Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MKO and the Demonizing Campaign

Nobody is immune from the threatening, anti-human, cultic practices of MKO

Everybody is curious as to why any defected member and escapee from MKO happen to be an Nobody is immune from the threatening, anti-human, cultic practices of MKOagent of Iranian regime whenever the organization ever publicizes the news of some defection itself. The announcement does not appear just after the escape or defection but months and even years later and after the group fails to come to terms with the defected to stop him/her talking out. The stigma, MKO believes, on the one hand will possibly neutralize the disclosures and on the other, hand will boost a propaganda battle to talk big of its intelligence potentiality in detecting the infiltrated agents. Thus, it may appear to many as a never-ending battle between MKO and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and security; and of course the more secretive and sophisticated the ministry is depicted the more capable its rival can be proclaimed.

But there are other reasons for MKO to enter a demonizing campaign against the regime’s security apparatus. Majority of the ranking members who leave MKO have been aware of hypocrisy and corruption within the group and majority are victims of cultic abuses themselves. However, as they have maintained an element of independence and some connection with their old values, they consider it a responsibility to become a volunteer to disclose facts long concealed from the public under a variety of pseudo social and democratic activities. Naturally, unable to provide justifiable responses to what MKO claims allegations against it, the group directs countless hateful attacks and attempts at character assassination of the defected members. The smear and character assassination campaign against dissidents further ensures that the exposé continues with full force.

That is why MKO was among the firsts to publicize the report by the Library of Congress report on Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and to translate its parts, particularly those concerning MKO and ex-members, into other languages to be circulated in a variety of affiliated web-sites and blogs. Although the report itself blends fact and fiction, a look at the given references leaves no doubt that either MKO has been tasked with the responsibility to prepare the report or has acted as a close consultant in preparation. Typically, whenever a disclosure is made by some defected member, MKO call it a slander against the group and a work of individuals who officially work with the regime. To look at it through the eyes of MKO and its leaders, anybody who is against the group is an agent of Iranian regime, that is to say all Iranian people but the group’s members and sympathizers. They include even the families who insist to see their relatives and children held against their will by the group.

To have a real understanding of the intra-organizational behaviors and principles within MKO in relation with the defection of members, the split and runaway of a member, and the ranking members in particular, is considered an unforgivable sin since the escapes have always faced the group with serious challenges. That is mainly because they make the closed group vulnerable to outsiders’ scrutiny. As a rule, the members are organized into teams and units each headed and controlled by a loyal ranking who is directly responsible for the deeds of his subordinates and their defections and escapes since they impose considerable political costs on the organization due to the fact that it would be hard to figure how much information is disclosed by the defected and to whom. Even the rank-and-files are under tight control if they turn to be willing to leave. To tell the truth, neither the insiders nor the ex-members as the outsiders are immune from the threatening, anti-human, cultic practices of MKO. It is a global threat and problem to be dealt with.

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Maryam Rajavi

Who can interview with Maryam Rajavi ?

Maryam Rajavi’s recent interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais appears to be one her few interviews with mass media. As the so-called president elect of the National Council of Resistance and the leader of the most viable alternative- as she claims – to the Islamic Republic, it seems odd that she has experienced so few appearances in the media, and roughly no appearance in Persian media.

Maryam Rajavi, the self-assigned president of the NCR and the co-leader of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO),seems to be too reluctant to appear in front of her country fellow men and answer controversial questions on her cult-like organization and its disappeared leader, Massoud Rajavi.

About two years ago in August 2011, Nooshabeh Amiri, the Iranian journalist published an article titled”Interview with Maryam Rajavi” on Rooz Online. Amiri wrote of a failed effort to have an interview with the leader of the MKO, Maryam Rajavi:

“A few years ago, one of the producers of CBS’s 60 Minutes asked me to arrange for the networks interview with Maryam Rajavi, a leader of Iran’s Mujahidin Khalq Organization (MKO). I told him then that I thought it was not possible to do this, to which he replied, “If the interview is going to be with a non-Iranian network, the response will certainly be different.”

