Page 212 – Nejat Society

MKO bomb makers are free in Europe

The revelations recently made on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI) by Der Spiegel, resulted in two kinds of reactions. As usual the first was made by the group’s propaganda media that tried to accuse the Spiegel correspondent Luisa Hommerich of being the mercenary of the IRI assuming her report as an attempt to launch misinformation about the group.

Eventually, the second group that included former members of the group came to the scene to endorse the testimonies of other former members that were interviewed by Hommerich for its investigative report.

Among the many articles written by former members of the MKO such as Musa Damrudi, Hanif Heidarnezhad, Ann Khodabandeh and Ali Shirzad that integrated Hommerich’s article, that of Mohammad Razaghi is worth to consider seriously because of the detailed and completing endorsement that he provides for the original report.
The German correspondent cites from defectors of the group that members of the MKO are subjected to physical and mental tortures. The most horrific part of the report cites the interviewees as saying that the residents of the MKO camps regularly practice “cutting throats with knife”, “breaking hand”, “removing eyes with finger” and “tearing down mouth”. Mohammad Razaghi confirms the testimony and explains that such kind of trainings had been originally instructed by Iraqi officers to the MKO operatives when the group was located in Iraq.

“As a person who was a member of the MKO for 20 years, I have enough information on the terrorist nature and the mafia structure of the group,” he writes in his open letter to Luisa Hommerich. “Ms. Hommerich, I would like to say that your report is correct but incomplete.”

Razaghi asserts that the trainings of “cutting throats with knife”, “breaking hand”, “removing eyes with finger” and “tearing down mouth” that are accomplished in the MKO camp in Tirana are actually the practice of killing people without an arm. “Officers of Saddam’s special guard used to teach these technics to the MKO’s high ranking members.”

Razaghi writes of further trainings that the MKO members received in Iraq. “In addition to the trainings you stated in your report, Iraqi officers used to instruct them to make firing bombs, destructive bombs and sound bombs with the very accessible items that they can by in their local markets,” he avows.

Razaghi warns about the potential of the MKO members who have received such horrific trainings.

“Once the creators of such destructive bombs were gathered in the notorious Camp Ashraf but today they are in most European countries living in the group’s safe houses,” he writes.

Razaghi ends his testimony promising Hommerich to reveal more information on the dangerous nature of the MKO in case he would be able to visit her.

March 4, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US openly supports MEK, a designated terrorist organisation

The United States’ much ballyhooed conference in Warsaw, the purpose of which was to gather support for more pressure on Iran, is now over. This exercise in futility did not gain the so-called ‘benefits’ that President Donald Trump and his racist, jingoistic cohorts had hoped. Rather, it exposed disagreements between the U.S. and many of its allies, and worsened some of them.

Some U.S. allies sent low-level representatives, a direct slap in the face to the U.S; some went even further and skipped the event. Many of those invited, whether or not they attended, have criticized the U.S. for its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and are still seeking ways to circumvent U.S.-threatened sanctions if they continue to comply with the agreement. Iran, whose nuclear development program is regulated by the agreement, continues to be in compliance, as certified by international inspectors, although it is clearly under no legal obligation to do so. When one party to an agreement violates it, that agreement is null and void.

Prior to the Warsaw conference, Twitter saw considerable activity in support of it. This could have been due to U.S. propaganda success in portraying Iran as the monster of the world (note: this writer visited Iran in the summer of 2017, and he can assure the reader that Iran is not what the U.S. wants everyone to believe). One wonders how U.S. government officials can possible accuse Iran of being the ‘foremost sponsor of terror in the world’, when the U.S. is currently bombing at least six (6) countries, is working to overthrow the democratically-elected governments of Syria and Venezuela, has invaded, bombed or otherwise destabilized at least 30 countries in the last 50 years, and has caused the deaths of at least 20,000,000 people. Iran, on the other hand, hasn’t invaded another country since 1798: yes, that is 221 years.

But perhaps the U.S. hasn’t been all that successful, and the increase in ‘Tweets’ was due to some other cause. Trita Paris, an award-winning activist, reports on his Twitter page that a huge number of those anti-Iran ‘Tweets’ were placed by ‘bots.’ For the uninitiated, a ‘bot’ is short for ‘robot,’ defined as “a program that operates as an agent for a user or another program or simulates a human activity.” It is an electronic method for doing all kinds of things on computers, including recognizing words on ‘Tweets’ and resending them. Any individual with a rudimentary knowledge of programming can create a ‘bot,’ get it to identify key words such as ‘Iran,’ ‘Warsaw’ and ‘Increasing Sanctions,’ to name just a few possibilities, and then have it ‘re-Tweet’ those entries to thousands, or potentially millions, of other Twitter accounts.

