Page 209 – Nejat Society

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Please call our aged mother

Lotfi brothers visit Nejat Society office of Kermanshah branch.
Their dear brother; Alimorad, was the prisoner of Iran-Iraq war when the Iraq’s dictator handed him over to the Rajavis. He was 16 years old at the time.
The Lotfi brothers say that they have had no contacts with Alimorad since then. Even a telephone call.
They say:” if our brother lives a free life at the MKO Camp, why the organization doesn’t allow him to contact his aged parents?!
How does it come that the cult claims Liberty and human rights for Iranian people but doesn’t allow its own members to contact their family?!…

December 25, 2018 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Traumatic stories of torture in the MKO during the 1990s—Part two

In the first part of theses series of articles, traumatic experience of Gholam Reza Shokri was covered as one of the numerous cases of human rights violations that has taken place in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization ( The MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi).

According to the Human Rights Watch report “No Exit”, in the early 1990s, dissent was on the rise Camp Ashraf. Former MKO members interviewed for this report cite the following reasons for their decision to leave the organization: military failure of the MKO to dislodge the Iranian government during the July 1988 military operation, forced mass divorces instituted as part of the “ideological revolution” and their persecution and torture by the MKO operatives during “security clearances” in 1994-1995.
According to the HRW report, “human rights abuses carried out by MKO leaders against dissident members ranged from prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death”.
1994-1995 marks the most horrible stories of torture and human rights abuse in the MKO’s Camp Ashraf, Iraq. Jamal Azimi (Known in the MKO as Majid Kaviani) wrote his tremendous memoirs of witnessing verbal and physical abuse in Camp Ashraf in 1994 (1373 Persian calendar).

Azimi is one of those reportedly 700 members of the MKO who were imprisoned and tortured in the project of “security clearance” during the 1994 to 1995. “The suppressive project was so huge that Rajavi could not launch it without preplanning; torturers and murderers should have been indoctrinated to operate Rajavi’s scenario,” Azimi writes.

He recalls that one of the female commandants named Sister Zarin called on all members to the eating place and spoke of the organization’s decisions for some cross border operations. “Everyone was nervous looking at each other in wonder and anxiety,” he writes.
The process of taking the rank and file to an unknown place was started the same night. “Assadollah Mosana came over and took one of the comrades,” Azimi recalls. “Two people took his locker to the other place. The process went on. Every night one or two people were removed from our unit. The unit became almost empty.”
Finally, it was his own turn. Assadollah called on Azimi and told him that Sister Zarin wanted to see him. In the new place he had to take map reading lessons. “The class was so boring. I had passed such courses several times… After some time the class was not as crowded as the first days. No one knew about the fate of the absentees.”
Azimi had no idea that those members had been taken for interrogation and torture in groups until the night that Sister Mehri called on him and his friend (nicknamed Ali) and told them that they had to go to the internal unit. “Hadi picked us up in his jeep and took us to the Street No. 100 [of Camp Ashraf]. We were thrown in a room of an abandoned building. They treated us so harshly…nothing was normal… we trusted the leader and our commandants so much that we guessed that they wanted to examine our devotion to the group,” Azimi recounts.
Finally Jamal was taken to the interrogation room where a superior member called Fazel started shouting at him: “You are a spy of the regime!”.
This was the accusation for all those 700 people. Azimi was shocked because he had joined the MKO on his own will. He had devoted his whole life to the group’s cause. “I could not believe that I was labeled as a spy after those many years of devotion to the Mujahedin,” he writes.
Azimi and Ali were then transferred to jail. “At midnight we heard loud screams. Someone was being beaten by others.” He recalls his memoir of the first night at the MKO prison. “It lasted for half an hour. We were listening to the sounds of scream and beating in fear and worry looking at each other. No one dared to speak. The screams ended. Ten minutes later, Mokhtar and Aadel [the two torturers that Jamal Azimi had seen as comrades before getting imprisoned] hurled a man in the cell and closed the door. He was unconscious. His nose and mouth were bleeding. His face was swollen and bruised.”
Jamal Azimi suffered the most terrible conditions of food, sleep and health in the MKO prison together with his six co-prisoners. All night long they heard prisoners whining from other cells. The prison guards –their former friends—treated them so terribly that no one could dare to ask why such a treatment.
After a dozen of days, once more, with tied hands and closed eyes, they were transferred to a place in Camp Ashraf called Castle No. 200. They were settled in a big room that housed 20 people. “The room was very dirty, full of garbage, dust and human’s stool. It smelled very bad,” Jamal writes.
“In the entire days I spend in Rajavi’s jail, I saw tortured people whose face was not recognizable because of too much beating,” he says. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I could not realize such atrocities against my friends.”

One of the tortured ones had been in the same unit that Azimi was. Azimi got close to him and asked him what the problem was. He was so terrified that he could not open up. Finally he said, “They wanted to force me to admit that I am the spy of regime but I did not admit such a false accusation.”

“What did they beat you with?” Azimi asked the bleeding man. “With wooden sticks, cables and Brother Hekmat beat me with a sleeper,” he replied.

This was a technic to intimidate other prisoners. Everyone in the cell was worried waiting for his turn to get tortured. Jamal Azimi was not tortured personally but he witnessed his comrade’s pains and sufferings after they were physically tortured by the MKO authorities. “I think if the group had the possibilities, they would have involved all members in their “security clearance” project,” Azimi suggests. “I do not know the exact number of members who were imprisoned and tortured in this project. After it was finished comrades would estimate different numbers, but most of them agreed on 700.”
In his opinion, Security Clearance was Rajavi’s tactic to silence any voice of dissent in the group. Rajavi seemed to be planning for an establishment in which no one would be allowed to express his/her criticism or opposition against the group’s leadership and strategies.
Mazda Parsi

December 24, 2018 0 comments

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – 250

++ Maryam Rajavi held a meeting in Albania where she announced that Iranian communities in 44 other countries support her. Snippets of this ‘support’ were broadcast on MEK media. The reality is, nobody attended except their low-level paid lobbyists and there were no Iranians except themselves. Commentators say they notice a big difference from some years ago. Now MEK don’t have the known lobbyists they used to. This lot really were nobodies. ‘If they take the sweets away, the flies will go as well’ sums up the comments. ‘In all these films there was not a single sentence of anything about strategy, tactics, what they want. MEK are lost people.’ Some commented that Maryam Rajavi is still trying to pose as a fifteen-year-old girl walking the catwalk, but instead of being paid she has to pay people to watch her.

++ Mohammad Seyedi Kashani, one of the original Mojahedin members, died in Albania aged nearly 80 years old. Some who knew him wrote their memories of him. They say he had nowhere to go so stayed with MEK until the end. He never voluntarily endorsed the Rajavis but was forced, like everyone else, to stand in meetings and say things. People see his death as a welcome release from this forced submission.

In English:

++ Nejat Bloggers uses the recent public protests in France and in Iran to argue that while such protests do take place in democratic societies, there have never been protests inside MEK because the group is run on inhumane and undemocratic lines. Any dissent is immediately suppressed using “prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture…” The piece concludes that Maryam Rajavi’s so-called support for Iranian workers contradicts what is going on in her own destructive cult.

