Page 796 – Nejat Society

Fundraising Cult techniques within MKO

Failing in its military phase, although never denouncing its armed strategy, Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has adopted a diplomatic phase mainly stressing on a prodemocracy campaign in the Western countries as an appropriate means to survive. The new phase, in contrast to its previous aggressive phase, relies less on the human forces and more on abundant financial sources that play a crucial role in the life and demise of the organization. The ever-increasing propaganda and political expenses in the West, modern lifestyle privileges, as seen in the leaders and the members of the National Council of resistance, as well as the running daily expenses of the forces residing in Camp Ashraf and those scattered in other countries require tremendous financial resources. A simple calculation reveals that the organization does have to avail unlimited financial resources to meet its surging financial expenses. Even the organization itself implicitly denies its total rely on sympathizers’ financial aids especially when nobody knows how long they have to sit waiting for the regime’s overthrow. The curious paradox is so disturbing that it makes leaders give some justifying explanations from time to time. In his message delivered on July 3, Massoud Rajavi stated:

Only the Iranian people and history are qualified to make any judgment on the veracity and independency of this resistance. We have reiterated that we are ready to give a detailed record of what we have done through a forty-two year long struggle and any spent penny to Iranian people living in any region from the north to the south. [1]

That is nothing more than a tactic to evade giving justifiable explanations. To escape imposed allegations the organization had to react by periodically calling for donations and financial aides, as advertised in its media and press, in the past two years.

The released documents after the fall of Saddam and also admissions made by the ex-members all indicate that Mojahedin had received abundant sums of dollars from the Iraqi agents as a bounty for espionage collaboration. Only in one of these sessions, due to reported information by Abbas Davari, the Iraqi agents granted the organization a remarkable sum of 50 million in dollars.

No doubt, from the day Mojahedin settled in Iraq till Saddam’s fall, the organization fully benefitted Saddam’s bountiful financial aids. But Saddam’s fall and the regional and political fluctuations led Mojahedin into a financial vacuum and they had to look for new resources to cover their huge expenses. But Mojahedin suffered no financial shortages since they have been commonly indulged in a variety of cult-like techniques to raise funds. Besides, they have promoted much developed and sophisticated techniques. The techniques can be classified and separately discussed as follows:

– Internal techniques of financial abuse

– Organized techniques of fundraising

– Political and social techniques of abuse

Internal techniques of financial abuse

The techniques mainly rely on members, sympathizers and their families’ financial potentialities. Being under political and psychological impact of the organization, they are more open to persuasion of the group and suggestible to offer what they are demanded. Politically, socially and ideologically convinced that the group draws the boundary between two worlds of absolute white and black, they are ready to offer whatever they own in addition to persuade friends and relatives to make remarkable donations. Here are the processes.

Persuading individuals to turn over their properties

It is not too hard to prove that under influential cult mechanisms the individuals willingly surrender whatever property they have gathered all through their career. When they easily consent to do whatever they are demanded to prove their loyalty and devotion to the cult and leader, it is much easier a task to relinquish property and savings unquestionably. To achieve the cause is deemed above anything and the worldly things have to be sacrificed for the greater achievement. That is the point where the individual is persuaded to close his eyes over whatever he owns as worthless unless spent for the accomplishment of the cause. The majority of the recruits in MKO who owned properties or savings rendered them up to the organization retaining not a penny.

Persuading individuals to earn incomes

It seems common in many cults to persuade individuals to travail in fitted professions to earn money for the cult. As the active members of a cult and organization, it is a part of their struggle for the cause to raise funds for the group’s expenses. Far above a duty, it is an organizational command to load the group’s treasure. At the present, many of Mojahedin’s cadres and members, based on their education and professional abilities, are engaged in a variety of profitable businesses and jobs to channel the incomes into the organization’s accounts. Explained by Anne Singleton, fundraising activities marked the degree of loyalty to Rajavi:

As regards membership, Rajavi has at his disposal, a totally loyal and self-sacrificing force of up to three thousand people who are willing to perform any task or deed he requires without question. One of the most important of these tasks has been a concerted and prolonged fund-raising campaign. For nearly two decades, the Mojahedin have been collecting money under the disguise of charity work for victims of Iranian repression, earthquakes and floods. Everyone who becomes involved with the Mojahedin is required to take part in fund-raising activities. This means standing in the street in all weathers, all day and asking the public for money. In the evening, a door to door collection is also employed. Collectors are urged to make up any deficit in their daytime amount in these evenings by working even harder. So important has this fund-raising become that classes are held to teach newcomers how best to manipulate the ‘subject’. Fund-raising very early on became a litmus test for support. Only those prepared to undergo the hardship and difficulty of this activity, were regarded as ready to move on to the next stage of involvement. [2]

Persuading individuals to engage in extortion and charity activities

As part of the organization activities’ duty in Western countries, they resort to a variety of alms gathering and charity activities in the streets. Through deceitful ways, they try to win the sympathy from European citizens under different pretexts of raising funds for homeless Iranian children, political refugees, the families of political prisoners, jobless and needy people and the like. Referring to bullying tactics of fundraising in Western streets, Anne Singleton writes:

When Maryam came to Europe in 1993, she brought with her a totally dedicated force who undertook any task required. They set about taking over from the supporters’ role of fundraising. With their bullying tactics, their productivity far exceeded anything seen before. Some were able to return up to 1500 pounds sterling, per day. But even before this, in one year alone, Iran Aid charity in the UK had a declared income of 5 million pounds. Its undeclared income has been estimated at over twice this, making a total of over 15 million pounds in one year. If this amount is multiplied for just ten countries: UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, then an annual amount of 150 million pounds can be estimated to have made its way to the Mojahedin organisation. If this is multiplied over ten years, then the figure of 1.5 billion pounds gives a rough estimate of the resources which Massoud Rajavi has amassed through the efforts of his devoted followers only in the streets of the West. [3]