Why might someone do this? For people who seek Iran’s destruction, but recognize that this is not what the people of Iran want, it is one way of skewing the perception.

And who would want this? The ugly alliance of the United States and Israel constitute the greatest threat to Iran. The apartheid Zionist entity wants complete hegemony in the Middle East, which would allow it to kill all the Palestinians and take their land. They use pro-Israel lobbies in the U.S. to purchase members of Congress, which then grant Israel unprecedented amounts of foreign aid, and impunity from its crimes in the United Nations.

It is a very poorly-kept secret that the government of Israel spends millions upon millions of dollars to combat the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement. Additionally, the Zionist entity pays university students to write positive things about it on social media. It forbids any investigation of its accusations of war crimes, proclaiming that its own investigations are sufficient; those ‘investigations’ exonerate it every time.

Does Israel commit war crimes, and crimes against humanity? In the 2014 slaughter of the Gaza Strip, Israel bombed residences, mosques, press buildings, hospitals, schools and United Nations refugee centers. That’s six war crimes right there. IDF terrorists shoot unarmed, incapacitated Palestinians. War crime number seven. Those same terrorists guard illegal settler-terrorists as they commit crimes against innocent Palestinians.

And what about general violations of international law? The blockade of the Gaza Strip, the occupation of the West Bank, the housing of over half-a-million illegal settlers on Palestinian land are just three examples.

The United States supports the MEK, once designated as a terrorist organization, but now welcomed into the U.S. family of violence. The MEK has as its goal the overthrow of the Iranian government and has killed thousands of innocent people.

How would U.S. spokespeople respond, one wonders, if Iran, Russia and other nations actively supported an organization whose goal was the overthrow of the U.S. government? No doubt any such nation would be quickly introduced to U.S. bombs.

The United States and Israel are determined to isolate Iran and overthrow its government, and replace it with one more to their liking, as was done in the 1953, when the U.S., through its own terrorist cell known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) overthrew the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, and installed the brutal Shah of Iran as monarch. For the next twenty-six years he oppressed the people of Iran, until he was overthrown in 1979, against the wishes of the United States. That revolution established the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the U.S. has opposed since its inception.

The Shah did as his U.S. masters directed; they cared not at all about his oppressive brutality. And when the Iranian people finally were able to rid themselves of the U.S. puppet, and installed a government of their own choosing, their new leaders were not quite so amenable to acceding to U.S. demands. Thus, the U.S. has chosen to sanction Iran for decades, support its enemies, and spread lies about the nation.

The Warsaw Conference didn’t quite accomplish U.S. goals, since most of the world is highly suspicious of the erratic and bellicose U.S. president, not wanting to anger him (U.S. violence has already been mentioned), but not particularly interested in following him over the cliff, either. And the other signatories to the JCPOA continue to seek ways to trade with Iran, thus providing Iran with the benefits that that agreement promised.

What the U.S. will do next is anyone’s guess. Bombing Iran, or supporting Israel in doing so, would not bode well for the Middle East, or the rest of the world. Iran is a large and powerful country, allied with Russia, which would not look favorably upon any such attack. It is hoped that Europe will continue to trade with Iran, enabling its people to live in peace and prosperity. U.S. efforts to the contrary will not turn out well, least of all for the U.S.

Robert Fantina, Mondoweiss,

About Robert Fantina
Robert Fantina is an author and activist for peace and international human rights. A U.S. citizen, he moved to Canada following the 2004 presidential election. His writing appears regularly on Counterpunch.org, Warisacrime.org, and other sites. Mr. Fantina resides near Toronto, Ontario.

March 3, 2019 0 comments

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest

Iran Interlink Weekly Digest – 253

++ Nejat Association announced the launch of campaign group “Mothers of the Forgotten Victims” led by mothers of the MEK’s hostages. The group pledges to bring to public attention the “crimes of the backers of hostage takers and terrorists”, who misuse their power to the point that for decades they have denied families the straightforward human right of meeting one another.

