Ann Singleton

Maryam Rajavi’s crocodile tears over human rights

‘Who could hang a saint?’ – Maryam Rajavi’s crocodile tears over human rights

Human Rights advocacy is a laudable activity. Advocates automatically occupy the high moral ground in pursuit of their goals – and this of course reflects on their status. But as with everything we must examine their underlying motives before we accept at face value the posturing of every Tom, Dick and Harry who jumps on the bandwagon of human rights. Above all, we must examine the person before we listen to their inviolable message.

In reaction to the ‘World Day Against the Death Penalty (October 10), notorious cult leader Maryam Rajavi will use the occasion to announce to a specially assembled audience that she is against the death penalty.

That will be news indeed to the thousands of former members and indeed the current members of the notorious terrorist Mojahedin Khalq cult which she leads. Maryam Rajavi’s MEK has not only killed over 12,000 Iranians and 25,000 Iraqis as part of its violent regime change agenda, but inside the group, Rajavi has been personally responsible for the extra-judicial murder and torture of countless members behind the closed doors of the cult.

So, what could be behind this dramatic volte-face? Has Rajavi really undergone a unique transformation of belief and if so, is she sincerely contrite for all the deaths she is personally responsible for within the Mojahedin Khalq? Does she regret her past? Will she now apologise to the thousands of former members of her organisation who are victims of heinous human rights abuses for which she and her husband are culpable?

For various reasons this is impossible. Not least because as the leader of a mind control cult such an admission of guilt would undermine the whole foundation of her organisation and throw the remaining vulnerable brainwashed members onto the path of a mental breakdown.

Or is this, as we have every reason to believe, a politically motivated fake stance brought about by panic and despair, just as once the MEK’s manufactured nuclear intelligence bought them artificial status brought about by opportunism. Since July, the negotiated Iran nuclear agreement has irrevocably changed the political landscape. The MEK are no longer needed or wanted beyond backing up the efforts of a few regime change pundits clinging to the past.

And of course, Maryam Rajavi is acutely aware of the fate of her benefactor Saddam Hussein. When he was no longer needed, his former allies handed him over to the Iraqi people for judgement and punishment. He was, as we all know, hanged.

So, Maryam’s Rajavi’s sudden and specific and uncharacteristic condemnation of the death penalty should be judged in this context. Her underlying message to her sponsors is, ‘who could hang a saint?’

Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Middle East Strategy Consultants,

October 10, 2015 0 comment

Maryam Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi’s strange diplomacy with the UK

Vicious attacks on the BBC Persian Service: Maryam Rajavi’s strange diplomacy with the UK

Maryam Rajavi is a nervous woman. As European ministers line up to visit Iran to improve trade and cultural links, and her cult resorts to violence on the streets of a small French village to keep families away from their loved ones, she must feel the cold winds of isolation and opprobrium blowing around her cult HQ in Auvers-sur-Oise and is certainly watching with growing concern for her own security.

As a result, Rajavi has renewed her efforts to obtain a visa to visit the UK. (She wants to come to the UK because there is more chance that her Zionist sponsors will offer her protection from legal prosecutions than in France where her activities are still under judicial investigation.)

Her last visit to the UK was in 1996. After failing her mission to mend political links with western governments, the French had ordered Rajavi to return to Iraq. In order to save face she negotiated a trip to the UK for a public appearance. (Even then her visit was hidden behind the pretence that the audience were attending a music concert with the retired Iranian singer Marzieh.) Rajavi was given a few days visa only after British security services had obtained a written assurance from France that she would immediately be allowed to return there where she has political asylum. Maryam Rajavi did indeed immediately return to France from whence she packed her bags and went back to Iraq and only covertly returned to Auvers-sur-Oise just before the start of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. In spite of her continued attempts to obtain a visa – a British peer raised the issue for her in the House of Lords – Maryam Rajavi remains persona non grata in the UK.

This has infuriated the notoriously bad tempered Rajavi whose reaction has been to bark at her intended hosts via a vicious campaign to demonise the BBC’s Farsi programme. Presumably Rajavi sees the BBC World Service as an earpiece of the FCO.

The attack began over a programme called Compass. The programme deliberately hosts controversial guests to prompt lively discussions. One particular combination included a former SAVAK (Shah’s repressive secret service) official at the time of the Shah and a former MEK terrorist who was in prison at that time. The programme asked ‘How effective was SAVAK?’ Enraged, Maryam Rajavi instigated a vicious attack on the BBC, which suddenly received an orchestrated rash of letters of complaint purporting to be from actual, named prisoners in Iran. This was ridiculed by critics of the MEK who pointed out that prisoners in Iran do not have access to satellite television and would not be able to write uncensored letters to London if only for security reasons. In any case, the vitriolic style of the letters is an indication that they come from the same few authors at the heart of the Rajavi Cult Empire in Europe. Staff at the BBC Persian Service were mystified.

