Participants in the 7th International Congress of the Victims of Terrorism in Paris strongly condemned Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) for its crimes against the Iranian people and the nationals of other countries, Fars news agency reported.
An Iranian delegation from the Iran-based Association for Defending the Victims of Terrorism (ADVT) in the Middle-East attended the annual meeting and provided the participants with different documents on the crimes committed by the MKO.
The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the Islamic revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran's new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.
The MKO fled to Iraq in the 1980s, where it enjoyed the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and set up Camp Ashraf in the eastern province of Diyala, near the Iranian border. Over 3,000 MKO members are currently residing at the camp.
The U.S. designated the MKO a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997; the group is still on the list. Britain and the European Union took the group off their terrorist lists in 2008 and 2009 respectively after court rulings that found no evidence of terrorist actions after the MKO renounced violence in 2001.
Also the Iranian delegation inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with their Spanish, French, Italian, Moroccan, Algerian and US counterparts on the prohibition of any instrumental use of terrorism.
The Iranian participants also proposed that the 9th International Congress of the Victims of Terrorism be held in Tehran in 2013.