MEK Iran: Sahraroudi, was involved in 1989 assassination of the Kurdish leader.

Abdolreza Shahlaei was born in Kermanshah in 1957. He joined the IRGC in 1979 and took part in the IRGC’s extraterritorial operations at the Ramazan base. In recent months, two U.S. officials have told Reuters that on the same night that Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force in Baghdad, was targeted by a U.S. drone strike and killed, another attack was carried out in Yemen to kill Brigadier General Abdul Reza Shahlaiei, but he allegedly survived the attack.

The purpose of establishing the Ramazan camp was to coordinate military activities inside Iraqi Kurdistan and to cooperate with Iraqi Kurdish groups who were opposed to Saddam Hussein during the Iraq / Iran war in 1984. IRGC’s Brigadier General Shahlaei, along with IRGC’s Gen. Jafari Sahraroudi, who was involved in 1989 with the assassination of the Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and has been in contact with the former Iraqi government’s opposition.

In 1989 when the Quds Force was formed, Abdul Reza Shahlaei was in the force and was responsible for terrorist acts, which was his mission in relation to Iraq.

Following the overthrow of the previous Iraq government, Shahlaei and Sahraroudi, who presently acts as an advisor to Ali Larijani, the speaker of parliament, frequently in Baghdad met his previous associates, who are now officials in the present Iraqi government.

Before Iraq’s government changed Shahlai played a role in terrorism emphasizing the Iranian regime in Iraq. It particularly targeted the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran), Iran’s main political opposition movement, which is based in Iraq.

Since 1992 Abdolreza Shahlaei has been in command following the 1^st US war with Iraq in 1990-91. This is the time when the regime’s terrorist activities rose in Iraq against the Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI / MEK Iran).

In 2002, several months before Iraq was invaded by the coalition forces, Qassem Soleimani was responsible for deploying three command units on the border between Iran and Iraq border in order to intervene in Iraq. The western and north-western area was commanded by Shahlaei.

“Following the 2002 fall of the Iraqi government Shahlaei, along with Jafari, a commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, and the Ramazan Camp, in coordination with Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, who was killed with Qassem Soleimani, pursued terrorist and political activities against the (PMOI / MEK Iran) in Iraq.”

There is evidence to show that a number of officials of the al-Tajamo’ al-Islami group associated with Abu Mahdi Muhandis, like Abu Farqad, previous commanders of 9 Badr and Abu Muhammad Tayeb, the previous intelligence commander of the 9th Badr Corps all met regularly with Shahlaei in Tehran in December 2002 regarding their intentions to eliminate the Mojahedin (PMOI / MEK Iran) from Iraq.

There was one example in 2004 following a statement issued by Iraq’s governing council that Shahlaei and Jafari Sahraroudi quickly went to Baghdad to discuss the return of (PMOI / MEK Iran) leaders to Iran with their previous associates. While the talks were taking place Shahlaei called on Abu Mahdi, the head of the al-Tajamo’ al-Islami and previous commander of the 9th Badr, to organize several demonstrations in some of Iraq’s cities against the (PMOI / MEK Iran).

Since 2002 in Iraq Shahlaei has also been involved in planning assassinations against coalition forces, particularly the US. He has been responsible also for the recruitment of Iraqis and sending them to Iran to train terrorists in Iraq. Shahlaei is training the regime’s terrorists at the IRGC’s bases the Hezbollah base in Jalilabad of the rural district of Varamin.

In 2006, the Iranian regime was involved in transferring thousands of its mercenaries to Iran for training and they were sent back to Iraq after completion of the training program. In Iran there were seventeen IRGC bases spread throughout the provinces which acted as training centers under the control of the Quds Force.

Key Quds Force commanders which included Qassem Soleimani, Shahlaei, Obaidawi, and Ahmad Forouzandeh, were involved in directing chain explosions, kidnappings, and assassinations of key people, university professors, airline pilots, and the displacing of large sections of Baghdad’s Sunni population.

In April 2007 at a press conference in New York Alireza Jafarzadeh, who disclosed key information, such as the presence of secret nuclear facilities of the Iranian regime, mentioned also the existence of training camps of Iran’s aimed at organizing terrorist activities, crimes, and assassinations in Iraq under the command of Shahlaei.

In 2007 on 21^st March UPI reported that an Iranian opposition group had revealed that Iran’s al-Quds force was involved in the training of both Iraqi death squads and militias. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq, or the (PMOI / MEK Iran), accused the Iranian regime of taking part in organizing and training massive Iraqi terrorist groups in Iran and returning them to Iraq.

In September 2008, Abdul Reza Shahlaei was named by the US government as one of the instigators of an operation in Iraq that ended up in the deaths of five American soldiers in January 2007. He was then put on the US’s watch list approved by the Treasury Department on 16^th September 2008 as one of five people who threatened the peace and stability of Iraq and its Government. It was also reported that Shahlaei provided support to Shia extremist groups which included JAM Special Groups which took part in attacks against U.S. and coalition forces.

In October 2011, it was discovered that there was a plan in force to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. The “IRGC’s Brigadier General Karimi, Commander of the Quds Force, and IRGC’s Brigadier General Abdolreza Shahlaei, Karimi’s Deputy Chief of Staff in the Revolutionary Guards” were allegedly responsible for organizing this terrorist act. When this was discovered the U.S. immediately placed sanctions on Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, and amongst others Abdolreza Shahlaei who was a key leader in this operation.

The People’s Mojahedin (PMOI / MEK Iran) has been targeted by the Revolutionary Guards, led by Abdolreza Shahlaei, in Iraq throughout the last few years. The National Council of Resistance revealed that Haj Yusuf (IRGC’s Brigadier General Abdul Reza Shahlaei), the Jihadi and Kata’ib Hezbollah group leader, had organized attacks in meetings with Abu Mustafa Sheibani, Abu Ala and Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a renowned terrorist in Iraq.

There is proof that since Sanaa has been taken by Houthi militants in early 2015, Abdolreza Shahlaei has been in complete charge of the Yemeni situation in the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards.

Last year in September and later in December Brian Hook, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran, declared that Washington had put up a $15 million reward for any information which would lead to the capture of Shahlaei.