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Posted: 6/17/2003 9:51:24 PM EDT
I got furious reading this.  WTF are the fucking frogs doing?  Are they actually persecuting the mullahs' enemies?  Why in god's name would they do this?  More appeasement to terror regimes?  Or just to spite the US?  The cynicism, the amorality, the petty vindictiveness....all at the price of millions of people trapped under the islamic fundamentalist regime. I hate the French so much, and they keep doing shit that makes me hate them even more.

[b]Iranians detained in Paris raids[/b]

Jon Henley, Paris and Ian Traynor, Vienna
Wednesday June 18, 2003
The Guardian

Iranian opposition figures and western diplomats were taken aback yesterday by a huge crackdown in France on a principal pillar of the opposition to the Tehran regime.
More than 1,300 police officers raided 13 addresses in the Paris region early yesterday in what the interior ministry called an "exceptional operation" against the People's Mojahedin of Iran.

In Vienna, where the UN nuclear watchdog is discussing Iran's alleged nuclear bomb project, opposition figures attacked the French move as a "despicable act" aimed at shoring up the Tehran regime as it confronts popular protest.

French police detained 158 members of the radical group for questioning. Some $1.3m and large quantities of "ultra-sophisticated" communications equipment were seized.

Among those arrested were the wife and brother of the movement's alleged leader, Massoud Rajavi, police said.

Although the movement is on EU and US terrorist network lists, elements are known to be in close communication with the Bush administration. Diplomats were nonplussed at the raids' timing and split over their effect on US-French relations.

The People's Mojahedin is the political wing of the Iraq-based Islamo-Marxist Mojahedin Khalq, whose fighters in Iraq began surrendering their weapons to US forces in May.

[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,979783,00.html[/url]
Link Posted: 6/17/2003 10:13:52 PM EDT
[#1]
Because we (and the EU) have declared those guys to be a terrorist organization...

They are based out of Iraq, and are complicating our operations there, so we asked them to disarm... Some did, some refused...

That's about it...

There are plenty more anti-mullah groups, this one just ruffled someone's feathers the wrong way, and got branded 'terrorist'...

Also, we do not want one evil (Islamic Theocracy) replaced by another (COMMUNISIM)... If these guys WERE to topple the mullahs, they'd just put their own mix of communisim and THEIR FLAVOR of theocracy (an odd kludge, but still...) in power instead of the federal republic that we'd preferr...

These guys aren't our friends, and we are not currently in a position where we need to fall back on 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' as we were back in the cold war...
Link Posted: 6/17/2003 10:17:04 PM EDT
[#2]
Quoted:
I got furious reading this.  WTF are the fucking frogs doing?  Are they actually persecuting the mullahs' enemies?  Why in god's name would they do this?  More appeasement to terror regimes?  Or just to spite the US?  The cynicism, the amorality, the petty vindictiveness....all at the price of millions of people trapped under the islamic fundamentalist regime. I hate the French so much, and they keep doing shit that makes me hate them even more.

[b]Iranians detained in Paris raids[/b]

Jon Henley, Paris and Ian Traynor, Vienna
Wednesday June 18, 2003
The Guardian

Iranian opposition figures and western diplomats were taken aback yesterday by a huge crackdown in France on a principal pillar of the opposition to the Tehran regime.
More than 1,300 police officers raided 13 addresses in the Paris region early yesterday in what the interior ministry called an "exceptional operation" against the People's Mojahedin of Iran.

In Vienna, where the UN nuclear watchdog is discussing Iran's alleged nuclear bomb project, opposition figures attacked the French move as a "despicable act" aimed at shoring up the Tehran regime as it confronts popular protest.

French police detained 158 members of the radical group for questioning. Some $1.3m and large quantities of "ultra-sophisticated" communications equipment were seized.

Among those arrested were the wife and brother of the movement's alleged leader, Massoud Rajavi, police said.

Although [red]the movement is on EU and US terrorist network lists, elements are known to be in close communication with the Bush administration[/red]. Diplomats were nonplussed at the raids' timing and split over their effect on US-French relations.

The People's Mojahedin is the political wing of the Iraq-based [red]Islamo-Marxist[/red] Mojahedin Khalq, whose fighters in Iraq began surrendering their weapons to US forces in May.

[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,979783,00.html[/url]
View Quote




I get it, they're "Our" Islamo-Marxist Terrorists, so it's NOT ok to whack them??

"Our" terrorists are "good", the other guys terrorists are bad....[rolleyes]
Link Posted: 6/17/2003 10:32:35 PM EDT
[#3]
I had the very same thought when I saw the report yesterday... "Those Fucking french!".

But then reading more I realized that the US has also determined the group to be terrorists so we really can't bitch too much about it.

As Dave_A pointed out, there's others out there that are more than willing to see a change of goverment in Iran.  We don't have to back all of them.
Link Posted: 6/17/2003 11:13:44 PM EDT
[#4]
Link Posted: 6/18/2003 2:35:22 AM EDT
[#5]
Iranian protests the arrests outside the French embassy in London
[img]http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/06/18/international/fran.jpg[/img]

The group busted by the French was declared a terrorist organization by Clinton's State Department in 1997.  The French government's action have pleased the Iranian Ayatollahs.