“I then recruited the assistance of a person affiliated with the MKO. A few days later he provided me with an email address to contact. When I did, I was given a telephone number to contact, which in all honesty made me feel embarrassed for my initial assumption which was based on hear say. Subsequent events however proved me right.

“When I made the first call, I was given another telephone number to call. This was repeated several times in the course of a few months that followed, until the American producer called me and said the issue was over and that there was no need to follow-up.

“I concluded that 60 Minutes must have decided to call off the pursuit because of how long it had taken to arrange for the interview. He surprised me when he said that a representative of the MKO had made arrangements with the program’s senior producer and had made a condition for the interview and had written up the questions to be asked….

“This was pathetic, something that still continues.”[1]

“Pathetic”! This is the term Ms. Amiri uses to describe the MKO’s propaganda system. However, the group’s approach regarding media is fraudulent.

The MKO’s propaganda decides what media to interview with its leader as well as what questions to be asked. Considering various reports on human rights violations committed inside the MKO as a cult of personality, the group’s propaganda runners know that all peace activists, freedom lovers and independent journalists would ask questions of which the answers are beyond the red lines of the group. Thus, they never risk the façade of a “democratic” opposition to Islamic Republic they are trying to build for their cult-like organization.

The Spanish daily, El Pais does not ask any question to trouble Rajavi but the questions are so simply and directly asked that could recall you a memorized dialogue in a screenplay. For an authentic unbiased interview with Maryam Rajavi the most crucial question which has never been answered since American invasion to Iraq in 2003 — the same year that Maryam Rajavi was arrested by French Police in her headquarters in the suburb of Paris—is this:”Where is Massoud Rajavi?”

There are many other important questions to be asked particularly regarding numerous testimonies of former members. For instance, recent testimonies of former female members on sexual abuse of women of elite council of the group by Massoud Rajavi must be explained by Maryam Rajvi who is according to evidences the main person to make women sleep with Massoud Rajavi.[2]

According to the 2005 Human Rights Watch report ” No Exit”, inside MKO camps there are ”abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave” to “lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members.”[3]

In Ms. Amiri’s article you can also find a list of questions that may obsess any independent journalist who is going to interview Rajavi. The followings are some of them:

“Does the MKO see itself responsible to respond to questions such as its cooperation with Saddam Hossein in attacking and invading Iran?

“Under what strategy and goal were inexperienced youth asked to respond to the Mersad Operation inside Iran?

“Is internal criticism allowed within MKO and can it be reflected outside the organization?

“Is it true that some MKO members have left the organization on the basis of such instructions by the group to take up the responsibility of attacking other opponents of the Islamic republic?”[4]

To our surprise, the biased report of EL Pais begins with this ludicrous statement by Maryam Rajavi: ”popular support inside Iran is a source of legitimacy for this resistance” (!)

This opening sentence clearly indicates that the interview was actually managed by the interviewee not the interviewer.

What does Maryam Rajavi mean by “popular support” inside Iran?!

One thing is sure; Rajavi’s claim is absolutely false. Although the MEK claims to be loved and respected inside Iran, the truth is that most Iranians view the terrorist organization as ruthless traitors who killed their own countrymen, according to many reports. For example Massoud Banisadr who is a former top official of the group say in an interview with Steve Hassan:”After Iranian revolution, late seventies and early eighties MEK could change from a guerrilla (or terrorist organization according to different people’s definition) into a popular political group attracting thousands of young people. But after moving back to terrorism, ignoring and violating people’s ethics, beliefs and principles, especially working with Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein after the incursion of Iraq into Iran, they lost all their support inside Iran and as matter of fact in public view they changed into a traitor organization”. [5] Also, The Wall Street Journal writes of critical views on the group,”Critics of the MeK allege that the organization has no major support inside Iran and that its leaders, who are based outside Paris, run the group like a cult.”[6]

Based on Mrs. Rajavi’s own claim, the “source of legitimacy for the resistance”is definitely absent.