++ Former MEK members in Albania, left destitute by the UNHCR and Albanian government, planned a protest picket in Tirana. This was cancelled several times as the MEK exerted its influence over Albania’s Interior Ministry (facilitated by the CIA and MOSSAD). Eventually, they succeeded in holding their protest and due to the presence of a reporter, MEK were forced to back off. Some Farsi commentators have written that this is a breakthrough and the beginning of the MEK physically disintegrating as more and more people are running away and the MEK and its backers can’t control them any longer.

++ Maryam Rajavi was on overdrive last week to insist that Luisa Hommerich’s Der Spiegel report is completely wrong and nothing untoward is happening inside the Manez camp. At one point the MEK insisted that the ‘allegations of sessions of forced confessions are ridiculous’. Former members have demanded that Rajavi dare to publish some of the letters and reports they were made to write while in the MEK. Some have pointed to the letters that MEK has already published from ex-members ‘admitting’ they are agents of Iran and that they have got money from Iran, as well as letters denouncing their parents, siblings and children. These former members say these “forced confessions” were written under coercion. Other commentators simply ask, ‘if nothing is happening inside your camp, why did you send armed guards to deter the journalist and why don’t you let anyone to talk to the inmates (even to allow a father to talk to his daughter). Why don’t you allow even the national police or authorities into the camp? More importantly, why are there no records of the people in the camp? Why do they have no legal status, no identity papers or bank accounts? Why have the CIA and Mossad taken this camp under their protection away from the Albanian authorities, as they did in Saddam’s Iraq?’

++ The MEK published photographs of Maryam Rajavi in a room inside the French Senate pretending that she had been invited there by someone or other. Other pictures showed a session of the Parliament without anyone from the MEK in it. Maryam Rajavi has been banned from the EUP but Lobbyist Struan Stevenson wrote about Rajavi alongside the picture pretending that she is still allowed there. She isn’t.

++ Approaching the Iranian New Year (Nouruz) several people have summarized the last year and the failures and downfall of the MEK. Some have predicted that in spite of this Maryam Rajavi will make a speech declaring ‘we won, we won’!

In English:

++ As the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian revolution came and went, Mazda Parsi of Nejat Bloggers assessed the ‘Achievements Of Maryam Rajavi In 40 Years Of Fighting The IRI’. From its failed efforts to exploit the failed Warsaw Summit, to the continued exposure of MEK scandals about treatment of its members, to the beginnings of its disintegration following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Parsi says there has not been a single step forward in the group’s claimed cause of overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran. The MEK’s only gain has been paid supporters. This is far outweighed by the loss of once loyal members.

++ In a longer piece criticising Facebook for having a foreign policy, Jefferson Morley in Salon wrote that “it seems to skew toward Israel and Iranian crackpots”. The crackpots are, of course, the MEK. Facebook removed an anti-MEK page while the MEK, which Facebook/DFRLab describes as “the largest and most active political opposition group against the Islamic Republic of Iran leadership”, still has a page. Morley says this “statement is so factually false as to be ludicrous”, adding “Facebook, wittingly or unwittingly, has succumbed to a crackpot propaganda campaign”. This is in spite of the fact that “Most non-governmental observers, who have not received money from the MEK, regard the group as a political cult”. Perhaps, says Morley, “Facebook … want[s] to promote a crackpot group for reasons of their own, perhaps related to the current U.S.-Saudi policy of hostility to Iran?”

++ Massoud Khodabandeh blogged around two intelligent articles about Iran saying “the complex issue of ‘dealing’ with Iran cannot be solved by the Trump administration or the European Union using the defunct Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) to shake a stick at the country. Iran’s government and ruling system is proving far too sophisticated for this stupid ‘regime change’ narrative. Iranians – inside and outside – don’t want that. Time for a new policy maybe; one that acknowledges facts on the ground rather than the delusion of empire.”

++ Following MEK death threats against Louisa Hommerich the Der Spiegel reporter, Anne Khodabandeh blogged that “it’s a mistake to approach the MEK as a normal opposition. Indeed, quoting MEK members is like giving a platform to Flat Earthers or Creationists. It is not balanced reporting. The MEK is a unique entity. Not an opposition, not a ‘group’ or ‘organization’, descriptions which imply a certain kind of accountable system and order… For the record, the MEK is a cult. Maryam Rajavi keeps slaves. It is that simple.”

