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Iran:Tehran's Intelligence Ministry repeats its stale, transparent tactic against Iranian opposition |
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Thursday, 10 November 2005 |
 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.”
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