By Mazda Parsi

Reference:
[1] Amiri , Nooshabeh, Interview with Maryam Rajavi, Roozonline, August 22,2011
[2] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/3261 ;

MKO Ringleaders Abuse Female Members Sexually


[3]Human Rights Watch, No Exit, 2005
[4] Amiri , Nooshabeh, Interview with Maryam Rajavi, Roozonline, August 22,2011
[5] http://freedomofmind.com/FormerMeKtopofficialanswersquestions
22February2012.php
[6]Solomon, Jay &Perez, Evan, Iran Exile Group Nears U.S. Rebirth, the Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2012

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Anti-Iran MKO terror group receives UK support

Analysts have found that the UK uses various controversial strategies to support MKO terrorists.

The Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an anti-Iran terrorist group, whose members are stray across Europe and the U.S., receives all-out support from the UK government through Anti-Iran MKO terror group receives UK supportvarious controversial strategies, according to detached members.

In December 2012, it was revealed that an unnamed British company has bought the movable property of Ashraf Camp, located in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala near the Iranian border, worth $25 million. It also offered the Iraqi government $500 million for the camp, media reports said.

The unnamed company then declared that 60 percent of the proceeds of the transaction will be given to MKO terrorists.

The terrorist group was uprooted from Iraqi soil as stipulated in the country’s law.

The MKO, which is responsible for the deaths of 17,000 Iranians since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, fled to neighboring Iraq in the 1980s. The group received military training from former Iraqi dictator Saddam and set up its camp near the Iranian border in order to be able to carry out terror acts inside Iran.

The group also cooperated with Saddam in the massacres of Iraqi Kurds and in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq.

Later in December 2012, a former MKO member, Massoud Khodabandeh was interviewed on Press TV’s political program The Monarchy where he pointed out that the anti-Iranian terrorist group would not survive without support from Britain and other Western states.

“I don’t see any terrorist organization capable of continuing, unless somebody wants it. Somebody has got to want this terrorist organization [MKO], somebody has got to finance it and somebody has got to arm it,” Khodabandeh said.

“One of the reasons that I am saying they have support is; not facing them directly to stop their violent activities in the West and to stop their money laundering in the West. When I say money laundering, I have been in it, I have seen it. This is not an unknown concept for the British government”, he added.

In a documentary called Cult of the Chameleon, aired on Al Jazeera back in 2007, Khodabandeh’s wife Anne Singleton, also a former MKO member from Leeds, UK, explained how she was manipulated and taken into the cult by active MKO terrorist group members, while she attended Leeds University in the 1970s.

“When I became a full-time cult [MKO] member, I gave up everything that I had. I gave up my home and all the possessions in it,” Singleton said on the documentary.

Singleton eventually ended up in the Ashraf garrison for further manipulation and military training. Later on, she managed to escape the prison-like garrison, but with difficulty.

Apart from Iraq and Iran, the European Union (EU), Canada and even the United States had listed the MKO as an active terrorist organization. So how was the cult allowed to freely manipulate, promote and recruit members for itself in a prominent British University?

Moreover, a website called UK Committee in Support of Ashraf (UKCSA) is a London-based organization which openly supports the MKO. The organization has published articles and interviews and proposed the idea of removing the MKO from the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

The UKCSA presents the Ashraf camp with pictures of greenery, flowers and natures, making it look like an attractive location for visiting.

The UK-based website also makes out that it is a legal campaign helping people in the Ashraf garrison who are allegedly sick and that donations are needed to support ill patients in the camp.

More UK support for the MKO came as in April 2012; the American Free Press website reported that Britain takes part in hidden operations in the Middle East to train MKO terrorists to target Iranian scientists and officials.

“MEK fighters have also been trained at secret Middle East sites by special forces teams from Britain, the U.S. and Israel and have been supplied at U.S. taxpayer expense with state-of-the-art weaponry and surveillance gear”, the report said.

The MKO is behind a number of assassinations and bombings inside Iran. A number of EU parliamentarians previously condemned a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list.

