NEWS,29.09.2012

US embassy warning: Philippines on alert

Philippine security forces were on stepped-up alert on Saturday after the US embassy issued an emergency advisory about an alleged threat against Americans in the capital."As a matter of precaution, we have augmented security," deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said. "Police visibility has been heightened."The US embassy said in its advisory that the "threat against American citizens in metropolitan Manila ... has been detected by reliable security forces" but it did not give details on the nature of a possible attack."This threat remains in effect until October 10," the embassy said in the advisory posted on its website on Friday.Britain, Australia and Canada also issued warnings to their citizens, citing the US advisory."Any attack could be indiscriminate, and we advise British nationals to exercise particular caution and extra vigilance in places frequented by expatriates and foreign nations," Britain's advisory said.Australia stressed the need for its citizens to avoid travelling to the conflict-wracked southern region of Mindanao, and Canada urged its citizens to be "extremely vigilant and increase their personal security awareness"."Bomb attacks could occur at any time in Manila and other key cities," Canada said in its advisory. "Targets could include places frequented by foreigners, such as large shopping malls and convention centres."Philippine police earlier stepped up security at the US embassy in Manila after violent protests in several countries over a US amateur film considered insulting to Islam.

Last Western detainee leaves Gitmo

The last Western detainee held at the Guantanamo Bay US military prison has returned to Canada after a decade in custody and has been transferred to a maximum security prison in Canada where he awaits parole, Canada's public safety minister said on Saturday.Vic Toews said that 26-year-old Omar Khadr arrived at a Canadian military base on a US government plane early on Saturday and was transferred to the Millhaven maximum security prison in Bath, Ontario.Khadr pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a US soldier in Afghanistan and was eligible to return to Canada from Guantanamo Bay last October under terms of a plea deal. Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at the Guantanamo prison set up on the US naval base in Cuba to hold suspected terrorists after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He received an eight-year sentence in 2010 after being convicted of throwing a grenade that killed Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer during a 2002 firefight.Toews noted that the US government initiated the transfer and suggested that Canada had little choice but to accept him under Canadian law."Omar Khadr is a known supporter of the al-Qaeda terrorist network and a convicted terrorist," Toews said. "Omar Khadr was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. As a Canadian citizen, he has a right to enter Canada after the completion of his sentence."John Norris, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, has said Khadr would be eligible for parole as early as the spring of 2013. It will be up to Canada's national parole board to release him, Toews said."I am satisfied the Correctional Service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr's sentence in a manner which recognises the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration," Toews said.

