Wednesday, March 21, 2007
MEK spokesman - Iran training Shiite militias
Security, Iran
(AP Worldstream) A spokesman for an Iranian dissident group says Iraqi Shiite guerrillas and death squads are being trained in more than half a dozen secret camps in Iran with the blessing of top Tehran government leaders and at least three senior Iraqi political figures including Abdel Aziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Iraqi Shiite fighters are sent to Iran in the guise of religious pilgrims or wounded veterans seeking medical treatment, schooled in the camps for up to a month in everything from sniper techniques to explosive devices and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, and sent back to Iraq, Alireza Jafarzadeh told a news conference on Tuesday.
Jafarzadeh now heads a Washington-based think tank called Strategic Policy Consulting Inc., which deals with issues relating to Iran's nuclear and military activities and claims to obtain its information from a network of resistance informants inside that country. U.S. officials have taken a wary view of Jafarzadeh's affiliation in the past with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose military arm, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein allowed the group to operate camps in Iraq from which it launched attacks inside Iran.
Jafarzadeh said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are closely connected to the training program, and he named Abu Ahmad Al-Ramisi, governor of southern Iraq's Muthanna province, and two members of Iraq's National Assembly as being secretly involved. A spokesman for Iran's U.N. Mission, Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, said Jafarzadeh was an "official representative of MEK, which is a terrorist group, and even on the terrorist list of the U.S. State Department."
The U.S. Mission to the United Nations had no immediate comment on Jafarzadeh's latest claims about clandestine training of Iraqi fighters in Iran.
Jafarzadeh displayed maps and satellite photos showing some of the purported camps' locations, including two near the former shah's palace in Tehran, another south of the capital in Jalil Abad, and another, the Bahonar base in Karaj, where he said techniques of guerrilla warfare, including deception and intelligence-gathering are on the curriculum. Other camps, he said, are in Qom, in Isfahan and in Iraq-Iran border areas near Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Ilam and Khuzestan. The information, provided in bits and pieces by spies and informants, was sketchy on some aspects and detailed on others.
The camps are run by several top commanders of the Qods Force, the most highly trained branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, with some members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia also taking part, he said. He said the camps are under the command of Brig. Gen. Mohammad Shahlaei, a Revolutionary Guards officer who has been "involved in the Iranian regime's intervention in Iraqi affairs."
Jafarzadeh now heads a Washington-based think tank called Strategic Policy Consulting Inc., which deals with issues relating to Iran's nuclear and military activities and claims to obtain its information from a network of resistance informants inside that country. U.S. officials have taken a wary view of Jafarzadeh's affiliation in the past with the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose military arm, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein allowed the group to operate camps in Iraq from which it launched attacks inside Iran.
Jafarzadeh said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are closely connected to the training program, and he named Abu Ahmad Al-Ramisi, governor of southern Iraq's Muthanna province, and two members of Iraq's National Assembly as being secretly involved. A spokesman for Iran's U.N. Mission, Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, said Jafarzadeh was an "official representative of MEK, which is a terrorist group, and even on the terrorist list of the U.S. State Department."
The U.S. Mission to the United Nations had no immediate comment on Jafarzadeh's latest claims about clandestine training of Iraqi fighters in Iran.
Jafarzadeh displayed maps and satellite photos showing some of the purported camps' locations, including two near the former shah's palace in Tehran, another south of the capital in Jalil Abad, and another, the Bahonar base in Karaj, where he said techniques of guerrilla warfare, including deception and intelligence-gathering are on the curriculum. Other camps, he said, are in Qom, in Isfahan and in Iraq-Iran border areas near Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Ilam and Khuzestan. The information, provided in bits and pieces by spies and informants, was sketchy on some aspects and detailed on others.
The camps are run by several top commanders of the Qods Force, the most highly trained branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, with some members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia also taking part, he said. He said the camps are under the command of Brig. Gen. Mohammad Shahlaei, a Revolutionary Guards officer who has been "involved in the Iranian regime's intervention in Iraqi affairs."
Labels: Alireza Jafarzadeh, Iran, Quds Force, Shiite militias, training camps
