++ Fars News reported that tens of Mojahedin members have defected the group after arriving in Albania. Several are high ranking members, including the informant who asked to remain anonymous for fear of his life. He told Fars News that MEK commanders including Farzaneh Meidan Shahi and Esmayeel Mortezayee also known as Javad Khorassan, do not allow other members to leave their residence and contact their families.

++ An analytical article by Nejat Bloggers questions whether the MEK are simply struggling to survive or are they really able to topple the IRI. The article expounds on various recent difficulties faced by the MEK and concludes: “It seems that the sequence of the MKO failed tactics and its futile efforts to wipe them off have no end. The Mujahedin-e Khalq is a broken group that is reaching its expiry date.”

++ Ban Ki Moon announced that the UN is committed to resolving situation of former residents of Iraq camp. The US has pledged financial support to the UN Trust Fund for Resettlement of Camp Hurriya Residents in order to help deal with this issue.

++ Ghorbanali Hossein Nejad was the guest on Mardom TV this week.

++ On his website, Ghorbanali Hossein Nejad has published the correspondence he has had with an Iraqi personality, Zaafer Alaani, in which the correspondent asks why he is still supporting the MEK. It became clear from this that the MEK was still using Hossein Nejad’s name in Iraq without his knowledge and claiming he was supporting them.

++ There has been a lot of writing in both English and Farsi about the arrest of Ali Mansouri by various people who knew him as a veteran member working for the MEK for thirty years. Now that he has been arrested as an Iranian spy in Israel there are many interpretations as to how this happened. Many say that in line with how the MEK usually behave they believe the MEK had a problem with him. They have sent him to Israel – where he has been a long term collaborator with Mossad – to prevent him running away and they lose him, so that once again, they have sacrificed another dissenting member.

++ The so-called hunger strike continues and the MEK are on overdrive to publicise it. But not many people are convinced because none of those participating look ill or weak. But, given the MEK’s past history many are predicting that they will kill one or two of them – for example by not giving medication to a diabetic, etc – to claim they died from hunger. As the MEK never surrender the bodies of the dead for autopsy they can do what they like. There are many disaffected members now so any one of them can be killed.

++Fars News has published an informative article about Hassan Dai (aka Daioleslam), which goes into detail about when he joined the MEK, about his family – a brother and sister in Camp Liberty – and how he was moved by the MEK from Germany to Washington. The article introduces him as the MEK’s contact with the neoconservatives in Washington (there are some accompanying pictures of him in recent demonstrations, etc). Fars News has exposed Dai because he is trying to claim he is not with the MEK, even though people in America know that he is.

++ Mohammad Razaghi published an article remembering Ahmad Rezapour who committed suicide whilst with the MEK. HE describes in detail how the MEK abused him to the point that he became really ill, but the MEK wouldn’t allow him to remain in the dormitory with the accusation that ‘if you stay you might masturbate’. In public humiliation meetings the MEK accused him of sexual deviancy and subjected him to mass spitting and swearing, and this continued abuse led to him killing himself. Razaghi says that even though they had themselves brought all this on his head, the MEK later criticised his commander for not realising he would commit suicide, not because he was dead but because his suicide was ‘against the leadership’; that is, damaging to the reputation of Rajavi.

++ Razaghi had an interview with Iranian website ‘Rajavis’. The interviewer, among other informative issues, asks Razaghi why he doesn’t come back to Iran. Razaghi admits that after thirty years in opposition, there is always the fear that you might be prosecuted. But, he says, that can be overcome as we have seen others return and nothing happens to them. My main problem, he continues, is that Rajavi has left nothing for us to support ourselves with. “As a pensioner and a sick man, if I come to Iran what do I eat, where do I live. I love the people of Iran but I have real problems which are being sorted out in the western countries. The interview is titled: ‘I have nothing to lean on to live in Iran, Rajavi has taken everything from me’.

++ This week was the anniversary of the death of the singer Marzieh, who was widely criticised after she left Iran to join with the MEK. Many writers say what a shame it is that for such a famous star only ten or so MEK terrorists gathered around her grave and nobody else. This doesn’t show hatred of her they say, but is because nobody wants to go near the MEK. Otherwise, there would be hundreds of people who would have liked to go and show their respects. Iraj Shokri, an ex NCRI member has short article on his site remembering Marzieh and exposing some of the problems they created for her and describes how she was under pressure but had nowhere else to go. He claims that she wouldn’t have stayed if she’s found the opportunity but she became dependent on them after she left Iran.