++ With a touch of enthusiastic optimism shared by many, Ebrahim Khodabandeh wonders in a blog ‘When will Maryam Rajavi disappear?’ Based on the case of her husband Massoud Rajavi, who ‘disappeared’ in March 2003, and was pronounced dead by the MEK’s Saudi backers in 2017, Khodabandeh predicts that the failure of Maryam Rajavi to produce anything of any value for her promoters and paymasters, means she will soon also need to be replaced as the leader of the MEK.

++ The most important news over the past week has been the public protest by around forty former MEK members in Tirana, Albania. This is significant because the MEK intervened several times with the Albanian Interior Ministry to try to prevent the protest. The fact it went ahead showed two things. One is that the former slaves of Maryam Rajavi have been left destitute by the UNHCR which supposedly brought them from Iraq on ‘humanitarian grounds’ – apparently humanitarian assistance can only be given to members of a terrorist cult, not those who escape it. The other is that the CIA, MOSSAD and MEK are losing control over the people in Albania.
2019/03/01

March 3, 2019 0 comments

Mothers, forgetten victims of the MKO Cult

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Nejat Society declare the Establishment of “Mothers, Forgotten Victims”

Nejat Society declares the establishment of “Mothers, Forgotten Victims” on February 26, 2019.
Commemorating the Iranian Women’s Day, Nejat Society central office declares the establishment of an association to support mothers of the victims of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI). The mothers whose children have been imprisoned behind the bars of the cult-like MKO group, are deprived from their basic right which is a free visit with their loved ones.
Nejat Society aims to be the voice of the mothers whose rights are ignored by the international community.
Further information on the activities of “Mothers, Forgotten Victims” association will be published eventually.
Nejat Society

March 2, 2019 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

When would Maryam Rajavi disappear?

Massoud Rajavi was the sole leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, MKO, NCR) terrorist cult for two decades. He disappeared just before the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in March 2003. Since then no-one knows his whereabouts; his wife Maryam now leads the organization.

In the last sixteen years, a lot has been said and written about the reason for his disappearance and why he does not show his face even to his own followers. There were even rumours about his death that the MEK did not express any clear and firm reaction to, leading to even more speculation.

The undeniable fact is that the MEK has a dark history of terror, crimes and betrayals and therefore is hated by all Iranians, even those opposing the Islamic Republic. Massoud Rajavi, who had lost his popularity inside Iran, gambled his destiny and tied it up with that of Saddam Hussein who was a loser in the end.

After the fall of the Baghdad dictator – the cult’s sole state sponsor – the MEK tried to find an alternative for him, this time in the west. But the US and its regional allies were only happy to use the MEK without Massoud Rajavi. They wanted to bypass the cult leader and leave the cult’s unpopularity behind with him.

However, the MEK’s top officials knew that the cult would not remain intact without the charismatic leadership of Massoud Rajavi, and this left the organization in a deadly paradox. The new sponsors such as the Saudis wanted Massoud Rajavi out of the picture, yet the MEK could not survive without him.

Two years ago, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal announced the death of Massoud Rajavi. At the same time Maryam Rajavi keeps talking as though he is leading the organization even though there is no trace of him.

But the MEK under Maryam Rajavi’s leadership has not met any of her new sponsors’ needs and requirements. It is time, therefore, for a new face if the MEK is going to be of any value against the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are waiting for her disappearance after that of her husband.

February 28, 2019 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

It’s a mistake to treat the MEK as a normal opposition group

When reporter Luisa Hommerich wrote her investigative piece in Der Spiegel titled ‘Prisoners of Their Own Rebellion – The Cult-like Group Fighting Iran’, which exposes the grim situation for MEK members, I doubt she was expecting death threats to follow. After all, she was just doing her job. But that is exactly what the MEK reaction was. A Farsi language statement (written and published in Europe) promised her assassination. Nice.

Of course, for those who already know the MEK, this is not surprising. A timely reminder that the MEK cannot disown its past and cannot stop repeating its past, came in an interview with Nabi Ahamadi, who escaped the cult in Albania recently. Ahmadi was a close friend of Malik Sharai who was killed by MEK in June last year. He confirmed that Sharai was one of the few remaining witnesses to the mysterious death of 53 MEK members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. He also confirmed that Sharai had asked to leave the group but was then held in solitary isolation before being physically eliminated by the MEK leaders. As a trained swimmer, Ahamdi says it is implausible that he drowned as MEK claim.

