Story

Washington’s Terrorist Friends: Prominent Americans Continue to Support a Murderous Cult

MEK is a curious hybrid creature that pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians.

One might ask if Washington’s obsession with terrorism includes supporting radical armed groups as long as they are politically useful in attacking countries that the US regards as enemies? It is widely known that the American CIA worked with Saudi Arabia to create al-Qaeda to attack the Russians in Afghanistan and the same my-enemy’s-enemy thinking appears to drive the current relationships with radical groups in Syria.

Given the fact that Iran continues to be the Biden Administration’s enemy du jour, it is perhaps not surprising to observe that the US also supports terror groups that are capable of attacking targets in the Islamic Republic. To that end, recently a number of former senior government officials and politicians were involved in cultivating their relationships with the Iranian terrorist group Mojahedin e Khalq (MEK), which held its most recent annual international summit in Paris for three days starting on July 10th. The event was online due to French COVID prevention guidelines and the featured speaker was Michele Flournoy, former US undersecretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama. Flournoy was once considered a front runner to be President Joe Biden’s defense secretary and she currently heads a consulting firm WestExec Advisors that she co-founded with current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken which has had considerable influence over staffing and other issues in the White House. In her talk, she accused Iran of posing a danger to the security of the Middle East, the United States, and to its own people, elaborating how “Since 1979, every US administration has had to deal with the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary regime and the Biden administration is no different. Iran is one of the most urgent foreign policy issues on the president’s desk.” She called for an “internal regime change” in the Islamic Republic.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers also spoke before the online gathering. Speakers included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Democratic Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Also participating were Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida and both Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. Former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile also spoke as did former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said that the MEK should be “blessed and protected.”

The summit self-described as “the largest-ever online international event dedicated to liberating Iran” with the objective of “inciting uprisings against the government in the Islamic Republic.” Though it would be charitable to suggest that the congressmen and former officials were largely involved to pick up the generous fees paid to speakers, it must also be noted that knowledge of MEK and its history is readily available on the internet and elsewhere. Flournoy in particular should have known better but even she, after the fact, claimed implausibly that she did not know that she was speaking to a former terrorist group that had killed Americans.

It should also be observed that the participating Congressmen all have extremely close ties to Israel and its domestic lobby, which have been assiduous in their efforts to vilify Iran as America’s designated enemy. To be sure, no one at the summit even mentioned Israel’s use of MEK operatives to carry out assassinations of scientists and sabotage operations inside Iran.

MEK is a curious hybrid creature in any event in that it pretends to be an alternative government option for Iran even though it is despised by nearly all Iranians. It is considered to be both irrelevant and ineffective but Iran hatred is so prevalent that it is greatly loved by the Washington Establishment which would like to see the Mullahs deposed and replaced by something more amenable to US and Israeli worldviews.

MEK is run like a cult by its leader Maryam Rajavi, with a number of rules that restrict and control the behavior of its members. One commentary likens membership in MEK to a modern-day equivalent of slavery. A study prepared by the Rand corporation for the U.S. government conducted interviews of MEK members and concluded that there were present “many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”

The group currently operates out of a secretive, heavily guarded 84 acre compound in Albania that is covertly supported by the United States intelligence community, as well as through a “political wing” front office in Paris, where it refers to itself as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). MEK is financially supported by Saudi Arabia, which enables it to stage events in the United States and in Europe where it generously pays politicians to make fifteen-minute speeches praising the organization and everything it does. It’s bribing of inside the Beltway power brokers and its support by Israel proved so successful that it was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Hillary Clinton even though it had killed Americans in the 1970s.

As indicated above, MEK made the transition from terrorist group to “champions of Iranian democracy” by virtue of intensive lobbying of Iran haters. A Guardian article also describes how “A stupendously long list of American politicians from both parties were paid hefty fees to speak at events in favor of the MEK, including Rudy Giuliani, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Elaine Chao and former Democratic party chairs Edward Rendell and Howard Dean – along with multiple former heads of the FBI and CIA. John Bolton, who has made multiple appearances at events supporting the MEK, is estimated to have received upwards of $180,000. According to financial disclosure forms, Bolton was paid $40,000 for a single appearance at the Free Iran rally in Paris in 2017.”

