Bill Richardson and the group still on US terror list

Fromer New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson

From Capitol Report New Mexico - Thom Cole of the Albuquerque Journal wrote a column back on Saturday (March 10) about former Gov. Bill Richardson accepting payment to give speeches supporting an Iranian group that the US State Department lists as a foreign terrorist operation. It’s a complicated story and as Cole points out, Richardson is not the only well-known political figure who has reportedly accepted money from supporters of the Iranian group — in fact, Republican officials such as former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge have spoken on behalf of the  Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK). Since I do the research so you don’t have to, here’s the deal: Who are these MEK guys? They’re a group that’s lined up against the theocratic government in Iran. That’s good. But they’ve been accused of targeting and assassinating targets inside Iran back in the 1980s. In 1997, President Clinton put the MEK on the US terror list in a move aimed at improving relations with Iran. And the MEK has remained on that list since then. But there’s been a movement to get MEK off the list, since the group says it has not taken part in violence in 20 years, shares a common desire with the US in seeing the current government in Iran replaced and its supporters say MEK has helped gather counter-intelligence against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The European Union took MEK off its terror list in 2009. On top of that, there’s the status of some 3,400 people associated with MEK who fled Iran and are now refugees in neighboring Iraq to consider. Read more

Bill Richardson and the group still on US terror list