Revealing herself to be supremely ignorant of UK politics and the current political atmosphere in relation to Iran, the next step was an astounding assault on credulity; a letter written to Prime Minister David Cameron supposedly from the residents of Camp Liberty complaining about the bias of the BBC. This concept is even more ridiculous than the prisoner campaign. The Farsi Commentariat were quick to point out that residents of Camp Liberty are living incommunicado as members of a cult and are therefore completely cut off from normal life. Living under strict gender apartheid, they are denied contact even with relatives inside the same camp, let alone their estranged families outside. Every bit of information they are given is strictly controlled and censored by the cult leaders – there is no such thing as access to external television, radio or print media in the camp. The idea that the MEK leaders asked brainwashed members to sign a letter which was written on their behalf is ludicrous in these conditions. Why ask? Just add their name to the letter. You don’t even need to inform them. Nobody will be able to ask them anyway because they are in a totally closed environment. A recent sham demonstration by Camp Liberty residents reflects how ludicrous this idea is. The residents of Camp Liberty held a demonstration against the Iran nuclear deal. Perhaps not a single resident has any idea what the deal was, but in any case they were ordered to hold placards written in English. But for whom? No media are allowed into the camp.

Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Middle East Strategy Consultants,

September 8, 2015 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

REPORT – FECRIS Marseille 2015

Expert in cultic abuse and terrorism in the MEK speaks in London charity meeting

REPORT – FECRIS Marseille 2015

The FECRIS Conference provides a forum for the world’s leading experts in cultic abuse to meet and talk and to share ideas, knowledge and experiences. The Conference is a safe place for researchers, practitioners, campaigners and support groups to mingle with former cult members and families of people who remain trapped in cultic relationships. The value of this unique forum was acknowledged by the board during the AGM.

After several years as Chairman of FECRIS, Tom Sackville retired and was replaced by Danièle Muller-Tulli. Good wishes to Danièle for success in this important role.

The theme of this year’s Conference which was hosted in Marseille by GEMPPI, was ‘Deliberately Planned and Encouraged Confusion Between Cults and Religion’. Serge Blisko, President of MIVILUDES, presented the opening speech which outlined this subject. He said that the widespread use of exploitative cultic abuse undermines democratic institutions and social functions. Those who employ these methods deflect criticism by claiming that their critics want to deprive them of ‘freedom of belief’ or that they are not accorded proper status as ‘religions’. Blisko also talked about the growing problem of ‘religious’ terrorism and its links to cultic behaviour.

Anne Khodabandeh, representative of The Family Survival Trust, was in a unique position to brief M. Blisko and the audience about this issue. She explained that it is possible to construct a model for describing and analysing the use of cultic abuse by terrorist entities without mentioning religion. Anne then went on to describe the deceptive recruitment and brainwashing methods used by terrorist groups and said that from her fifteen years as an activist in this field she was able to suggest solutions to tackle this phenomenon. This briefing was greeted enthusiastically by M. Blisko and the audience.

President of MIVILUDES Serge Blisko with Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton) of the FST

There were several informative and interesting talks and also first-hand testimonies. Some stood out as particularly interesting. Pierre Le Coz Director of the Department of Social Science at the Faculty of Medicine, University Aix-Marseilles, gave a fascinating presentation in which he described step by step how individuals can be brought under the influence of a manipulator using specific psychological techniques.

In contrast, Alexey Voat a researcher from Moscow, gave a very pertinent presentation on the Aum Shinriyo cult’s use of the internet for deceptive recruitment. Voat had undertaken to act as a recruit to delve deep inside the cult’s workings. His revelations were instructive for understanding any other cultic recruitment over the internet.

Olivier Faelens, President of SAS Seckten from Belgium, inspired the audience with his advice on how to avoid false arguments presented by groups such as The Church of Scientology, with its continual demands for debate on the subject of whether or not it is a true religion. The real issue, said Faelens, is the internal harmful practices. It is these we must insist on addressing when debating cultic abuse.

Anne Edelstam, journalist, talked about Fundamentalism. She described the history of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and how in spite of the people’s revolution, its creation of alternative social structures dedicated to the reintroduction of fundamentalist strictures on society still have the potential to undermine the country’s democratic processes.

Finally, leading cult expert Janja Lalich explored the struggle for justice in the American legal system. She described several case studies and talked about her own experience as an expert witness and how the cults deliberately exploit ignorance and misconceptions regarding cultic abuse. This talk linked the various issues raised in previous speeches with the subject of the Conference: ‘Deliberately Planned and Encouraged Confusion Between Cults and Religion’.

Maurizio, Lalich, Khodabandeh (Singleton), Corvaglia

During the Conference the audience participated with lively and informative questions and discussions at various points in the day. A light lunch was served al Fresco in a convivial atmosphere. The host association GEMPPI is to be congratulated on the success of the Conference. The simultaneous translators are appreciated for their hard work in bringing the full content of the speeches and interjections to all the audience. The new Chair of FECRIS, Danièle Muller-Tulli closed the Conference and thanked the outgoing Chairman Tom Sackville in his absence for all his hard work.