++ Iran Interlink wrote about Maryam Rajavi’s efforts to counter the many media reports this year which have exposed the MEK’s human rights abuses against the members. Rajavi’s films only made things worse as they exposed the very abuses she tried to ignore – gender apartheid, gendered work roles, illegal work by slave labour, medical treatment by unqualified people, etc. But the best gaffe was the film showing an elderly MEK member carrying two shopping bags containing Tena incontinence pants. ‘Donald Trump’s Tena Revolutionaries’ tweeted Anne Khodabandeh.

++ Philip Giraldi in the American Herald Tribune goes to town with a withering denunciation of retired U.S. Army Colonel Wes Martin whose apparent ignorance and stupidity, Giraldi shows, is a glaring example of ‘why the United States has not won a real war since 1945’. Giralidi uses Martin’s unquestioning support for the MEK, in the face of all available facts, to expose him. “It apparently never occurred to Martin that the group had a whole lot of history before he appeared on the scene…”

++ Eldar Mamedov writes for Lobelog to expose how ‘Europe’s Extreme Right Is In Bed With MEK’. “Vox received a donation of 500,000 euros from MEK… This money allowed the party to kick-start its election campaign for the European Parliament. The person who played a key role was Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a veteran Spanish politician. At first sight, Vidal-Quadras and Rajavi would make strange bedfellows…”

++ After Amnesty International published a report on events in Iran thirty years ago, many Iranians whose family members were involved in those events, but who do not support the MEK, wrote to criticise the methodology of the report’s investigations. Some of these were the families of MEK in Nejat Society. Why, they ask, have nobody but MEK supporters been interviewed? Why, indeed, does the report refer throughout to the MEK as PMOI, a designation only the MEK uses? Why does Amnesty International apparently deliberately refuse to talk about abuse of human rights and war crimes committed by MEK themselves, particularly sending non-combatants to be slaughtered in the hopeless Eternal Light operation of 1988?

++ Gazeta Impakt of Albania published a scathing criticism of the Rama government’s focus on support for MEK in spite of widespread anti-government protest in the country. Pandeli Majko, Minister for the Disapora, comes under attack for attending a rally hosted by Maryam Rajavi in Tirana and attacking Iran as though that was the most important issue for Albania at the current time. The article concludes “Pandeli’s speech…, which broke international law and domestic law by saying ‘I do not care that you are terrorists, etc.’, tells of Rama’s arrogance, bribery and thievery. At a time when Tirana and all of Albania are consumed by protest, Pandeli and Maryam Rajavi have chosen to pretend to be a whore when a village burns.

++ The unexpected expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from Albania prompted several articles. Iran’s Press TV said the Balkan country “fell prey to a scenario fabricated by the US and Israel” which was, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi, “in line with previous such scenarios meant to damage Iran-Europe relations at the current sensitive juncture.”
Iran’s Fars News also commented on the move saying “surprisingly, the news on the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador from Albania was first declared by White House National Security Advisor John Bolton on Twitter.” Fars News said “The move by the Albanian government came after months of warnings by Albanian activists and media about the growing influence of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization among Tirana officials. The MKO and the White House had both requested the Albanian government to expel Iranian diplomats and cut off ties with Iran.”

++ From inside Albania, criticism of the Rama government as a puppet of the US was voiced by Olsi Jazexhi in Iranian.com who asked ‘Has Donald Trump Appointed Maryam Rajavi As Foreign Minister of Albania? Jazexhi pointed out that the “news of the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats caught everybody by surprise in Tirana”, in particular Prime Minister Rama and his government who only learned about it via Twitter. The article describes how MEK have been able to establish a state within a state (Camp Ashraf 3) in Albania from where it dictates US/Israeli foreign policy toward Iran to government ministers and officials. “MEK has managed to terrorize not only the media but even many Albanian MPs… The whole history of the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats from Albania seems like a Trump–Netanyahu desperate affair which uses poor, corrupt and obedient Albania for their global confrontation with the European Union and other major world powers against Iran.”
Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – December 21, 2018

December 24, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Has Donald Trump Appointed Madam Maryam Rajavi As Foreign Minister Of Albania?

