U.S. officials including Richard Perle met with Mujahedin Khalq Organization [aka People's Mujahideen of Iran] in Washington in contravention of U.S. law.

The Mehr News Agency reported U.S. officials including Richard Perle - the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon - met a number of MKO members in Washington on January 24, despite the fact that according to U.S. law it is a punishable offense for U.S. citizens to assist the MKO.

In 1997 the U.S. government added the MKO to its terrorist list and banned all political activities of the group in the country. However, in reality, the group is not only protected and supported by the U.S. government but is also allowed to conduct anti-Iranian activities in the United States.

The members of the former Islamic-Marxist Organization which waged a heroic struggle to topple the Shah of Iran are now being imprisoned by U.S. troops in Iraq. According to the Mehr News Agency many repentant MKO activists wish to return home to Iran, but party bureaucrats in league with the American imperialist bourgeoisie and the CIA have been subjecting MKO inmates to mind control and persuasion in an attempt to reconfigure the MKO organization as a proxy militia in order to undermine Iran's Islamic government.

Uncooperative MKO cadre are being subjected to psychological control techniques against its members such as isolating them from the outside world and the mass media and subjecting them to intense indoctrination and pressure, adding that the MKO leaders are denying them the right to think and decide for themselves, the Mehr News Agency reported on Monday. U.S. forces are still overseeing and supporting the MKO members in Iraq, despite the fact that the Iraqi Governing Council has decided to expel the MKO from the country and gave members a deadline to leave.

On Saturday, 24 Jan. 04, former members of Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) participated in a news conference at the Palestine International Hotel in Baghdad in which they called on the international community to intervene to help free their friends who are still incarcerated in the prisons of the MKO in Iraq.

Some Iranian families have recently traveled to Iraq to meet their children and encourage them to come home. MKO officials and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency have prevented them from doing so. For this reason, a number of former members of the group along with the families of detained members attended the news conference in Baghdad, in which they called for the Red Cross, human rights groups, and organizations fighting terrorism to help the detainees return to their homes.

Incredibly, U.S. forces are preventing the repentant MKO members from returning home to Iran. In a bizarre bend sinister, top MKO officials held meetings a few blocks away from the White House and had contacts with a number of U.S. officials, while the U.S. government is endangering the lives of its service personnel all over the world under the pretext of fighting terrorism.