Iran condemns US for taking group off terror list

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of Iranian opposition party National Council of Resistance of Iran, smiles as she attends an international conference on Iran policy in Brussels. Maryam Rajavi, the Paris-based head of the exiled opposition group, said in an interview that she hopes the organization can now have the ear of the world's diplomats to help bolster its bid to overthrow Iran's clerical regime. She stressed that its goal was to replace the Islamic Republic with a democratic government Iran condemned on Saturday the Obama administration for taking an Iranian militant group formerly allied with Hussein off the U.S. terrorism list, saying it shows Washington's "double standards."The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which began as a guerrilla movement fighting Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, helped overthrow the monarch in 1979 then quickly fell out with the Islamic Republic's first leader, Khomeini. It fought in the 1980s alongside Saddam's forces in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war but disarmed after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.The State Department delisted the group on Friday, meaning that any assets the MEK has in the United States are unblocked and Americans can do business with the organization. On Saturday, at their Paris headquarters, MEK members gathered to celebrate, tossing flower petals and displaying photos of members killed in the past 15 years."We call on the international community to respect the will of the Iranian people for a regime change in Iran," Maryam Rajavi, the Paris-based head of the exiled opposition group, said Saturday.Iranian State TV criticized the decision, saying that the U.S. considered the MEK "good terrorists" and claims Washington is using the group to work against Tehran. State radio said the move highlights President Barack Obama's anti-Iranian sentiments."There is much evidence of the group being involved in terrorist activities. Delisting them shows America's double standard policy on terrorism," state TV said. The U.S. distinguishes between "good and bad terrorists" and the MEK are now "good terrorists because the U.S. is using them against Iran," the report also said, adding that Washington and Israel use the group to spy on Iran's nuclear program.The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has denied the claims, saying the program is peaceful and is intended for electricity generation and scientific research.The State Department said the MEK hasn't committed terror for more than a decade. The group has also complied with demands that over 3,000 of its once-armed members abandon their base in Iraq near the Iranian border for a camp outside Baghdad, an essential step to ending their decades-long presence in Iraq.The group claims it is seeking regime change through peaceful means, aiming to replace Tehran's clerical system with a secular government.However, a senior State Department official suggested that removing MEK from the U.S. terrorist list does not translate into a shared common front against the Islamic Republic. The official said Washington does not view MEK as an opposition movement that can promote democratic values in Iran. The official on Friday briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.In a rare interview on Friday, Rajavi said "the most important impact ... will be seen inside Iran.""The balance of power is going to change. For example, the first message for the Iranian people will be they won't fear increasing their activity and increasing their demonstrations," she said. The fear "will evaporate ... and that will lead to the expansion of anti-regime activities within Iran."Iran says MEK is responsible for the deaths of more than 12,000 Iranians over the past three decades, including senior government officials.The MEK spent huge sums of money over years lobbying for removal from the U.S. terror list, holding rallies in European capitals and elsewhere that featured luminaries like former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge from the administration of George W. Bush. Former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was among those recently welcomed by the MEK to Paris.The group was protected in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but its members are disliked by the new Iraqi government, dominated by Shiite Muslims like those in Iran.The United States had insisted the MEK's members leave Camp Ashraf, their home in Iraq, as a condition for removal from the terrorist list. All but several hundred militants are now located in Camp Liberty, a former U.S. base outside Baghdad, looking for placement in third countries.The MEK was removed from the European Union's terrorist list in 2009.

NEWS,11.02.2012.

Israel's Mossad Teams up with Terror Group to Kill Iran's Nuclear Scientists (Part 2)