Anne Khodabandeh representing TFST at the FECRIS Conference, Marseille 2015

[Note: FECRIS – European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Cults and Sects – created in 1994, serves as an umbrella organisation for associations which defend cult victims in more than 30 countries, including 5 non-European organisations. FECRIS is active at an international level with representation at the UN (ECOSOC).]

(END)

Family Survival Trust,

May 25, 2015 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi: Don’t allow the MEK to hijack your name

Dear Ms Pelosi,

Following the long awaited announcement in Lausanne on the Iran nuclear agreement, your strong opposition to Senator Corker’s legislation has been welcomed by peaceable Iranians and Americans who, like you, support President Obama’s push to resolve the nuclear issue through diplomatic means.

It will come as some surprise to you therefore, that a group of Iranian war-mongering regime change proponents, the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq (MEK), claim to have your support.

In an astounding act of hubris, the MEK has not only appropriated your good name and attached it to a stance which is in contradiction to what you have always stated, but the group has also apparently fooled many of your opponents in Congress whose presence in this event has also been misrepresented as specific support for the MEK.

The MEK’s website Iran News Online reported as a news item a celebration held in Congress on March 17 to mark the Iranian New Year or Norouz. According to this news item, the event was attended by several advocates and lobbyists of the MEK – those named include Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ted Poe and Jackson Lee, all of whom advocate the MEK’s regime change stance. As well as around 300 Congressional staff, many, but not all, of the attendees have been Neoconservatives whose anti-diplomacy stance is overtly expressed by people like John Bolton who so recently exhorted America to ‘bomb Iran’.

This is not company in which we would expect to find your name, let alone your endorsement. Yet, the duplicity and deceit and treachery of the Mojahedin is so bold as to allow them to do exactly this.

In this reporting of the event in Iran News Online – written in Farsi, not in English – the MEK have quoted a letter purported to have been written by yourself especially for the event on the occasion of the Iranian New Year. This letter states simply that you “congratulate the people of Iran on their New Year”.

This of course is a natural and commendable expression of support. But the context in which this letter is used makes it appear as though you are in agreement with the other participants. The event was attended by Sona Samsami, a long-term MEK member who represents the MEK’s front organization the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in the United States. This group promotes itself as the agent of violent regime change in Iran – even though it has no support among Iranians and no capacity to undertake any such activity.

The MEK have misreported and manipulated this event so that it looks as though it has been held specifically to promote the MEK and its regime change agenda. I am sure that most of the attendees had no such awareness or intention.

Screenshot from MEK site

But this is not all. The MEK’s public site Mojahedin.org actually puts words into your mouth as though you were at the event and reports that Nancy Pelosi “Congratulates the people of Iran and the residents of Camp Liberty”. This, of course, is preposterous. These residents, the old and sick remnants of the MEK’s army, are awaiting expulsion from Camp Liberty and Iraq because of the MEK’s thirty year history of terrorism and treachery in that country. The UN mandate is to find them third countries to be transferred to for their safety. (Unfortunately this process has stalled because the MEK leader Massoud Rajavi refuses to cooperate and is holding the residents incommunicado inside Camp Liberty without any access to their families or the outside world. And in addition, most countries shun the MEK as a terrorist outfit and are very reluctant to accept them even as individual refugees.)

The report also quotes you from 2007 when you mentioned the situation of these Iranians in Iraq and said ‘something must be done about them’ in a way to sound as though you supported the MEK. But it is simply amazing that the MEK could think anybody except their own brainwashed members would believe you support such a group except on humanitarian grounds, in which case your support would take a very different form.

Screen shot from MEK site

I write to you as an expert on the MEK who has been campaigning for over a decade to help free the residents of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, and to expose the lies and deceit of the MEK’s leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. I would urge you to investigate the matter of your name and reputation being hijacked by this group. But further, I would urge you also to alert your colleagues in Congress – including those who are your political opponents – to the duplicitous methods of this group. The MEK’s unchallenged interference in the political process of America is not only very much against your country’s national interests, it is a slap in the face of those peaceful Iranians and Americans who, like yourself and President Obama have invested so much time and energy into allowing diplomacy to work.

About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):

Middle East Strategy Consultants,

http://www.mesconsult.com

Autor of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

http://www.camp-ashraf.com

April 15, 2015 0 comment

Albania

Albania must protect human rights of Iranian refugees from MEK

Rajavi cult abuse – Albania must protect human rights of Iranian refugees from MEK

Albania’s efforts to improve its human rights and bring them into line with European and international standards could be seriously undermined if it does not take action to curtail the activities of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq cult organisation in that country. There is strong evidence that the MEK has bought land and property just outside Tirana in order to create a closed cult enclave similar to ones in Iraq, and that it is using coercion to keep refugees captive there where they are subject to systematic human rights abuses outside the supervision of the Albanian authorities.

The MEK is a terrorist organisation. It is being dismantled in Iraq because its presence and its activities there are illegal under Iraq’s constitutional law. UN officials have made high level efforts to persuade third countries to accept these individuals, in particular those with previous connections to those countries. Understandably, most Western countries have been extremely reluctant to allow trained terrorists into their countries even as refugees. Albania has, however, generously accepted to receive some of the Iranians as refugees. Since 2013, over four hundred of these former MEK combatants have been transferred from Camp Liberty in Iraq to Tirana by the UNHCR as refugees.

