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Couple charged with planning attack on 'cult-like' Iran group in France Diplomat arrested for planned attack on Iranian group in France
(about 3 hours later)
Belgian authorities have arrested a married couple who are accused of preparing a bomb attack during a packed rally held by an Iranian opposition group in France last weekend. An Iranian diplomat is among four people who have been arrested in in connection with what authorities said was a foiled bombing attack targeted at a rally organised by an Iranian opposition group in France at the weekend.
As well as Iranian exiles, there were numerous American speakers at the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) event, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s attorney. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a fringe opposition group loathed by the Iranian establishment, accused leaders in Tehran of planning the suspected attack which French authorities said was targeted at a rally near Paris on Saturday, featuring high-profile US politicians, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s attorney.
The Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said on Monday that the couple, Belgian citizens of Iranian heritage in their 30s, were charged with “attempt at terrorist murder and preparing a terrorist crime” against the Iranian opposition group in Villepinte, near Paris. On Monday, Belgian authorities said an unnamed Iranian diplomat, who works for Tehran’s mission to the Austrian capital, Vienna, was arrested in Germany, while a married couple, Belgian citizens of Iranian heritage, were detained with “attempt at terrorist murder and preparing a terrorist crime” against the MEK. A fourth suspect was arrested in France.
The office said investigators who detained the couple and searched their car found about half a kilogram of TATP explosives and a detonator. A few grams of TATP can cause bodily damage. Half a kilogram would be enough to cause a sizeable explosion and, in a crowd of 25,000, considerable bloodshed and widespread panic. The arrests come ahead of a rare visit to Europe by the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, who is scrambling to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal after Trump pulled out of agreement. Rouhani arrived in Zurich on Monday and is expected to travel to Austria on Wednesday in a bid to save the agreement.
Police also raided five homes over the weekend but did not elaborate on the results. “The conspiracy of the terrorist dictatorship ruling Iran to attack the Grand Gathering of the Iranian Resistance in Villepinte, Paris was foiled,” said a statement by the secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella group of the MEK.
The federal prosecutor’s office said that as well as the Belgian security services, the DGSI French internal intelligence service and German judicial authorities were instrumental “in avoiding a terror attack on French soil”. “The mullahs’ regime’s terrorists in Belgium, helped by the regime’s diplomat terrorists, had designed for the attack,” it added, acccording to their official website.
Prosecutors said three suspected accomplices were detained in France. An Iranian diplomat based in Vienna was detained in Germany. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, rejected Iran’s involvement, and described the accusations on Twitter as a “sinister false flag ploy”. A visit by Rouhani to Austria in 2016 was cancelled after Iran objected to a planned MEK rally that was supposed to take place at the time of his visit.
The MeK is an exiled Iranian opposition group detested by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which refers to them as “hypocrites”. The formerly armed group had been on the EU and US terrorism lists before being delisted from both. The rally, called Free Iran 2018 – The Alternative, sought to plant the seeds for regime change in Iran. On Monday Zarif wrote on Twitter: “How convenient: Just as we embark on a presidential visit to Europe, an alleged Iranian operation and its ‘plotters’ arrested. Iran unequivocally condemns all violence & terror anywhere, and is ready to work with all concerned to uncover what is a sinister false flag ploy.”
Trump recently appointed John Bolton, who has addressed an MeK rally in the past, as his national security adviser and Giuliani is a regular MeK headliner, which could help strengthen the group’s bid for US backing. Iran has vehemently denied accusations in May by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that its elite Revolutionary Guards carried out “assassination operations in the heart of Europe”.
The MeK is still widely viewed as a Marxist-Islamist cult built around the personality of its leader, Maryam Rajavi. The Iranian couple were in a Mercedes car when they were stopped by special forces and arrested on Saturday, in the leafy Brussels neighbourhood of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, which is close to the home of the EU institutions. According to Belgian media, police found 500 grams of TATP explosive and a detonator hidden in a toiletries bag.
Belgium’s federal prosecutor, which never publishes the surnames of suspects, announced in a statement that a 38-year old man, Amir S, and his wife, Nasimeh N, who is 33, had been charged with attempted terrorist murder and preparing an act of terrorism.
Belgium’s interior minister, Jan Jambon, said there had been no threat to Belgium, in a tweet that praised the police, security and judicial services for their “rapid and effective intervention”. The threat level in Belgium, which was reduced earlier this year, remains unchanged, he added.
Tehran considers the MEK as a terrorist organisation – a view shared by the US and the EU until not long ago. The US delisted it only in 2012, but the MEK’s animosity with today’s rulers in Tehran has earned them powerful allies in the west, most particularly among Trump’s associates such as John Bolton, who is the group’s most powerful advocate.
A cult-like fringe exiled Iranian opposition group, the MEK was once a sworn enemy of the United States. It was responsible for the killing of six Americans in Iran during the 1970s, and enthusiastically cheered the post-revolution seizure of the US embassy in Tehran when angry students took 52 American diplomats hostage for a period of 444 days in 1981.
Believed to have between 5,000 to 13,000 members, the MEK was established in the 1960s to express a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. It launched bombing campaigns against the Shah, continuing after the 1979 Islamic revolution, against the Islamic Republic. In 1981, in a series of attacks, it killed 74 senior officials, including 27 MPs. Later that year, its bombings killed Iran’s president and prime minister.
During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the MEK, by then sheltered in camps in Iraq, fought against Iran alongside the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a turning point for the group, which sought to reinvent itself as a democratic force.
Today, it functions as a fringe exiled group with characteristics of a cult that works for regime change in Iran, though it has little visible support inside the country. It portrays itself as a democratic political institution although its own internal structure is anything but.
MEK (People's Mujahedin of Iran)
FranceFrance
Europe
IranIran
Belgium Rudy Giuliani
Trump administration
Europe
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