12 MKO leaders on Interpol’s wanted list: report

TEHRAN, Feb. 29 (MNA) – Interpol has issued arrest warrants for 12 leaders of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), the Habilian Association website reported on Tuesday. The website, quoting an informed unidentified Iraqi official, said that the arrest warrants have been issued for the members due to the illegal activities that they have carried out, including abduction. According to the official, the main impediment to the implementation of the arrest warrants is the fact that police forces are not allowed to enter Camp New Iraq, which was formerly known as Camp Ashraf, where most of the MKO members are based. However, he said that Iraq reserves the right to pursue the cases of the MKO members in other countries when they are transferred out of Iraq. The Iraqi government plans to transfer all MKO members out of the country and has temporality relocated them to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad International Airport. The MKO started its activities as a terrorist group based in Iraq in the early 1980s. In addition to the assassination of hundreds of Iranian officials and citizens, the group cooperated with Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in its repression of the Iraqi people. The MKO had fought as a mechanized division in alliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. But it was disarmed and left stranded after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that toppled the dictator. The U.S. government characterized the MKO as a cult and designated it a terrorist group in 1997, holding it responsible for the assassinations of three U.S. Army officers and three civilian contractors before the Islamic Revolution (in 1979). With funding from the Iranian diaspora, the MKO has mounted a major campaign in the U.S. and Europe and enlisted many top national security figures from mostly Republican administrations as well as a number of prominent Democratic politicians to get its terrorist designation lifted.