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The cult of Rajavi

European intellectual views on the Cult of Rajavi

Dena Peace and Freedom Association interviewed a European intellectual on the Cult of Rajavi(MKO/MEK). Ms. Shemeltz who is an expert and scholar on psychotherapy, has personal and scientific experience about cults.

As the representative of Dena Peace and Freedom Association, Mr. Mohsen Abbasslou talked with the honorable expert, Ms. Shemeltz.

Abbaslou: Ms. Shemeltz! Thank you so much for your time. You are a psychotherapist and once you have lived in a cult in Western Africa so you get precious experience on living in cults. We are so pleased to have you here. You trusted Peace and Freedom Association and declared your readiness to share your ideas and experiences with us. This is an honor for our association.

Ms. Shemeltz! You are well informed about practices of cults. How do you define the MKO or in better words the Cult of Rajavi?

Ms. Shemeltz: I consider the system used in the MKO Cult the same as the system used in North Korean camps. In these camps everything is run by force and aggression. As I know and according to documents I studied on the MEK cult the impact of stalinistic approaches on the MEK is too significant.

For me, the story of the cult of Rajavi is like an unbelievable myth. During the 1970s there were various versions of such organizations but the MKO is very complicated. It does not comply with today world. The MKO members are sort of frozen people.

On the other hand, the leaders of the cult of Mujahedin present themselves as progressive and modern. Their inner reality does not go with the mask they wear outside.

Mr. Abbasslou: as an expert, how do you think the Cult of Rajavi could control and imprison individuals for so many years? How is this psychologically and scientifically feasible?

Ms. Shemeltz: in my opinion, before they enter the organization, people do not know how it works and what its functions are. They arrive in the cult while they know nothing about its internal relations, so they suddenly find themselves imprisoned. I think the MKO takes the members’ common sense.

Members of the cult even can’t go for a walk out of their camp. They have no individual freedom. The cult has taken their entire power for decision making or choosing. The members, held imprisoned in the cult have defined a strategy for themselves to stay alive:

“We obey the organization regulations to stay alive. We have no way out!”

Translated by Nejat Society

To be continued

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

More smoke and mirrors from the MEK propaganda factory

America’s national integrity held to ransom by MEK fear mongering

The MEK have been very keen to publicise a Library of Congress report called ‘Iran’s Ministry of America’s national integrity held to ransom by MEK fear mongeringIntelligence and Security: a Profile’.

On the surface this is understandable as the MEK is the sworn enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, a closer look at the content reveals a murkier truth.

The report is characterised by its mixture of allegation, assertion and allusion, much of which is not substantiated by evidence. The report blends fact and fiction in a manner intended to deceive and mislead. As such, this document is not an attack, it is a defensive act, it is a play on words intended to prevent informed discussion and stop important people being listened to. Indeed, the gratuitous mention of two specific individuals, Anne Singleton and Massoud Khodabandeh, who have consistently exposed the aspects of the Mojahedin Khalq which it most wants to hide – cult nature, human rights violations, mercenary relation to foreign agents – is the strongest possible indication of the provenance of this report.

The other indication is that the source of this specific misinformation is Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker. In a footnote the article “Disinformation Campaign in Overdrive: Iran’s VEVAK in High-Gear” is sourced at Global Politician, September 3, 2007, http://www.globalpolitician.com/23386-vevak-iran (accessed April 17, 2012). Interestingly, this website can no longer be accessed.

It is known that Zucker, along with his family visited Maryam Rajavi in Paris and was sufficiently impressed by her glamorous outfits, free dinners and weasel words to become an active advocate of the MEK in America.

However, Zucker’s article received a thorough retort back in 2007 from Professor Paul Sheldon Foote.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopiranwar/message/1557.

Reference to the same discredited article in this report can only be done out of ignorance, stupidity or desperation. Do Zucker and his ilk really believe that through defamation they can prevent the truth from emerging. Perhaps the MEK believe this will save their necks in Washington. Certainly Massoud Rajavi is deluded. He really believes that his cultic ‘thought-terminating clichés’ will work with everyone. In Zucker he has found a like minded person, willing to place hope over experience. But surely there are people in Washington who are not so willing to be so easily duped.

