New York beggars hired by MKO to stage rally

The terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCR and PMOI) pays money and feeds New York beggars in return for their participation in its small gatherings in front of the UN headquarters, a report said. Simultaneous with the United Nations Security Council meeting on Iraq which partly focused on the situation of the terrorist grouplet, the tiny group of the MKO members who used to be less than a handful have started paying money to about 30 beggars and elderly people from different nationalities to lure them into their gathering, the Islamic republic news agency reported. The gathering called for returning to Camp Ashraf in Iraq. A UN staff member who had worked in Tehran for several years and is quite familiar with the demographic and national structure of the Iranian society was quite bewildered to see people with colored skins in the terrorist MKO gathering. An elderly lady who was participating in the MKO gathering said that she was from South Africa and was a professional beggar. She said two people had asked her to come in front of the UN headquarters and wave the MKO flag in return for 20 dollars and a meal. The MKO was a long-standing member of the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, but after heavy lobbying the group was dropped from the list last year. The group was allied to Saddam Hussein and retains a significant presence at Camp Liberty, and formerly at Camp Ashraf (its main training camp) during the US occupation. The MKO group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets. The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly-established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran's new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar and Judiciary Chief Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981. The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country. The terrorist group joined Saddam's army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran. Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who eventually took the MKO off the US terror list. The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September 2012, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time. In September 2012, the last groups of the MKO terrorists left Camp Ashraf, their main training center in Iraq's Diyala province. They have been transferred to Camp Liberty which lies Northeast of the Baghdad International Airport