++ News has been continuously filtering out from Albania. One report suggests that commanders from the MEK have approached various people with the promise that Maryam Rajavi asked them to compile a list of useful people so they can be smuggled into Britain with false passports. One high ranking person commander who has been selected for this process is Hooshang Doodkani, from Khoy in Western Azerbaijan province. Considering that the process of refugee status has started and that it is likely that most of these people will be granted refugee status in Albania after the interviews, this is seen as an attempt to prevent people from having straightforward refugee status and instead create dependency on the MEK which will provide the false identity and passports and so trap them in the cult. Commander Farzaneh Maidanshahi is Rajavi’s contact in Albania for these activities.

++ Other news from Albania is that a high ranking member called Mansour Sha’bani has defected from the MEK and joined with the other former members. This defection has resulted in greater efforts at control by MEK commanders in Tirana who are now checking on people who want to go out on their own as they are worried more will leave. There are other credible reports that the MEK is reshuffling its system in Tirana. Maidanshahi has been retained as main commander, but Ismael Moretezai (aka Javad Khorrasan) has been replaced by another known henchman, Abdulvahab Najafinejad Jahromi (aka Afshin). Although the MEK don’t regard Albania as a place for their activities, the cult has decided to expend much more energy to sort the place out; more people have been dispatched there to help keep control. Other news suggests that out of seventeen residents of Camp Liberty who had previous residency in the UK and whose applications for asylum are currently under review by the UK immigration service, three are currently in Albania.

++ A few short comments have been posted about Maryam Rajavi’s gathering for ‘Iranian Youth of Europe and America’. Pictures published by the MEK mostly feature Maryam Rajavi with her bunch of lobbyists who are neither ‘youth’ nor ‘Iranian’, and this has become a joke among the MEK’s own supporters. Many articles pick on Rudi Giuliani who according to MEK websites claims that the overthrow is imminent. He has given a message to the residents of Liberty and Ashraf (!?): “I know you are having a hard time… but the day of freedom of Iran is near, I pray for your sacrifices and support you. Because of the leadership of Mrs Rajavi the new Iran will be built on the back of the martyrs of freedom very soon, and soon you will destroy the murderous dictators and replace them with a government of your own.” Many articles ridicule Rajavi and the rest of them, calling him ‘brother Rudi Giuliani’.

++ Mojahadin.com website in Iran carries a brief note on the appearance of Maryam Rajavi in the European Parliament. The organization has dismissed the European Parliament’s recent statement against Iran on human rights. Under the title, ‘The murderer of 17,000 Iranians appears in the gathering of so-called human rights advocates’, the organization criticizes Rajavi’s speech in which she insists that the west should stop talking and confront Iran.

++ Many people have analyzed Struan Stevenson MEP’s invitation to Maryam Rajavi to appear inside the European Parliament as symptomatic of a desperate Israeli reaction to Catherine Ashton’s visit to Tehran. In particular, they say, it was Ashton’s meetings with human rights and opposition activists in Iran that has made the MEK and Israel shiver. Stevenson used his gathering of the usual paid MEPs and officials, they claim, as a platform to harshly attack Ashton and the previous European Parliament delegation on behalf of his paymaster Maryam Rajavi, to the point of swearing at Ashton calling her ‘ignorant’. The writers highlight the intense shakiness of Stevenson and the rest to the lobbyists with the conclusion that they are reaching the end of the road.

++ Nabil Saeb al A’raji, Secretary General of the Free Iraq Party announced in an interview that the MEK is a terrorist and murderous organization affiliated with the remains of Saddam, and which has killed scores of innocent Iraqis, irrespective of what its western supporters believe of it. At the same time Aliyeh Nassif, MP, had a lengthy interview with Al Rai news agency in which she described the MEK as “a cancerous tumour which the enemies of Iraq have implanted in the body of Iraq and which will be removed surgically as soon as possible”. In addition, Hayedeh Al Ameri, a famous Iraqi writer who was working very closely with Saleh Motlaq (now one of the deputy prime ministers and a supporter of the MEK and Saddam), revealed that Motlaq used to receive 200,000 dollars though the MEK, but that now he is directly being paid millions of dollars he is not so keen on them. Al Ameri revealed that Motalq used to spend 50,000 dollars on advertising for the MEK and pocket the rest of it himself.

++ Nejat Association made a short comment that the MEK is screaming even louder than the Israelis over the oil deal of 500,000 bpd between Iran and Russia. Nejat says that while a business deal is not a crime, the torture and murder of your own people, however, is.

++ Edaalat (Victims of MEK Terrorism in Iran), published a short article among those from many others about the MEK’s shift from the nuclear issue to the human rights issue. Edaalat reminds Israel and its allies that “you may use MEK for information laundry for a while, but don’t you think it is ridiculous to use them to attack Iran over human rights with their dirty past”.

++ Amir Hossein Panahi from Ariya Association in Paris wrote a short article titled ‘Struggle Against the Regime as a Money Spinner’. He examines the role of MEK lobbyists who make money out of speaking in MEK rallies and identifies regulars such as Patrick Kennedy, Lee Hamilton, Rudi Giuliani, David Phillips and etc. who get paid between 25 to 160,000 dollars to come and let Maryam Rajavi flirt with them. The obvious thing is that this has nothing to do with any struggle or even lobbying as work. A lobbyist, Panahi points out, works to make changes. These are simply crooks charging money just to stand and speak to no end.

++ Nejat Association wrote an open letter to the UNHCR office in Tirana in appreciation of a New Year party it held for the former residents of Camp Liberty. The event was enjoyed by those who have separated from the MEK and who refused to attend a party held by the MEK which, according to Nejat, fears the decline of its cult hegemony. The letter thanked the UNCHR saying the party “reinforced our friends in their effort to distance themselves from the cult indoctrination system”.

++ There have been several articles about the MEK’s angry reaction to the release of the four Iranian border soldiers last week who had been abducted by terrorists. This reaction came alongside Maryam Rajavi’s efforts to send her condolences to the families of four high Sunni leaders who had reportedly been killed by Iranian security forces in Balouchestan. Embarrassingly for Rajavi this report proved to be completely false.

++ Comments were made about the MEK’s deafening silence as the anniversary of the re-opening of their office in Washington passed by this week. Some commentators reminded the MEK about the amount of jumping up and down and shouting ‘victory, victory’, which accompanied the re-opening and the MEK’s claim that America would definitely take Iran and give it to Rajavi.

++ There were a few reactions to Rajavi’s announcement to her usual lobbyist audience that the US should not give a visa to Iran’s UN ambassador, Hamid Abutalebi. Many referred to existing documents about the MEK which show that when the US hostages were released the MEK criticized Khomeini’s government for not executing them. They also refer to some of the MEK’s activists in the US – Ali Reza Jafarzadeh, Sona Samsoni and Ali Safavi – who are part and parcel of the Pentagon of America but who have all published their suicide notes whenever MEK asked them to. They also remind us that the MEK killed Americans in Iran as part of its anti-Imperialist struggle.

 18 April 2014