Anne Singleton also states that the organization even exploited elderly members and sent them into the streets to collect money:

The Mojahedin have also brought to Europe some of their more elderly members who can no longer cope with the harsh conditions in Iraq. These people are also used in fund-raising. That is, standing in the streets from morning until night collecting money under the guise of Iran Aid. These elderly people have little other choice considering the pressures on them. [4]

Persuading individuals to extort money from the families

The individuals are persuaded to conceptualize a black and evil picture of whoever stays out of the context of the cult or organization. Thus the members are convinced that any action to deceive people in general and their parents and relatives in particular are acknowledged as right and ethical. As explained by Margaret Singer:

Psychotherapy and self, improvement cults are particularly known for getting members to produce revised personal histories and, especially, to view their parents as evil and no longer trustworthy. Similarly, as I have mentioned, the religious cults train members to regard outsiders, even blood relatives, as of Satan and to be avoided at all costs. [5]

The individuals, who have left their parents when they needed to have them along, as it is the case with members of Mojahedin, can readily plot to extort money from them. Many MKO’s ex-members confess that under the group’s instructions, they pried big sums of money out of their parents.

Cults also turn members against their families, using a plethora of rationales made to fit the group’s ideology. One political cult, for example, "tests" young recruits by having them deliberately lie to their parents while someone in leadership stands next to them when they make the call. This is a first step in both separating recruits from their families and teaching them to follow irrational orders. [6]

Revolutionary seizure

Admitted by a number of the ex-members, the properties of some members and sympathizers in European cities were confiscated by the agents of the organization under the direct command of the Rajavies. The process will be discussed in detail.

Sources:

[1]. Massoud Rajavi’s delivered message on July.

[2]. Anne Singleton’s Saddam’s Private Army.

[3]. Ibid.

[4]. Ibid.

[5]. Thaler Singer, Margaret; Cults in Our Midst, p. 89.

[6]. Ibid.

Bahar Irani – Mojahedin.ws – October 27, 2007

October 30, 2007 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi and Camp Ashraf: Cult Hallmarks of MKO

As mentioned in the previous article, exaltation of self-immolation in the messages of MKO’s leaders is in fact an applied ploy to encourage members to commit suicidal operations for cult causes. The causes displayed as holy, their accomplishment requires ceaseless sacrifices on the part of members. Eric Hoffer, explaining on the glorification of terror acts by the cults states: “The holy terror only knows no limit and never flags”.

Terror-exaltation is not the chief approach manipulated by certain cults and Mojahedin in particular. In his few messages delivered from his hideout in the past recent years, Rajavi has particularly provoked continuation of suicidal operations as an emergency exit from the raised crisis. The self elected leader of Mojahedin has mainly focused on the preservation of two cult dynamics as the strategic guidelines in his messages, namely, Maryam Rajavi and Camp Ashraf. Calling on all the sympathizers of Mojahedin to fight in a united front against the EU for the removal of the terrorist tag, Rajavi in his message of March 25 stated:

At the present, it is a national duty on any Iranian and especially on our victorious opposition forces throughout the world to preserve two things which have turned to be two sides of the same coin. On one side rests a portrait of Maryam and on the other side, a perspective of Ashraf. I urge you one by one to struggle like Maryam and along with her day and night to mint the coin and achieve the end. [1]

There seems to be no need to explain what crucial and strategic roles Maryam and Camp Ashraf play in Mojahedin’s explicit cult relations. Regardless of their political potentialities to motivate and push the insiders forward, they represent the unequivocal manifestations of a much transcendental entity, Massoud Rajavi, who can never be fathomed unless through a deep comprehension of Mojahedin’s internal ideological revolution. It does require a high price which the members have to pay. He patterns Ashraf as a model for all European sympathizers to follow:

Adhere to Ashraf’s resistance forces and rise up ahead in line with phoenix of liberty (Maryam Rajavi) in any region in the country. [2]

It might seem too exaggerating an idea that a geographically isolate military camp might maintain so dynamic prerogative to instigate a national uprising. Beyond a geographical location, Ashraf has to be regarded as Mojahedin’s ideological receptacle or a synagogue of organizational teachings whereto all the sympathizers have to inevitably turn their attention to be ideologically inspired. In fact, Maryam and Ashraf have impressions far beyond two names; they are instruments with two internal and external functions. Internally, they are concepts to convey the cult commands concealed from the eyes and notice of the west. Externally, they are manipulated to keep the cult’s ideology dark to buy political legitimacy. Theorizing the external aspect, Mehdi Abrishamch explained:

Internationally, we intend to convince countries that we are the ones who represent Iranian people. Of course, in none of the international scenes the issue of ideology and political stances is ever discussed. Of the importance is to impose ourselves, on account of a sea of blood, as representing Iranian people. In the accomplishment of this strategic line, we must incubate how to benefit the existing conflicts between the imperialists. [3]

The organized gatherings and extravaganzas in Camp Ashraf with Rajavi’s coincidently delivered messages entirely rotate around cult and ideological instructions. In his latest message, Rajavi called on all sympathizers to adapt themselves to Ashraf’s capacities. It is a command for any sympathizer to be detached from his/her personality and to develop a personality of absolute devotion to the organization and leadership. Rajavi’s messages work as a powerful magnet to associated scattered particles of the cult, a common procedure in most cults of personalities. Expounding on the effacement of individual separateness, Eric Hoffer writes:

The effacement of individual separateness must be thorough. In every act, however trivial, the individual must by some ritual associate himself with the congregation, the tribe, the party, etcetera. His joys and sorrows, his pride and confidence must spring from the fortunes and capacities of the group rather than from his individual prospects and abilities. Above all, he must never feel alone. Though stranded on a desert island, he must still feel that he is under the eyes of the group. [4]

Then, the insiders’ submission to the leader and whatever he demands them in his presence and absence is the result of his full authority over them. The sympathizers’ ideological dependence on the organization has convinced them that there are eyes watching them all the time and they must be in constant association with other particles to form a whole. Now in the absence of the leader, Maryam and Ashraf are considered the pivotal axle around which the whole body of Mojahedin rotates; they are the strategic red lines that nobody is permitted to transgress.