The news of the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats caught everybody by surprise in Tirana on December 20. The Iranian embassy and its ambassador Gholamhossein Mohammandia have kept a very low profile in Tirana in the past months. While Iran has been very upset with Albania, which since 2013 is hosting on its soil a violent Iranian jihadi organization, the Mojahedin e Khalq (MEK), its embassy and ambassador who understand that Albania is not an independent state, but a puppet of the U. S., has kept a very low profile. The most that the embassy has done is to politely ask Albania to respect Iran which has always respected Albania, to distance itself from MEK’s terrorism and to warn Albania about this terrorist organization.
The Iranian Mojahedin who started to come to Albania as war refugees since 2013, have since the election of Donald Trump in the White House become very aggressive in the country. The MEK which runs a paramilitary camp in the village of Manza outside Durres, have been accused by various Albanian and Western media outlets of running illegal activities in Albania. MEK, which breaks many Albanian and international laws, calls on a daily basis for violent jihad against Iran. They keep many of their members in slave-like conditions, who are brainwashed and radicalized with the idea of violent jihad. If an Albanian were to do in Albania what MEK and their cult leader Maryam Rajavi does, he or she would have ended up in jail as a terrorist and imprisoned for up to 15 years. However, Albania does not implement its laws on MEK, since they are ordered not to do so by the Americans.
From its paramilitary camp in the village of Manza, MEK carries out daily twitter attacks, fake news production and espionage against Iran, but not only this. The people who are familiar with their websites and publications know that MEK attacks even Albanian and Western media outlets which do not support the stance of the Trump administration regarding Iran or question the ‘democratic’ credentials of this terrorist jihadi organization. Through its paid writers MEK has attacked in recent months many Western news outlets, like the MSNBC, Al-Jazeera English, Britain’s Channel 4 News, The Guardian, and The Independent. It has also attacked many media and personalities in Albania, including Albania’s former president, Rexhep Mejdani, by claiming that they work for Iran against the ‘democratic opposition’ of Madame Maryam Rajavi.
MEK which does not use and does not accept democracy and criticism has never accepted a public debate about its past and present crimes, its cultish organization and the enslavement of its members. Anyone who dares to criticize them is viciously lynched and attacked as an Iranian agent, advocate of the Mullahs of Tehran or as someone who is part of Tehran’s influence operations.
Thanks to the total American control over Albania, MEK has established a state within a state. In its paramilitary camp in Manez, MEK keeps many of its members as slaves, does not allow them to walk out of the camp, talk to their families, marry, have families, find a job and live a free life. By psychological coercion and brainwashing it threatens anyone who dares to question the existence of this violent paramilitary cult with either direct violence as they did with the journalist of Channel 4 or the Canadian Mostafa Mohammadi, the father of Somayeh Mohammadi (a radicalized jihadi woman whom they keep in isolation), or else they launch slander and verbal attacks.
“Thanks to the total American control over Albania, MEK has established a state within a state.”
The verbal and slander attacks that MEK conducts against the free media in Albania, have created a climate of fear in the country. In July 2018 when Mostafa Mohammadi was in the country and sued MEK for abduction and radicalization of his daughter who has abandoned Canada and joined the jihad of MEK, few Albanian media outlets dared to publish his story. Stories have emerged of how MEK paid many media outlets in the country in order to buy their silence regarding the abduction of Somayeh Mohammadi. MEK commanders like Behzad Saffari, Farid Totounchi (Mahoutchi), Jila Deyhim visited all major media outlets in Albania to ‘convince’ them not to publish anything against MEK and their ‘holy’ supreme leader, Maryam Rajavi.
MEK has managed to terrorize not only the media but even many Albanian MPs. An Albanian MP who takes part in the meetings that MEK and Maryam Rajavi holds every year in Paris under the banner of Free Iran, told the writer of this article that “We know who the MEK are. They are a terrorist organization, whom the Americans killed themselves. But the Americans have told us to protect them, and we are protecting them.”
Since their arrival in Albania in 2013, MEK which acts like Al-Qaeda in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, has continuously asked the Albanian government to close the Iranian embassy in Tirana and expel the ‘Mullah’s diplomats’, since according to MEK the government of Iran is not the one based in Teheran, but is Maryam Rajavi and her jihadis. The Albanian government which was forced by the Americans to host these ex-terrorists as war refugees has found itself in a very difficult position in the last years. The Iranian refugees of MEK are not acting like the refugees from Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to whom Albania has offered asylum. They do not integrate but dictate their own policies to their host country. The Albanian government which has dealt with the issue of violent extremism in the past is very upset to see how MEK breaks many laws in Albania, keeps their members as slaves, beats their opponents in the streets of Tirana, harasses journalists, and according to an Albanian police report they harass, blackmail and can even kill their own members.
The pro-MEK MP who sits on Albanian National Security Council with whom I spoke in August 2018, told me: “We are in a very difficult position with MEK. We go to Paris to support Maryam Rajavi, because our British and American friends tell us to do so. MEK is very unhappy with the Rama government because they are not doing what MEK is asking him to do. But the opposition (Democratic Party) MPs are supporting them. We make sure that they do not keep guns in their hands. I told them to open their camp and deradicalize, but on the other hand we have the Iranian embassy here. With MEK, we do what the Americans tell us to do. I have told MEK that they must integrate themselves into Albanian society, open their camp but I do not know if they will listen to me.”
While Albania is in very difficult situation with the MEK and Albanian public opinion is very upset with the Edi Rama government for bringing these terrorists in the country, MEK are offered a high class treatment by the Trump and Israeli administrations and are used as a major carrot by the U.S. administration against the European Union and its policies towards Iran. The E.U. and many other governments are upset with Albania for hosting MEK, but they do understand the difficult situation of the corrupt government of Edi Rama which is accused of cooperating with major drug trafficking organizations.
The announcement on Twitter by John Bolton, the U.S. National Security Advisor of President Trump, that the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama had expelled the Iranian ambassador from Albania caught everyone by surprise in Tirana. Edi Rama, who most probably was not aware of what the Americans were up to, has not made a single statement about this event and it seems that he did not know what was going on, until Bolton communicated to Tirana and the world the news on December 19. When MEK organized a propaganda meeting in Manez on December 15, they asked Pandeli Majko, Minister of the Diaspora in the Rama government ‘why does Albania still host an Iranian Embassy in Tirana’. Majko who is a major supporter of MEK and has previously supported the Bush administration in its rendition and torture programs in Afghanistan and Iraq, told the MEK that we keep the Iranian embassy in Tirana because of international law.
Albanian government officials, contrary to what John Bolton claimed, had not expelled any Iranian diplomat and had no idea what was going to come. The Iranian embassy did not know anything as well and had not received anything from the Albanian government. When news of the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats broke, many Albanian journalists who deal with issues of security, terrorism and crime contacted the Albanian Foreign Ministry to ask what was going on and who were the people that Albania was planning to expel. The Foreign Ministry had no answer since they did not know. PM Edi Rama, who is facing major scandals and public protests in the country, also seemed confused by the expulsion story.
The whole history of the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats from Albania seems like a Trump – Netanyahu desperate affair which uses poor, corrupt and obedient Albania for their global confrontation with the European Union and other major world powers against Iran. The Americans and Israelis know that Edi Rama and his corrupt government will not dare to say no to the Americans. After the announcement, Rama was congratulated by the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and others in the U.S. administration for the ‘brave act’ that Albania and he probably did not know was coming. Israeli and U.S. media outlets are producing amazingly outrageous fake news stories about the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats. They now are accusing Iran for planning an attack on the Israeli football team which played in Albania in 2016, even though the Israelis and the Americans back in 2016 accused ISIS for this falsely claimed attack. Back in 2016, the government of Edi Rama, which does anything to appease Israel and America, created a major embarrassment against the Muslim community in Albania by detaining and terrorizing 200 Muslimsthroughout the country, while the governments of Albania and Kosovo jailed dozens of Muslims and Imams without any proof. These people who have been held in incarceration without any facts for more than two years for their alleged plan to attack Israelis, up to this moment have not been convicted, since Albanian prosecutors have not managed to find a single piece of evidence of the intended attack that Israel claimed in 2016.
The fantastic fake news story that the Israeli Mossad produced in November 2016 against the Muslims of Albania and Kosovo is now being twisted again. The Trump administration and their Israeli friends, who for some very strange reasons ordered the Albanian government via Twitter to expel two Iranian diplomats, are now accusing Iran of planning to kill the Israelis in 2016. Shpend Kursani, a Kosovar deradicalisation expert and Fatjon Mejdini an investigative journalist who were commenting on Tim Judah’s Twitter account on 20 December 2018 wrote:

Which would mean, charges against those who were locked in the prison because, as their court proceesings suggest, of their links to ISIS, should be dropped, and prosecution should restart, perhaps by replacing”ISIS”with”Iran”in charges. What a contradiction would that be

— Shpend Kursani (@ShpendKursani) December 19, 2018
I would suspect so for MEK as well. Now they can twist if they way not us to know otherwise they. But the citizens in Albania alao have the right to know the truth. So look fwd if you learn smth new
— Shpend Kursani (@ShpendKursani) December 20, 2018

The comments of Kursani and Mejdini above show the confusion and amazement that exists in Albania regarding the expulsion of the Iranian diplomats and the claim that Iran and not ISIS planned to attack the Israelis back in 2016. Albanian journalists, many of whom were trained by the Americans and Israelis themselves on issues of extremism and violent jihad are shocked by what they read from the U.S. administration and Israeli officials. Every decent human being on this planet knows that Iran has nothing to do with terrorism in Albania and its ambassador has been expelled not by Albania but by the American dictate. The request for his removal is a fulfillment of the demands that MEK has been making to Albania and many European governments for many years. While MEK and the Americans have been unsuccessful in forcing the Europeans to join John Bolton and Netanyahu’s crusade against Iran, the removal of the Iranian ambassador from Albania seems like a last desperate attempt by Trump administration against the EU.
PM Edi Rama, who should feel very nervous about the way that Israel, the U.S. and MEK have taken control over the foreign policy of his country, has not commented on the event yet. He understands that the old terrorist lady Maryam Rajavi and her jihadi soldiers whom Edi Rama welcomed generously in Albania in 2015, have now managed to take hostage the foreign policies of his country. Edi Rama whose government has voted against Israel and Trump in the United Nations on the question of Jerusalem, in order to appease the Europeans, knows that the Europeans are angry about what is going on with his country’s foreign policy. The expulsion of the Iranian diplomats will not sound good in Brussels. MEK, Israel and the U.S. are using Albania as a prostitute in their confrontation with Europe and Iran. However, Madam Maryam Rajavi, who claims to her jihadi radicals that she is the president-elect of Iran, should be smiling now. The Americans and Israelis have now set her to act as the Foreign Minister of Albania even though Edi Rama welcomed her in Albania in 2015 as a war refugee and not as a member of his government.
Dr. Olsi Jazexhi, Tirana, Albania, Iranian.com

