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French cause stir with swoop on Iranian
militia
By Charles Recknagel
PRAGUE - When the French police cracked down on
the People's Mujahideen this week, they did so in force.
Some 1,300 police and national security officers took
part in a broad sweep of the organization's offices in
over a dozen locations in the greater Paris area. Some
of the raids saw masked riot police equipped with
automatic weapons storming houses while helicopters
circled overhead. By day's end some 160 people were in
custody.
The raids were conducted according to a
court order which accused the People's Mujahideen of
"criminal association aimed at preparing terrorism acts"
and of "financing a terrorist enterprise". The People's
Mujahideen - also known by its Persian-language name as
the Mujahideen-e-Khalq - is the main armed Iranian
opposition group and the military wing of an umbrella
exile opposition party, the National Council of the
Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
A French police
spokesman said that the officers found no explosives in
the Mujahideen's offices, but did uncover plenty of cash
- US$1.38 million in $100 notes and also 150,000 euros
(US$174,000). The police also confiscated boxes of files
and paperwork for a court investigation into the group's
activities and possible criminal trials of some members.
French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said
that the decision was taken to dismantle the
organization because it was trying, in his words, to set
up a "base camp" in France. He provided no details. The
arrests immediately set off protests by angry Mujahideen
members and sympathizers in London. There, a crowd of
some 50 protested outside the French consulate, with one
man setting himself alight. Police said the 38-year-old
man's injuries were critical but not life-threatening.
Analysts say that it is not yet clear why Paris
decided this week to finally move against the
Mujahideen. The European Union put the group on its list
of banned terrorist organizations in 2002 over its
routine infiltration into Iran to assassinate officials.
Washington also considers the Mujahideen to be
terrorists. But until now the Iranian armed opposition's
fund-raising and organizational activities have been
widely tolerated in the West, in part due to support
from politicians who oppose the Islamic Republic.
Ben Faulks, an expert on Iran at the Economist
Intelligence Unit in London, says that it is hard to see
what immediate threat the French court saw in the
Mujahideen, but it almost certainly was not any plan to
carry out terrorist activities in the West: "They have
been there a long time and the [Mujahideen's] interests
would be the worst served by trying to stir things up.
An attack in France is almost unthinkable, particularly
given the fact that they have managed to sort out a kind
of working relationship with the US [and given the fact]
they want to keep their noses clean and concentrate on
perhaps gaining US support for some kind of activity in
Iran," Faulks says.
The analyst says speculation
about the reasons for the arrests ranges from the
possibility that Paris learned the Mujahideen were using
bases in France to plan an attack on Iran to the
possibility that the arrests are part of Western
diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to accept tighter
controls on its nuclear development program.
"A
guess might possibly be that the French government
somehow sees it as beneficial in their relations with
Iran. Possibly there were attacks planned against the
Iranian mainland and the French might have a case for
making arrests on that basis. Possibly it is just that
the French are trying to use [the arrests] somehow as
leverage in Tehran, possibly as part of wider efforts to
get Iran to sign up to the Additional Protocol on
nuclear issues," Faulks says.
France had poor
relations with Tehran immediately after the Islamic
Revolution in 1979 but in the decades since has
developed strong trade and diplomatic ties which it
would not want compromised by Mujahideen attacks traced
to its soil.
At the same time, the EU has called
on Iran to sign a so-called Additional Protocol with the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) allowing more
intrusive, short-notice inspections of its nuclear
program. The US has accused Iran of concealing efforts
to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it has any
such programs.
While analysts say that time is
needed to see just what are France's motivations, the
Mujahideen itself has accused Paris of bending to
pressure from Tehran. Ali Safeva, a London-based NCRI
official, told Reuters yesterday that "this action is
part of a dirty deal with the terrorists who rule Iran".
Tehran has long demanded Paris move against the
Mujahideen. The Iranian Foreign Ministry praised the
arrests, saying "this is a positive step taken by France
and we are expecting their people to be handled like
other dangerous terrorists".
The Mujahideen had
maintained a fighting force of several thousand soldiers
in northern Iraq since the mid-1980s under the
protection of Saddam Hussein, but its cross-border
operations against Iran now have been curtailed by the
US occupation authority. US forces, which initially
clashed with the Mujahideen early in the Iraq war, have
reached a ceasefire accord with the group under which
the fighters are restricted to a few bases and their
heavy weapons have been impounded.
The group,
which has Islamic and Marxist roots, originally
participated in Iran's Islamic Revolution but soon after
broke away and now espouses a secular system of
government. Since the early 1980s, the armed Iranian
opposition has had offices in Paris, many other European
capitals, and Washington.
Among those arrested
were Miryam Rajavi, who the umbrella NCRI has said would
become Iran's president should the country's clerical
leadership be toppled. She is the wife of the Mujahideen
founder, Massoud Rajavi, whose whereabouts is not known.
The group is reported to have little support in
Iran due to its past support from Iraq, which fought an
eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s. It has not been
involved in the student-led protests in Tehran over the
past week.
Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut
Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
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