Steven Schneebaum received an unusual cry for help on Christmas Eve 2003. Representatives of Iranian American families asked Schneebaum, then a partner at Patton Boggs and an experienced human rights attorney, if he could help protect their relatives in Iraq. Over the next nine years, Schneebaum and other big-firm lawyers were able to go far beyond that initial request.
The Iranians in Iraq were members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (or Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, aka “MEK”), a group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State. MEK members had fled Iran in 1981 after two years of conflict with its theocratic regime. Those clashes escalated into a 1981 MEKsponsored bombing that killed more than 70 leading Iranian officials in Tehran. MEK members eventually set up headquarters in 1986 in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, where they continued committing violent acts against Iran and were protected by Saddam Hussein’s regime. MEK was placed on the U.S. terror list in 1997, but claimed to have renounced terrorism in 2001.
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