Another example is the suspicious assassination of Mohammad Reza Kolahi – the bomber of the Jomhouri Party headquarters in 1981 who was killed in the Netherlands in 2015. After he left the MEK Kolahi was always going to be a liability. He knew too much. So, why is nobody asking Maryam Rajavi about this convenient death?

One reason of course is that the MEK leader Maryam Rajavi refuses to engage with journalists, investigators, researchers. Anyone in fact who might get to the truth about her organization. Indeed, Hommerich did her job thoroughly, as did the journalists of Aljazeera, The Guardian, Independent, Channel 4 News, NBC and other down the years (there is a very long list). They all asked the MEK to give their side, to comment on their findings and to have a voice. The MEK called them all agents of the Iranian intelligence services and refused to talk.

Former MEK members Gholamreza Shekari and Hassan Heyrani from Albania, who were interviewed for the Der Spiegel article, revealed that not only did the MEK refuse Hommerich’s request for interviews, they sent armed guards to prevent her getting near to Camp Ashraf 3 in Manez. This is not the response of a normal political opposition. Issuing death threats to journalists is not the response of a normal political opposition. But then, there’s nothing normal at all about an opposition universally hated by their own people, inside and outside Iran.

It is a mistake to approach the MEK as a normal opposition. Indeed, quoting MEK members is like giving a platform to Flat Earthers or Creationists. It is not balanced reporting. The MEK is a unique entity. Not an opposition, not a ‘group’ or ‘organization’, descriptions which imply a certain kind of accountable system and order.

Hommerich asked to speak with someone from the MEK (NCRI) but they did not reply. Instead, she spoke with some of the many defectors who have escaped. Their stories do not differ much from the testimony of other former members over thirty years: the MEK is a cult that routinely and systematically abuses the human rights of its whole membership. According to 50-year-old Gholamreza Shekari, this is achieved through ‘lies, manipulation and fear’; a methodology known as Cultic Abuse.

For the record, the MEK is a cult. Maryam Rajavi keeps slaves. It is that simple.

February 28, 2019 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

MKO defectors take action in Tirana

Defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) protested in Tirana, Albania.

About forty former members of the MKO gathered in Eskandar Beik square in Tirana to call on High Commissioner of Refugees to accomplish its responsibilities regarding the defectors of the group. They took action against the HCR that used to recognize them as refugees until they were members of the MKO but stopped its aids immediately after they left the group

“We have a lot of health and financial issues,” the defectors proclaimed. “We wasted twenty to thirty years of our life in the MKO under the poorest condition. Why don’t the HCR and the Albanian authorities care for our judiciary status as refugees?”

Protesters’ main demands are the followings:

They want their refugee status to be recognized by the HCR otherwise they should be allowed to leave Albanian territory.
They ask the HCR office in Albania to send their refuge documents to the authorities of the European Union and the office of Federika Mogherini.
They ask for legal and financial independence in Albania since the HCR is diverting its duties on the MKO authorities.
They ask for legal permission to visit their families. (They were not allowed to visit their families for the dozen of years they were in the MKO)

Citizens of Tirana passing by the peaceful protesters offered sympathy to them after they read their placards. The action was covered by the Albanian News media and TV reporters interviewed the protesters.

February 27, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Facebook praises an Iranian cult, MEK known for killing U.S. citizens

Facebook’s foreign policy seems to skew toward crackpots

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
Facebook has a foreign policy, and it seems to skew toward Israel and Iranian crackpots.

Last month, the social media giant announced that (with the advice of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab [DFRLab]) it had removed 783 assets — pages, groups, and accounts — that the company assessed to be associated with an Iran-based network for “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

The Atlantic Council is a D.C.-based think tank dedicated to multilateralism and “just societies” that embodies the American multilateralist elite. It is also Facebook’s consultant on what should be allowed on the world’s largest social media platform.
Among the problems cited by DFRLab were five Facebook pages about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that “had a strong bias in favor of Palestine.” They were removed. Thumbs down.
You can rest assured that Facebook has also removed all those pages with a strong bias in favor of Israel — oh wait. Bibi Netanyahu’s Facebook page is still up. So is AIPAC’s. Strong bias in favor of Israel? Thumbs up.
No Bibi Jokes, PleaseAnother banished Facebook page called @Polcartoons was published in Hebrew. The site’s offense? Facebook/DFRLab said it “curated cartoons from various Israeli news outlets that lampooned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and conservative Israeli political sentiment.”Can you imagine the nerve of these Iranians? What kind of online demons would poke fun at Prime Minister Netanyahu?! In Hebrew! Poor, defenseless “conservative Israeli political sentiment” is under unfair foreign attack! From Iranian hackers! On Facebook! Such behavior, we regret to inform you, will not be tolerated by the politburo in Palo Alto.

