TIRANA (Dispatches) -- Republican U.S. Senator John McCain has praised the head of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), Maryam Rajavi, in a meeting in the Albanian capital, Tirana.
McCain, who is on an official visit to Balkan states, met Rajavi and some other members of the notorious MKO group in Tirana on Friday.
He congratulated the terrorist group’s "successful transfer” from Iraq and praised its members for what he described as "sacrifice.”
"There is no doubt that people in this room have suffered not only themselves, but in the loss of their loved ones,” he said.
"You have stood up, fought, and sacrificed for freedom, for the right to live free, for the right to determine your future,” he added.
The MKO has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials over the past three decades.
Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist assaults since the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, about 12,000 have fallen victim to MKO’s acts of terror.
In 1986, members of the terrorist group fled Iran for Iraq, where they received support from the then Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and set up Camp Ashraf, now known as Camp New Iraq, in Diyala Province near the Iranian border.
The terrorist group also sided with the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, during Iraq’s eight-year imposed war against Iran in the 1980s beside helping him in his brutal crackdown on his opponents.
In December 2011, the UN and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriyet. The last group of the MKO terrorists was evicted in September 2013 and relocated to Camp Hurriyet to await transfer to third countries.