By Sebastien Malo
The Daily Star, Beirut, Saturday, February 06, 2010

An outlawed Iranian group says Iran’s government has been taking advantage of the wave of arrests that followed widespread protests across the country to also crack down on their affiliates in Iran, its spokesman said on Friday. “There are more arrests of sympathizers of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran [PMOI] since the beginning of the uprising [in Iran],” the group’s spokesman Shahriar Kia told The Daily Star newspaper in a telephone interview.
Most PMOI members have exiled to Iraq where they have been living in camp Ashraf some 60 kilometers north of Baghdad. The group moved its headquarters there some 20 years ago after it sided with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1986, then fighting a war against Iran. The group is notoriously at odds with Iran’s Islamic regime, and it has opposed its leadership violently in the past.
According to Kia, a majority of the almost 70 PMOI supporters currently imprisoned in Iran were arrested in the same period as hundreds of protestors jailed after the mass arrests that followed the post-election unrest that erupted last year.
Eleven PMOI sympathizers who are among those detained have been sentenced to death, and were awaiting their executions, he added.
“These people were arrested and sentenced to death basically because of visiting camp Ashraf or having relatives in Ashraf,” Kia said.
According to the spokesperson, the 11 PMOI affiliates who are awaiting their execution may be the same individuals whom Iran’s judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, said were to be executed soon in comments reported this week. “My take is that they are the same people,” said Kia.

In September, camp Ashraf and its PMOI residents made the headlines after the Iraqi government clashed with its residents. 12 residents were confirmed dead after the two-day altercation.
The PMOI is listed as a terrorist organization by the US government, who also protected the group’s camp in Iraq until the responsibility was passed on to Iraqi authorities last year.
The group maintains that its message finds many supporters in Iran, and that its base of supporter has been expanding since the turmoil began, both claims that are hard to verify due to the opacity of the country’s political stage.
While most imprisoned affiliates were charged for their contacts with the PMOI, many were also accused of having participated in the uprising, according to Kia. The group is seldom mentioned in news reports about the country’s political turmoil, which usually focus on the more prominent Green Movement.
“High-ranking officials, MPs and other top authorities have said that this uprising is commanded by the PMOI in Iran,” said Kia. “They are arresting PMOI in order to prevent the uprising from continuing.”
“Although the Iranian regime has suppressed the uprising and in particular the PMOI, the people will continue to protest,” said Kia.