December 22, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Albania fell prey to Israeli-US scenario

Tehran has denounced Albania for expelling two Iranian diplomats, saying the Balkan country fell prey to a scenario fabricated by the US and Israel.
Albania’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that it had expelled two Iranian diplomats suspected of “involvement in activities that harm the country’s security.”
A ministry spokesman told the Associated Press that the expulsions followed talks with others, including Israel.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Thursday that Albania’s move was “in line with previous such scenarios meant to damage Iran-Europe relations at the current sensitive juncture.”
He said the expulsions come while Tehran has “always had appropriate relations with Albania and respected all of its domestic regulations in a move based on principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign policy.”
US National Security Adviser John Bolton was quick to publicly support Albania’s decision.
“We stand with PM [Edi] Rama and the Albanian people as they stand up to Iran’s reckless behavior in Europe and across the globe,” he tweeted.
Qassemi said that Washington’s stance on the issue and Albania’s declaration that its move had been coordinated with foreign security services, prove that the US and the regime in Israel had been behind the expulsions.
Albania, he added, had fallen prey to a scenario fabricated by the US and the Israeli regime and certain terrorist groups.
The Iranian official further called on the Albanian government “to defend its sovereignty, independence and security” in the face of the US-Israeli scenario,” stressing that the country “must not allow others to affect and hamper its relations with Iran due to special political reasons.”

Albania has expelled Iran’s ambassador and another diplomat for “damaging its national security.”
Worth nothing that Albania houses the MEK, an Iranian cult seeking regime change in Tehran. https://t.co/KAcltD3YvD
— Holly Dagres (@hdagres) December 20, 2018

Albania hosts thousands of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), a notorious anti-Iran terror group.
The MKO has carried out numerous attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials over the past three decades and is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community.
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.
Albania is not the first European country to make such claims against Iran.
Back in June, Belgian authorities said that an Iranian diplomat had been arrested along with a 38-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman, suspected of plotting a bomb attack on an MKO meeting in Paris attended by US President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and several former European and Arab ministers.
Assadollah Assadi, 46, was arrested in Germany and later extradited to Belgium in defiance of Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961.

Later on October 30, Danish intelligence chief Finn Borch Andersen claimed that an Iranian intelligence service had tried to carry out a plot to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure on Denmark’s soil.
Swedish security police also said a Norwegian citizen of Iranian descent had been arrested on October 21 in connection with the alleged plot and extradited to Denmark.
Israeli media later revealed that the Israeli spy agency Mossad had provided Denmark with “intelligence” concerning the alleged plot by Tehran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Tel Aviv is behind what Iranian Foreign Minister described as “false flags” in Europe.
Tehran said “invisible hands” were at work to damage Iran’s ties with Europe at the time when the two sides are closely cooperating to save the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal following the US’s pullout.

December 22, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Albania Expels Iranian Ambassador in Naively Orchestrated Move Disclosing Sovereignty Issues

The Albanian government expelled two Iranian diplomats on Thursday as concerns in Tirana are growing over the nation’s weakening independence and sovereignty under US dictates.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama decided to expel Iranian Ambassador Gholam Hossein Mohammadnia and another diplomat, as part of the US requests from Tirana that also include granting growing influence to the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI and PMOI) terrorist organization in Albania.

The move by the Albanian government came after months of warnings by Albanian activists and media about the growing influence of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization among Tirana officials. The MKO and the White House had both requested the Albanian government to expel Iranian diplomats and cut off ties with Iran.

Daily Panorama quoted sources in Albania’s foreign ministry as saying that the “hard decision was taken by the prime minister in consultations and full coordination with the international allies”.

But a letter wrote to Rama on December 14 by US President Donald Trump indicated that the prime minister has not made the decision on his own, thanking the permier for “joint efforts”.

The letter released in the US embassy’s facebook page said that “we commend the Government of Albania for taking action against the Iranian regime” for what it called as its terrorist plotting on Albanian soil, threatening European security.

More surprisingly, the news on the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador from Albania was first declared by White House National Security Advisor John Bolton on twitter.

“Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania just expelled the Iranian ambassador, signaling to Iran’s leaders that their support for terrorism will not be tolerated. We stand with PM Rama and the Albanian people as they stand up to Iran’s reckless behavior in Europe and across the globe,” Bolton wrote on Twitter.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also rushed to praise Rama, and pledged support to Albania for expelling the Iranian ambassador.

Later in the day, Albanian government acknowledged that the decision was prescribed by Israel and the US, saying that they have been receiving consultation from both Tel Aviv and Washington. The United States has long been pursuing a plan to turn Albania into the frontline of militancy against Iran.

Ever since their expulsion from Iraq, the MKO – a terrorist organization with a several-decade-long history that includes assassination of 12,000 Iranians and a number of foreign citizens – has found a strong foothold in Albania after US and Israeli official requests from Tirana to host the main camp of the terrorist group and embark on widening security cooperation with MKO. The Rajavi cult has been spending millions of dollars to buy influence among Albanian officials in the last few years.

The MKO had also asked the Albanian government to sever ties with Tehran in messages that increasingly appeared on its social media outlets in the last several weeks.

The MKO, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly-established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by the MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who argued for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in September 2012, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under the US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with the American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

In September 2012, the last groups of the MKO terrorists left Camp Ashraf, their main training center in Iraq’s Diyala province. They have been transferred to Camp Liberty. Hundreds of the MKO terrorists have now been sent to Europe, where their names were taken off the blacklist even two years before the US.

The MKO has assassinated over 12,000 Iranians in the last 4 decades. The terrorist group had even killed large numbers of Americans and Europeans in several terror attacks before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A sum of 17,000 Iranians have lost their lives in terror attacks in the 35 years after the Revolution.

After the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, the MKO was exiled first to Iraq and then to Albania. Albania houses 3,000 MKO members.

Since last year, a slew of US politicians have visited the MKO in Albania, often without any public announcement, or under cover of meeting some Albanian politicians. These include former FBI director Louis J. Freeh, US Senator John McCain (who addressed a MKO conference), and a delegation of US Senators Thom Tillis, Roy Blunt, and John Cornyn.

A few months later, US Congressman Ted Poe introduced a bill in the House of Representatives calling upon the government of Iraq “to compensate the former residents of Camp Ashraf (the former MKO camp) for their assets seized by groups affiliated with the Government of Iraq.”

Media reports said in June 2018 that John Bolton received $40,000 to participate and address the audience in a gathering of the MKO terrorist group in Paris in July 2017.