Sources:

[1]. Massoud Rajavi’s Message delivered on March 25.

[2]. Ibid.

[3]. Revolutionary Diplomacy vs. Liberal Diplomacy and open, anti-revolutionary policies, p. 12.

[4]. HOffER, ERIC; The True Believer, Harper &. Row Publishers, New York, 1966, p. 61.

Bahar Irani, Mojahedin.ws, October 19, 2007

October 28, 2007 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Cult of the Chameleon

A documentary by Aljazeera television about Rajavi cult (Mojahedin Khalq Organisation) transcription and video file Aljazeera television, October 17, 2007 Aljazeera television on october 17, 2007 broadcasted a documentary about Rajavi cult. Cult of the Chameleon

Aljazeera

Hello and welcome to WITNESS. I am Rageh Omar. During the ongoing and often contentious negotiations between Iran and the United States, there is one subject they both agree on: the MEK or the People’s Mojahedin of Iran is a terrorist organisation. Massoud Rajavi is the leader of this bizarre Iranian Cult Cult of the Chameleon who over the years helped Ayatollah Khomeini overthow the Shah, then declared war on the Islamic Republic ruthlessly killing their fellow countrymen. They allied themselves with Saddam Hussein but now that he is gone are ardent supporters of the coalition. The MEK has switched allegiances so often that any underlying ideology is long gone. But one fundamental tenet remains; personal power.

Massoud Rajavi claims to be a bridge between his followers and God and the faithful believe him. Rajavi is a master of human psychology. He manipulated his followers’ weaknesses until they are prepared to do anything for him. One woman carried cyanide capsules in her mouth for two years ready to die for her leader.

Iranian film maker Maziar Bahari met her and other followers as he tried to untangle the CULT of the Chameleon.

Narrator: For more than three decades, it has been one of the most secretive cults in the world – The People’s Mojahedin of Iran – or the MEK. Its leader is Massoud Rajavi.

Anne Singleton: Massoud Rajavi has likened himself as the bridge between people and God. Now from that position, he can more or less order his followers to do anything.

Marjan Malek: The MEK tell their members that Massoud Rajavi is not only your leader, but also your husband, father and brother. He is the only one who should matter in your life and you shouldn’t think about anyone else. Narrator: In a suburban house in the northern English city of Leeds, Anne Singleton looks like any other suburban mother having a bit of after school playtime with her son. But for Anne and her husband Massoud Khodabandeh, it has been a long strange journey to this normality.

In the 1970s like many university students, Anne was looking for a challenge and a cause. She found it in an Iranian revolutionary group active in Leeds University.

Anne Singleton (former MEK supporter): When I became a full time cult member I gave up everything that I had. I gave up my home, and all the possessions in it. I gave up my car. I converted to Islam. I became Moslem. I had even burned my diaries. Since I was a kid I kept diaries, and in order to show them that I was so dedicated to them I just burned them all. Just, I gave myself to them.

Narrator: When Anne joined the MEK in Leeds in 1979, the organisation was helping the leader of the Iranian revolution – Ayatollah Khomeini – to depose Iran’s Monarch – the Shah.

The MEK shared Khomeini’s hatred of America and called him their Imam or Islamic leader. But the Ayatollah never thought Rajavi was a true Moslem. After the revolution, the MEK was outlawed, and Rajavi was banned from running for president.

Narrator: The MEK’s terror teams killed many officials as well as more than ten thousand innocent Iranians. In turn the Islamic government executed and tortured thousands of MEK members, and even those who only sympathised with Rajavi’s ideas. Majid Farahani was one of them. He was working as a trades union activist when he was arrested and sent to prison for four years.

Majid Farahani: When I was in prison they tortured me in different ways. For example they played football with me. The torturers literary kicked me around between them. They also made me lie down at the door of the torture chamber, so I could hear the screams of others being tortured inside. But the most effective form of torture was beating my feet with an electric cable. When they hit you they start with a thick cable, after a while your feet go numb and you can’t feel anything anymore. So they change the cable and hit you with a smaller one. That hurts much more.

Narrator: Like thousands of imprisoned political and labour activists, soon after his release Majid joined the MEK’s guerrilla fight against the Islamic government.

Majid Farahani: While I was being tortured, the main thing I was thinking about was when my feet were going to heal. But while my feet were healing there was not a moment in which I was not thinking about taking revenge for what they did to me.

Narrator: While the tortures and assassinations continued in Iran, in London Anne Singleton joined a group of Rajavi supporters on a hunger strike against Khomeini’s regime.

Anne Singleton: After about three or four days of hunger strike, I began to feel if as I was really on a different level to the rest of the world around me. It was almost as if when I walked down the street, I was walking at twice the speed of everyone else. I was having a really kind of spaced out experience. And I interpreted this – and I was encouraged to interpret this – as if I had kind of seen a hidden truth.And the truth was that by understanding the Mojahedin and understanding their leadership – the Rajavis – I had somehow transcended normal existence and that therefore I had made the grade.

