[caption id="attachment_95410" align="alignright" width="245"] Logo of anti-Iran terrorist Moujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO)[/caption]
TEHRAN (Tasnim) A former member of the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) revealed the groups close relations with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.
Ghorban Ali Hosseinnejad said the leaders of MKO (also known as MEK) maintain strong ties with the ISIL Takfiri group in Iraq and Syria.
The MKO leaders had pinned hope in ISIL to seize control of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad after the northern city of Mosul fell to ISIL forces last summer, Hosseinnejad was quoted by Iraqi Al-Masalah website as saying.
When Mosul was occupied by ISIL militants, the MKO supported ISIL and described the seizure of the city as popular Iraqi revolution, the defected member of the terrorist group stated.
Militants from the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant overtook Mosul and a number of cities last June, as the group marched across large sections of Iraq and Syria.
The Iraqi army, backed by volunteer forces, has managed to retake parts of the occupied territories and the operation to liberate Mosul will begin in the near future.
The MKO - listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community - fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
They fought on the side of Saddam during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88). They were also involved in the bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991 and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.
The notorious group is also responsible for killing thousands of Iranian civilians and officials after the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979.
More than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings.
Back in December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to the former US military Camp Liberty outside Baghdad.
The last group of the MKO terrorists was evicted by the Iraqi government on September 11, 2013 to join other members of the terrorist group at Camp Liberty and await potential relocation to other countries.