Jan. 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Iranian authorities have announced on Monday the dismantling of a cell that allegedly provided financial and logistical support to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI), considered a terrorist group by Tehran.
There are six detainees from an “important network” in simultaneous operations carried out in several Iranian provinces, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence has published in a statement collected by the Tasnim news agency.
The network moved money collected abroad through complex money laundering methods and provided material to various PMOI “operative 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 offices 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 various MKO intermediaries inside Iran, supervised the process of financial transactions with multi-stage money laundering methods, and delivered money, weapons, ammunition, and technical and communications equipment to the terrorist teams and even recruited thugs to participate in riots in Iran,” according to Tehran.
Another of the detainees is the father of an “operative member” of the PMOI “terrorist teams” who was arrested three years ago.
Iran’s 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 rupture of relations with Iran after an investigation into a cyberattack registered in July 2022, a decision branded as “reckless and shortsighted” by Tehran.
The PMOI, which actively participated in the revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi 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 dome established by the ayatollahs.
The group was persecuted by the religious authorities established 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, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordered the execution of alleged members and sympathizers of the organization.
