Iran Opposition Denies Terror, Fund-Raising Charges

Iran’s main opposition movement has denied any involvement in terrorism and in the allegedly illegal fund-raising that drew the attention last week of authorities in Germany.

“If the charges are that people in our organization have benefited from illegal fund-raising, that is an absolute lie,” Farid Soleimani, media spokesman for the People’s Moujahedeen of Iran, said Monday in a telephone interview from Paris.

Last week, German authorities charged five people with defrauding social service programs by diverting government funds to the Iranian opposition group for weapons. The arrests came after a joint investigation by German police and FBI agents in Los Angeles, where seven people were charged with illicitly raising more than $1 million for the group.

Soleimani said Monday the German arrests were aimed at strengthening a “no-win case” in L.A.

The State Department considers the People’s Moujahedeen a terrorist movement, a claim denied by the group and many Congress members.

At a news conference in Cologne, Germany, last week, representatives of the Iranian resistance condemned the German police raids as “unlawful and unjustified.”