Narrator: In 1981 Rajavi escaped to France. Soon after, the MEK began evolving into a cult. Rajavi declared that the organisation should be run equally by a man -himself – and a woman. The problem was Rajavi’s wife had died fighting the Islamic government. He needed a new partner to join him at the top of the organisation. Rajavi’s deputy Mehdi Abrishamchi voluntarily divorced his wife Maryam, so Rajavi could marry her.

Massoud Rajavi’s marriage was the beginning of a series of ideological and sexual revolutions which he used to take over his followers’ lives. Anne

Singleton: They went beyond arranged marriages and actually ordered their members to divorce. This didn’t just mean that if you are married – actually married to somebody – you must divorce them. It meant that if you weren’t married you had to somehow mentally, emotionally divorce, to understand that you are divorced from your sexuality. And the demand was made – on the surface – it was justified by saying that you had to give all your energy and your time to the cause and not be distracted by your sexual feelings and your love for your wife or your husband.

Narrator: Anne’s husband Massoud Khodabandeh was Rajavi’s bodyguard for six years. He is one of the very few people who observed up-close the characteristics which make Rajavi a charismatic leader.

Massoud Khodabandeh (former MEK member): As someone who lived closely with Mr Rajavi for years, I can tell you that he is very intelligent and he is quite a charming man, but most importantly he is a hard worker. He spends a lot of time and energy on whatever he wants to do. He is really interested in psychology. There is no book on psychology that he has not read a few times. But he is a very lonely person. That might be because he is a ruthless leader who has killed or alienated many of his close friends and colleagues.

Narrator: In 1986 at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, the MEK moved to Iraq at the invitation of Saddam Hussein. Saddam was already responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iranian young men. To many Iranians who already hated the MEK for its campaign of terror, Rajavi’s collaboration with Iraq was nothing short of treason.

Massoud Khodabandeh: Shortly after we went to Iraq, we became part of Saddam’s Army. We collaborated very closely with the Iraqis. You may ask me now: “how you help the enemy of your country?” But it goes back to the nature of cults. Being part of a cult kills all kinds of emotions in you. A member becomes a tool in the hands of a cult. You don’t care about your country, or even your mother and father anymore. We saw ourselves as saviours of humanity, so nationalism or other feelings were not important for us anymore.

Narrator: The group settled at camp Ashraf, a military base one hundred kilometres north of Baghdad. In this isolated setting, Rajavi could exert more control on his followers and delude them about his power. In 1988 he convinced them all to make an all out attack on the regime in Iran, an act of collective suicide. Rajavi told his followers that they could take over Tehran within a few days. The operation was called the Eternal Light. And the order to attack was give by Rajavi’s wife Maryam.

Massoud Khodabandeh: At the time of operation Eternal Light, we were isolated in camp Ashraf in Iraq and didn’t know anything about what was going on in Iran. We were under the illusion that if we attacked Iran, the people of Iran would help us and then we could topple Khomeini’s government. That was wrong and most Iranians we came across fought against us.

Narrator: After the attack Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the massacre of MEK members inside Iranian prisons. Within a few weeks thousands of MEK prisoners were summarily executed. Rajavi in turn, used the legacy of the Eternal Light martyrs to reinvigorate the organisation.

Massoud Khodabandeh: Rajavi had his own reasons to fight the Iranian regime. He believed that more victims on either side of the conflict would help him consolidate his control over the MEK. After the operation he even exaggerated the number of the dead on both sides. Ironically Mr Rajavi was helped in his mission by the Iranian government. They killed about three to four thousand MEK prisoners after the operation and ensured that Rajavi could rule the MEK for years.

Rageh Omar: For individuals caught up in the strange world of a cult, the price is high. But on the world’s political stage the MEK, led by Massoud Rajavi still had a few more surprises. Join me after the break. Welcome back. Life inside a cult is filled with disinformation and psychological manipulation. Massoud Rajavi is a master of mass hypnosis, harnessing the faith of his followers and convincing them to fight his battles. He switches allegiances at will to suit the current political climate. But some started to question their leader when he asked them to kill children. Narrator: In 1991, at the height of the first Gulf War, Saddam found a new use for Rajavi. He ordered the MEK to help put down the uprising of the Iraqi Kurds with maximum force.

Majid Farahani: When we entered the town of Kifri in Iraqi Kurdistan, the MEK used heavy artillery against anyone who was in their way. It didn’t matter if the person was an innocent civilian, a man, a woman or even a child. The MEK shot anyone who came in their way through the town.

Narrator: Majid’s platoon killed most of the captives, but one was handed to the Iraqis to be executed.

Majid Farahani: They brought this little boy who was hit in the stomach and was suffering a lot. The MEK didn’t give him any medical help or even a glass of water. The next morning they handed the boy to the Iraqi authorities and the Iraqis killed him right there and then. I can never forget the screams of the boy who called Baba, Baba, asking for his father. Those words still echo in my head. Narrator: Majid and many others left the organisation in protest after the genocide against the Kurds. Once again Rajavi needed new members for the MEK. He found them among vulnerable Iranian asylum seekers in Europe. In 1996, Marjan Malek was living as a refugee in Holland.

Marjan Malek (former MEK member): The MEK are masters of human psychology. When they meet someone they spot that person’s weak points. They talked to me and they realised that I had many problems with my ex-husband who used to beat me. So they started talking about women’s rights and the equality between men and women, in order to attract me for the organisation.