It apparently has never occurred to the congressmen and senior officials that the MEK group had a whole lot of history before it appeared on the scene in Washington and began buying American politicians. MEK, which consisted of a group of dissident students having Marxism inspired anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist roots, had a bloody falling out with the Iranian revolution leaders in 1979, forcing it to resettle at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad. It was protected by Saddam Hussein and used to carry out terrorist attacks inside Iran. It was also fiercely anti-American beginning back in the 1970s when it was still in Iran, to include attacks on US businesses and denunciations of the United States presence in Iran under the Shah. In 1979 it supported executing the US Embassy hostages rather than negotiating their release. One of its songs went “Death to America by blood and bonfire on the lips of every Muslim is the cry of the Iranian people. May America be annihilated.”

Within the US government, MEK was notorious for its assassination of at least six US Air Force officers and civilian defense contractors. One particularly audacious ambush in which two air force officers were murdered by MEK while being driven in from the airport was reenacted for each incoming class at the Central Intelligence Agency training center in the late 1970s to illustrate just how a perfectly executed terrorist attack on a moving vehicle might take place.

Given how currently nearly every news cycle includes stories about fake news on social media, it is surprising that MEK is never mentioned. Its current Albanian operational center uses banks of computers manned by followers, some of whom are fluent in English, who serve as bots unleashing scores of comments supporting regime change in Iran while also directing waves of criticism against any pro-Iranian pieces that appear elsewhere on social media, to include Facebook and Twitter. By one account, more than a thousand MEK supporters manage thousands of accounts on social media simultaneously. The objective of all the chatter is to convince the mostly English-speaking audience that there is a large body of Iranians who are hostile to the regime and supportive of MEK as a replacement.

It is an indisputable fact that over the past ten years, members of both major parties in Congress have either traveled to the group’s compound in Albania or spoken via video messages or live appearances in exchange for hefty speaking fees. The support provided by prominent officeholders and policymakers to include effusive praise of a terrorist group that is viscerally anti-American and has killed US officials is a disgrace. It is also a symptom of deeper problems in terms of how our foreign policy has been developed through the ascendancy of special interests. That America’s Iran policy should lead to praise of a radicalized extremist cult that is funded by authoritarian Saudi Arabia and politically supported by apartheid Israel ignores US actual interests at our peril.

By Philip Giraldi – Islam Times

August 15, 2021 0 comments

Albania

Albania and Iran’s dissident MEK: A marriage made in the US

Some 30 kilometres west from Albania’s capital Tirana, nestled between a mountain range and the Adriatic Sea, lies the town of Manëz.

With a population of roughly 7,000 and picturesque views in every direction, it is a typical Albanian town, save for one fact: it hosts Camp Ashraf-3, the base of Iranian dissident group known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran.

Going by its Farsi acronym of MEK, the group has had a presence in Albania since at least 2013. In its heyday, it was one of the main groups struggling against the imperial regime in Iran, playing a major role in the 1979 revolution before falling out with the newly-established Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Over time, the group’s significance diminished.

The Ashraf-3 base within the main destructive zone (map: USGS.gov)

Currently, roughly 3,000 members of MEK are estimated to live in Camp Ashraf-3, a heavily fortified compound. The camp’s perimeter is lined with Iranian flags and guarded by Albanian private security.

And although the group gets little mainstream attention, it has actively been courted by powers hostile to Iran, primarily the United States. MEK’s leader, Maryam Rajavi (wife of one of the group’s founders, Massoud Rajavi, presumed dead since 2003) has met with prominent US politicians such as Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton and the late John McCain. An annual conference hosted by the MEK in Paris regularly draws visitors from various right-wing European political parties.

Despite this support, the group has next to no credibility in Iran, according to Houchang Chahabi, an Iranian-born professor of international relations at Boston University.

“They have been politically irrelevant in Iran since at least the mid-1980s, and have little to no domestic support,” says Professor Chahabi.

This raises the question of why Albania of all countries would drag itself into one of the world’s most tense geopolitical standoffs, between the United States and Iran, by agreeing to host a tiny, fanatical armed group, which until 2012 was designated as a terrorist group by the United States and most of the European Union.

Now described by various sources as a cult, a cartel, a dangerous extremist group, the group’s presence may even represent a threat to Albanians.