Unfortunately UN officials responsible for undertaking to transfer the residents of Camp Liberty have been hindered further in their task by the cult nature of the group. The MEK leaders have effectively imprisoned and isolated the residents of Camp Liberty just outside Baghdad, and refuse to allow them to leave independently or have contact with the outside world. This has meant that families wishing to help their loved ones have been unable to do so. MEK treatment of these people involves the violation of nearly all their internationally recognised human rights; including the right to form a family, to enjoy citizenship, freedom of belief and many more.

Once they arrive in Albania one of the first things all the new arrivals do is to contact their families and seek out other forms of support. The refugees are given time limited support by the UN refugee agency – accommodation and a small living allowance – which is deemed sufficient for them to settle in their new country and make new lives for themselves.

But the MEK does not easily relinquish its control over these former members and has made every effort to prevent them from living independently. One obvious reason is that the MEK want to maintain numbers so they can advertise to Western sponsors as an opposition group. But more importantly, these new arrivals are desperate to tell their stories. They want to speak out about the suffering they endured, some for many, many years. Their stories are of terrible internal human rights abuses committed by the MEK leaders over a period of thirty years (documented by HRW and RAND) and which are still ongoing. They are also witnesses to the MEK’s war crimes while the leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi collaborated with Saddam Hussein. The MEK is desperate to silence them.

As the first group arrived, the MEK dispatched senior members from Paris to intimidate them and re-create the cult hierarchy in Tirana. Although unable to physically contain these people, the MEK first offered money and then issued threats to coerce them into compliance. Even so, over half of them rejected the MEK.

The MEK has now created a physical space in which the cult can continue to impose the same strict controls that exist in all its bases. Albanian authorities overseeing the resettlement of these refugees may choose to believe the MEK’s deceptive arguments that this is a humanitarian act because this appears to fulfil the obligations the government has toward the refugees. But former MEK members and cult experts know that already this inaccessible enclave hides systematic human rights abuses.

A country’s commitment to improve human rights for its citizens must not be allowed to exclude the most vulnerable people, including refugees. If Albania is serious about ratifying international human rights conventions and harmonising existing legislation to comply with European standards this issue must be addressed as a matter of urgency before conditions for these vulnerable refugees become intractable.

About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):

Middle East Strategy Consultants,

http://www.mesconsult.com

Autor of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

http://www.camp-ashraf.com

January 25, 2015 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

lobbyists demand MEK terrorist cult in Iraq be re-armed rather than removed

Rajavi’s lobbyists demand Mojahedin Khalq terrorist cult in Iraq be re-armed rather than removed

It is surely ironic that the same bunch of people who lobbied hard and at great expense to have the Mojahedin Khalq terrorist cult removed from European and American terrorist lists (the flimsy claim they had renounced terrorism was only possible because in 2003 the US army captured, disarmed and confined them to a single camp in Iraq), is now lobbying to have them re-armed.

Whether delusional or corrupt, this gang – listed below and now posing as the International Committee in Search of Justice (ISJ) – says the residents of Camp Liberty should have their “personal protection weapons returned to them for self-defence following serious threats and attacks [sic] as the Iranian regime’s intervention in Iraq grows”. But has neglected to inform their English speaking audience that the MEK leader, Massoud Rajavi, has demanded the MEK be re-armed with heavy weapons as well as small arms.

In any case, anyone who knows anything about the situation of Camp Liberty knows that the residents are deliberately imprisoned incommunicado inside the camp by the MEK leaders, that the greatest danger these residents face is from these MEK leaders, and that small arms are wanted in order to impose greater control over these captives as they become more and more desperate to escape the tyranny of the cult.

The ISJ statement should certainly not be read without context: Since attaining sovereignty in 2009, each successive government of Iraq has designated the MEK as a terrorist entity which must, under the Constitution, be entirely removed from Iraqi territory. The demand for re-arming rather than removing this group is doubly insulting for a country still swarming with Western spawned terrorist groups.

Perhaps the most ironic ‘complaint’ of the Committee is that the government of Iraq is not investigating the September 1, 2013 attack on Camp Ashraf in which fifty three people died. How is this possible when forty two key eye witnesses – survivors of the attack – have been incarcerated by the MEK inside Camp Liberty so that no investigator in the world has access to them?

Instead of demanding the MEK be re-armed ready to utilize violence again – the raison d’etre of the terrorist cult – this gang should be demanding from Massoud and Maryam Rajavi that each resident of Camp Liberty be given the opportunity to make contact with their families in privacy and to freely leave the camp if they desire. Then we would see how quickly and efficiently these people can be resettled.