Narrator: Marjan was born into a working class family in Tehran. She was not politically active and simply left Iran with her family to find a better life in Europe. When the MEK operatives first approached Marjan in Holland, her asylum application had just been rejected. The MEK helped her successfully appeal the Dutch government’s decision and in so doing, gained a new recruit for the organisation. By the time Marjan joined the MEK, Rajavi was using even more personal measures to control his followers.

Marjan Malek: Sometimes Massoud Rajavi had general meetings with women and never allowed men to enter the session. I remember in one of those meetings he gave us brushes, combs and hairclips as a gift. But before giving them to us he used them on his own hair first. Or in another session, he gave women Terrycloth robes as a gift. Again he put them on first and walked around the stage a little bit before giving robes to the women.

Narrator: In 1998, Marjan was chosen to be a member of an all women sabotage team sent into Iran.

Marjan Malek: Before leaving for operations in Iran, I had training in camp Ashraf on how to hold cyanide capsules under my tongue. We had to use the capsules in case we got arrested by the Iranian regime. We had to break the glass, scratch our tongues with it, and within a few seconds commit suicide, so we couldn’t reveal any organisational secrets to our captors. In order to practice, we put two small date pits under our tongues. I hope I can remember how to do it – good – I still remember. We had to hold the pits for days under our tongues to practice, and the pits are really hard. I am sorry, can I throw these out?

Narrator: After a failed attack on an army base in Tehran, Marjan was captured in a restaurant just as she was taking out the cyanide capsules so she could eat. The MEK thought that she succeeded in committing suicide. Rajavi called her a martyr . . . a shining emerald in the sea of love who reached the highest levels of dignity and glory.

Marjan Malek: When they arrested me I thought of nothing else but Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. I didn’t think of getting killed, tortured or whatever else might be about to happen to me. My only thought was that I disappointed Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

Narrator: Soon after her arrest, Marjan publicly denounced the MEK. At a press conference, she told reporters that while in prison she had time to question Rajavi’s policies and his cult of personality. Marjan came to realise that terrorism and collaboration with Saddam had made Rajavi a hatred figure in Iran. She also experienced the new attitude that the Iranian government took towards the MEK prisoners.

Marjan Malek: When I was in prison, I often asked my captors when they tortured and killed the MEK members in the past, why they weren’t doing that now? They answered that in the past they didn’t know better so they resorted to violence. But now they realise that if they killed me, my whole family would want to revenge my blood. So the Iranian regime has realised that if they treat the MEK as cult members and not criminals, there will not be bad blood between them and the victims family, so there would not be any reason for revenge.

Narrator: Soon after leaving the MEK, Marjan opted for normal life. She married another MEK dissident and they now live in the Netherlands with Marjan’s two daughters from her former husband.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Rajavi ordered the MEK to greet the coalition forces wholeheartedly. Rajavi himself went into hiding and he has not been seen since. The MEK surrendered their arms and offered to help the Americans to fight against the Ayatollahs in Iran.

Rajavi’s words sounded like music to the ears of those Americans who thought after the fall of Baghdad they could attack Tehran. While many in the Pentagon wanted the United States to support the MEK, the State Department insisted that Rajavi cannot be trusted. But Saddam’s overthrow meant that the MEK had to find other ways of financing their survival in Iraq. There are many stories of members embezzling their parents to send money to them.

Rezvan and Mohammand Saffari’s son joined the cult sixteen years ago.

Mohammad and Rezvan Saffari (parents of an MEK member): He never called us or tried to get in touch with us for fifteen years. We thought that – god forbid – he might have died in a war. He said I want to leave the MEK and I need money to hire a lawyer. I withdrew whatever savings I had to send to him. I was really happy that I could send him that money. I thanked God that he could finally come back to us – come home.

I worked so hard to raise my son. I worked until midnight to provide for him and his brothers and sisters. I sent him to London to become a dentist, to become a useful member of society. I really don’t know what to say.

Narrator: Their son gave the money to the MEK and is now one of spokesmen of the organisation.

Massoud Rajavi is still in hiding and still in charge. His organisation is listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union. For three decades he has changed ideologies and swapped allegiances, while keeping his followers enthralled with sexual manipulation. After the American debacle in Iraq, Rajavi’s followers are trapped at a camp in the Iraqi desert, awaiting his next alliance.

And in northern England, at least one former cult member thinks about those in the desert all the time.

Anne Singleton: I look now at the people in camp Ashraf and I remember how I was in that organisation. And I feel nothing but the mostenormous compassion for them. I really wish I could help them to escape from that organisation because I do feel very deeply how inhuman their life is in many ways. They really have no rights at all. And now that I have regained my freedom – my freedom of thought – of belief – my freedom of speech – and just basic enjoyment of life, I understand how deeply their humanity has been crushed, and I really wish they could be helped.

Rageh Omar: Massoud Rajavi’s followers are still sitting in the Iraqi desert waiting for their leader’s next move. They are being ‘looked after’ by American and Bulgarian forces.

Thank you for watching. Cult Of The Chameleon

Download Cult of the Chameleon

October 28, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

Function of the Cult’s Army after the fall of Rajavi

Function of the Cult's Army after the fall of Rajavi

October 24, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Terrorism Awareness Indeed

I’m very excited and pleased to introduce today’s guest poster, Danny Postel, who comes to us with some absolutely chilling revelations about the bad faith of the neoconservatives’ supposed dedication to”freedom”(I know, I know: you’re shocked). Danny is the author of Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism and is co-coordinator of the Committee for Academic and Intellectual Freedom of the International Society for Iranian Studies.

