Arab News Blog

” …. Ahmadi is the secretary general of the Free Life Party of Iranian Kurdistan, PJAK, a political movement launched in 2003 that has also engaged in “self-defense” operations against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The U.S. Treasury Department listed PJAK as a “specially-designated global terrorist” organization on Feb. 4, 2009, alleging that the group had “terrorist ties to the KGK,” the political arm of the PKK, the Turkish Kurdish organization that has been battling the Turkish government for the past 25 years.

But a German court explicitly rejected an effort by the German government last year to impose similar restrictions on PJAK activities in Germany, according to Morton Sklar, a lawyer for the group based in suburban Maryland.

The State Department has never accused PJAK of engaging in international terrorism or military activity outside of Iran. But PJAK fighters have clashed occasionally with Iranian Revolutionary Guards units in Iranian Kurdish towns and villages, making it a primary target of the Iranian regime……

Iran has complained frequently about PJAK’s activities, and has launched repeated artillery attacks and even airstrikes against PJAK bases in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq. But until the Treasury Department action last year, Iran’s efforts to get PJAK branded as a terrorist organization – both in Europe and the United States – had failed. ………….

He warned that Turkey was “trying to convince the Obama administration to take military action against PJAK bases in the Qandil mountains,” and urged other opposition leaders to join together against the Iranian regime.

Ahmadi’s arrest comes just days after the Iranian government abducted rebel Baluchi leader Abdolmalek Rigi in Pakistan, bringing him back to Iran and staging a televised “confession” during which Rigi claimed the CIA had offered to provide his group with arms, money, and military training………. Iran has accused Jundollah and PJAK of working with the CIA to foment an ethnic-driven rebellion against the Iranian regime.

Both groups operate in predominantly Sunni Muslim areas along Iran’s eastern and western borders. Both groups appeal to non-Persian minorities, who have been systematically repressed by the Tehran regime. “