List of members of the ISJ according to the MEK:

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, former MEP; Patrick Kennedy, former Congressman; Günter Verheugen, former member of the EU Commission; Nicole Fontaine, former MEP; General Hugh Shelton former US military; David Kilgour, former Canadian Secretary of State; Ingrid Betancourt; Raymond Tanter; Horst Teltschik; Colonel Wesley Martin, former US military; Senator Lucio Malan, Italian Senate; Alessandro Pagano MP; Antonio Razzi, Italian Senate; Gérard Deprez MEP; Ryszard Czarnecki, MEP; Tunne Kelam MEP; Lord Carlile, UK; Lord Clarke, UK; Lord Maginnis, UK; Lord Dholakia, UK

About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):

Middle East Strategy Consultants,

http://www.mesconsult.com

Autor of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

January 15, 2015 0 comment

France

In a democracy we don’t beg terrorists not to kill us

Open letter to President Hollande

In a democracy we don’t beg terrorists not to kill us – Instead we expect our elected leaders to ensure that such crimes are prevented

An Open Letter To President François Hollande From Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton) in the UK

Dear President,

Freedom of speech is under threat in Europe. You, and other national leaders swear you are doing all you can to protect this principle and to protect your citizens from this threat.

Let me remind you that for three decades France has hosted the Mojahedin Khalq terrorist group in Auvers-sur-Oise, just outside Paris.

In the past few weeks, the leader of this group, Massoud Rajavi, has broadcast a message to the MEK members, some hundreds of whom live hidden lives in France and other European cities. In this message, Rajavi demands the assassination of former members of the MEK and other critics of the group. I am included in that list.

Addressing his loyal followers (brainwashed cult members), Rajavi says “I ask that every one of these traitors be brought to justice”. Placing this demand in the context of Ashura (the historical massacre of Imam Hossien and his followers), Rajavi asks them to be willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill each one of his enemies.

Three times this message has been reinforced, with the names and pictures of targets broadcast over a European satellite owned by a Saudi Arabian company. The latest broadcast was on the eve of the Charlie Hebdo killings. My picture is in the centre as the main target. My ‘crime’ has been to speak out about the true nature of this murderous group, to expose the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, both in the Middle East and in Europe.

You are the President of France, not ISIS or Al Qaida. You, therefore, are responsible for the security of your citizens. I also hold you responsible for my life because you are currently hosting a terrorist group which threatens to kill me simply because I speak out against its continued crimes. In a democracy we don’t beg terrorists not to kill us. Instead we expect our elected leaders to ensure that such crimes are prevented.

France has protected the MEK for thirty years in a closed de facto terrorist enclave just outside Paris. I, and others like me, do not expect to pay the price with our lives for the cynical policy of hosting this group as a tool for political games.

About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):

Middle East Strategy Consultants,

http://www.mesconsult.com

Autor of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

http://www.camp-ashraf.com

January 11, 2015 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

ISIS supporter Maryam Rajavi attacks Obama from French parliament

This week an inter-parliamentary group from Iran visited France for the enhancement of parliamentary, economic and political relations between Tehran and Paris. The Iranian delegation of three senior MPs was headed by Chairman of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi. The talks were deemed by both France and Iran to have been constructive.

Boroujerdi’s interview with France 24 indicates that the nuclear issue and ISIS were at the top of the agenda in the meetings: the West wants Iran to help fight ISIS in return for a favourable outcome to the nuclear negotiations.

In a panic at the thought of closer ties between the two countries, Israel set about trying to disturb the atmosphere in the French parliament by pushing the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq leader Maryam Rajavi into a meeting with legislators in order to voice Israeli concerns and demands.

But using the MEK will never work out positively for Israel, for the simple reason that the MEK are incapable of making any difference to anyone or any situation of any real importance. Instead the MEK will only make things worse.

The Iranian delegation did not discuss the MEK, nor did they react to the presence of Rajavi nearby – it could be of course that the French parliamentarians hosting the Iranian delegation had been too embarrassed to bring the impromptu affair to their attention as it was irrelevant to the work of the delegation. However, Iran’s Fars News Agency published without comment the content of Maryam Rajavi’s speech which spoke for itself.

Maryam Rajavi tried to claim legitimacy as a result of the failure of a legal case against her and several other leading MEK members. Fortunately, informed people do not make the same assumptions as she does. Indeed, in June a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said France has “no contact with the “People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran” which is known for its use of violence. It has no legal existence in France as an organization. Its violent and undemocratic Ideology has been exposed by several human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International who have reported on the organization’s cultic practices and its refusal to formally renounce violence. We also warn about the intense campaign of disinformation and influence it leads.”

Maryam Rajavi’s speech showed what a liability she and her disinformation are even for her own sponsors. She not only attacked Iraq, Iran and Syria as being responsible for the creation of ISIS, but vehemently attacked the USA too for backing the Maliki government saying: “During these years, not only did the United States not voice any protest against these actions, but they praised Maliki’s measures. The by-product of these crimes was the expansion and strengthening of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. This was the outcome of showing leniency towards the most horrendous dictatorship in contemporary times and its proxies.” She warned: “And now, the mullahs of Iran are exploiting this policy by the West; poised to fill the vacuum created by the ISIS retreat as a result of the international coalition attacks with the militias.”

Yet only a few months previously MEK websites were filled with pages showing support for ISIS when Rajavi believed the terrorist army would overrun Baghdad and take over the MEK camp near the airport.

