Albania says it foiled Quds Force plot to attack exiled Iranian dissidents

Albania hosts about 3,000 members of the MEK at the request of the United States and the United Nations

Albanian security agencies thwarted a plot to attack exiled Iranian opposition members that was masterminded by the foreign operations unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, police in Albania said.

Police said they uncovered a terrorist cell belonging to Iran’s elite Quds Force that had planned attacks on members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, or MEK, including at a gathering for a religious festival in March last year.

“The Albanian authorities have identified these individuals and thanks to intelligence from informants inside the criminal organisations have prevented the plan of March 2018 and the eventual planning of attacks by organised crime members ... on behalf of Iran,” General Police Director Ardi Veliu said.

Albanian police on Wednesday published photos of three Iranians and a Turkish citizen allegedly involved in the cell.

The leader lives in Turkey and another has an Austrian passport, police said.

Albania hosts about 3,000 members of the MEK at the request of the United States and the United Nations. They live in a compound in the northwest of the country.

Led by Paris-based Maryam Rajavi, the MEK casts itself as an alternative to Iran’s theocratic regime. Ms Rajavi is also the leader of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella bloc of opposition groups in exile that includes the MEK.

France said last October that Iran’s intelligence ministry was behind a June plot to attack a dissident rally near Paris. It seized assets belonging to Tehran’s intelligence services and expelled an Iranian diplomat.

Albania sent home Iran’s ambassador and another diplomat last December for “damaging its national security”, but provided no details.

“It is time that the Iranian regime’s embassies in Europe, including the one in Albania, be shut down. They are not diplomatic centres, but direct and facilitate the regime’s terrorist operations abroad,” Ali Safavi, an official with the NCRI foreign affairs committee, said after the announcement by Albanian police.

In January the European Union sanctioned Iran’s intelligence services after accusing Tehran of being involved in plots to assassinate regime opponents in the Netherlands, Denmark and France.