Come on, Rogin. Huffpost's Christina Wilkie tore this one wide open in early August in an incredible piece. Worth a mention/link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/mek-lobbying_n_913233.html

So who is financing these people? Follow the money trail. This article sdoes illustrate how persons in and out of government will gladly prostitute themselves to make a buck. It would be nice to think that a few of these indignant people are speaking out based on a sense of righteousness.

For much of the past decade, sundry Americans and foreigners living peacefully in the US have been sent to federal slammers for allegedly raising money for foreign terror groups. There has been reason to doubt that some of these "foreign terror groups" are anything of the kind. It appears that in such prosecutions, Justice announces that it's been "determined" that some group is a terror organization, and so, it's okay to find guilty any person sending that group money or other assistance. Similarly, in earlier years, the authorities could determine that a woman was a witch. Life got bad for such women once that determination had been announced.

The modern determinations seem to be reached at the State Department, in secrecy, and have extraordinary legal power. How exactly does State reach them, and how accurate are they? They certainly seem to have some overlap with the generally discredited and mistrusted process known as racial profiling.

How has it happened that people can be sentenced to life without parole on the sayso of a government body -- which is what such determinations seem to be.
Some juries have rebelled against prosecutors relying on these determinations and naming foreign bodies as "specially designated terrorist organizations".

Outstanding example: the 2003 prosecution in Florida of computer engineering professor Sami al-Arian, fund raiser for a charitable drive on behalf of the Palestine Islamic Jihad. Mr al-Arian ia a Muslim: Wikipedia describes him as a Muslim activist but whether this means anything more than that he goes to church on Fridays, is unclear. At his first trial, Justice told the jury the PIJ was a "specially designated terrorist organization" -- another way of announcing a determination. Al-Arian was tried on 17 charges. The jury found him innocent of eight and deadlocked on the other nine. Justice (!) was back in court a few days later demanding a fresh trial on those nine deadlocked cases and al-Arian, destitute after paying for his defense in the first trial. struck a plea deal -- that is, agreed to waive his right to trial -- that has left him under Justice's thumb for the rest of his life.

Al-Arian's calvary seems to have arisen because he naively struck his plea deal in the belief that he would be handed a small sentence and then deported to his homeland, Egypt. That's just what the judge ordered. But Justice has been slyer than that. After his first release, they brought him before a grand jury and in effect demanded that he confess to helping a specially designated terrorist organization. He won't do that, which makes him contemptuous of court and sends him back to the slammer. That's happened twice so far, and he's in house arrest following his second term of imprisonment awaiting yet another trial for contempt -- at Justice's pleasure.

Recall that no jury has ever found al-Arian guilty of anything. The sentence handed out in response to his plea deal included a deportation order, to take effect at the end of his imprisonment. Justice has overridden that court order for a series of indeterminate gotcha actions in more recent years. It's like watching a cat play with a smaller animal it plans to kill after its fun.

Clearly al-Arian is never going to say he knows anything about any specially designated terrorists. He has been standing by that position for several years and by using the contempt power, Justice need never prove that he does. Now id al-Arian contemptuous, or is the Justice certainty that they can squeeze something out of him one day or year clearly and specifically contemptuous of the court's deportation order? Armed with the original State determination, Justice need not ever care.

Strange that nobody interested in federal debt-cutting ever looks at matters like this.

I could have sworn they were taken off the list years ago. The US loves any Iranian opposition group...although it is a bit odd that any Republican chickenhawk would support a group that fuses together the two things they hate most in the world: Islam and Marxism.

I thought I read somewhere where these guys were involved in the US embassy takeover in Tehran. If so, why are we doing them any favors? Payback's a ....... well, you know.

The modern determinations seem to be reached at the State Department, in secrecy, and have extraordinary legal power. How exactly does State Greg Tims reach them, and how accurate are they? They certainly seem to have some overlap with the generally discredited and mistrusted process known as racial profiling.