According to the report, Feizabadi with her accomplice, Mohsen Aslankhan-Afshar, who is also another member of the MKO group, committed the crime to extort money from the child’s family.

 

The news of kidnapping has put the terrorist group under pressure because it may disrupt the process of lifting the group’s terrorist designation announced by the United States.

 

The U.S. government characterized the MKO as a cult and designated it a terrorist group in 1997, holding it responsible for the assassinations of three U.S. Army officers and three civilian contractors before the Islamic Revolution (in 1979). 

 

With funding from the Iranian diaspora, the MKO has mounted a major campaign in the U.S. and Europe and enlisted many top national security figures from mostly Republican administrations as well as a number of prominent Democratic politicians to get its terrorist designation lifted.

     

MJH/PA