++ The main focus of Farsi outlets this week has been reaction to the MEK’s threats against critics and former members. The MEK has been in overdrive in the last two weeks following Massoud Rajavi’s order to kill them. This has already led to many physical and verbal threats and intimidation, particularly in France where the MEK now has its main base. Many writers responded by holding France responsible for any trouble rather than the MEK itself, since France hosts the group which is known to promote and use violence. According to many, the recent dropping of the legal case against MEK second-in-command Maryam Rajavi and around 80 of her cohorts has acted as a green light for the group. The MEK now specifically wants to assassinate those who were witnesses in the court case against Rajavi and the others. These people point out they were summoned as witnesses and it is now incumbent on France to protect them. The MEK’s Farsi paper carries an order directly from Rajavi to kill Massoud Khodabandeh. Khodabandeh points out “this is to frighten the recent arrivals from Camp Liberty and stop them from exposing further crimes of the MEK leaders. The real problem is that the French Judiciary is weak in front of Mossad and other MEK backers. But if anything happens to anyone we all know that France is responsible as it hosts the group.”

++ Jahangir Shadanlou has headed an appeal against the decision to drop the court case. In an interview with Rahai TV, Shadanlou said: “Their threats are not new. The MEK have always tried to kill if they can, and if they can’t kill they character assassinate people to the extent of publishing books and reports against them. They will even pay people like Yves Bonnet to write a book. We took him to court for libel and he lost the case. Other incidents like the FIAP knife attacks reveal the MEK’s violent nature. If France doesn’t stop them, this kind of thing can happen anywhere in Europe. The ridiculous dropping of the court case has been taken by MEK as a green light to kill critics as they used to do in Iraq.”

++ An article by Minoo Sepher, a prominent writer, says the only way for the Americans and the French to clear themselves of accusations of supporting terrorism and operating double standards, is to extradite Massoud and Maryam Rajavi to Iran to stand trial for their crimes in an open court.

++ Now the list of new arrivals in Tirana from Camp Liberty is known, many families are trying to establish contact with their loved ones. They have resorted to leaving notices around the area frequented by the refugees with their names and phone numbers. The families have been prevented from contacting their loved ones by the MEK, so they have asked them to make the first contact instead. According to a report by Ebrahim Khodabandeh [in last week’s Weekly Digest] the MEK have created closed camps in Tirana to which they take the arrivals and have re-created the cult conditions which were so destructive in the Iraqi camps.

In English:

++ Nejat Association reported on the participation of Maryam Sanjabi and Ebrahim Khodabandeh in the International Conference on ‘World Against Violence and Extremism’ (WAVE). Held in Tehran by the Institute of Political and International Studies (IPIS) on 9-10 Dec. 2014, the conference enabled hundreds of delegations from 53 countries around the world to share information and views on militarism, terrorism and other forms of violence. During the conference, Sanjabi and Khodabandeh, who represented hundreds of families of residents in Camp Liberty, were able to brief the participants about the latest situation of Rajavi’s mind manipulating destructive cult (MKO) and the need to establish contact between those trapped in Camp Liberty in Iraq in the hands of Rajavi, and their suffering families. In all cases, without exception, the addressees approved the necessity for this basic right to be fulfilled and made promises that they would do everything possible in their capacity to help this human rights issue which is the result of the whim of a violent extremist leader of a cult.

++ An article by Gareth Porter published in Consortium News talks about ‘How the Iran-Nuke Crisis Was Hyped’. In an interview with Porter, former IAEA Director General Han Blix, “said he has long been skeptical of intelligence that has been used to accuse Iraq and Iran of having active nuclear-weapons programs.” According to Porter “a prized weapon in the U.S. geopolitical arsenal is “information warfare,” the ability to promote false or misleading information to heighten the pressure on an adversary, often using supposedly neutral UN agencies as a front, as may have happened on Iran’s nuclear program.”