++ This week, Jordanian parliament announced that no MP will participate in Maryam Rajavi’s meetings in Paris in future. In the past a couple of MPs had attended on a personal level paid by the MEK. The parliamentarians pointed to the presence of Syrian terrorists next to Rajavi and said they can’t go and sit alongside representatives of Syrian terrorism.

++ Tareq Al Hashemi, the fugitive Iraqi former vice prime minister, who has been charged with terrorism and was famous for his connection with the Saddamists, turned up next to Maryam Rajavi in Brussels this week. It is believed by many commentators that he had been brought by the MEK and the Israeli lobby such as Stevenson and others in order to sit next to Rajavi in public and to boost her message. Ironically, Al Hashemi only spoke a sentence or two to condemn the killings at Camp Ashraf and blame Prime Minister Maliki before pushing his own anti-Iraq, anti-Al Maliki agenda. Some pointed out that his whole speech could be summed up in one sentence: ‘Me, Ezzat Ebrahim, Saddam Hussein, Rajavi…. are all innocent’.

++ Several articles have been published in Iran and outside in Farsi and in English about what forces are against the reduction of American sanctions. Practically all start with the MEK and Israel and neoconservatives in the west, and follow with the hardliners in Iran, and others who have financial interests and connections with Russia and China in Iran.

++ Hojjat Seyed Ismaeli – an ex MEK intelligence commander – has an article in Irandidban going into detail about what Rajavi called his ‘strategy’. The title ‘The strategy that was left behind in Iraq’ is self explanatory. Ismaeli says that even though, from the start, the MEK were mercenaries for Iraq, they have now abandoned that path and are looking for a new strategy.

++ Hadi Afshar – known as Said Jamaali in the MEK – has published number six in a series of articles recounting his years with the MEK until he managed to run away. He had been a high ranking member serving in MEK operations and intelligence for thirty years. This week’s article is called, ‘Don’t be mistaken, I am not talking about the intelligence services of Iran’. HE describes what he has seen inside the MEK in terms of torture and murder and also names some of those who, other witnesses have said, were killed under torture in MEK prisons.

++ Sahar Family Foundation website has an article titled, ‘Warnings of MEK commanders in Liberty and Maryam Rajavi’s video conference’ . The leaders in Camp Liberty are warning that everything is on the verge of collapse, and even high ranking members are dissenting. This all goes back to the unanswered questions hanging over the deaths at Camp Ashraf. Rajavi has replied in a video conference that ‘giving up Ashraf was the price we had to pay to be removed from the US terrorism list, but that we have been more successful by delaying it for a year. We deliberately kept Giti and Zohreh (top women military and intelligence commanders who were killed) there and it was because of them that we were able to keep Ashraf for another year, otherwise we couldn’t have done it’. She goes on in the usual cult jargon to claim that ‘giving these martyrs was worth it as we got back much more than we paid for’. She then paints a picture of the rosy future of the MEK now it is off the US list of terrorist entities. She claims that now Camp Liberty is the ‘beacon of the arrow of evolution and struggle’ and replaces Ashraf, and should be kept at any price. In this video she instructs the commanders that everyone has to forget about leaving Iraq. Instead they have to think and work towards making Liberty into Ashraf. She has instructed the top leaders that questions are forbidden and ordered them to suppress anyone who starts questioning anything. She also ordered them to show more videos of her speeches as well as getting the members involved in more sport and exercise, and to interest them in the European football leagues in order to pull them towards football and other such distractions etc, to keep them busy. In addition to this situation, Sahar says there is clear evidence that the MEK do not allow people to visit hospitals outside the camp unless the MEK are 100 per cent sure they will stay with them and return to the camp. For example, the MEK transferred Hossein Shakeri, born in Amol and a graduate of Architecture in Italy, to Baghdad hospital so late that he died on arrival. According to hospital staff he could have easily been saved if he had arrived sooner. Sahar says many letters have been sent to and they have talked several times with UNAMI representatives in Baghdad clearly demonstrating that the humanitarian disaster at Camp Liberty is caused by Rajavi and his commanders, and it is they who do not allow things to be sorted out and the residents sent to safe places. Sahar asks everyone, specifically UNAMI, to intervene in the situation of Camp Liberty which, ten years after the fall of Saddam is still being run with impunity by the head of a terrorist cult.

October 25, 2013