MEK leader to testify before Congress
Maryam Rajavi will discuss the threat the Islamic State poses to members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) at Camp Liberty.
The leader of a controversial group devoted to regime change in Iran is set to testify before Congress next week.
Maryam Rajavi, the president-elect of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), will testify via videoconference April 29 at a House Foreign Affairs terrorism panel on "ISIS: Defining the Enemy." The council is an umbrella group of Iranian dissident groups that includes the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), which was removed from the State Department's terrorism list in 2012 after an intense lobbying campaign and has since spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise its profile on Capitol Hill.
"They're not on the foreign terrorist list now, and they should be treated as if they're not on the foreign terrorist list," said panel chairman Ted Poe, R-Texas, an Iran hawk and one of the top recipients of MEK-linked donations in recent years.
Other panel members backed the controversial decision to invite a group that has been tied to attacks against US business and diplomatic interests in Iran under the Shah. The MEK renounced violence in 2001.