“The provenance of the largest part of the intelligence documents — the so-called “laptop documents” — was an unresolved question for years after they were first reported in 2004 and 2005. But former senior German foreign office official Karsten Voigt confirmed in 2013 that the Iranian exile opposition group, the Mujahedeen E-Khalq (MEK), gave the original set of documents to the German intelligence service (BND) in 2004.”

“The MEK has been reported by Seymour Hersh, Connie Bruck, and a popular history of the Mossad’s covert operations to have been a client of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, serving to “launder” intelligence that Mossad did not want to have attributed to Israel.”

++ Mazda Parsi in Nejat Bloggers says the Mojahedin “Adore Hypocrisy on Human Rights”. The article points out that whenever the UN passes a resolution to condemn human rights in the IRI, this gives fuel to the MEK propaganda machine, despite its own horrendous human rights record.

In November, Parsi says, “Dr. Ismail Salami wrote in Global Research: “The not-very-independent UN body has made a mockery of justice by soldering a resolution on the so-called human rights violations in Iran.” He suggests that the double standard over human rights has led the UN to ignore severe violation of human rights by some countries like Israel.”

The article continues, “While the UN ignores serious violation of human rights in Gaza, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and particularly in camps of the cult-like MKO, the Australian Government maintains the MKO and its affiliates in its consolidated [terrorism] list updated on December 15th, 2014.” In spite of this, “although the cult leader Mrayam Rajavi vainly tries to wear the mask of humanity by laying flowers at the floral memorial of the victims of the incident in Sydney, the history will never forget the atrocities of the Cult leaders toward its own members, and the victims’ memories will be always alive.”

++ Another article by Mazda Parsi in Nejat Bloggers talks about the MEK’s propaganda campaign to manipulate American hardliners on the issue of the nuclear negotiations.

++ A group of ex-MEK members wrote an open letter to Hassibeh Haj Sahrai, deputy head of Amnesty International. They say that over the years, as AI publishes its statements, they more and more resemble the statements published by the MEK about Iraq. AI appears to be taking a political stance alongside the MEK without having any idea what is happening on the ground there. There is pretended concern about the situation of Camp Liberty but which actually reveals AI has no knowledge about it. For years, former MEK members say, they have been writing to expose human rights abuses inside the MEK, and have repeatedly asked AI to investigate. But AI has shown no interest whatsoever in doing this. The letter asks, ‘is Amnesty International’s Iraq office part of the opposition to the current government of Iraq, and as pro-Saddamist as it appears to be? If so, even as an opponent of the government AI has a responsibility toward the human rights situation in the camp’.

++ Ebrahim Khodabandeh met with Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Ebrahim Jafari in the International Conference on World Against Violence and Extremism (WAVE) in Tehran last week to ask him to help facilitate family visits for residents of Camp Liberty. In extension to this, Khodabandeh wrote an article for Iran Interlink giving up to date news about the MEK in Tirana and Camp Liberty. According to people who contact him directly, the MEK had forced the delay in transferring the latest two groups of Camp Liberty residents to Tirana while they finalised purchases of land and buildings outside the Albanian capital. The MEK subsequently created two closed camps and forcefully took the new arrivals there. The MEK has re-created Camp Ashraf in Albania, with closed doors and the cult system intact and have vowed to make more camps in Europe and elsewhere. The heads of the MEK quote Massoud Rajavi who promised he would make “a thousand Camp Ashrafs”. Having said that, people say that inside these camps the residents are protesting and rioting and fighting back. They are no longer compliant. The MEK commanders are trying to prevent outside interference. They threaten officials of the UNHCR and other agencies; either they can buy people or they threaten they will lose their jobs. Other news says that the MEK have changed the go-between for Paris to Tirana from Hassan Nayebagha, to Mina Rezai (a younger member who has been groomed for this role) because she is less known.

++ While visiting Iran, Iraq’s FM Ebrahim Jafari said in several interviews that getting help from Iran to fight terrorism in his country is natural because Iran is the natural ally of Iraq. He said the two countries will root out terrorism together.