Cult

A third offending page, @StopMEK, was removed for promoting views against the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK. The page was dedicated to denouncing the MEK, an Iranian organization opposed to the country’s clerical leader. The MEK is described by Facebook/DFRLab as “the largest and most active political opposition group against the Islamic Republic of Iran leadership.”
This statement is so factually false as to be ludicrous. The Iranian parliament, the Majlis, has organized factions critical of President Hassan Rouhani that are much larger and more active than the MEK. Masih, the country’s online anti-hijab movement that challenges the Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership, has 2.1 million followers, far more than the tiny MEK.
Facebook, wittingly or unwittingly, has succumbed to a crackpot propaganda campaign.

Supporting Saddam

Here’s diplomatic correspondent Barbara Slavin on the MEK’s sorry history:
“The MEK, a cultish Marxist-Islamist group responsible for the death of six Americans in Iran before the 1979 revolution, lost out in the post-revolution power struggle and fled to Iraq, siding with Saddam Hussein against Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Maryam Rajavi, the widow of MEK leader Massoud Rajavi, lives in a compound outside Paris…”
From 1997 to 2012, the MEK was listed by the U.S. government as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” When Human Rights Watch visited an MEK camp in Iraq in 2010, investigators documented widespread abuse of human rights.

“Serious concerns”

The State Department website says:

“The Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”

Most non-governmental observers, who have not received money from the MEK, regard the group as a political cult.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delisted the group in 1992 because the MEK paid millions of dollars to ex-U.S. officials of both major parties to speak at MEK events. John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani have taken MEK money. So have Bill Richardson and Howard Dean.
The group is funded by Saudi Arabia, according to Slavin, which “inflames” various conflicts in the Middle East. Writing for the Voice of America, Slavin said:

“Contrary to the MEK’s claims, there is nothing democratic about this cultist organization, which requires its members to divorce their spouses or remain celibate and engage in Maoist-style struggle sessions of self-humiliation. Those that manage to escape often require long periods of de-programming.”

Do Facebook and DFRLab not know that the MEK is a marginal group whose actions are inconsistent with the unobjectionable, if contradictory, stated principles of the Atlantic Council? Or do Facebook and the Council want to promote a crackpot group for reasons of their own, perhaps related to the current U.S.-Saudi policy of hostility to Iran?
All we can say for sure is the MEK has a Facebook page.The Iranian Facebook page @StopMEK is gone.

Requests for response from the Facebook Press Office were not immediately returned.
JEFFERSON MORLEY
Jefferson Morley is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.

SalonJefferson Morley, Salon

February 27, 2019 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

What are the achievements of Maryam Rajavi in 40 years of fighting the IRI?

Despite the huge propaganda the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) launched for the Warsaw Summit, the US-led conference was a failure. The MKO leaders who apparently are too optimistic about Trump’s anti Iran policy, made their utmost efforts to exploit the shambolic conference in Warsaw. Alex Ward of VOX accurately asserts that the meeting “was intended to isolate Iran has ended up isolating America instead — highlighting one of the central problems of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy”. [1]
Ward’s assertion was confirmed by several other journalists and experts. Ron Ben YIshai of the YNetNews writes,

“The Warsaw Summit was a mostly failed attempt by the United States to form a broad international coalition to support the Trump administration’s Middle East policies.” [2]

“U.S. officials have been trying to portray the Warsaw Conference as a success for their plans; the concrete results are far from that,” And Saeb Erekat of Haaretz states.

“Just as with other aspects of foreign policy under the Trump administration, its emissaries have exaggerated its results.” [3]

It seems that the dreams of the MKO leaders have shattered by the end of the Warsaw Summit even though they spent a lot of money to nurture their cause in the sidelines of the program. As usual the group rented speaker and participants in front of the conference hall. At the time, Gregg Carlstrom of the Economist wrote on his twitter account,

“The MEK is having a rally in Warsaw where as usual about a third of the crowd is random non-Iranians who’ve been bussed in from Slovakia and can’t read the signs they’re holding”. [4]

Former New York mayor, Giuliani spoke at the MKO’s show to suggest that “peace in the region would only come when Iran was ruled instead by his clients, the National Council of Resistance of Iran”. [5]
It is widely known that Giuliani’s motivation to support a formerly designated terrorist group which has the blood of Americans in its hand, is just financial. “If the MEK were holding an event on the South Pole, Rudy Giuliani would participate,”Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, told Newsweek.