So, what is it that Rajavi and his supporters are so desperate to hide?

Part of the answer to this question lies in the recent article ‘Do not Disturb – Criminals at Work in Camp Liberty’ by one of the people named in the report. As time passes and the UNHRC processes the individuals in Camp Liberty for refugee status and relocation, the danger of further exposure of human rights abuses inside the MEK is becoming ever more critical for the cult. More and more exhausted and disillusioned MEK members are scheduled to come to Europe. When they are freed from Rajavi’s cultic constraints what else will they reveal about the cult and its criminal activities?

While the UN is timidly tiptoeing around outside the closed door of Camp Liberty afraid to intervene for fear of being labelled an ‘agent of the Iranian regime’ only three thousand individuals are affected.

But in America the implications behind this report signal a potent threat to the national interest. Behind the self-interested motivations of the MEK and its sponsors, there lies real danger for the American establishment. The problem for America is not the fact or fiction of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry’s reach into western countries. Instead, it is the reach of the internal enemies of America into its corridors of power which is truly disturbing.

Let us not forget that a similar document, mingling actual fact and unsubstantiated allegations masquerading as fact, became a central piece of evidence which was used in the legal argument to remove the MEK from the proscribed terrorism lists of both the UK and the European Union. Is this not a disturbing precedent?

Now, if Zucker and his ilk can insert this MEK written propaganda into an apparently official document for the Pentagon – an easy target of course as it is swarming with willing warmongers – will it be long before such documents reach into higher circles of power – that is, the people with America’s nuclear arsenal at their fingertips. The decision making clique in a national crisis cannot afford to be swayed by either ideologically biased or un-researched information.

When MEK misinformation so blatantly reaches the Pentagon, is it too far fetched to imagine it reaching The White House? Should a crisis arise, can Americans be confident that those at the top really have well researched and balanced information on which to base their decisions or could America be heading for a catastrophic miscalculation?

The loopholes to such a possibility can and should be closed. The MEK may look like friends now, but do not think they won’t turn around and bite you in the future.

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The Democracy on Mass Graves

Discovered mass graves are a miniature sample of MKO’s democracy in a greater world

Just after the downfall of Saddam, the Iraqi dictator, tens of mass graves were discovered around The Democracy on Mass GravesIraq, where thousands of Iraqis had been buried after apparent mass executions. The discovered graves accounted for a plainly shocking fact that how Saddam got rid of his opponents with no sense of remorse or mercy. And now after the evacuation of Camp Ashraf, a bastion for his mercenary forces, additional dimensions of crimes committed by his mercenaries have been unearthed.

The latest reports endorse that the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK/PMOI/NCR), known as witting accomplices in Saddam’s crimes, have been talented students of the late criminal master. As an Iraqi official says, several mass graves have been unearthed in Camp Ashraf. Reportedly stressed by Sadeq al-Husseini, the deputy chairman of Diyala’s provincial council, the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights is in charge of determining the identities of the bodies and to whom they belong; Kurds, Arab local residents or else. Regardless of the bodies’ identities, they have been human beings either slaughtered by Saddam, MKO’s forces or in joint operations. In any case, the responsibility is on MKO as it has long been dwelling on the bones of these bodies concealed from the outside and the parents and relatives who never heard any news of them.

The huge controversial feature of the MKO was its decision in 1983 to ally itself with the former Iraqi regime of Saddam. Arriving at an agreement, Massoud Rajavi moved, along with his loyal ring-leaders and majority of his forces, to Baghdad in 1986. Forming the National Liberation Army there with Saddam’s aid, he dispatched his forces to fight alongside Iraqi forces against Iranian troops that led to further diminishing of MKO’s credibility inside Iran. Moreover, a number of Iraqi Shi’ites and Kurdish organizations have alleged that MKO forces played a role in the suppression of the so-called Safar Intifada of March 1991 against the former Iraqi regime.

