Authorities in Iran announced Monday the dismantling of a cell allegedly providing financial and logistical support to the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), considered a terrorist group by Tehran.
Six members of a «major network» were arrested in simultaneous operations carried out in several Iranian provinces, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry said in a statement carried by the Tasnim news agency.
The network moved the money collected abroad through complex money laundering methods and provided material to various PMOI «operational and terrorist» teams inside Iran.
The leader of the network has been identified as Ali Mohamad Dowlati, «an important element of the MKO terrorist group — as the PMOI is called by the Iranian authorities — which has headquarters in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands.» Tehran accuses Albania, as well as Abu Dhabi and Amsterdam of «supporting and collaborating» with this group.
Dowlati «had contacts with several MKO intermediaries inside Iran, supervised the process of financial transactions with multi-stage money laundering methods and delivered money, weaponry, ammunition, and technical and communications equipment to terrorist teams and even recruited thugs to participate in riots in Iran,» according to Tehran.
Another of the detainees is the father of an «operational member» of the PMOI «terrorist teams» who was arrested three years ago.
The Iranian Intelligence Ministry has warned countries that «host» PMOI «terrorists» that the presence of these individuals «will only aggravate illegal and terrorist activities in any country.»
Albania announced in September its severance of relations with Iran following an investigation into a cyber-attack recorded in July 2022, a decision branded «reckless and short-sighted» by Tehran.
The PMOI, which actively participated in the revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlevi with an Islamist discourse mixed with an adaptation of Marxist ideology, fought on the side of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the war with Iran between 1980 and 1988 after denouncing the actions of the religious leadership installed by the ayatollahs.
The group was persecuted by the religious authorities in Iran, which led the then leader of the group, Masud Rajavi, to reach a pact with Hussein in 1986 in the middle of the war between the two countries, after which the then supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordered the execution of alleged members and sympathizers of the organization.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