“He seems wholly addicted to the group’s honorarium checks, and he refuses to let it bother him that the MEK has American blood on its hands. He is the picture of a man without principle.”[6]

The scandals of the MKO reached their peak when Des Spiegel exposed more revelations about the true nature of the group a few days after the Poland Summit. In order to prepare the report, Luisa Hommerich interviewed a dozen of the MKO defectors in Albania. “Members of the Trump administration have been providing support to a political sect that aims to topple the Iranian regime in Tehran,” she writes.

“Around 2,000 of its members live in a camp in Albania. Former members say it is subjecting followers to torture and psychological terror.” [7]

The report exposes horrific violation of human rights inside the MKO and eventually the author is accused of being the agent of the IR intelligence by the MKO’s political arm, the so-called National Council of Resistance. The main question that should be answered by the MKO leaders is that given that all the evidences and testimonies on the human rights abuses by the MKO are misinformation forged by the Iranian government, what are the group’s achievements in the past forty years?
As soon as Saddam Hussein’s regime was collapsed in 2003, the MKO was disarmed by the US army. As a result it created a big gap in the then isolated structure of the group. A large number of Ashraf residents defected the group. The process of defection has been going on until now that the group is settling in Albania. This is happening despite the severe control and manipulation by the MKO to prevent defection.
Exploring the history of the MKO in the forty years of its existence after the 1979 revolution in Iran, you are not able to find a step forward to the group’s claimed cause which is the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. The only improvement that the group has made during the recent past decades can be seen in the number of its paid supporters. This is in an absolute contrast with the loss in the number of the group’s loyal fighters.

By Mazda Parsi
[1] Ward, Alex, The US held a global summit to isolate Iran. America isolated itself instead, VOX, February 15th, 2019.
[2] Yishai, Ron Ben, Warsaw Summit winners and losers, YNetNews, February 17th, 2019.
[3] Erekat, Saeb, The Arab World Just Trashed Trump’s Mideast ‘Peace’ Plan, Haaretz, February 18th, 2019.
[4] Mackey, Robert, As Giuliani Calls for Regime Change in Iran, Netanyahu Raises the Specter of “War”, The Intercept, February 14th, 2019.
[5] ibid
[6] Maza, Cristina, Trump Lawyer Rudy Giuliani Gives Rally Calling for Iran Regime Change Right Outside Warsaw Middle East Summit Featuring Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, NewsWeek, February 13th, 2019.
[7] Hommerich, Luisa, Prisoners of Their Own Rebellion.The Cult-Like Group Fighting Iran, Spiegel Online, February 18th, 2019.

February 23, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

What benefit might the MEK have for the US?

I have wondered why the Trump administration has moved the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, MKO, NCR, Rajavi terrorist cult) to a remote and isolated camp in Albania to keep them intact, even though they were meant to be deprogramed and disintegrated there in the first place.

I wondered what good they might be for the Trump administration now that they are more than one thousand miles away from Iran’s borders and just inside Europe.

Why should the Trump administration bother so much about them? The Americans clearly know how much the MEK are hated by Iranians; even by the opposition groups. And the US and its regional allies know full well that getting near to the MEK would cost them their political and international reputation.

This was until I received confirmed information from friends inside Albania that the MEK members have been used to intimidate politicians in the Balkan states and in Eastern Europe to yield to US demands in the region.

Now I know. The MEK terrorist cult in Europe can be used as the Sword of Damocles and hung over the head of the EU by the hawks of Washington to stoke US-EU conflict.
Everyone knows that the Trump administration is not keen on the internal and international policies of the EU on many subjects, including the Iran issue. And the MEK terrorist members residing just next door can easily be used to bully EU politicians.
I am now more certain than ever that reorganizing the MEK in Albania is a security threat to Europe rather than Iran. And the EU must justly be concerned about the presence of a US backed terrorist cult in Europe.

February 21, 2019 0 comments

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