MKO’s collaboration with Saddam against Iraqi people exerted a dramatic impact on the group’s internal relation that led to serious inter-organizational problems as well as external challenges. Several dozen members announced their defection and deserted Camp Ashraf protesting among other things the group’s complicity in the suppression of Kurdish and Shi’ite uprisings in the aftermath of the Kuwait war. The arrival of these former members in Europe and their organized attempts at spotlighting the alleged abuses and deviations of the organization, led MKO to intensify its character assassination campaigns against its former members and to label them as the agents working for Iranian regime.

A slew of detentions inside MKO camps and torture at the hands of senior members were also the harsh reaction against the protests. But soon the outside world came to be notified of what was going on within the group when a credible and high-profile human-rights organization for the first time revealed and verified the testimony of the detached members. The 28-page HRW report, “No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps”, details how dissident members of the group were tortured, beaten and held in solitary confinement for years at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group’s policies.

With the fall of Rajavi’s bastion, the world will see more of the democracy he has promised to establish. These mass graves are just a miniature sample of a future democracy in a greater world. Many facts have already come out and this is not the last one which follows.

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK, a hated entity in the view of Iranians

MEK and other anti-Revolutionary groups has launched attempts to wield their impact on the upcoming Presidential Elections in Iran, to be held in June 2013. Other groups inside Iran have shown their interest in elections, though.

According to this report, members of MEK, a terrorist group, entered Iran illegally and were doing sabotage and terrorists acts during the street uprisings in Iranian 2009 presidential elections. They launched an attempt to extend the riots.

Mujahedin-e-Khalq, also known as Monafeqin, have committed more than 19,157 murders of Iranian citizens since 1979. They also have killed 5 US militaries.

Iran Khabar Agency is one of the news agencies of the MEK terrorist group, which, during 2009 Iranian presidential elections, reported false stories about the elections with the objective of spoiling image of Iran in international scene.

This website has been active since recent few months and published reports about 2009 presidential elections provocative stuff about upcoming elections. In one such act, the terrorist group has contacted citizens in Tehran as polling institutes and made proactive questions as ‘ was 2009 presidential elections a fraud?’, or ‘ do you think that, if your favorite candidate is not elected, will you go to the streets and protest?’.

U.S. and Canada delisted the terrorist organization from their terrorist list despite their red pages of crime against more than 19,000 Iranians. This provides opportunity for MEK to act freely against Iranian government and people.

MEK is such a hated entity in the view of Iranians, that even Iranian opposition groups deny their relationship with MEK.

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Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Do not Disturb – Criminals at work in Camp Liberty

Massoud and Maryam Rajavi accused of sexual cruelty

When the US army captured the MEK and confined them to Camp Ashraf in April 2003, they registered 3,800 individuals. Of these, 800 were women.

Women "rewarded" with pendants and robes after sexual ordeal

The figure has remained mostly constant, with some members being trafficked in and out of the camp, and some escaping the cult altogether. (The actual figures are unknown because the Pentagon allowed the MEK to shut the door of the camp and operate Camp Ashraf independently of both national and international law.)

Understandably it is the women who escaped from Rajavi and his cultic abuses who are proving the most problematic. They are very angry and they are proving very difficult to silence.

In the Autumn of 2012 a number of these women, having courageously overcome the stigma attached to such issues, joined together to speak publicly about the sexual abuses they suffered in the MEK. They allege that Massoud Rajavi, the de facto leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, not only deceived them into having sex with him but had also instigated a programme of coerced hysterectomies for all women members in order to ‘neutralise their sexuality’. Out of the 800 women registered in Camp Ashraf, they gave the names of 100 who have already become victims of Rajavi’s hysterectomy programme.

The women (several of whom had been appointed to the highest level of the MEK hierarchy – the Leadership Council which directly serves Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Maryam), described a bizarre process of preparation for their sexual encounter with Rajavi which was facilitated by and presided over by Maryam Rajavi, who, they said, procured specific women from the membership for Massoud’s use. The women were made to believe that refusal to participate would result in demotion, humiliation and even worse punishments.