According to documents released by al-Monitor news website, the US Public Financial Disclosure Report in January 2018 for Bolton indicated that he has received $40,000 from the MKO as speaking fee in Paris gathering.

The date of speaking is July 1, 2017, and the event was titled ‘Globe Events–European Iranian Events’.

Bolton had in the same date attended the MKO gathering in Paris, stressing during his address that the Islamic Republic should not be allowed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Revolution in Iran.

During his address, he said that Trump is fully opposed to the “regime in Tehran”.

“The outcome of the president’s policy review should be to determine that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution will not last until its 40th birthday,” Bolton said.

Recently, Joanne Stocker, of the US portal Defense Post, told NBC that Bolton had received more than $180,000 from the MKO to speak in their favor. Bolton’s office has so far refused to comment on it.

(End)

December 22, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Pandeli Majko prefers to get paid by Mojahedin Khalq , leaving Tirana to burn

On December 15, 2018, at a time when all Albania is protesting against the corrupt regime of the Resurgence government of Rama, and the Albanian people demand that the Rama government be dismissed, Rama’s Minister of the Diaspora instead of solving the Albanian students’ problems who are protesting against the government, has chosen to resolve Iran’s problems. Together with a bunch of international opportunists, Pandeli has gone to the annual meeting of Maryam Rajavi with her jihadists at the Mojahedin Camp in Manzas.
At this meeting, Pandeli has attacked the government of Iran and has expressed his support for the Iranian terrorist group that the corrupt Rama government harbors and enables with better conditions than Albanians in the jihadist camp in Manzas. Pandeli, who was cheered on by Iranian terrorists and the old terrorist old woman Rajavi, spoke in the jihadist tone, “Thank you very much”. Very excited and talking in broken English he said among other things:

“It’s a great honor as always to talk to you. Not as a minister or a former prime minister, but primarily as your friend. I know, as Mr Patrick Kennedy said earlier, it is a question why Albania has an Iranian official embassy in Tirana, and at the same time we host you. Why both? It’s a simple and honest question. And my answer is that we have had the official Tehran Embassy here for years, and they are here because of international law. But you are here for another cause. The Iranian Embassy represents the country today, while the MEK represents the Iran of the future.
“I am very proud that I and many of my friends are in the hands of Maryam Rajavi, one of the few women who will, with her leadership, change not only the future of Iran but also of the Middle East.
“I know that much news exists that says MEK is a terrorist group, they have done this and have done that. But this does not bother me at all! Because we know you, you came here under the umbrella of the UN and UNHCR. You and terrorism are two different things. You do not have diplomats who use diplomatic status to hide behind as terrorists. But some Iranian officials have done so. And acting like a terrorist while pretending to be a diplomat is a contradiction. But this is not up to me or Albanians, Iranian officials must give their full explanation. Things have changed, and times will change quickly. It is certain that the time is coming, and this piano melody that is playing here in Tirana will be sung throughout Iran as a song.
“I will not speak much, for many reasons, since today I did not know I even had to give a speech. But when you have friends like Hassan, who just said to me: ‘Pandeli, it’s your turn to talk’, believe me when I stand before you myself, a government official, but now that I have met you I know you very well and I’m sure that you and your families now understand that you are not just refugees like a few years ago, but you are now in your land. You have done in less than a year, performed a miracle by building a city. We Albanians say in Albanian: my home is my homeland. Albania is your homeland.

“Thank you”

Pandeli’s speech was one of several at this meeting held by Maryam Rajavi – who along with the others cried over the problems of the Iranian people, people whom she, her husband and her jihadists have killed over the years. Maryam Rajavi’s lips did not mention anything about Albania, which is blocked by protesters demanding regime change. The whole problem for the old terrorists, but also Minister Pandeli Majko who eats Albanian bread, has been Iran.
Pandeli’s speech above, which broke international law and domestic law by saying ‘I do not care that you are terrorists, etc.’, tells of Rama’s arrogance, bribery and thievery. At a time when Tirana and all of Albania are consumed by protest, Pandeli and Maryam Rajavi have chosen to pretend to be a whore when a village burns.
Translated by Iran Interlink

December 20, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Europe’s Extreme Right Is In Bed With MEK

Until recently Spain was the envy of Europe. While in most countries the resurgence of the populist right was reshaping national politics, Spain was able to dodge the trend: a centre-right government lost power six months ago in a no confidence vote, and was replaced, in an orderly fashion, by a centre-left one. A minority Socialist government, which had more female ministers than male, steered the country in a decidedly pro-European direction. The extreme right, meanwhile, polled in single digits.
Not any longer. The December 2 regional elections in Andalucia, Spain’s largest region, saw a noisy irruption of Vox, a hitherto marginal extreme right party, into Spanish political life. Vox won almost 11% of the popular vote, which gave it 12 seats in the 109-seat regional chamber. For the first time since the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in mid-1970s, the extreme right has entered a Spanish parliament, albeit for now only a regional one.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal is a professed admirer of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French extreme right, and built his campaign on a platform of Euro-scepticism, anti-feminism, xenophobia, and exacerbated Spanish nationalism. The transatlantic extreme right political guru Steve Bannon sees Vox as a valuable part of his global ideological crusade against the “liberal elite” and “cultural Marxism”.
What is less known is that Vox’s emergence is intimately linked to Mojaheddeen-e Khalk (MEK), an exiled Iranian cult bitterly opposed to the current government of Iran. MEK was on European Union’s terrorist list until 2009 and on the U.S. terrorist list until 2012.

The Vox-MEK link goes beyond any ideological affinity that might exist between the two groups. According to an investigation on Vox’ finances conducted by El Pais, a leading Spanish newspaper, Vox received a donation of 500.000 euros from MEK, acting under the umbrella of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in 2014. The money reportedly came via thousands of contributions ranging from 200 to 5000 euros from individual members and sympathisers of the NCRI. This money allowed the party to kick-start its election campaign for the European Parliament.