++ At the time of this week’s session of nuclear negotiations, Maryam Rajavi and her paid lobbyists tried their utmost to somehow make themselves relevant to attract media attention. They came out with all kinds of messages and stances in order to place themselves with the neocons. But this time there was no media coverage at all. It appears the West has given up on them and the MEK has become a burden rather than a useful mercenary force.

++ Maryam Rajavi, desperate to be in news about something, jumped on the bandwagon of the Australian hostage debacle. First she claimed hostage taker Man Haron Monis was “an agent of the Iranian regime”. She then backtracked when this was found to be untrue. Even more ridiculous was sending a delegation to the funerals of the victims to lay a wreath on her behalf, with photographs to advertise this for her websites. The backlash among Farsi commentators hit when everyone started laughing at this. One even joked about being careful the delegation didn’t take some flowers – referencing the incident when MEK officials were caught stealing flowers from graves to take to ornament Maryam Rajavi’s closed camp in Auvers sur Oise outside Paris.

++ Ghalam Iran (Pen Society) challenged Massoud Rajavi. In a recent announcement, Rajavi claims that only seven people have asked to leave Camp Liberty. Ghalam said, “OK. If, in spite of all the pressure you put on people, we accept that seven people have been courageous enough to say they want to leave, you should now tell us who they are. You must name them. We want to know if they will mysteriously end up dead tomorrow, have heart attacks or commit suicide. It is usual for you to kill such people as dissidents. Certainly, the UN officials need to find them and help them before anything bad happens.”

++ In English:

++ An article by Hamid Babaei, head of the Press Office for the Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN in New York, published by The Hill, questions why that publication “would make its coveted platform so routinely available to the propaganda of a terrorist cult or its bought off the rack series of front groups and shills”. Babaei asserts that “During the last two years a number of opinion pieces have appeared in The Hill against Iran. These articles serve the interests and are written by the members and affiliates of a terrorist group known as the MEK”, which Babaei argues the State Department has called a “repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis.”

++ Brian M Downing, a political-military analyst writing in The Asia Times, reviews the current state of the nuclear negotiations. He identifies ways in which Iran has complied with various demands over its peaceful nuclear programme and how the deliberate scuppering of these overtures by America and her allies contributes to a continued perception of threat in Iran. Among these threats, “Israel and the ex-pat Mujahideen-e-Khalq group have assassinated a number of Iranian nuclear scientists, though incidents have diminished owing either to increased security or fewer targets. In October 2014, the nuclear research site at Parchin was rocked by a powerful explosion. Outsiders see these acts simply as efforts to slow down the nuclear program. Iran sees them as a sign of general hostility from outside powers.”

++ Iran Interlink posted an analytical article by Sam Muhho in Global Research titled ‘Terrorism is not a “Threat” to the West. It is a Weapon of the West’. The article has no mention of the MEK, but describes the framework within which the MEK has its Western support.

++ Mazda Parsi writing for Nejat Bloggers lines up Maryam Rajavi with the neocons and Israeli lobby who, “even before the ink dried on the extension agreement in Vienna” were demanding new sanctions on Iran as an attempt to further obstruct the negotiations. Parsi points out however that Maryam Rajavi’s “determination to obstruct nuclear talks and engagement with Iran is not in line with the Iranian people’s longing for independence and security”.

++ Sahar Family Foundation reported on Ebrahim Khodabandeh’s meeting with Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Ebrahim Jafari. Khodabandeh asked him to help facilitate family visits for residents of Camp Liberty. “In this meeting Mr. Jafari emphasized that the MKO is a terrorist cult which has committed many crimes against the people of Iraq and confirmed that it is the wish of all factions and tendencies that they should leave the country and that their leaders be prosecuted. He said that preventing the families from visiting their relatives shows by itself the nature of the leaders of this group.”

++ A detailed article by Gareth Porter in Middle East Eye vindicates the findings of his book Manufactured Crisis, that at least some of the so-called ‘laptop documents’ came from Mossad “using the Iranian opposition as a hopefully credible source” to front these revelations.

December 19, 2014