The MEK and its sister organizations have since the beginning been run by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, a husband-wife team who have maintained tight control despite assassination threats and internal dissent. Massoud Rajavi, 63, founded the MEK, but since the U.S. invasion of Iraq has taken a backseat to his wife.The State Department report describes the Rajavis as “fundamentally undemocratic” and “not a viable alternative to the current government of Iran.”NBC News correspondent Tom Aspell visits an MEK base in Iraq in this Nightly News piece that aired on May 26, 1991.One reason for that is the MEK’s close relationship with Saddam Hussein, as demonstrated by this 1986 video showing the late Iraqi dictator meeting with Massoud Rajavi. Saddam recruited the MEK in much the same way the Israelis allegedly have, using them to fight Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War, a role they took on proudly. So proudly, they invited NBC News to one of their military camps outside Baghdad in 1991.“The National Liberation Army (MLA), the military wing of the Mujahedin, conducted raids into Iran during the latter years of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War,” according to the State Department report. The NLA's last major offensive reportedly was conducted against Iraqi Kurds in 1991, when it joined Saddam Hussein's brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion. In addition to occasional acts of sabotage, the Mujahedin are responsible for violent attacks in Iran that victimize civilians.”“Internally, the Mujahedin run their organization autocratically, suppressing dissent and eschewing tolerance of differing viewpoints,” it said. “Rajavi, who heads the Mojahedin’s political and military wings, has fostered a cult of personality around himself.”The U.S. suspicion of the MEK doesn’t end there. Law enforcement officials have told NBC News that in 1994, the MEK made a pact with terrorist Ramzi Yousef a year after he masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Yousef built an 11-pound bomb that MEK agents placed inside one of Shia Islam’s greatest shrines in Mashad, Iran, on June 20, 1994. At least 26 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 200 wounded in the attack.That connection between Yousef, nephew of 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and the MEK was first reported in a book, “The New Jackals,” by Simon Reeve. NBC News confirmed that Yousef told U.S. law enforcement that he had worked with the MEK on the bombing.In recent years, the MEK has said it has renounced violence, but Iranian officials say that is not true, that killings of Iranians continue. Still, through some deft lobbying, the group has been able to get the United Kingdom and the European Union to remove it from their lists of terrorist groups.The alleged involvement of the MEK in the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists provides the U.S. with a cloak of deniability regarding the clandestine killings. Because the U.S. has designated the MEK as a terrorist organization, neither military nor intelligence units of the U.S. government, can work with them. “We cannot deal with them, “said one senior U.S. official. “We would not deal with them because of the designation.” Iranian officials initially accused the Israelis and MEK of being behind the attacks, but they have since added the CIA to the list. Three days after the Jan. 11, 2012, bombing in Tehran that killed Roshan, the state news agency IRNA reported that Iran’s Foreign Ministry had sent a diplomatic letter to the U.S. claiming to have “evidence and reliable information” that the CIA provided “guidance, support and planning” to assassins directly involved in the attack.U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton immediately denied any connection to the killings. “I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” Clinton told reporters on the day of the attack.But at least two GOP presidential candidates have no problem with the targeting of nuclear scientists. In a November debate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed “taking out their scientists,” and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum called it, ”a wonderful thing.”The MEK’s opposition to the Iranian government also has recently earned it both plaudits and support from an odd mix of political bedfellows. A group of former Cabinet-level officials have joined together to support the MEK’s removal from the official U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list, even taking out a full-page ad last year in the New York Times calling for the removal of the MEK from the U.S. terrorist list. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy were among those whose signatures were on the ad.“There’s an extraordinary group of bipartisan or even apolitical leaders, military leaders, diplomats, the United States … the United Kingdom, the European Union, even a U.S. District Court in Washington, said that this group that was put on the foreign terrorist organization watch list in 1997 doesn’t deserve to be there,” Ridge said in November on “The Andrea Mitchell Show” on MSNBC TV.U.S. politicians also have been pushing the U.S. government to protect the 3,400 MEK members and their families at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, about 35 miles north of Baghdad. With the departure of U.S. troops, the MEK feared that Iraqi forces, with encouragement from Iran, would attack the camp, leading to a bloodbath. At the last minute, however, agreement was brokered with the United Nations that would permit the MEK members’ departure for resettlement in unspecified democratic countries. As of this week, there’s been little movement on the planned resettlement. Iranian fighters with the National Liberation Army, the military wing of the MEK, clean armoured personnel carriers in 1997 after a field exercise near Camp Ashraf in Iraq.The Iranians see what’s happening as terrorism and hypocrisy by the United States. They have forwarded documents and other evidence to the United Nations – and directly to the United States, they say.” I think this is very cynical plan. This is unacceptable,” said Larijani. “This is a bad trend in the world. Unprecedented. We should kill scientists … to block a scientific program? I mean this is disaster!”Daniel Byman, a professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and also a senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said that if the accounts of the Israeli-MEK assassinations are accurate, the operation borders on terrorism.“In theory, states cannot be terrorist, but if they hire locals to do assassinations, that would be state sponsorship,” said Byman, author of the recent book, “A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism.” “You could argue that they took action not to terrorize the public, the purpose of terrorism, but only the nuclear community. An argument could also be made that degrading the program means that you don’t have to take military action and thus, this is a lower level of violence and that really these are military targets, where normally terrorist targets are civilians.”But ultimately, Byman said, there is a “spectrum of responsibility” and that Israel is ultimately responsible.Ronen Bergman, while not speaking on behalf of the Israeli government, suggests that there is a justification, citing an oft-repeated but disputed quote in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s said that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth.“Meir Degan, the chief of Mossad, when he was in office, hung a photograph behind him, behind the chair of the chief of Mossad,” notes the Israeli commentator. “And in that photograph you see -- an ultra-orthodox Jew -- long beard, standing on his knees with his-- hands up in the air, and two Gestapo soldiers standing -- beside him with guns pointed at him. One of -- one of them is smiling.“And Degan used to say to his people and the people coming to visit him from CIA, NSA, et cetera, ‘Look at this guy in the picture. This is my grandfather just seconds before he was killed by the SS,’” Bergman said. “’… We are here to prevent this from happening again.’"