By Danny Postel

During the week of October 22-26, an official announcement effuses, “The nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.” Ringmastered by David Horowitz, this circus will be performing under the tent of something called the”Terrorism Awareness Project.”

The purpose of this ballyhoolooza, we are told, is to confront the “Big Lies” of the Left regarding terrorism and militant Islam. Worthy subjects, to be sure. Indeed I would like to help the sponsors of the “wake-up call” promote awareness of them. Toward this end, let’s consider the American Right’s “special relationship” with one group of terrorists.

The U.S. State Department officially considers the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) a Foreign Terrorist Organization. While those honors date back to 1994, they’ve been renewed during the Bush years. Indeed in 2003 Foggy Bottom went further, including the National Council of Resistance of Iran — an MEK alias — under the terrorist designation. (The MEK is also known as the People’s Mujahedeen.)

To make a long and bizarre story short, the MEK got its start in early 1960s Iran, helped overthrow the Shah in 1979, but quickly turned on the revolutionary government it helped bring to power. Employing an ideological blend of Stalinism and Islamism, the tactics of a paramilitary guerilla faction, and the organizational structure of a cult, the group went into exile, eventually making their home in Iraq in the mid-1980s. Not only did Saddam give the organization cover: he armed, funded, and utilized them for a variety of ends over two decades.

The group’s wicked political brew was on spectacular display on the old MEK flag (see below; since abandoned), with its sickle and Kalashnikov positioned atop of a Koranic verse. (Not — to state the obvious — that the mere presence of a Koranic verse in and of itself implies Islamist political commitments, but in this case the shoe very much fits.)

Here you have virtually everything the Right claims to oppose all rolled into one: Islamism, Marxism, terrorism, and Saddam. Naturally, then, neoconservatives would utterly deplore the MEK and everything it stands for, right? The MEK would in fact make an ideal target for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week and Terrorism Awareness efforts, no?

Well, no. At least one of the carnival’s acts, it turns out, is rather fond of the Islamo-Stalinist-terrorist cult group, and has repeatedly argued for the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of terrorist groups and indeed urged the U.S. government to embrace it. Daniel Pipes, who will be speaking at Tufts on October 24th as part of the Horowitz high jinks, has made the MEK a recurring theme in his writings going back several years.

Pipes has also gone to bat for the MEK right in the pages of Horowitz’s house organ.

But Pipes is far from alone on the Right in championing the MEK. He co-authored the first piece linked to above with Patrick Clawson of the right-wing Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Right-wing commentator Max Boot has argued not merely for the removal of the MEK from the terrorist list but for funding and unleashing it to do battle with Iranian forces — this while casually acknowledging that it is a “political cult.”

In some cases the MEK plays a stealth role in the media machinery of the American Right. What the FOX News Channel tells viewers about Alireza Jafarzadeh when he appears on its airwaves is that he is an “FNC Foreign Affairs Analyst.” What you have to go to the FOX News website to discover, however, is that Jafarzadeh served “for a dozen years as the chief congressional liaison and media spokesman for the U.S. representative office of Iran’s parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.” But it is scarcely known that the sonorous-sounding National Council of Resistance of Iran is in fact a front name for the MEK.

Now, it’s true that Jafarzadeh discontinued his post with the National Council of Resistance of Iran—but only when (and only because) its Washington office was forced to close in 2003 as a result of the State Department decision about it being a front for the MEK. It’s not like he had a change of heart.

If you attend an “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” event, you might want to ask the speakers about this terrorist cult and whether they condemn it. Some of them might — not all neoconservatives agree on the MEK.

But the fact that several prominent American conservatives have cozied up to an Islamist-Stalinist cult that was on Saddam’s payroll and the State Department considers a terrorist organization — this raises serious questions (to put it mildly) about the Right’s bedfellows and the calculus that determines them.

It suggests the need for a little more terrorism awareness.

Commonsense – By Rick Perlstein

October 21, 2007 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Indoctrination of Suicidal Operations in MKO

A scrutiny into the internal relations of the cults, especially in their leaders’ manner of conveying orders to the members while they are absent, reveals that most of these orders are issued indirectly through tokens and expressions incorporated in the messages. But of course these tokens and expressions are thoroughly discussed and apprehended in a conducted series of inter-organizational instruction meetings. In the terrorist cult of Mojahedin-e Khalq, as it might be in other cults, it has been a preferably common approach at least for the last few years to prepare the members psychologically for unexpected and unplanned operations instead of giving direct commands. Nearly two decades before Mojahedin’s members first committed self-immolations in a number of the western countries in June 2003, Massoud Rajavi in his message delivered on the occasion of his marriage with Maryam Azodanlou (Maryam Rajavi) mentioned the suicidal self-immolations as indications of devotion and ideological loyalty:

I avouch once more that self-immolation and suicidal feats prove inferior compared with that redemption and sacrifice. As for Mojahedin at the present, self-sacrifice is the least they can do. From that day on, I saw no Mojahed and read no report unless they volunteered and dedicated for suicidal operations. Of course, it is not suicide but freedom and redemption. We are forerunners of vehemence regardless of how many innocent Iranians might be sacrificed. [1]

At the same meeting, Rajavi announced members’ preparedness for committing self-immolation which specifically indicated a coded revolutionary message:

Any reborn Mojahed carries certain codes and manners. I found identical codes and manners in anybody and any letter I encountered that day coming from inside or outside of the country; they all volunteered for suicidal operations, and each insisted to be the first. [2]

Ebrahim Khodabandeh, a detached member of MKO, reiterates that such modus operandi is common cult-like practices applied by majority of cults. The members are provoked to carry out feats rather than being given direct orders. As he instances in the case of his own arrest, the organization attempted to provoke his daughter to commit self-burning:

