The panel of former senior officials included Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Commandant of the Marine Corps General James Conway, Deputy Commander of United States European Command General Charles Wald, Ambassador John Bolton, and FBI Director Louis Freeh. The continuing designation of the MEK was acting as a license for genocide at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, the officials said.
Below Remarks by Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Thank you Alan, and thank you ladies and gentlemen for being here. As i left New York this morning you can see the motorcades of foreign diplomats beginning to descend on the city that began to arrive earlier this week for the United Nations General Assembly. Soon enough, far too soon for most of us, one of those motorcades will be the one conveying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into the heart of a city of people of diverse backgrounds and creative energy – a diversity and energy that he despises to his core, so that he can strut his moment on the world stage at the United Nations and proclaim his contempt for the country that protects him so carefully and also his intent to wipe off the face of the earth the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. So we want to look at this time for hope.
Where’s the hope? Well, can we find it in what has been described as the Arab Spring, in the forces sweeping the Middle East? Well the sad fact is that that movement has begun to succeed only in authoritarian countries, not in totalitarian countries. In other words, it’s begun to succeed only in countries where there is some limit to the brutality that the regime is able and willing to bring to bear on dissent. But in countries where there is no limit to the brutality that the regime would use to put down dissent, and Iran tops the list of those countries, the story has not been as happy. Back in February when Egyptians were first beginning to stir, at Friday prayers in Tehran supreme leader Ali Khamenei, speaking not in Farsi, but in Arabic to make sure he reached and impressed people in Cairo, praised what he called this explosion of sacred anger and warned against U.S. interference in Egypt. He claim that events in Tarir Square with a natural extension of the 1979 revolution in Iran. He was obviously not embarrassed that in 2009 he himself had given the orders to put down the uprising in the streets of Tehran that actually began the Arab Spring, and then again that the regime has responded with brute force. Even before Iranians went into the streets, the mullahs executed people in record numbers and call for the execution of anyone who dissents. When people were nonetheless brave enough to take to the streets again the regime cut the ties between the protesters and the outside world so that it could use brutality without being seen. And in particular, as I’m sure many of you in this room know better than I, the mullahs have executed people with a connection to Camp Ashraf where MeK residents are holding out despite the efforts of Iran and its collaborators among the Iraqi authorities to drive the residents back to Iran or destroy them altogether. I’ve been before you on earlier occasions and we have heard many people anxiously long for and look for signs that this country, the United States, so despised by Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs in Tehran would bestow itself and take concrete action to do Ahmadinejad and those who pull the strings most oppose and fear and that is to remove the MeK from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Those hope so far have not been realized and it seems ironic to have to report this morning as Alan Gerson did that the main hope for the people of Ashraf as we sit here is that the United Nations, an organization that is not exactly covered itself with glory over the years, will act through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at least to help the residents of Ashraf get the benefit of a guarantee that was given to them by a United States General in 2003 that they would have the status of protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The history here is known to many but nonetheless bears repeating: in the 1990s as a goodwill gesture to the regime in Tehran, our government placed the MeK on that list. By all accounts, this was done to help us engage with the regime and perhaps to get the regime to behave as a responsible member of the world community. Whether that policy was wise or foolish there’s no mistaking that it failed. Repeatedly the Iranian regime has grown only more hostile and more threatening toward the United States and toward its neighbors. In the administration which I served, that designation was continued this time out of fear that if the MeK were de-listed the Iranians would provide weapons including deadly IEDs to insurgents in Iraq. Well that policy too was a failure because as we know, although the designation continued, Iran has supplied deadly weapons including IEDs to those insurgents.
The MeK has long since renounced violence and for years before today, the MeK stands explicitly for establishing a democratic, nonnuclear, secular, republic in Iran. Its members live in Iraq in Camp Ashraf, have given up the weapons they might have used to defend themselves, and for their welfare in the hands of coalition forces after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They accepted solemn assurance of the coalition and specifically of American Generals that they would be treated as ‘protected persons’ under international law. Instead of pursuing violence, the MeK has put itself in the hands of this country and of our institutions. And so in addition to accepting the word of our military that the residence of Ashraf would be protected, the MeK took to our courts to undo the unjust designation resorting to the law. After all, if an organization cannot be treated under the law as a foreign terrorist organization unless it either engages in terrorism that threatens the welfare of the United States or has the capability and intent to do so then the MeK, which has renounced violence has no such intention, no such capability, should have no difficulty in getting itself off that list.
And so July of 2010, the MeK won a ruling from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Secretary of State must reconsider the designation of MeK as a foreign terrorist organization because the information she was relying on to continue that designation was not sufficient.
