Alwaght- Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama said the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group must leave the country if it wants to use Albanian soil to fight against Iran.
In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published on Friday, Rama said Albania has played host to the Tirana-based MKO "for several years" but the group is not allowed to use the country as a platform for its political operations.
He said Albania has no intention of being at war with Iran and "does not accept anyone who has abused our hospitality."
Rama castigated the MKO's use of Albania as a "trench in a war that is not ours" and said the group "must leave Albania," if it wants to engage Iran.
The Albanian prime minister acknowledged his country's good relations with the United States, which encouraged Tirana to agree to the request of the then US President Barack Obama in 2016 to accept thousands of MKO members.
"We opened our doors because the group, then operating from Iraq, was systematically followed," Rama said.
The MKO has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks over the past four decades, about 12,000 have fallen victim to MKO’s acts of terror.
Albanian police forces raided a camp belonging to the MKO on June 20 due to its engagement in “terror and cyber attacks” against foreign institutions.
Albanian authorities seized 150 computer devices linked to terrorist activities. At least one person was killed and dozens of others were injured during the clashes at the camp, known as Ashraf-3, in the northwest of Tirana.
Reports suggest that an MKO member killed in the raid was a high-profile commander of the terrorist group named Abdolvahhab Faraji. He was said to be an expert in military engineering operations, and was apparently in charge of technical and engineering activities during an anti-Iran operation by MKO terrorists in July 1988.
More than a week later, police in Albania entered the Ashraf-3 camp and security forces were deployed at the entrance to the camp and controlled all vehicles leaving the site.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani has insisted that the anti-Iran terror group will always pose a threat to the security of its host countries.
He expressed hope that Albania would “make up for its mistake of hosting this terrorist cult.”
Albania started hosting the terrorists after the group was shunned by the government of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The European country is estimated to have been accommodating some 3,000 members of the terror cult since 2016.
The European Union, Canada, the United States, and Japan had previously listed the MKO as a "terrorist organization."
In 2012, the group was taken off the US list of terrorist organizations. The EU followed suit, removing the group from its list of terrorist organizations.