Maryam Rajavi invented rituals such as being washed by other women members so as to ‘spiritually purify’ them, followed by the instruction to dance naked before both the Rajavis to prove they had ‘broken the physical and mental barriers’ to their total submission to Massoud. After these coercive practices, he would choose a bedmate for sex. The women have said that they did not agree to sex with Rajavi out of free will but because they had been coerced through deception into submitting to what they later came to recognise as rape.

The women who spoke out all now live in Europe. Other former MEK women members living in Iran and currently in Iraq are also said to be willing to give their testimony. The women described how they were deceived into undergoing spurious hysterectomies in order to fulfill Rajavi’s demand that they ‘divorce from their sexuality’.

In response, former Colonel, Leo McCloskey, Commander of Forward Operation Base in Ashraf until 2008, was featured on the MEK’s websites and media, attempting to denigrate the women and dismiss their claims by labeling them as ‘agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence’. Based on what knowledge and expertise did he manage to come up with such a nonsensical counter argument?

What is most disturbing about these revelations is the response from the establishment. I’m sure that everyone reading this article will be at least curious to know whether such outrageous accusations might be true or not. Perhaps those who are more familiar with the MEK’s past known behaviour will be willing at least to give some credence to these allegations. But for responsible bodies like the UN and even human rights organisations, which, over thirty years, have compiled reams and reams of documented evidence of gross abuses committed by the Rajavi cult (let us not forget the MEK victims found in Abu Ghraib prison), to ignore these easily verifiable witness statements because the MEK says they are a ‘plot by the Iranian regime to discredit the opposition’ really beggars belief.

The facts are easily verifiable. The physical evidence of hysterectomy can be found in the women’s bodies. It is a matter of fact, not opinion. And if those who managed to escape the cult have evidence consistent with their accusations, does it not behove those people actually responsible for their welfare to conduct an investigation into the condition of the other named women in the MEK who are trapped incommunicado in (the ironically named) Camp Liberty.

Let us look more closely then at the ‘one size fits all’ label used to denigrate the victims: ‘agent of the Iranian regime’. It is not the first time the label has been used by the MEK, nor will it be the last. After all, in the current reckless Western culture of ferocious Iran-bashing, it is an easy formula to trot out for a willing audience. And what a willing audience!

The phrase arises from the cultic nature of the MEK and of course the concept of ‘thought-terminating clichés’ is familiar among experts in cultic abuse. It describes the technique used by cult leaders to prevent their followers (victims) from using their critical faculties. Whenever the cliché is mentioned, the cult member stops thinking. In this case, the phrase is also linked to another technique ‘cultic phobias’ which is to introduce irrational fears which when triggered arouse a phobic reaction in the victim.

For members of the Rajavi cult, the phrase ‘agent of the Iranian regime’ fulfils both these purposes; they stop thinking and experience an amorphous, pervasive fear. In some cases they can easily resort to violence in response to this reaction. The really despicable aspect of this use of the label is that it is directed at those victims of the cult who have only recently escaped the abuses. For them the phrase stinks of menace and threat; exactly why the Rajavi’s choose to use it.

But for outsiders, clearly many are unable or unwilling to use their minds to think through the absurdity of this phrase. Or, maybe they don’t need to. Leo McCloskey surely wasn’t acting out of the goodness of his heart when he quoted the MEK phrase. In such crass cases, are we wrong to assume that pecuniary benefits most probably apply?

With the deployment of this thought-terminating cliché, Rajavi has effectively hung a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the closed door of Camp Liberty, while an apparently awestruck (by Rajavi’s genius no doubt) Western world tiptoes outside, afraid it too will be accused of being an ‘agent of the Iranian regime’.

Anne Singleton, Middle East Strategy Consultants, Author of "Saddam’s Private Army" and "The life of Camp Ashraf"

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