The person who played a key role in securing this funding was Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a veteran Spanish politician who served as a vice-president of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2014. Vidal-Quadras abandoned his center-right Partido Popular (People’s Party—PP) in 2013, on the grounds that it moved too far to the center under the leadership of Spain’s former prime-minister Mariano Rajoy. He became one of the founders of Vox, which sought to attract the disaffected voters of the right.
During his years as a vice-president, Vidal-Quadras was the most influential MEK lobbyist in the EP, leading the cross-party group “Friends of Free Iran“. This group acted mostly as a mouthpiece for the MEK. In his role as a vice-president he hosted on numerous occasions the NCRI “president-elect” Maryam Rajavi in the European Parliament.
At first sight, Vidal-Quadras and Rajavi would make strange bedfellows. Given Spain’s own traumatic experience with terrorism, the country’s right-wing has traditionally projected an image of unwavering toughness on the issue. Vidal-Quadras, however, saw no qualms in advocating for a removal of an avowedly Islamic-Marxist cult like MEK from the EU terrorist list—an effort that eventually culminated successfully in 2009. A self-professed defender of the “West”, Vidal-Quadras was lobbying on behalf of an organisation that was responsible for terrorist attacks on Westerners in Iran.
Vox did not make it to the EP in 2014, and Vidal-Quadras eventually parted ways with the party in 2015. He still spends a lot of time in Brussels, however, continuing to promote the NCRI/MEK, now through the “International Committee in Search of Justice” (ICSJ). Unfortunately the ICSJ’s website shows a marked lack of transparency. It gives no disclosure on its funding and staff. It claims that it “enjoyed the support of over 4000 parliamentarians on both sides of Atlantic”, but doesn’t identify a single one. Despite its lofty name, it seems to be narrowly focused on pushing the NCRI/MEK agenda of regime change in Iran. In sum, the “committee” looks more like a one-man operation.
Vidal-Quadras may no longer be with Vox, but that hardly means that MEK-Vox ties are severed. Rafael Bardaji, a former adviser to the Spanish prime-minister Jose Maria Aznar, recently joined Vox and is a staunch advocate of Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy against Iran. And Aznar himself addressed a MEK rally in Paris in 2010.
Current leaders of Vox insist that they no longer receive any funding from foreign sources. They claim that the party is supported exclusively by small Spanish firms and crowdfunding. This, however, flies in the face of the party’s apparent financial strength, as reported by El Pais, which has enabled it to acquire real estate, hire new personnel, pay lawyers to file complaints and petitions against the government, etc. Former party leaders accuse the current leadership of running financially opaque operations, falling far short of satisfying legal standards for transparency.
Whatever the financial status of Vox currently, the role of MEK in enabling this newcomer into the ranks of Europe’s extreme right cannot be ignored. It should also serve as a wake-up call to mainstream Western politicians who have allowed themselves to be fooled by MEK’s siren songs about democracy and secularism in Iran.
This article reflects the personal views of the author and not necessarily the opinions of the European Parliament.

By Eldar Mamedov, Lobelog

ELDAR MAMEDOV
Eldar Mamedov has degrees from the University of Latvia and the Diplomatic School in Madrid, Spain. He has worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and as a diplomat in Latvian embassies in Washington D.C. and Madrid. Since 2007, Mamedov has served as a political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP) and is in charge of the EP delegations for inter-parliamentary relations with Iran, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and Mashreq.

December 19, 2018 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Dispelling Myths About Iran, Trump’s Bogeyman

Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder, discusses myths and misconceptions about Iran and the Donald Trump administration’s dismantling of the nuclear agreement. She also talks about her book “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran”

Story Transcript

BEN NORTON: It’s The Real News Network and I’m Ben Norton.

One of the key elements of the Trump administration’s foreign policy has been increasing aggression against Iran. Trump has cozied up with the Saudi regime, but at the same time, has repeatedly called for the overthrow of Iran’s government. Well, joining us to discuss this is a leading figure in the U.S. peace movement who has been helping to lead the fight to save the Iran Nuclear Deal. I’m speaking with Medea Benjamin, who is a co-founder of the women-led peace movement, Code Pink, and also the author of a book on Iran that expels many of the myths about the country, called Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thanks for joining us, Medea.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Good to be here with you, Ben.

BEN NORTON: So let’s talk about Iran as a country before we talk about U.S. policy. There are a lot of myths about the country. Of course, there is a lot to criticize. It is a theocracy, but it’s also a democratic country. In fact, it’s probably the most democratic country in the region, or at least one of them. They have presidential elections with three fourths voter turnout, which are much bigger than the U.S. They certainly have issues repressing women, they have issues repressing worker’s rights. But compared to U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, as you point out in your book, Iran actually looks much better. Why do you think there are so many myths and can you talk about some of the experiences you’ve had? You visited Iran for the first time in 2008 and you visited it several times since then, and you’ve seen that some of these myths are really ridiculous.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, I’m glad you start out by saying that it is a problematic government, because we are working with civil society in Iran. And depending on what’s happening internally in the politics, there’s more space or less space for civil society to try to make reforms and changes in the government. Right now, is a very difficult time, and there are many people who would be our counterparts in Iran who are in prison. But as you say, the U.S. has put forward a very misguided view of Iran. First of all, they always say it’s the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world. And when we hear that, we should just say, “Stop, no, not true.” And then, in terms of internally in Iran, there are more avenues for women, for example, to study, to work. We are connected with a group of women business people that have enormous businesses. They have their own, very large factories, their own farms, their own–I’m friends with a woman who is an architect of some of the largest dams in the country.

So that’s sort of something that you don’t hear about, that women are so actively involved in the economy. There is a myth that the Jewish population is such a repressed population. Being a member of the Jewish community and an American, when I first went to Iran I was very concerned about being both. And as soon as you said that to people, there went, “Oh, first of all, we love America.” And it is a very pro-American population. And then, they love Jews. And it’s funny, whether it’s among these religious Iranians, they’re saying, “Oh, we have so much in common between our religions,” and I try not to say I’m a non-practicing Jew. Or if they’re coming from the secular side, they say, “Oh, we love Jewish sense of humor, Jewish movies, Jewish this.” So that’s another myth. I’m not sure what are the other ones you wanted to bring up, but there are lots of them.

BEN NORTON: Well, and as you point out in your book, Iran has the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East after Israel. And what’s incredible is you cite a 2014 poll by the ADL, which is a pro-Israel group, and they have a vested interest in portraying Iran as an evil bogeyman, but they even were surprised to see that they surveyed anti-Semitic views in the Middle East and found that after Israel, Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the region.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Absolutely. There’s even a designated position for the small population to have a member of parliament.

BEN NORTON: And what’s interesting is, in your book, you also talk about how Iranians are very careful to distinguish the American people from the American government, which many Americans are actually not. I mean, some Americans do it, but they’re not really privy to doing. Frequently, especially our politicians, conflate the Iranian people with the Iranian government. You hear racist rhetoric about how you can’t trust Iranians. And when we hear in Iran, frequently we see on Fox News and conservative media, they’ll show the signs that say Death to America, Death to Israel. They’re not saying Death to the American people, they’re saying American government policies, which as you point out, have destabilized their government, have imposed crippling sanctions on society that have led to large numbers of civilian deaths, that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953. They have good reason to be very critical and to even despise the American government. But they always are careful to distinguish it from Americans, like you.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Yeah. And maybe that is partly because the Iranian diaspora, and there’s so many Iranians that are living in the United States and in Europe who go back and forth to Iran, and so there is a lot of American culture that gets infused in Iranian society. And people are very good at getting around restrictions of the government. The government restricts things like Facebook and Twitter, and yet it’s very easy for Iranians, and almost all of them do, just get around those restrictions. So there is a lot of back and forth. But things have gotten worse on the U.S. end with Trump, because Iran has been put into the Muslim ban. And so, in Trump’s trying to keep terrorists out of the United States, Iranians who have never been involved in a terrorist activity against Americans here in the United States, have been included in that ban, increasing the animosity towards Iranians in the United States and the equating Iranians with terror.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, let’s talk more about the Trump administration’s policies, and also the policies of his predecessor, Barack Obama. For all of the many criticisms of Obama, who started the war in Yemen, which was launched by Saudi Arabia, the war in Libya, destroying that government.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: The drone strikes.