From revolutionaries to cult

MEK was founded in the 1960s by radical students opposed to Shah Reza Pahlavi. With an ideology combining Shia Islamism with Marxism, throughout the 1970s the group staged dozens of often suicidal attacks on security forces, as well as targeting western-owned hotels, airlines and oil companies.

During the 1979 revolution, they were crucial in the final gun battles against the Shah’s police. However, it did not take long for things to sour between the various factions involved in the revolution. The Ayatollah Khomeini-led Islamist faction ended up seizing most of the political power.

Following massive street protests organised by the MEK, the Islamic Republic cracked down hard on the group, executing thousands of supporters and driving many to flee across the border to Iraq, where they were hosted and armed by Saddam Hussein.

Women fighters armed with AK-47s in the National Liberation Army of Iran stand at attention during a flag ceremony at Camp Ashraf,Wednesday Jan 29 1997, 110 kilometeres northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The fighters are dedicated to overthrowing the Islamic regime in Iran and installing a multi-party democracy. (AP PHoto/ Jassim Mohammmed)

Tens of thousands MEK members participated in the Iran-Iraq War, fighting alongside the Iraqi military which was indiscriminately bombing Iranian cities and using banned chemical weapons. This caused what credibility they had left in Iran – and clearly they used to have a lot, as evidenced by their massive support during the revolution and the post-revolutionary period – to dissipate.

An attempted incursion into Iran in 1988 by an 8,000-strong mechanised MEK force, at the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq War, ended in crushing defeat. The group began resembling more of a cult than a political party – the 1988 defeat was partially blamed on members being too distracted by “trivialities” like love, friendship and parenthood to be zealous enough fighters.

Throughout the 1990s, MEK helped Saddam Hussein brutally quell uprisings in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, implicating themselves in some horrendous atrocities, particularly against Kurds.

Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the MEK began piquing the interest of US hawks. It had toppled hostile regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan with ease, and the insurgencies which would end up bogging it down had yet to fully take off. It was widely believed that Iran would be the next country on the list – and the MEK looked like convenient on-the-ground partners.

However, events in Iraq took an unanticipated turn. The country’s post-Saddam government forged closer ties with Iran, particularly under the leadership of Nouri al-Maliki. Between 2009 and 2013, Iraqi security forces raided MEK compounds multiple times, killing over 100 members.

This alarmed the MEK’s western sponsors which began looking for alternative countries to base the group in. They reached out to several of their Eastern European partners, with Romania identified as an ideal location. However, only one country responded to the request positively: Albania.

MEK officially renounced violence and between 2013 and 2016, between three and five thousand members were relocated to Albania, with the help of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), overseen by the governments of Sali Berisha and Edi Rama.

Violation of sovereignty?

Few even within Albania know of MEK’s existence. Those that do have asked questions about the implications of hosting such a group: fears were raised that the presence of the MEK forces Albania to inherit a decades-long struggle between a major regional power in the Middle East and a terrorist group with cult-like characteristics, at the behest of the United States.

However, Professor Olsi Jazexhi, an Albanian historian and lecturer at the International Islamic University of Malaysia, believes that there is little immediate security threat to Albania as a result of the group’s presence.

“Iran has attacked MEK terrorists in the past in Iraq, however at present it cannot do anything against MEK in Albania. Albania is a NATO member country and its security is guaranteed by the Americans,” he says.

Dr Zijad Bećirović, director of the International Institute for Middle Eastern and Balkan Studies in Ljubljana agrees with this view.

“Iran does not attach much importance to this group. Albania is a member of NATO and Iran would not want to risk a confrontation,” Dr Bećirović tells Emerging Europe.

Leaked photos showing MEK members at work

This may be particularly true in light of how MEK renounced violence as a precondition of its relocation to Albania. Now, according to interviews conducted by The Guardian with MEK defectors, members spend most of their time posting propaganda comments on online forums demonising the Iranian government.

Furthermore, the group appears to have fallen far from its heyday as one of the trailblazers of the Iranian revolution to becoming something not unlike a cult.

Members are forced to divorce their spouses upon joining. Celibacy is strictly enforced, and daily, members have to confess their sexual urges in front of their peers. Dozens of women have allegedly been sterilised by the group’s doctors under false pretences, presumably to sever them from “distractions” such as raising children.

Dr Bećirović believes that the US clearly played a major role in bringing the group to Albania.