Where do we stand today? Well in Camp Ashraf, the organization that surrendered its arms and placed itself under the international protection in 2003 to the point where the residents of Ashraf each received an identification card issued by the United States designating that person is a ‘protected person.’ That camp has been attacked twice by Iraqi troops, once in July 2009 and once in April 2011, and both times, both times when the secretary of defense of the United States was present in Iraq — the last time resulting in the murder of 35 defenseless women and men using weapons and vehicles supplied by the United States and operated by troops trained by the United States. And the United States has done nothing about it. In fact, although the attack came from Iraqi troops were photographed in the act of committing it, some in the State Department of actually advocated we resettling Ashraf residence elsewhere in Iraq away from the Iranian border, as if the attack somehow had come from Iran – a sure way of making certain that the remaining residents of Ashraf can be obliterated completely out of the sight of the rest of the world.
As I said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has made it explicit a few days ago that the residents of Ashraf who have filed applications for refugee status are entitled to that status. But what about the United States? What about the country that Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, called the last best hope of earth? What has the United States done?
Now the European Union and the United Kingdom have acted forcefully to remove the terrorist designation from the MeK years ago, recognizing that if that designation ever was appropriate—and I submit to you that there is substantial reason to doubt that it ever was appropriate—but if it ever was, the record is clear that that there is no such basis any longer. In order to be kept that list organization must be involved in terrorism at some point in the last 10 years; that’s the law. As I indicated, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has made it clear that the government has shown no evidence to justify that designation. The court told the State Department that its evidence was not adequate and remanded the matter to the State Department to present other evidence if it could to justify the continued designation. And the State Department has been at this for a year. It has asked MeK written questions having nothing whatsoever to do with the appropriateness of the designation and presented all kinds of irrelevant documents and has simply dragged its feet and refused to act. Let’s take one example that i think lifts the lid off what’s going on here: an unclassified State Department document reporting that when State Department officials questioned Iranians applying for visas to enter the United States from such places as Ankara, Baku, Berlin, Dubai, and Istanbul, these visas applicants reported that they regarding MeK unfavorably. Now think about that. First of all whether these Iranians think well or ill of MeK is not relevant to whether MeK should be listed as a foreign terrorist organization, but beyond that, the State Department is actually claiming with a straight face that when it lists the MeK as a foreign terrorist organization and then asks people applying for visas from the State Department what they think of MeK the people they asked were applying for visas to the country that lists MeK as a foreign terrorist organization said they have unfavorable views of MeK. A first-year college student who offered that kind of evidence to support a conclusion in a term paper would get a failing grade.
This is a strategy of nothing but endless delay. Repeated requests from people on both sides of the political spectrum former governor Howard Dean of Vermont and bill Richardson of new Mexico (both democrats) or Ambassador John Bolton (who’s here) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Homeland Security Director Tom ridge, two former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff have all called on the United States, implored out government to end this unjustified designation. And what have we heard from State Department? Last week, on September 6, Secretary of State answered the letter sent in august by several of us including Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh (who’s also here) and me urging her to act and citing the plight of the residents of Ashraf she said simply that the designation is “currently under review…” currently under review and what of Ashraf? The secretary tells us that the department these are the words of the letter “the department shares your concern about the violence that took place.” Shares our concern about the violence that took place? How does it share that concern? The violence didn’t just happen. It wasn’t a natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake. It was inflicted by Iraqi troops acting at the behest of Iran using weapons supplied by the United States. It wasn’t a natural disaster. It didn’t just take place. In defiance of all logic, she says that the continued listing of MeK has nothing to do with the mistreatment of residents of Ashraf or the treatment of MeK members inside Iran or outside it, even though both the Iraqis and the Iranians do not hesitate through their proxies to cite the listing of MeK as a basis that justifies the mistreatment of MeK members. The letter suggests that perhaps MeK members can be moved to quote “a less contentious location in Iraq.” There’s nothing contentious about the location of Ashraf. Of course it’s near the Iranian border, but the residents of Ashraf were not attacked by Iranians. They were attacked by Iraqis. Does it make sense to move them deeper into Iraq where they can be obliterated out of sight? The State Department shares our concern? Perhaps if the Secretary of State wanted to express her concern, she might offer to go visit the graveyard in Ashraf and tell those killed that she’s sorry about what happened. But of course she couldn’t do that because as we know the Iraqis have occupied territory on which that graveyard sits, and the current Iraqi government has refused any American, even a delegation of Congressmen, permission to enter Ashraf. So she couldn’t even do that even if she expressed the hope, which she has not.
So what can the secretary do as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prepares to come to New York and stage his annual obscene performance at the United Nations? Or she can do what the European Union is already done what the United Kingdom has already done and remove this evil designation and she can do it as a splendid welcome to Ahmadinejad as he comes to new york to spit in the collective face of humanity.
This is a great opportunity to change the dynamic that has prevailed until now, and to do so dramatically. It would have two effects. First, it would show the current regime that we mean business and we are prepared to take all necessary steps to bring pressure on the regime, and secondly, it would take the focus of the regime away from interfering with the Arab spring as it has been, through Hezbollah and its other surrogates, and away from the situation in Egypt. What we can do is to stop just being a great power and start behaving like a great power and to show that the words of Abraham Lincoln who described the United States as the last best hope of earth are, as they are in fact, even truer today than they were when he first spoke them.
Thank you very much.