On some occasions, the organization refrains to issue direct orders; the members are instigated if they are to be indulged in an activity. He is made to believe he has made a self-generated decision. They never tell somebody, for example, to set himself on fire; they say ‘if I were you, I would set myself on fire’…. When I was arrested in Surya and were sent to Iran, the organization made an instant call to my daughter in London telling him I was under torture and was to be executed soon. They told him ‘if we were you, we would go before the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs and set ourselves on fire’. [3]

The wave of Mojahedin’s self-immolations in June 2007 in objection to Maryam Rajavi’s arrest by French police is the most explicit instance of cult activities practised by MKO. In contrast to the claims made by Maryam Rajavi that the parade of the human torches in Western countries was a matter of abrupt and self-initiated outburst, there are evidences that, as mentioned, a great number of members, through a showy avalanche of letters, volunteered for suicidal and self-burning operations as a proof of their yielding to the ideological revolution. In fact, the idea of self-immolation was first infused into the members by the leaders; it worked as a code for the members to endorse and follow.

Again and again Maryam Rajavi warns the Western states that self-immolations and suicidal operations are potential leverages to confront them against their legally adopted policies against Mojahedin. In a lecture addressing members, she maintained that such operations were consequent revolutionary accomplishments maintained by Mojahedin, and Massoud Rajavi was the only element who could deter perpetration of these operations:

Of the greatest accomplishments of your move was to make all came to know that it was only by the order of Massoud that you made no reaction when we headed for Iraq. You know well that you were all ready to disturb cities through your opposition. But it seems that your quiescence and the strict discipline led them to miscalculation. However, they had to make corrections the following year, and this year they might have learned a good lesson that it was only for Massoud’s command that we could confront them, a fact they are well aware. [4]

Heavily propagated by Mojahedin’s publications following Mojahedin’s first ideological revolution, self-burnings were highly approved as instances of heroic deeds. Published by Mojahedin’s organs we read:

Of the brilliant manifestations of Mojahedin’s loyalty and devotion that highlight the golden pages of Mojahedin’s heroic chapter are countless urges by members and sympathizers for self-burning as a means of displaying opposition and disclosure of the dictatorial intrigues. [5]

It should be pointed out that indoctrination of these suicidal operations is beyond limitations of boundaries; both Camp Ashraf residents and those active in Western countries equally receive persuading instructions:

The volunteers of the revolutionary self-burnings and similar suicidal operations consist both those who live in military camps and fight in forefronts of struggle against the regime and those who in different countries enthusiastically pursuit the accomplishment of Iranian’s modern revolution. [6]

Based on the mentioned facts, it can be concluded that committed suicidal operations by Mojahedin’s members are organizational indoctrinations. In fact, such feats are deliberately plotted cult-like ploys to fulfil the leaders’ ambitions. Applied in the same way as other cults, Mojahedin manipulate a variety of techniques and use impressive terms like heroic deeds, sacred and holy operations and a lot more to persuade members to commit suicidal operations. While denying any given command for such inhuman, abominable and cult-like deeds, Massoud Rajavi in his message acclaims self-burning operations and hails the victims:

Hail to Sedigheh and Neda, the two blazing torches and ever-glaring lights of freedom, and other 23 blazing heroes in 10 countries…. [7]

Sources:

[1]. Mojahed No. 253, Massoud Rajavi’s speech made on the occasion of his marriage with Maryam Azodanlou, 1975.

[2]. Ibid.

[3]. The lecture delivered by Ebrahim Khodabandeh at the Symposium of the Link between Cults and Terrorism held in Isfahan on October 2006.

[4]. Muslim Students Association’s Gazette No. 127.

[5]. Ibid.

[6]. Ibid.

[7]. Massoud Rajavi’s message delivered in July 2007.

Mojahedin.ws – Bahar Irani – October 16, 2007

October 21, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

The Chief Indictable Villains

Following the released reports of two Mojahedin-e Khalq members going on trial before a French court for allegedly helping a third member burn herself to death during a 2003 protest, the Mojahedin-run media are engaged in a vast propaganda blitz to disclaim allegations. The two are charged with ‘provoking suicide’ and allegedly providing gasoline for a woman to set herself on fire in broad daylight. The propaganda machine of the organization, by furnishing details from the trial, attempts to instill that:

– the committed self-immolations in Paris were unorganized but self-initiated deeds

– the deeds were carried out in opposition to the members’ presumed expulsion from France

– Mojahedin disclaim allegations of involving in terrorist acts against civilians and masterminding self-immolations

– the presence of at least one of the victims of the self-immolations, Marzieh Babakhani, in the course of the trial to announce that her self-burning was a self-decided act is a ploy to vindicate allegations of ‘provoking suicide’ and that, suicides were not pressured by the organization

– although not indicated in the file in the process, defendants insist to disapprove allegations of the group’s being engaged in cult-like activities

Any of the above cases can be discussed in detail, but of the importance is the absence of any acceptable evidence to acquit the defendants of the allegations. According to the existing videotaped evidences, the prosecution can charge that the two were not only aware of the suicide’s intention but also provided for her to commit self-burning. It alleges that the two men on trial were filmed on June 18, 2003, buying fuel from a gas station in the vicinity of the scene where she was abetted to set herself on fire.

In none of the defendants’ defences, as reported by Mojahedin-run media, there can be found evidences in relation to the file in process. For instance, the defense argues that Sediqheh Mojaveri, one of the two women who died of self-burning injuries, set herself ablaze because she had been threatened with expulsion from France to Iran. Not only there exists no evidence to her claimed cause of self-immolation, but in no way such defense acquits the suspects of their allegations. In fact, Mojahedin intend to distract the social opinion of the main issue for which the trial is set. Furthermore, they can present no proven evidence that the French government at the time had reversed her right to asylum.

