(Los Angeles, CA) - The FBI arrested 7 members of the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) at Los Angeles International airport on Feb. 28, on charges of illegal fund-raising for a terrorist organization. The PMOI, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), was using a fake human rights organization as a front for funding military activities in Iraq. According to FBI witnesses inside the fund-raising network, all the money raised for unsuspecting travelers and from Iranian-Americans was shipped to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to buy military equipment for the group's National Liberal Army, based in Iraq.
Visitors to LAX have long been familiar with the Mujahedin's fund-raising activities. Iranians, mostly women wearing Islamic Republic-style head scarves, approach unsuspecting travelers in pairs and claim they are raising money to help Iranian children and victims of torture, then spread out glossy books with graphic pictures of torture victims.
In a 120 page affidavit, FBI Special Agent Christopher E. Castillo detailed his contacts with a confidential informant who had been lured into the MEK fund-raising scheme. The informant recorded numerous conversations with the ring-leader, identified by the FBI as 39-year old Tahmineh Tahamtan, in which she detailed how moneys were raised from travelers and from Iranian-Americans.
The informant accompanied Tahamtan and other members of the cell on trips around the Los Angeles and Orange County areas to solicit large donations from Iranian-Americans who sympathized with the MEK, according to the affidavit. The FBI seized training materials for the airport fund-raisers, as well as motivational videos that portrayed the activities of the self-styled "National Liberation Army" in Iraq.
The three-year FBI investigation was triggered by a Jun 12, 1997 cable from the FBI Legal Attaché in Bonn, Germany to the Los Angeles field office, "indicating that the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) were conducting a money laundering investigation of MEK members involved in fundraising," the affidavit states. "The BKA uncovered large sums of money being sent to Germany from various individuals in the U.S., some of which were in the Los Angeles area."
At about the same time, the affidavit states, the local CBS affiliate in Los Angeles aired an investigative news report on the alleged illegal fund-raising activities, that included footage of known MEK operatives working travelers at LAX. The investigation kicked into high gear once the State Department officially designated the MEK and its affiliates as terrorist organizations in October 1997.
In February 1998, the affidavit states that the FBI seized banking records from a Bank of America account belonging to the Committee for Human Rights in Iran (CHR), a front organization used by the MEK to disguise its fund-raising activities on behalf of the group's military wing in Iraq.
The Los Angeles-based CHR was registered as a non-profit educational group that provided "financial assistance for refugees... [and] to victims of persecution currently residing in the United States." The affidavit states, to the contrary, that the CHR was used as a front for collecting money that was transferred out of the country to bank accounts used by the MEK for its military activities.
Three corporate officers listed by the CHR on its tax returns - Fahimeh Azarani, Majid Lashkari, and Eskandar Eskancari - were not arrested but were cited repeatedly in the affidavit
Lashkari, who gave his employer as Lothar Import of Ventura, California, and Azarani rented apartments on behalf of the MEK which were used as its "kanoon," or cell headquarters.
Those arrested were identified as Tahmineh Tahamtan, Mustafa Ahmady, Hossein Afshari, Ali Reza Moradi, Hassan Rezai, Najaf Eshkoftegi, and Mohammad Omidvar, all of Los Angeles.
At one point, Tahamtan drove to Orange, California to solicit a $12,000 donation from Omidvar, identified as a "long time financial supporter of the MEK and the NLA.". In a tape-recorded conversation on the premises of his business, Prestige Jewelry, Tahamtan also pressed him to lean on other MEK supporters to make large donations. Omidvar joked: "Kazem Rajavi, may God forgive him, said, You give one finger of yours to the Mujahedin and they will take your shoulder off."
The affidavit also detailed harsh anti-American comments made by the MEK's foreign affairs spokesman, Mohammad Mohadesin, in a conference call from Iraq with cell members on March 26, 2000. Mohadesin is frequently portrayed in the press as pro-American and pro-Western, but in talking with MEK supporters accused the United States of giving satellite surveillance footage of the group's bases in Iraq to the Iranian government.
MEK opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq appeared at several places in the 120 page affidavit, but most forcefully at the end, suggesting that the FBI may have chosen to act to prevent imminent terrorist acts in the United States.
Within hours of the Feb. 16 U.S.-British air strikes against Iraq, two of the arrested MEK members "talked about retaliation against the U.S. from Iraqi terrorists who they indicated were most likely already in the U.S.," the affidavit states.
An April 30, 1998 Fact sheet on the MEK distributed by the FBI to all FBI field offices around the United States detailed the group's anti-American activities. "At the time the organization was founded, the goal was to overthrow the monarchist rule of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi," the affidavit states. "During the struggle to overthrow the Shah of Iran as well as after the Shah's overthrow, the MEK publicly claimed responsibility for acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens, U.S. interests and other acts of terrorism." The affidavit cites the assassination of U.S. military officers in Iran, and noted that the group took part in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979, along with other pro-Khomeini forces.
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director (exec@iran.org). FDI materials are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org/.