Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Terrorist
Group Supporters Meet in Washington
Friday, May 26,
2006
WASHINGTON -– Dozens of self-avowed supporters of an
Iranian group on the State Department's list of international
terrorist organizations met Thursday in a public building in
Washington, D.C., to call on the Bush administration to legalize the
activities of their group.
The Mujahedin-e Khalq, also known as the People's Mujahedin
Organization of Iran, was first blacklisted by the State Department
in June 1994. Various front organizations, including the National
Council of the Iranian Resistance, were added to the U.S. blacklist
in 1997.
While the blacklisting has prohibited the group from openly lobbying
Congress, a variety of like-minded organizations have championed its
cause, claiming to have no operational ties to the banned terrorist
group.
"We sympathize with them," one of the organizers of Thursday's
event told NewsMax, when asked why people attending the rally had
been given banners with photographs of MEK leaders Massoud and Maryam
Rajavi.
He said the event had been organized and paid for by
"Iranian-American organizations," but would not name any specific
group.
The MEK and its front groups have distributed letters in Congress in
support of its cause that have garnered as many as 226 signatures
from members of the House of Representatives. Many congressmen who
signed later said they had no idea they were supporting a terrorist
group.
The MEK calls itself the Iranian "resistance," but other
organized Iranian opposition groups in the United States and inside
Iran consider them traitors, because the MEK allied with Saddam
Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Called "Islamic-Marxists" by the former shah, today even the Marxist
Organization of the People's Fedaii Guerillas of Iran (OPFGI) has
rejected the group.
But some U.S. military officers who processed MEK members after their
training camp in Iraq was seized during Operation Iraqi Freedom in
2003 believe the United States could use the MEK to lead an armed
uprising against the Tehran regime.
Thursday's pro-MEK rally was sparsely attended compared to similar
events in the past. Elaborately staged to ressemble a U.S.
presidential nominating convention in an elegant hall at 1301
Constitution Ave., barely 100 people attended the event.
Participants were given noisemakers and other props to make the event
appear like a mass rally. Professional video crews were posted around
the large ballroom and sent live footage to a satellite truck
outside, which beamed it to Florida and then to Europe, technicians
said.
Organizers said the only member of Congress who addressed the
rally was Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. An officer from the Department of
Homeland Security's Office of Protective Services said he had been
assigned to assist the private security detail hired by the
organizers.
When asked why the U.S. government was allowing sympathizers of a
group on the State Department's terrorist list to gather in a
government-owned building -- the Andrew Mellon auditorium -– he
said the decision had been made by his superiors. "I'm here to ensure
that people can express their First Amendment rights without threat
or restriction," he said.
Also addressing the group was proferssor Raymond Tanter, who chairs
the Iran Policy Committee, a private group in Washington that is
lobbying Congress and the Bush administration to remove the MEK and
its front groups from the terrorist list.
Tanter had just returned from Paris, where he and other members of
the Iran Policy Committee had been invited to address a similar event
sponsored by pro-MEK groups. IPC does not disclose its source of
funding, but invites donations over the Internet.
While the MEK today opposes the clerical regime in Tehran, it took
part in the 1979 revolution against the Shah. In a 1994 report to
Congress, the State Department explained that it had designated the
group as a terrorist organization because it had taken part in the
1979 taking of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and had murdered Americans
working in Iran under the shah.
[Correction: According to the
Iran Policy Committee, Tanter appeared at the rally, but did not
"address" it.]
Original
article: