Iranian communities.

http://library.nps.navy.mil/ho me/tgp/mek.htm

RELATED to this JUDGE...
He ruled that the Airport Security Law clashed with the Fifth Amendment.

Aviation security law dared

Law clashes with Fifth Amendment, groups claim

By Grace Santa Ana

Airport screeners and their lawyers joined Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (first row, second from left) at a news conference in Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - “There is no rational basis for the citizenship requirement.” Orrin Baird, associate general counsel at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) here, summarized the lawsuit filed January 17 by the SEIU, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Federation of Filipino American Associations and several advocate groups at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Department of Tourism Secretary Norman Mineta and Undersecretary John Magaw.

“We allege that prohibiting non-citizens from remaining as airport screeners violates the Fifth Amendment, which states the rights of persons. All people should be treated equally,” Ben Wizner, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, told Philippine News.

Hank Price, spokesperson for the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, told reporters he could not comment on the ongoing litigation. In November 2001, President George W. Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which called for the federalization of airports within a year.

The act also requires all airport baggage screeners nationwide, about 25 percent of whom are legal permanent residents, to be U.S. citizens.

By most estimates, about one-fourth of the low-paid, high-turnover jobs are held by noncitizens, and the numbers are higher at metropolitan airports like San Francisco, where 80 percent of the 800 screeners are noncitizens, and Los Angeles International, where 40 percent of the 1,000 screeners are not citizens.

The suit is primarily represented by screeners from Los Angeles and San Francisco, but union lawyers say a ruling would have nationwide impact.

Many of those affected are Philippine immigrants named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“Napamahal na yung trabaho sa akin,” Ruby Gonzales Boja told PNews of the screener job she has had for almost five years now, and is in danger of losing with the act’s implementation.

“Why does the U.S. government even get immigrants from the Philippines to serve in the U.S. Navy or Marines, and they don’t have to be citizens,” questioned Boja, a 5-year permanent resident.

In support of Boja’s concern, the lawsuit states, “Non-citizens may be members of our military, and lawful permnent residents are required by law to register for the draft. Non-citizens may also serve in the National Guard, which, after September 11, now performs armed security duties at screening stations side by side with non-citizen screeners whose employment will be terminated by (the act).” Boja, who filed for citizenship February 2001 so she can vote, just hopes she will be granted citizenship in time for the November 2002 deadline. “I think it’s discriminatory. We do our best for the safety of the passengers. One year is not enough to know the job,” the former regional manager for a marketing company in the Philippines told PNews.

Eliseo Medina, SEIU executive vice president, agrees, “Amercian wants security, not scapegoating. Experienced, hard-working, tax-paying immigrant screeners are part of the solutions, not part of the problem. They should be allowed to remain in the job.”

Mark Rosenbaum, legal director for ACLU of Southern California, said, “Taking qualified, experienced screeners off the job because of their citizenship status won’t make anyone safer.

“By eliminating thousands of skilled, qualified, and experienced screeners solely on the baiss of their citizenship status, and replacing those workers with people who have no on-the-job training or experience, we are opening the door to unnecessary security risks at our airports.”

ACT OF CONGRESS

Immigrant advocates have high hopes for the case. By random draw, it was assigned to veteran U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi, who was held with his family for more than three years in an internment camp for Japanese Americans in World War II.

“There are no foreseeable challenges. Hopefully, Congress will act even before the case goes to court, and strike down the security requirement,” Baird told PNews. “We hope Congress sees this suit, and decide to fix it by changing the law,” Wizner agreed.

On Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-California) pending legislation to permit lawful permanent residents eligible to become U.S. citizens within one year to remain as airport screeners, he said, “It’s a step in the right direction, but it does not cover all immigrants. “What we’re hoping for is for Congress to build on all noncitizens.”

The Honorable Judge Robert M. Takasugi

Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodger great who helped integrate our country through baseball, said that "the right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time." No person has taken this issue to heart more than our hero, mentor and friend, the Honorable Robert M. Takasugi.

At the age of twelve, Robert M. Takasugi was among the 130,000 residents of Japanese descent who were interned in concentration camps throughout the western United States.

Describing the ordeal as "an education to be fair" and one of many challenges he faced, Takasugi received a degree from UCLA and joined the US Army. His commitment to equal justice brought him to law school, where Takasugi graduated in the top 5% of his class at USC and took to the streets of East Los Angeles, representing many of the sixties' civil rights protestors.

After serving on the Municipal and Superior Courts of Los Angeles, Judge Takasugi became the first Japanese American appointed to the federal bench in 1976.

As both a district court judge for a quarter century and an invitee of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Takasugi's work has consistently been marked by a high degree of integrity and a commitment to equal access to justice.

Judge Takasugi has authored important opinions and has been involved with ground breaking cases such as: Bouman v. Pitchess (court trial finding discrimination against female sheriffs in sergeant promotional exam); Lyons v. City of Los Angeles (issuing a preliminary injunction against LAPD for its use of choke holds); Colorado River Indian Tribes v. Marsh (environmental protection action by Native Americans against federal and state governments); Asian American Business Group v. City of Pomona (finding unconstitutional the city 's ordinance requiring all business signs be partially in English); People for Community Empowerment v. City of Long Beach (questioning the constitutionality of the city's public-gathering permit process); Weiner v. FBI (releasing FBI documents under FOIA related to the politically motivated surveillance of John Lennon); Gonzales v. McEuen (due process for high school students facing expulsion); and US v. Delorean (high profile criminal drug case against auto maker including allegations of evidence held by publisher Larry Flynt).

