RFE/RL France: Police Arrest Members Of Iran's Armed Opposition, But
Why Now?

By Charles Recknagel

The French police have rounded up some 160 members of Iran's armed
opposition, the People's Mujahedin. The move has surprised some
observers because for the past 20 years the group has been free to
operate in France and many other European countries, as well as the
United States.

Prague, 18 June 2003 (RFE/RL) -- When the French police cracked down
on the People's Mujahedin this week, they did so in force.

Some 1,300 police and national security officers took part in a broad
sweep yesterday of the organization's offices in over a dozen
locations in the greater Paris area. Some of the raids saw masked riot
police equipped with automatic weapons storming houses while
helicopters circled overhead. By day's end some 160 people were in
custody.

The raids were conducted according to a court order which accused the
People's Mujahedin of "criminal association aimed at preparing
terrorism acts" and of "financing a terrorist enterprise." The
People's Mujahedin -- also known by its Persian-language name as the
Mujahedin-e-Khalq -- is the main armed Iranian opposition group and
the military wing of an umbrella exile opposition party, the National
Council of the Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

A French police spokesman told RFE/RL's Radio Farda yesterday that the
officers found no explosives in the Mujahedin's offices but did
uncover plenty of cash -- $1.38 million in $100 notes and also 150,000
euros.

The police also confiscated boxes of files and paperwork for a court
investigation into the group's activities and possible criminal trials
of some members.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the decision was taken
to dismantle the organization because it was trying, in his words, to
set up a "base camp" in France. He provided no details.

The arrests immediately sparked protests by angry Mujahedin members
and sympathizers in London. There, a crowd of some 50 protested
outside the French consulate yesterday, with one man setting himself
alight. Police said the 38-year-old man's injuries were critical but
not life-threatening.

Analysts say it is not yet clear why Paris decided this week to
finally move against the Mujahedin. The European Union put the group
on its list of banned terrorist organizations in 2002 over its routine
infiltration into Iran to assassinate officials. Washington also
considers the Mujahedin to be terrorists. But until now the Iranian
armed opposition's fund-raising and organizational activities have
been widely tolerated in the West, in part due to support from
conservative politicians who oppose the Islamic Republic.

Ben Faulks, an expert on Iran at the Economist Intelligence Unit in
London, says it is hard to see what immediate threat the French court
saw in the Mujahedin but it almost certainly was not any plan to carry
out terrorist activities in the West:

"They have been there a long time and the [Mujahedin's] interests
would be the worst served by trying to stir things up. An attack in
France is almost unthinkable, particularly given the fact that they
have managed to sort out a kind of working relationship with the
U.S. [and given the fact] they want to keep their noses clean and
concentrate on perhaps gaining U.S. support for some kind of activity
in Iran," Faulks says.

The analyst says speculation about the reasons for the arrests ranges
from the possibility that Paris learned the Mujahedin were using bases
in France to plan an attack on Iran to the possibility that the
arrests are part of Western diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to
accept tighter controls on its nuclear development program.

"A guess might possibly be that the French government somehow sees it
as beneficial in their relations with Iran. Possibly there were
attacks planned against the Iranian mainland and the French might have
a case for making arrests on that basis. Possibly it is just that the
French are trying to use [the arrests] somehow as leverage in Tehran,
possibly as part of wider efforts to get Iran to sign up to the
Additional Protocol on nuclear issues," Faulks says.

France had poor relations with Tehran immediately after the Islamic
Revolution but in the decades since has developed strong trade and
diplomatic ties which it would not want compromised by Mujahedin
attacks traced to its soil.

At the same time, the EU has called on Iran to sign a so-called
Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
allowing more intrusive, short-notice inspections of its nuclear
program. The United States has accused Iran of concealing efforts to
develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies it has any such programs.

While analysts say time is needed to see just what are France's
motivations, the Mujahedin itself has accused Paris of bending to
pressure from Tehran.

Ali Safeva, a London-based NCRI official, told Reuters yesterday that
"this action is part of a dirty deal with the terrorists who rule
Iran."

Tehran has long demanded Paris move against the Mujahedin. The Iranian
Foreign Ministry yesterday praised the arrests, saying "this is a
positive step taken by France and we are expecting their people to be
handled like other dangerous terrorists."

The Mujahedin had maintained a fighting force of several thousand
soldiers in northern Iraq since the mid-1980s under the protection of
Saddam Hussein, but its cross-border operations against Iran now have
been curtailed by the U.S. occupation authority. U.S. forces, which
initially clashed with the Mujahedin early in the Iraq war, have
reached a cease-fire accord with the group under which the fighters
are restricted to a few bases and their heavy weapons have been
impounded.

The group, which has Islamic and Marxist roots, originally
participated in Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution but soon after broke
away and now espouses a secular system of government. Since the early
1980s, the armed Iranian opposition has had offices in Paris, many
other European capitals, and Washington.

Among those arrested yesterday were Miryam Rajavi, who the umbrella
NCRI has said would become Iran's president should the country's
clerical leadership be toppled. She is the wife of the Mujahedin's
founder, Massoud Rajavi, whose whereabouts are not known.

The group is reported to have little support in Iran due to its past
support from Iraq, which fought an eight-year war with Iran in the
1980s. It has not been involved in the student-led protests in Tehran
over the past week.