Rajavi’s speech is largely incoherent and certainly adds up to nothing but disparate rants against everyone and everything. But in that it is inspired by the Israeli way of doing politics. Divorced from reality, Rajavi urges the Western coalition not to work with Iran. Clearly nobody told her about the FRANCE 24 interview with Boroujerdi who said that the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group cannot be trusted. “The very countries that created the Islamic State group are now part of a coalition that … wants to destroy them,” he said. “How can a contradiction like this be resolved? It’s only natural that we cannot trust [the coalition]. We don’t want to enter a political game.”

As though to confirm and cement her ignorance and stupidity, Maryam Rajavi finally mentions her hostages in Camp Liberty and says she hopes that with the “removal of Maliki in Iraq, the French government would use all means possible for Camp Liberty to be recognized as a refugee camp under the United Nations’ supervision”.

Maryam Rajavi has clearly not read Massoud Khodabandeh’s fourth report from Baghdad on the current situation of the MEK and Camp Liberty published in October. This report makes it clear that the new government of Iraq led by Prime Minister Abadi has already put in place plans to expedite and speed up the process of removing the MEK entirely from Iraqi territory. Apparently Abadi is even more keen than Maliki to be rid of the MEK, and the UN agrees.

When a supporter of ISIS sits in the French parliamentary building and attacks President Obama, the cracks are seriously beginning to show in the West’s approach to resolving the whole Middle East situation. Observers may not be sufficiently informed to tell Western governments what to do in their own interests, but any schoolchild can point out the damage the MEK is doing to them.

About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):

Middle East Strategy Consultants,

Autor of “Saddam’s Private Army” and “The life of Camp Ashraf”

November 2, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Ironically, only Iran can help America really take control of ISIS

President Obama’s short speech to the nation on September 10, addressed the urgent need to take action against the Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL). The speech began with a description of ISIS and the danger it poses. Of course Obama used his own potent words to talk about ISIS, but the organisation which he described has the characteristics of a group that:

•Recruits by deception; pretends to embrace religious precepts but in reality pursues an extremist political ideology.

•Holds such simplistic and erroneous beliefs that it can only prevent its members from seeing through them by preventing them from thinking and therefore fills every minute of their day with activity, whether military training or peeling carrots or cleaning latrines.

•Indoctrinates recruits with thought stopping fears and certainties so as to create a stark, unassailable ‘us and them’ mentality, a sense of innate superiority which obliges followers to ruthlessly eliminate all enemies.

•Uses cruel, arbitrary punishments, extra-judicial killings, and example killings to warn against disobedience.

•Demonstrates its abilities through terrorising acts, then boldly advertises that it has killed tens of thousands of people.

•Has a leader who arrogates all rights and knowledge to himself, who dictates the sexual behaviour of his followers and has a hareem of women for his own use.

•A leader who dictates the minutiae of the followers’ lives and operates a strict hierarchy of control with obedience to his whims as the guiding principle for promotion or demotion.

•Is universally hated by ordinary people.

This, however, is not a description of ISIS, it is a description of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the exiled Iranian terrorist group. While ISIS claims to be Sunni, and the MEK claims to be Shiite, there are such significant similarities they can both be defined as destructive cults. The major distinguishing difference of course is the incomprehensible savagery of ISIS, which even the MEK never aspired to.

The MEK operates as a totalitistic, destructive mind control cult which harms its own members as much as its victims. Its past is littered with death and destruction; the MEK has publicly boasted of killing 12,000 during its terrorist campaign against Iran, and it also killed 25,000 Iraqis for Saddam Hussein during its 30 year sojourn in that country. But in spite of this history the MEK now has some high profile advocates in Washington. Some, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Hillary Clinton, choose to ignore the unsavoury aspects of the group’s behaviour and embrace its vehemently anti-Iran stance instead.

This was only possible because the MEK were brought under control during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The militant group were bombed, then disarmed and corralled into a single camp, effectively rendering it impotent as an armed force. The MEK’s means of surviving this was to focus on a new identity and present itself under the guise of a political opposition. Fronting Maryam Rajavi as a democratic, feminist leader the MEK used its apparently unlimited financial resources to court western policy makers with a vague promise of engineering regime change in Iran by acting as the vanguard of a counter revolution. The MEK’s advocates support it not because of its potential as a terrorist force or even because of its numbers which at present comprise fewer than a thousand loyal, active members. Instead, it is as a cult that it has value. The MEK’s ability to deceptively recruit and manipulate people into doing just about anything is its chief asset; an asset that could not be bombed out of them or confiscated along with their weapons. The fact too that MEK followers are not paid and are effectively enslaved, makes it even better value.

This is also why the IRI is still cautious of the group. Observers express themselves puzzled by the sensitivity shown by successive Iranian governments to this apparently toothless tiger. But Iran has a sophisticated understanding of the dangers posed by cultic terror groups born from experience. Iran also understands that simply waging war on such a group, fighting fire with fire, will not destroy it. Iran has been successful in reducing the MEK to nothing more than a lobbying group because its approach to the MEK is as a cult, not just a terrorist organisation. Inside Iran, a country wide attempt is made to educate against the dangers of such cults and controlling groups. It is their way of inoculating the population against deceptive recruitment.