French Arrest 150 From Iranian Opposition Group
By ELAINE SCIOLINO


ARIS, June 17 — French authorities today arrested more than 150 members of a long-established armed Iranian opposition group, accused them of organizing terrorist acts, and seized $1.3 million in $100 bills.

The move against the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen, as the group is known, effectively shut down its operations in France, while the timing of the action seemed to send conciliatory signals to Iran.

Senior French officials insisted that the crackdown was not linked to events inside Iran. But it coincides with demands by the United Nations chief nuclear weapons inspector, the European Union, the United States and Russia that Iran allow international weapons inspectors to conduct more intrusive examinations of its nuclear sites.

It also coincides with a wave of student protest in Iran. On Sunday, President Bush encouraged antigovernment demonstrators in Iran to continue their protests for the sake of creating "a free Iran." Today in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell encouraged Iranians to protest for their rights, dismissing Tehran's charges that Washington was interfering in its domestic affairs.

Also today, a 38-year-old Iranian protester set himself on fire outside the French Embassy in London. Early news reports indicated that the man, whom a guard and police officers tried frantically to save, was angered by the French raids. The police said his injuries were not life-threatening.

The French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, told members of Parliament today that the broad crackdown was necessary because the Iranian opposition group wanted to use France as an international base of operations to supplement their activities from their headquarters in Iraq.

"The Mujahedeen wanted to make France their rear base," Mr. Sarkozy said. "We couldn't accept that."

The top antiterrorism judge in France, Jean-Louis Bruguière, ordered the raids after uncovering a "criminal conspiracy with the intent to prepare acts of terrorism and financing of a terrorist enterprise," Gérard Laurent, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

The Iranian government praised the French action. "We have been waiting for a long time for the French authorities to act against them and conform with the decision of the European Union, which had declared this small group to be terrorist," said a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

The People's Mujahedeen, based in Baghdad, has long been the best-organized political and military operation fighting to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization. The European Union declared it a terrorist organization in May 2002.

But during the American-led war against Iraq this year, the United States flirted with using the group to prevent Iran from meddling in Iraq's internal affairs.

Then, after a high-level policy review in Washington, the United States decided instead to disarm the group's army. American soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Division now monitor the group, which has turned over its heavy weapons and stays in designated areas northeast of Baghdad.

The People's Mujahedeen does not enjoy much support inside Iran, largely because of its ties to Iraq. It has not been involved in the recent protests in Iran, which have been organized by students at Tehran's main universities.

The United States and other European countries helped provide crucial intelligence that led to today's arrests, one of the biggest domestic intelligence operations in years, said one senior official.

More than 1,300 French police officers, many of them masked and armed with automatic rifles and supported by helicopters, were involved in the early morning raid at the group's headquarters in the north Parisian suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise, and in Yvelines west of Paris.

The crackdown was nicknamed "Operation Theo," after Theo Van Gogh, the art dealer who lived for a while with his brother Vincent, the painter, in Auvers-sur-Oise. Both men are buried there.

Link Posted: 6/18/2003 2:36:10 AM EDT
[#6]
The main Auvers-sur-Oise site consists of four villas surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire and is protected by police guards and video cameras. Among those detained there were Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the Mujahedeen leader Massoud Rajavi, who has been based at the group's military headquarters in Iraq, and Saleh Rajavi, Mr. Rajavi's brother.

Massoud Rajavi was expelled from France to Iraq in 1986, at a time when the French government was trying to improve relations with Iran and help to win freedom for nine French hostages held by Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon. He then built a force in Iraq, which now numbers about 10,000 people, including about 3,000 fighters.

In 1987, Maryam Rajavi, who is Mr. Rajavi's third wife, became "commander in chief of the Iranian National Liberation Army" and two years later was elected secretary general of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political front for the People's Mujahedeen, while her husband became chairman.

Asked about the timing of the raids, Mr. Laurent said the investigation began in 2000 and was not connected to external events. "This is a totally French operation, a serious blow designed to eradicate an organization that has called for the use of terrorism to achieve its goals," he said. "This investigation didn't just start yesterday."

In addition to the stash of dollars, which were uncovered in Auvers-sur-Oise, the police also seized sophisticated encrypted satellite and other communications equipment and a trove of the organization's documents. No arms or explosives were found, Mr. Laurent said.

The United States still allows the National Council of Resistance to operate on its soil, and the group has deep support among a core group in Congress that has long sought to overthrow the Iranian government.

Formed in the 1960's by the college-educated children of Iranian merchants, the People's Mujahedeen was described as an "Islamic leftist" organization. In the 1970's it staged attacks inside Iran and killed several American military officials and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran.

The group was part of the broad coalition that initially supported the Iranian revolution, and it took part in the takeover in 1979 of the American Embassy in Tehran. But it fell out with the government because it called for a more participatory system and more power-sharing.

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/18/international/europe/18FRAN.html[/url]
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