Her expulsion as a refugee required certain procedures and her political condition as well as any possibility of risking her life would be taken into consideration. Besides, unless she had violated the regulations, the French government had no alibi for her expulsion. Indeed it raises a question that how two people contribute to the act of suicide for their third colleague to save her on the poor supposition that her life might be at risk.

The engagement of the refugees, being known as the members of a notorious terrorist cult, in such appalling activities in opposition to what is not beyond mere supposition indicate that Mojahedin hardly respect the regulations of the country wherein they have been granted asylum. It can also be concluded that they resort to cult-like practices against the civil and democratic laws of a country even before they are put into practice for any justifiable reason.

The propaganda scenario prepared by Mojahedin also attempts to clean Maryam Rajavi’s name of the allegations that her arrest was the cause to initiate such cult-like suicidal operations. But it is so easy a task to prove that encouragement of the members to commit self-immolation was an exalted strategy in the process of the organization’s ideological revolution as a working leverage against any made restriction by France. To wash Maryam Rajavi’s hands of the perpetrated self-immolations following her arrest, Mojahedin’s media quotes Pierre de Bousquet, the DST’s director at the time, saying “unfortunately, Mrs. Rajavi, because of the custody conditions, lost the opportunity of being immediately informed of the events happening outside to stop them”.

Such claims further prove the key role of Maryam Rajavi as Mojahedin’s she-guru to instigate or frustrate these cult activities. Even at the same time, Pierre de Bousquet had said the organisation could no longer claim that its aim was to defend human rights and bring about democracy. He said, as reported by the Observer, “The attempts at self-immolation to protest against the arrest of Madame Radjavi are proof of a new fanaticism. Auvers was to become the Mujahideen’s world headquarters after the loss of bases in Iraq.”

Stated in Mojahedin leaders’ messages at least in the past four years, suicidal activities have been advocated as working leverages against French legal bodies’ verdicts especially after the ruling of the European Court of Justice on December 12, 2006 to unfreeze the organization’s assets. Although the court has never ruled that MKO should be removed from the list of banned organisations, but under the pretext of the ruling, the organization chances orchestrating other activities.

How Mojahedin’s leaders accredit suicidal operations as solutions to encountered problems while denying cult allegations is a matter of consideration. The evidences being so evident, how can they convince the court that the committed self-immolations were the result of an abrupt and self-initiated outburst for personal reasons? And how do they justify their paradoxical mannerism of calling the victims of the immolations as heroes and martyrs?

Regardless of any verdict that the two suspects might face if convicted, for those who have developed a deep understanding of Mojahedin’s internal relations within Camp Ashraf and their European headquarters there remains no doubt that such suicidal activities are provoked by the organization itself. The two on the trial are not the only indictable suspects of the alarming elf-immolations. None of them can truly exemplify the model of the cult and terrorist entrepreneurs who, in both hideout and broad daylight, encourage and provoke such inhuman, undemocratic practices for ambitious, cult causes. They are the chief indictable villains escaping the law.

Bahar Irani – Mojahedin,ws – October 19, 2007

October 21, 2007 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Dubious Sources of Disinformation Campaign

In an article recently released by Asia Times Online, Pepe Escobar discusses that General David Petraeus, media-hungry US supreme commander in Iraq will continue to be the key pawn in the current, breathless demonization-of-Iran campaign, whose target is to manufacture consent for an American attack against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) inside Iran. In his propaganda blitz, Petraeus resorts to information provided by notorious terrorist groups that have long been listed on the State department’s FTO.

As the article points out, “Petraeus’s dubious sources include the ragtag Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), a micro-terrorist group that used to be harbored by Saddam Hussein inside Iraq and now is protected by the Americans in Diyala province. So from Saddam’s terrorists the MEK are now elevated to the status of”our”terrorists”.

Pepe Escobar further discusses that “Tehran knows exactly what’s going on. Editorials at the conservative Mehr news agency in Iran routinely accuse the US – and especially the CIA – of using both MEK and PJAK to”destabilize Iran”. Now a bankrupt terrorist group that has transformed into a cult of personality, Mojahedin-e Khalq engages in any dirty affair to survive. Wearing a pro-democratic mask, the group has hardly fought for the interests of its people; it has long been intriguing against its own people hand in hand with whomever challenges the Iranian regime.

In an earlier article that Manouchehr Hosseinzadeh contributed for Payvandnews, the author refers to Mojahedin-e Khalq as a bankrupt group that “spend the night in bed with enemies of our people and in the morning cry freedom. Their account is different. They are sentenced to the destiny of decaying in the arms of those who call them terrorist yet protect them to use in another day”.

October 16, 2007 0 comments

France

Paris court summons 2 MKO members

A French court has summoned two MKO members who incited one of the group’s supporters to set herself on fire in a June 2003 protest.

The 55-year-old Mahmoud Alami and 51-year-old Hossein Amini-Qolipour who are the members of the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) were summoned to face charges of encouraging a woman to commit suicide.

The MKO staged a protest in June 2003 against the French police raid on the MKO Headquarters in Paris.

Three MKO members committed suicide by fire during the protest held one day after the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi was arrested by the French police.

There are videos showing Alami and Amin-Qolipour buying gasoline near the demonstration site and giving it to Sediqeh Mojaveri who killed herself in the protest.

PressTV – Sun, 14 Oct 2007

October 16, 2007 0 comments

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