There can be no doubt that ISIS at present is like a mad dog running wild. There can be no comparison between the old defunct MEK and the 30,000 young fanatics who are ISIS. It must be either destroyed completely or brought under control. Like the MEK, ISIS has made sophisticated use of the internet to create a massive cyber presence for itself, on its own terms, which then translates into mainstream media coverage becoming part of its recruiting tool. The immediate concern of western governments is that ISIS must be stopped because it poses a threat to their own populations as much as regional ones; a lesson bitterly taught by Al Qaida.

As a consequence, President Obama has gathered a coalition of forty countries willing to take on IS militarily. But, for all their bravado, the central, unspoken dilemma for all of them is that ISIS has the potential to do precisely what most of these coalition countries want – oust the Assad regime in Syria and push back Iranian influence in Iraq by strengthening the Sunni tribes in the north. This is why, behind the belligerent threats of bombing, the will to actually destroy the group completely is weak. This is why, instead of negotiating a tough pax with the Syrian government, America proposes to flout international law to launch illegal aerial bombing raids into that sovereign country.

In northern Iraq, Iran has shown itself as the US’s natural ally in any effort to contain ISIS. Iran is the one country with the greatest experience of dealing with this kind of cultic terrorist threat, and could perhaps help formulate a comprehensive plan to bring ISIS under control just as the MEK is now under control. Yet Iran remains the US’s greatest nemesis.

What is preventing cooperation on this vital issue is the continued enmity between America and Iran. But the stark fact is that an American policy of threats and sanctions have yielded nothing in the way of stopping or reducing Iran’s regional standing.

Realistically, if America and Israel together could have defeated Iran and forced the country to submit either through sanctions or war, then this would have happened by now. This has not and cannot now happen – not through pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, not through engineering civic riots and insurgency, and certainly not through proxy terrorist groups. But American policy toward Iran, based on what Gareth Porter describes as a manufactured crisis, has ensured that the US is incapable of acknowledging that after Israel, Iran is her natural strategic partner in the Middle East. This is not to say that America has to like the Islamic Republic of Iran, or to stop criticism of its policies or to not drive a hard bargain on nuclear issues. But to continue the hopeless pursuit of regime change at the expense of diplomatic engagement and potential cooperation is self-defeating to say the least.

Already as a result of this misconstrued policy, Iran will certainly enter the next round of nuclear negotiations significantly stronger, rather than weaker. American leverage will be practically null: America’s belligerence toward Russia over the Ukraine has severely, if not permanently, alienated the two countries; Congressional sanctions have forced both Russia and China to pursue separate trade deals with Iran; Germany and France are coolly weighing their economic losses against any political gains in continuing to follow America’s intransigent position toward Iran. Even the plucky, loyal little UK may keep at arms length an American negotiating team which has gone behind their backs before. Without lifting a finger itself, Iran will benefit from these fractures in the P5+1. On top of that, its popular (in the rest of the world), support for the Palestinian cause, its success in helping Iraqi Shia militia repel ISIS, and its principled insistence on Iran’s inalienable right under the terms of the NPT to a civic nuclear power program, will all lend the Iranian negotiators gravitas on the world stage. Perhaps the only option left is for the talks fail, for one side or the other to be forced to walk away from the table. In that case, everyone loses.

Clearly it is controversial to attempt even a neutral description of the Iranian position. To go further and suggest that the US needs to find a way to cooperate with Iran in order to find a way to curtail the horrors of ISIS, is perhaps beyond the pale for many. But when this overwhelming and self-defeating enmity prevents sound political analysis from understanding and acknowledging the real problem, and when this prevents the creation of real, effective solutions, then we need to question where American interests really lie, and who is prepared to serve them.

Iranian.com, About Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton):Middle East Strategy Consultants,

September 20, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Rajavi’s drums of war silenced by trade envoy Baroness Nicholson

The Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) is busy preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an annual ‘June 21st’ rally which celebrates its failed coup d’état in 1981. This year, as every year, the MEK will be paying for both audience and speakers alike to attend. The show convinces nobody. For years the MEK has survived solely on a hollow propaganda campaign which tracks and mirrors Neoconservative and Israeli interests. To please its Western backers the MEK has, over the years, supported Saddam Hussein and more recently Saddamists and insurgents in Iraq, played a part in manufacturing a nuclear crisis for Israel, acted as a loudspeaker for the Israeli/Neoconservative ‘bomb Iran’ narrative and, when all these failed, most recently postured as human rights advocates.

After thirty years, the MEK’s promise of regime change and the establishment of a pro-West Iranian government has come to nothing. Even during the 2009 post-election unrest, the Iranian people showed no inclination to start another revolution or to overthrow their government and especially didn’t resort to violence; such designs exist only in Massoud Rajavi’s personal grandiose delusions. Clearly the Iranian people, assessing the Rajavi cult as an alternative, overwhelmingly prefer the governance they currently have, even with all its faults to that of a mind control cult.