BEN NORTON: Absolutely, the drone war. One of the few positive elements of his foreign policy was an important breakthrough, the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was an international deal. Although corporate media outlets have portrayed it as a deal between the U.S. and Iran, it was much more. It was a deal between the U.S. and Iran, but the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. So that includes China, the largest country in the world, Russia, also France and Britain, and the European Union and Germany.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: And approved by the Security Council in its totality.

BEN NORTON: Absolutely. So Obama was part of an international process that brought Europe, Russia and China together, and they agreed to a deal, a kind of rapprochement with Iran that would lift sanctions. And these sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, they’ve led to large numbers of preventable deaths from people who can’t get medication and other forms of assistance in hospitals. But the Trump administration tore that deal up. And still, as of right now, in December 2018, all of the other parties to the agreement are abiding by it, including Iran. The United Nations has made it clear that even though Iran doesn’t have to continue staying in the agreement because the U.S. unilaterally violated it, Iran is still abiding by the agreement. Can you respond to Trump’s destruction, or attempt to derail, this important historic piece of legislation and why Iran is still abiding by its side of the deal?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, it’s really tragic for the Iranian people, who put their hopes in pushing their government to make a deal with the international community, and then to see that the hardliners inside Iran who said, “Why are you doing that, you can’t trust the U.S.” were right, you couldn’t trust the U.S. In comes a new president and unilaterally withdraws from that deal, reimposes sanctions. And the important thing for people to understand about those sanctions, because we toss around the word sanctions all the time, you never know how grave these sanctions are and how crippling they are. Because it says not only are U.S. businesses prohibited from trading with Iran, but any other business around the world that wants to trade with Iran cannot use the U.S. dollar, which is the international currency, and cannot do business with the United States. And so, it has been devastating for the Iranian economy and it’s been devastating for the other countries who want to continue with the deal.

Now, Iran, the government, wants to continue with the deal if it sees some economic benefits, which was promised to it. And that’s why the Europeans are scrambling now to come up with a vehicle for allowing their companies to work with Iran without getting sanctioned by the U.S. But it’s very difficult, and it’s not clear whether this is going to function and whether the Iranian we’ll see enough benefit to the economy to justify staying within that deal. But we have to talk about what is the purpose of the U.S. pulling out, which is to cripple the Iranian economy and to encourage the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government.

BEN NORTON: The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former CIA director, who is an anti-Iran hawk like many people Trump has surrounded himself with, he made that very clear. He essentially admitted that this is collective punishment, which is illegal under international law, but that’s another point. Let’s talk more about the Trump administration’s policies. Because not only do we have Pompeo, but we also have John Bolton, who is one of the most cartoonish hawks imaginable. This is a guy who cut his teeth supporting the Iraq war. He also has lobbied for many years for war on Iran. He has quite the range. I mean, it’s kind of pathological for Bolton.

And we’ve seen that part of the Trump administration’s policy has not only been imposing these crippling sanctions to try to strangle the economy and force the Iranian people to rise up, but the Trump administration has also been supporting other militant groups that have been trying to fight the Iranian government. Recently, we saw a horrific attack on a military parade in Iran by an Ahwazi Arab separatist group which has received support from Western governments as well. The attack was ostensibly targeting a military parade, but several civilians, including children, were killed in the attack. But even more egregious than that, we’ve also seen the Trump administration extend an olive branch to the MEK, the Mojahedin-e Khalq. Tell us about what the MEK is and why the Trump administration and John Bolton have been supporting this bizarre cult.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: It’s absolutely astounding that this is the organization that they’ve chosen to be supporting as a “viable alternative” to the present government in Iran, because the MEK has absolutely no base of support inside Iran. Whether people in Iran hate the Iranian government or like the Iranian government, they hate the MEK. Why? Well, let’s look at what the MEK did right after the revolution. They were part, initially, of trying to overthrow the Shah, but when they lost out, they then joined with Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq and were trained and equipped by Saddam Hussein to go into Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, which lasted for over eight years, and a bloody horrible war, and they were blowing up suicide bombers, killing civilians and siding with the enemy.

So they are seen in Iran as a group that has no legitimacy. And on top of that, that they are a crazy group, that they are a cult-like group. And this is not just us saying this, this is the Rand Corporation, this is the U.S. government, internal documents. They were chased out of Iraq after the U.S. invasion, and they now have their base in Albania, which is really like they hold their own people, they’re imprisoned. If you decide, “Uh-oh, I’m seeing through this, this doesn’t look good for me anymore, I want to get out,” you can’t get out of there. And they have a reverence to the head of it, Maryam Rajavi, and her husband, who hasn’t been seen in the last seven years, and seems like he died, but they pretend that he’s still alive somewhere. It is a group that has been on the U.S. terrorist list until 2012, when they got a lot of money, and it seems like they get Saudi money, to pay off a lot of politicians to get themselves off that list.

You talked about John Bolton. It’s reported that he’s taken 180,000 dollars from the MEK. But it’s also people like Giuliani, like Newt Gingrich, and Democrats as well. There are a number of different Democrats, and they just had this holiday party in Washington, DC in the Rayburn building of Congress, where you saw the Democrats like Eliot Engel, who will be the head of the Foreign Relations Committee in the House, going there to give his support. Nancy Pelosi has gone to give her support to the MEK. So it’s very, very bizarre and dangerous.

BEN NORTON: Pelosi has, in fact, Tweeted support for the MEK’s ostensibly human rights front group. But let’s talk a little bit more about the MEK and then let’s talk about the Democratic Party’s response and the leadership’s response to the Trump administration’s unilateral destruction of the Iran nuclear deal. Specifically what’s incredible with the MEK is they are actually a cult in the sense that Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, who are a married couple, the new members in the 90s, they refused to let them get married.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: They had to get divorced.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, they had to get divorced and their loyalty was only to the MEK cult. They have all these bizarre–for all the criticisms of the Iranian government, and there are many, including repression of women, MEK has equally backward views on women’s liberation, and as you mentioned, is allied with Saudi Arabia. So maybe we could talk a bit more about that and how the Democratic Party has failed to stand up to many of these policies. We saw leaders of the Democratic Party under Obama actually side with Republicans against the Iran Nuclear Deal, most infamously Chuck Schumer. And now, even those who supported the JCPOA have been pretty mute.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, you would think … Well, first of all, on the MEK, when we confront these members of Congress and their support for the MEK, they say, “Well, the MEK has changed.” And they’ve changed because they’ve had these great PR firms that they’ve paid a lot of money to basically tell the MEK what to say. And they have all these different front groups. But you scratch under the surface and it is the MEK and it is this cult group and they torture people within their own organization who want to leave. So it is bizarre that so many people in the U.S. government would be supporting the MEK. But the real question is why isn’t the Democratic Party coming out and really criticizing Trump for having unilaterally withdrawn from a treaty that was working and continues to be working, and put the U.S. on a collision course with the international community.

