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Location: Nashville, Tennessee, United States

2/28/2003

How Saddam Hides Weapons
From the London Sunday Times, via Tehran Times, an inside look at how Saddam Hussein hides weapons of mass destruction with the help of Iranians - in Iraqi bases run by Iranian members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq terrorist organization.

Since 1987 Iraq has been hosting the MKO as part of its continuing tense relations with Iran since the imposed war of 1980 to 1988. During the 1991 Persian Gulf war American and British warplanes spared the MKO camps from bombing raids and left tanks and artillery intact while they smashed the Iraqi Army. Today, the MKO maintains at least a dozen camps in Iraq. Its 3,000-strong military force is equipped with tanks, artillery and missile launchers mostly provided by Iraq. Despite the fact that it is Iraqi-based, the MKO has always vehemently denied any connection with Saddam. But the U.S. State Department accused the group of performing internal security duties for the Iraqi dictator in return for his giving it bases. It is a claim backed up by the former MKO members interviewed last week. MKO forces were used, they said, to support the Iraqi Army's bloody quelling of the ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shia in the south, who rose up following the end of the Persian Gulf war.

The MKO - leftist and anti-Western - is the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and has several thousand members operating from Iraq, as well as a network of sympathizers in Europe, the United States, and Canada. MKO was added to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups in 1997 because its attacks have often killed civilians. MKO is not tied to al Qaeda, however, members of the organization are thought to have participated in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. If indeed they are helping Saddam hide WMDs, here's hoping MKO's bases and personell wind up as "collateral damage" of the coming military liberation of Iraq.