Iran hangs two activists

[oberliner]

Iran has carried out the first executions of activists detained in street protests after the disputed 2009 presidential poll, hanging two men it said were from an outlawed group.

The executions on Monday of the two activists from the Iranian exiled opposition group, People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) came despite a plea by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that they be freed.

The Tehran prosecutor's office named the executed pair as Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Hajaghaei. It did not say where they were hanged.

"Two elements of the Monafeghin (hypocrites) group were executed early today," the prosecutor's office said on its website.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/201112514128271328.html

[leveymg]

1. PMOI, aka MEK, on US Foreign Terrorist Organization list.

Wiki:

The People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI, also MEK, MKO) (Persian: سازمان مجاهدين خلق ايران sāzmān-e mojāhedin-e khalq-e irān) is a religious leftist organization that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The MEK is classified as a terrorist organization by a number of governments, including the United States<2>.

(SNIP)

On July 13, 2003, New York Times published an article that in 1991 when Saddam Hussein used the PMOI and its tanks as advance forces to crush the Iraqi Kurdish people in the north and the Iraqi Shia people in the south, Maryam Rajavi as then leader of PMOI's army forces commanded:
“ "Take the Kurds under your tanks"<69> ”

On December 14, 2006, Time Magazine published an article about PMOI and reported: "By the mid-1980s, the group (PMOI) had cozied up to Saddam Hussein, who provided them with funds and a compound, Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad. The U.S. government has accused the group of helping Saddam brutally put down Iraqi Kurdish people in the early 1990s, and of launching numerous attacks inside Iran."<65>

On January 05, 2009, Time Magazine published an article about PMOI and reported: "Despite its position on the U.S. terrorist list since 1997, and reports by former members of abusive and cultlike practices at Ashraf, the MEK has gathered support from some surprising places abroad — especially since the U.S. invasion — by pitching itself as a viable opposition to the mullahs in Tehran. "They have been extremely clever and very, very effective in their propaganda and lobbying of members of Congress," says Gary Sick, a Persian Gulf expert at Columbia University's Middle East Institute and the author of All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter With Iran. "They get all sorts of people to sign their petitions. Many times the Congressmen don't know what they're signing." But others, Sick adds, "are quite aware of the fact that this is a designated terrorist organization, and they are quite willing to look the other way for a group that they think is a democratic alternative to the Iranian regime.""<70>

[oberliner]

3. EU removes PMOI from terrorist list

BRUSSELS, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- European foreign ministers in Brussels Monday agreed on a terrorism list that does not include the People's Mujahedin of Iran based in Iraq's Diyala province.

Milena Vicenova, the Czech envoy to the European Union, said Friday the latest version of the list of terrorist organizations recognized by the European Union was forwarded to ministers without the name of the PMOI. European ministers approved the list Monday.

Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Paris-based political wing of the PMOI, said the decision was a victory for her resistance movement, adding the delisting paved the way for democratic opposition to the clerical regime in Iran.

The Monday decision opens the door for the PMOI to lobby for funds and removes the terrorist label from the 3,500 members of the group living under U.S. military protection at its Iraqi enclave, Camp Ashraf, EUObserver.com reports.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2009/01/26/EU-removes-PMOI-from-terrorist-list/UPI-44751232989491/#ixzz1CRZPw7xW

[Raster]

2. Hopefully the revolutionary fervor will again wash over Iran. The mullahs are like a plague.