US mulls harboring anti-Iran terrorists

Sun Nov 27, 2011 1:57PM GMT

Members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington (File Photo)

The United States is mulling over removing the anti-Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from its terrorist watch list and giving refuge to its members, a move which indicates Washington’s support for terrorism.

Former CIA directors James Woolsey and Porter Goss together with former FBI director Louis Freeh are among those lobbying President Barack Obama to delist the MKO from the US terrorist list, The New York Times reported.
Others include former attorney general Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief Tom Ridge, President Obama’s first national security adviser General James Jones, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.
The MKO is designated as a terrorist organization under United States law, and has been described by State Department officials as a repressive cult.
The Iraqi government has made clear its plans to close down the notorious Camp Ashraf , located about 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of the border with Iran, which hosts about 3500 MKO terrorists, before US troops pull-out by the end of the year.

Morocco Islamists poised to win parliamentary vote

Image via Wikipedia

By Souhail Karam

RABAT | Sun Nov 27, 2011 8:59am IST

(Reuters) – Morocco‘s moderate Islamist PJD party is on course to win a parliamentary election, partial results showed on Saturday, in what would be the second victory for Islamists in the region in the wake of the “Arab Spring” uprisings.

Incomplete results from Friday’s vote indicate that PJD will lead a coalition government in partnership with the secularist party of the outgoing prime minister and two other groups.

Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring, sent ripples through the Middle East last month when a moderate Islamist movement won the country’s first democratic election.

Morocco has not had a revolution of the kind seen elsewhere in the region, with its ruler, King Mohammed, still firmly in charge. But it has witnessed some protests inspired by Arab uprisings, mostly to demand fewer direct powers for the monarchy and an end to corruption. In response, the king has introduced limited reforms.

CIA arrests in Iran? Allegations point to smoldering covert war with US.

CIA arrests were perhaps Iranians working as informants for Western intelligence services. Iranian officials this week announced the arrests of a dozen spies.

By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / November 25, 2011

Masked members of the Iranian Basij militia parade on Friday.

Raheb Homavandi/Reuters Washington

A smoldering covert war pitting the United States against Iran took a new turn this week as Iranian officials announced the arrests of a dozen “CIA spies” they said were targeting the country’s nuclear program.

Iranian officials, including the country’s intelligence minister, did not release the identities or nationalities of the alleged spies, but intelligence analysts say they are probably Iranians working as informants for Western intelligence services.

“The main mission of this act of espionage was related to Iran’s progress in the fields of nuclear technology and also military and security activities,” said Parviz Sorouri, a member of Iran’s powerful parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, according to the official IRNA news agency. “The US and Zionist regime’s espionage apparatuses were trying to damage Iran both from inside and outside with a heavy blow, using regional intelligence services.”

The potential “CIA arrests” followed reports earlier in the week of other arrests in Iran. There were also reports that Hezbollah, the Iran-affiliated Shiite militia in Lebanon, has arrested alleged CIA informants.

The latest Iranian allegations could not be verified, and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment, as it does as a rule on “operational activities.” But the charges were the latest installment in a growing list of covert operations – or accusations claiming such operations. That list includes the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iranian factories and military installations, cyberattacks targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, and – on the other side – the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Show Trials in Benghazi

27.11.2011 00:25

by FRANKLIN LAMB

An affable gentleman, “Mahmoud” ushered this observer into the Benghazi People’s Court (Mahkamat al-Sha’b) and showed me the freshly painted courtroom where on December 19, 2006, the current NTC leader and long term CIA favorite, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, twice upheld death sentences by firing squad against a Palestinian doctor, Ashraf al-Hujuj, and five Bulgarian nurses Kristiyana Valtcheva, Nasya Nenova, Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chervenyashka, and Snezhana Dimitrova.

The death sentences were requested by the Libyan prosecutor in his opening statement four months earlier, in the final appeal in the fake HIV show trial case # 607/2003 held at the criminal court in Benghazi.

The appellate judge in the case was none other than the current head of the NATO-installed Libyan National Transition Council (NTC) Mustafa Abdul Jalil, whose formal legal education consisted of sitting in on some Sharia law classes. Following his appellate decision in the case, and for other services rendered to the former regime, Jalil was rewarded with the post of Minister of Justice. He served loyally in that position until American associates encouraged the intensely ambitious Minister to resign on February 24, 2011, the day he joined the Benghazi based uprising, as “leader.”

Across Party Lines, Lobbying for Iranian Exiles on Terrorist List

Image via Wikipedia

By SCOTT SHANE  Published: November 26, 2011

WASHINGTON

At a time of partisan gridlock in the capital, one obscure cause has drawn a stellar list of supporters from both parties and the last two administrations, including a dozen former top national security officials.

Hundreds rallied near the White House in October for the Mujahedeen Khalq, known as M.E.K.

That alone would be unusual. What makes it astonishing is the object of their attention: a fringe Iranian opposition group, long an ally of Saddam Hussein, that is designated as a terrorist organization under United States law and described by State Department officials as a repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.

The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, has won the support of two former C.I.A. directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey, who argued unsuccessfully for ending the terrorist label while in office.

War games spotlight China-Pakistan hype

Image via Wikipedia

JHELUM:

Paratroopers hurtling head first out of planes, attack helicopters strafing a terror training centre and shacks blown to bits were this week’s latest embodiment of China-Pakistan friendship.

The war games conducted by 540 Chinese and Pakistani soldiers running around scrubland – the fourth joint exercises since 2006 – were ostensibly a chance for China to benefit from Pakistan’s counter-terrorism experience.
There was disappointment that fighter jets were unable to carry out a bombing raid, with visibility apparently poor, but the exercises were declared a success in terms of deepening friendship and improving military cooperation.
But behind the pomp rolled out for the Chinese, complete with slap-up marquee lunch and bags of presents, the relationship is as transactional as any other as China competes with Pakistan’s arch-rival, India, for Asian dominance.
And it is far from easy to decipher. “They operate silently so as not to make any statements in public apart from cliches. So one doesn’t know what’s happening,” said retired Pakistani general Talat Masood.
China is Pakistan’s main arms supplier, while Beijing has built two nuclear power plants in Pakistan and is contracted to construct two more reactors.
But the alliance has been knocked by Chinese accusations that the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which wants an independent homeland for Xinjiang’s Muslim Uighurs, is training “terrorists” in Pakistani camps.

Yemen presidential election set for February 21

SANAA | Sat Nov 26, 2011 2:50pm EST

(Reuters) – Yemen’s vice president called presidential elections for February 21 on Saturday under a deal aimed at ending months of protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh that have brought the country to the edge of civil war.

If the agreement goes according to plan, Saleh will become the fourth Arab ruler brought down by mass demonstrations that have reshaped the political landscape of the Middle East.

Saleh returned home on Saturday after signing the deal with the opposition in Riyadh on Wednesday under which he transferred his powers to Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after 33 years in office and 10 months of protests.

In a decree run on the Saba state news agency on Saturday, Hadi said Yemenis “are called on to vote in early elections for a new president of the republic starting at 8 o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, February 21, 2012.”