And I think it’s because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of thing. We see now the Saudis working with Israel against Iran. And so many people in the Democratic Party are still beholden to the Israeli government and the lobby groups like AIPAC, and the Israeli government is determined to find a way to overthrow the Iranian regime. So the Democratic Party, unfortunately, I think through its allegiance to the Israeli government, doesn’t want to speak out against Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal and dangerous course that could potentially lead to another horrific war in the Middle East.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, and let’s conclude. I want to talk about the prospects of a new war. The war in Iraq, an illegal invasion in 2003, was absolutely catastrophic. It led to well over one million deaths and it destabilized the entire region. Ironically, it actually empowered Iran. But before the war, we saw that a major U.S. general had actually acknowledged that there was a list that the Bush administration had drafted of seven countries in five years they wanted to topple or destabilize. Many of the countries on that list have been destabilized or overthrown. Libya, Syria has been largely devastated, Iraq of course, but Iran was always the cherry on top. And it seems like John Bolton and the people that Trump has voluntarily surrounded himself with would love to see a war on Iran. Of course, it could be even more catastrophic than the war on Iraq.

Do you think that that’s a possibility, and if it’s not even a possibility, if it’s not realistic, what other forms of indirect warfare is the Trump administration going to wage on Iran, and how can peace activists here in the United States try to stop and push for peace and diplomacy?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: I would say that there is a war with Iran going on right now. And that is, one, through the proxy wars in the region and trying to goad Iran into retaliating. And the other is sanctions, which is war by other means. Supposedly, medicines and food are exempt from the sanctions, but they’re not because the banks don’t want to deal with Iran. So we see people who are dying from diseases like cancer diseases because they can’t get their medicines. We see people who are having a very difficult time making ends meet in Iran right now because of the sanctions. So the U.S. is waging war on Iran right now. Will it get into a hot war? It could easily happen. We’ve already seen the U.S. attacking Iran in Syria and Iran holding back and not countering that. But how long will they be able to hold back? Will the Revolutionary Guards be pushing for retaliation?

The U.S. sanctions and the U.S. strangling of Iran are actually strengthening the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. They’re hurting the reformists. And so, things are getting more and more tense. So I don’t think we should sit around and wait and contemplate the possibilities of getting into a war with Iran. I think we should think that things are so bad right now, what are we going to do to move the U.S. in a different direction? What are we going to do to pressure the Democrats once they’re in control of the House next year, to put forward legislation saying the U.S. should join the Iran Nuclear Deal? Let us say that we want to have diplomatic relations and trade with Iran. Let us counter all the efforts to be supporting the MEK. I think we have a lot of work to do to reverse course and stop a hot war, but also stop the war that’s going on right now.

BEN NORTON: We’ll have to end our conversation there. We were speaking with Medea Benjamin, who is the co-founder of the women-led peace group, Code Pink, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thanks so much for joining us, Medea.

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Thank you.

BEN NORTON: For The Real News Network, I’m Ben Norton.

The Real News

December 19, 2018 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

MEK (Rajavi cult) victims’ families reject Amnesty International report endorsing gross human rights abuse in Albania

To: Secretary General of Amnesty International Mr. Kumi Naidoo
Amnesty International UK
Human Rights Action Centre
17-25 New Inn Yard
London
EC2A 3EA
020 7033 1777
sct@amnesty.org.uk
We write as the families of Mojahedin Khalq members. We do not wish to comment on the events of 1988 that your report covers except to question whether it is customary for a campaigning human rights group to investigate historic events in a 140-page report. What does AI hope to achieve by creating this report?

We find the report seriously flawed and it lacks credibility for the following reasons:
An internet search will show that all western organisations, such as the US State Department and United Nations, and the media refer to the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation as MEK or MKO. This report refers throughout to the PMOI, which is only ever used by the MEK itself. After reading this report we need to ask who has really written it and what relationship the author has with the MEK/MKO and Maryam Rajavi?
On page 7 of the report it says:
“Amnesty International’s research, conducted from September 2017 to November 2018, analysed the testimonies of 41 survivors, 53 family members of victims, 11 former prisoners, and 10 other witnesses from 28 cities across Iran, obtained either directly or through Justice for Iran, an Iranian human rights organization.”
Shadi Sadr of Justice4Iran is the nominal head of several organisations supported by anti-Iran neoconservatives. She frequently travels to Albania and Paris to liaison with MEK and Maryam Rajavi. She has written pro-MEK articles and takes a pro-MEK stance. She has no credibility whatsoever in the wider Iranian community.
The report claims to have taken testimony from MEK members in Albania. The people in Albania do not have identity documents, work permits or travel documents. They are not registered as refugees in Albania. Even when they were registered by the UNHCR in Iraq many used fake or borrowed passports. So, it would not be possible for AI to accurately and unequivocally identify the individuals they spoke to.
Also, it is true that all MEK members have already learned scripted information about the events of 1988. MEK have indoctrinated the members with their version of reality over the years. They are not reliable witnesses.
There are tens of Iranian families living in Europe and North America who lost their loved ones in the events of 1988. The report is an insult to the other families of the executed people inside and outside Iran who do not support the MEK, who have not sided with Saddam Hussein nor with Saudi/Israeli anti-Iran forces. Why has AI failed to interview even a single one of these people? They are families of MEK victims, but they are not traitors.
On page 1, Amnesty International claims to be “independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion and are funded mainly by our membership and public donations”.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein when it was possible to investigate the conditions of MEK members in Iraq, AI failed to say a single word except to promote MEK as a ‘human rights’ group. In 2005, Human Rights Watch wrote a damning report on the human rights abuses conducted by MEK against their own members. In 2009 the RAND Corporation conducted an in-depth study of MEK and revealed its cultic human rights abuses. This year alone, following some hard-hitting reports by Albanian media about MEK’s dangerous and abusive behaviour in Albania, various western media outlets investigated and wrote about MEK. All identified serious human rights abuses against the members.

As families of the MEK members we are angry and appalled that Shadi Sadr can go to Camp Ashraf 3 in Manez, but none of us families are allowed to visit our loved ones there. We have campaigned for two decades for the right to have contact with our loved ones inside the MEK. Even prisoners in high security jails in Iran have this right.

Raha Bahreini of AI and Shadi Sadr of Justice4Iran have made the MEK out to be a peaceful democratic opposition. This is a lie.
MEK members are isolated and held in a state of modern slavery under forced indoctrination. Apparently Amnesty International does not know the meaning of that. Otherwise, why doesn’t AI speak out about the current abuses of the MEK? Why doesn’t AI mention anywhere that MEK kills its own members – Massoud Dalili in Iraq and Malek Sharai in Albania this year for example?
Your report frequently refers to the right of victims and their families to have human rights abuses investigated and reparations made. While the report identifies members of the Mojahedin Khalq as victims in 1988, you have ignored the victims of human rights abuses inside the MEK for over thirty years. The report even fails to mention what happened during Operation Eternal Light in 1988 when Maryam Rajavi and her husband Massoud sent 2000-3000 members – mostly non-combatants – to their deaths in a hopeless military campaign to invade Iran. This was clearly a war crime.
This complete – and we can only assume, deliberate – failure to describe the MEK’s crimes and abuses in the report make it meaningless. Its only use could be for the MEK to whitewash its image and deflect attention from the control and abuse of their members in Albania.
If Amnesty International truly believes in campaigning for every person’s human rights, we families make the following demands:

That AI pressure the Albanian state to ensure that all who want to leave the MEK camp are allowed to do so.
To ensure that the Albanian state issues visas and intervenes inside Albania to allow families to meet their loved ones.
To grant the members and ex-members of MEK identity documents and work permits which will allow them to live independently.

December 19, 2018 0 comments

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