But perhaps Judge Takasugi's greatest contributions have come outside the courtroom, as a teacher, mentor and role model to thousands of law students and attorneys.

Mujahedin fund-raising ring leaders arrested March 1, 2001

(Los Angeles, CA) - The FBI arrested 7 members of the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) at Los Angeles International airport on Feb. 28, on charges of illegal fund-raising for a terrorist organization. The PMOI, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), was using a fake human rights organization as a front for funding military activities in Iraq. According to FBI witnesses inside the fund-raising network, all the money raised for unsuspecting travelers and from Iranian-Americans was shipped to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to buy military equipment for the group's National Liberal Army, based in Iraq.

Visitors to LAX have long been familiar with the Mujahedin's fund-raising activities. Iranians, mostly women wearing Islamic Republic-style head scarves, approach unsuspecting travelers in pairs and claim they are raising money to help Iranian children and victims of torture, then spread out glossy books with graphic pictures of torture victims.

In a 120 page affidavit, FBI Special Agent Christopher E. Castillo detailed his contacts with a confidential informant who had been lured into the MEK fund-raising scheme. The informant recorded numerous conversations with the ring-leader, identified by the FBI as 39-year old Tahmineh Tahamtan, in which she detailed how moneys were raised from travelers and from Iranian-Americans.

The informant accompanied Tahamtan and other members of the cell on trips around the Los Angeles and Orange County areas to solicit large donations from Iranian-Americans who sympathized with the MEK, according to the affidavit. The FBI seized training materials for the airport fund-raisers, as well as motivational videos that portrayed the activities of the self-styled "National Liberation Army" in Iraq.

The three-year FBI investigation was triggered by a Jun 12, 1997 cable from the FBI Legal Attaché in Bonn, Germany to the Los Angeles field office, "indicating that the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) were conducting a money laundering investigation of MEK members involved in fundraising," the affidavit states. "The BKA uncovered large sums of money being sent to Germany from various individuals in the U.S., some of which were in the Los Angeles area."

At about the same time, the affidavit states, the local CBS affiliate in Los Angeles aired an investigative news report on the alleged illegal fund-raising activities, that included footage of known MEK operatives working travelers at LAX. The investigation kicked into high gear once the State Department officially designated the MEK and its affiliates as terrorist organizations in October 1997.

In February 1998, the affidavit states that the FBI seized banking records from a Bank of America account belonging to the Committee for Human Rights in Iran (CHR), a front organization used by the MEK to disguise its fund-raising activities on behalf of the group's military wing in Iraq.

The Los Angeles-based CHR was registered as a non-profit educational group that provided "financial assistance for refugees... [and] to victims of persecution currently residing in the United States." The affidavit states, to the contrary, that the CHR was used as a front for collecting money that was transferred out of the country to bank accounts used by the MEK for its military activities.

Three corporate officers listed by the CHR on its tax returns - Fahimeh Azarani, Majid Lashkari, and Eskandar Eskancari - were not arrested but were cited repeatedly in the affidavit

Lashkari, who gave his employer as Lothar Import of Ventura, California, and Azarani rented apartments on behalf of the MEK which were used as its "kanoon," or cell headquarters.

Those arrested were identified as Tahmineh Tahamtan, Mustafa Ahmady, Hossein Afshari, Ali Reza Moradi, Hassan Rezai, Najaf Eshkoftegi, and Mohammad Omidvar, all of Los Angeles.

At one point, Tahamtan drove to Orange, California to solicit a $12,000 donation from Omidvar, identified as a "long time financial supporter of the MEK and the NLA.". In a tape-recorded conversation on the premises of his business, Prestige Jewelry, Tahamtan also pressed him to lean on other MEK supporters to make large donations. Omidvar joked: "Kazem Rajavi, may God forgive him, said, You give one finger of yours to the Mujahedin and they will take your shoulder off."

The affidavit also detailed harsh anti-American comments made by the MEK's foreign affairs spokesman, Mohammad Mohadesin, in a conference call from Iraq with cell members on March 26, 2000. Mohadesin is frequently portrayed in the press as pro-American and pro-Western, but in talking with MEK supporters accused the United States of giving satellite surveillance footage of the group's bases in Iraq to the Iranian government.

MEK opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq appeared at several places in the 120 page affidavit, but most forcefully at the end, suggesting that the FBI may have chosen to act to prevent imminent terrorist acts in the United States.

Within hours of the Feb. 16 U.S.-British air strikes against Iraq, two of the arrested MEK members "talked about retaliation against the U.S. from Iraqi terrorists who they indicated were most likely already in the U.S.," the affidavit states.

An April 30, 1998 Fact sheet on the MEK distributed by the FBI to all FBI field offices around the United States detailed the group's anti-American activities. "At the time the organization was founded, the goal was to overthrow the monarchist rule of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi," the affidavit states. "During the struggle to overthrow the Shah of Iran as well as after the Shah's overthrow, the MEK publicly claimed responsibility for acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens, U.S. interests and other acts of terrorism." The affidavit cites the assassination of U.S. military officers in Iran, and noted that the group took part in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979, along with other pro-Khomeini forces.

Source:
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director (exec@iran.org). FDI materials are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.

RELATED to this JUDGE...He ruled that the Airport Security Law clashed with the Fifth Amendment.

Aviation security law dared

Law clashes with Fifth Amendment, groups claim

The Honorable Judge Robert M. Takasugi

RELATED to this JUDGE...
He ruled that the Airport Security Law clashed with the Fifth Amendment.