Iranian Opposition Group Denies Links to 7 Accused in L.A.

Seven people accused in federal court this week of using a sham charity to raise money for an anti-Iranian government group called Moujahedeen Khalq are not associated with the organization, a spokesman said Friday.

Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based Moujahedeen spokesman, said the claim that money raised in Los Angeles for the Committee for Human Rights in Iran was somehow funneled to the Moujahedeen Khalq is “absolutely bogus. The Moujahedeen have no connection whatsoever” with the charity, he said.

U.S. authorities, after a three-year investigation, arrested seven Los Angeles area residents of Iranian descent on suspicion of sending more than $1 million to foreign bank accounts controlled by the Moujahedeen Khalq.

The Moujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, is one of 27 groups worldwide classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. U.S. law prohibits lending material support to these groups. The MEK has staged guerrilla raids against Iran.

Those arrested are Mohammad Omidvar, Tahmineh Tahamtan, Mustafa Ahmady, Hossein Afshari, Ali Reza Moradi, Hassan Rezai and Najaf Eshkoftegi. Eshkoftegi and Omidvar are U.S. citizens. The other five are Iranian nationals.

The FBI alleges that Tahamtan, the only woman among the seven, is the leader of what they refer to as the Los Angeles MEK cell.

Tahamtan and Rezai were denied bail at the request of the U.S. attorney. They remain in federal custody, as does Ahmady, whose detention hearing has been delayed until Tuesday. The other four have been released on bail.

The FBI alleges the seven raised money for the Committee for Human Rights in Iran, which the bureau says is a front for the MEK.

The FBI says most of the money was raised in aggressively solicited donations from unsuspecting travelers at Los Angeles International Airport. Much of the money was traced to Turkish bank accounts that the government says are MEK-controlled.

The government investigation is based largely on information from confidential informants who helped raise the money. These informants said they were told repeatedly that the money was intended for the MEK, according to an affidavit filed in Los Angeles federal court.

The MEK began in the 1960s, one of many groups opposing the reign of the shah of Iran. It took part in his overthrow in 1979, but later broke with the Muslim clerics who emerged as the leaders of post-shah Iran. MEK members were then persecuted by the clerics. Gobadi said more than 120,000 MEK members have been executed.

The group was eventually outlawed in Iran, and many members went into exile. It is now based in Iraq, from which it stages cross-border raids into Iran, according to the U.S. State Department’s biennial terrorist report.

Gobadi, the MEK spokesman, said the Los Angeles charges should be viewed in a political context, as a new American administration’s signal to Iran that rapprochement is still possible. The U.S. also classifies Iran as a terrorist state.

Preliminary hearings for the seven are set for March 14.