But worse for the defunct MEK is that since President Rouhani’s election a seemingly irreversible and fundamental shift in approach has taken hold on both sides of the Iran-West confrontation and the MEK is being firmly shoved off the bandwagon. The MEK are rapidly losing what specious ground they held in the world of Iran bashing. Significantly, since the beginning of nuclear negotiations last Autumn, a wave of government representatives and businesses have visited Iran from all over the globe, not just Western countries, keen to do business. These changes are characterised in the opening paragraph of an article in the Washington Post on May 28: “For the first time in decades, businesspeople from the United States are visiting Iran in significant numbers, exploring the possibility of future partnerships as Iranian and American entrepreneurs begin to envision a reopening of long-closed commercial channels.”

Nothing could be more toxic to the MEK’s role as purveyors of chaos and violence than the establishment of trade and economic ties. But it is not only on the issue of Iran that the MEK has lost. Since 2003, the group had made itself indispensable to the Saddamists and pro-war and pro-Israel elements who tried to claw back power in Iraq through exactly that continuation of chaos and violence. Now the successful elections in Iraq at the end of April have turned the tide irrevocably against them in that country too. Nor did the MEK fare any better from the European Parliament elections either, losing its two key lobbyists Struan Stevenson and Alejo Vidal Quadras from the Iraq Delegation of the European Parliament.

So the British Prime Minister’s personal appointment of Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne as his Trade Envoy to Iraq with the mandate to ”increase trade and economic co-operation between the UK and Iraq”, was certain to provoke a fierce reaction from the MEK. Baroness Nicholson is an old adversary of the MEK, as she was of the entire Saddam Hussein regime. In a MEK-fed blog, Samuel Westrop questions her appointment because of “Her pattern of support for the Iranian regime” before asking “Exactly whose interests will Baroness Nicholson be serving?” For a group which operates on the basis of corruption, deception and exploitation, naturally this would be their primary question. But the naïve answer to their own rhetoric, ‘Iran’, shows total lack of comprehension about the real world and politics. Emma Nicholson, whose ‘British Establishment’ credentials run through her veins, will work for the interests of Britain of course, and not even party political agendas or partisan groups.

This is not the real issue though. The precursors to economic and trade links are stability and security.

Mindful of its urgent need to establish security in the country, the Iraqi government formally asked the United Nations to fulfil its obligations to expel members of the MEK and transfer them to other countries to protect Iraq’s national security and that of its neighbours. The Iraqi Cabinet goes further, however, and suggests scrapping the 2009 agreement between the US, the GOI and UNAMI because of the inordinate delays and stalling by the UN in fulfilling its obligations. This would allow Iraqi security forces to close Camp Liberty and scatter its occupants as well as bringing some of the MEK to justice for crimes committed in Iraq in the same judicial manner that other elements of the Saddam regime were brought to justice.

It is no wonder then that the MEK is panicking as it faces the dissolution of rank and file members on which it bases its claim to be the “main opposition” or “only alternative” to the IRI. The group is rapidly losing its unique position as a proponent of regime change and war because the world has moved on. It is occupying an increasingly isolated position, one which has fewer and fewer customers. Even so, grooming the MEK for use in the armoury of tactics to attack the IRI began some years before the current impasse was reached. After the MEK was removed from the US terrorism list in 2012, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen began her promotion of the group, introducing Maryam Rajavi as a human rights advocate. Toward the end of 2013, as the manufactured nuclear crisis began to lose its potency as a platform for more sanctions and threats of war and bombs, the MEK tried hard to re-fashion itself to suit the anti-Iran agenda pursued by Ros-Lehtinen and Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu – that of attacking Iran’s human rights record.

But the debacle in the Canadian Parliament revealed that inclusion of the MEK in a human rights forum only exposes the politicised nature of this platform and the anti-humanitarian agenda of its proponents. Maryam Rajavi, a woman who personally dispatched thousands of untrained, badly armed civilian MEK supporters to fight the battle hardened Iranian army and IRG in the 1988 Eternal Light operation resulting in around 2000 futile deaths, and who stands accused by tens of hundreds of former MEK members of violating their rights and abusing them, cannot ever be held up as an advocate of human rights.

In Israel itself there is a backlash against Prime Minister Netanyahu over this use of the MEK in an increasingly desperate attempt to derail the nuclear negotiations. It seems that Netanyahu and the MEK stand alone while the rest of the world has moved on.

The fresh economic vision for the Middle East which is increasingly beginning to take hold in the imagination of Western governments depends on peace and security. When these conditions are established not only do trade links improve and economic prosperity grow, but when a country is thereby able to open itself up to greater engagement with the international community this helps improve the human rights situation for its citizens too. In direct contrast to Maryam Rajavi and the MEK’s destructive role, Baroness Nicholson’s involvement in Iraq as Britain’s Trade Envoy will not only be helpful for the British economy but will also help in improving human rights in Iraq.

June 9, 2014 0 comment

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