“Albania is a reliable ally of the United States. This was also shown in how Albania hosted prisoners of war from Afghanistan captured by the United States. It is quite certain that the MEK would not have come to Albania without the mediation or role of the United States.”

However, despite this, Bećirović acknowledges that Albania also has its own interests in hosting the MEK. “In this way, Albania strengthens its role in the region and international relations and its position with the United States and western allies.”

—

Others, like Olsi Jazexhi, see the whole situation as evidence of American hegemony over Albania.

“Albania today is ruled by the US embassy in Tirana. The embassy vets our politicians – like the Guardian Council in Iran – and it decides which politicians enter parliament or not. The hosting of MEK in Albania is not an Albanian affair, but an American-Israeli affair.”

However, lately, the MEK has been back on the Iranian government’s radar. In November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior official in Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, was assassinated. Some local news reports indicated that over 60 people were involved in the assassination.

Mohsen fakhrizade- iran nuclear scientists assassinated – israel – mek

Iranian government sources blamed the assassination on MEK, acting in conjunction with Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. The unconfirmed reports of there being several dozen people involved in the operation indicate a high level of collusion between locals and the architects of the assassination. MEK has demonstrated its members’ zeal, fanaticism, and willingness to collaborate with enemies of Iran – it would not be preposterous to suggest that they may have played a part in the killing.

The incident also echoed how during a string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists from the late 2000s to the early 2010s, the Iranian government persistently claimed the involvement of MEK sleeper cells.

Regardless of whether or not the MEK were involved in the assassinations, it is clear that they have been identified as the United States’ partner in Iran, should anything happen between the two countries.

This, however you slice it, means that the group is actively collaborating with a country that has been persistently hostile to Iran for over four decades.

And that means that as long as tensions remain between the US and Iran, MEK will continue to be useful to its patrons – meaning Albania will continue hosting them.

“Albania will continue to host the MEK paramilitary base on its soil for as long as the Americans need them to,” says Olsi Jazexhi.

“If one day the United States makes peace with Iran, MEK will be forgotten, dismantled, de-radicalised and its remaining members will finally live a peaceful civilian life. But for the time being they are useful and good terrorists which Albania must host.”

Unlike many news and information platforms, Emerging Europe is free to read, and always will be. There is no paywall here. We are independent, not affiliated with nor representing any political party or business organisation. We want the very best for emerging Europe, nothing more, nothing less. Your support will help us continue to spread the word about this amazing region.

Emerging-europe.com

August 14, 2021 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Nejat CEO’s explanations on the petition against the MEK in the ICJ

Following the start of a petition by former members of the Mujahedin Khalq (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) and families of the group’s current members against the leaders of the group, then obtaining the final verdict from the International Court of Justice in Tehran, and the following referring of it to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as well as the growing wave of signatures of the online petition for the international trial of the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi, Mr. Ebrahim Khodabandeh the CEO of Nejat Society presented a comprehensive report on the process of the petition for the participants of the recent conference held by Nejat Society.

What is the judiciary process?
There is an International Criminal Court in the Hague. The Statute for the creation of the Court reads that “The Court will prosecute the most serious crimes that are of concern to the international community. These are crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.”

The International Criminal Court was created to complement national courts. The Court will not begin investigating a crime if the state concerned is already investigating or prosecuting it, or even if the state has investigated it and then decided not to prosecute the persons concerned. “This has taken place in Iran,” Khodabandeh notifies. “42 people passed a judiciary process in three years to finally participate a hearing court in March 2021, in Tehran. The complainants and the witnesses addressed the court. The final verdict was issued a few months ago.”
The International Court of Justice, which has its seat in The Hague too, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and a section of the ICC.

“The entire documents related to the ICC including the verdict issued in the Iranian court, the petitions, the documentations and testimonies were officially translated.” Khodabandeh added. “The copies were equalized to the original documents. They were sent to our friends in Europe. Three of our friends [ex-members of the MEK] Aliakbar Rastgou, Ghafoor Fatahian and Isa Azadeh took the documents and submitted to the court in the Hague.”
Khodabandeh notified that the defectors in Europe were willing to submit the documents to the court via a demonstration which was not possible due to the Covid pandemic. “Mr. Rastgou registered the documents in his own name and delivered them to an official named KarimAsad Ahmadkhan in the secretariat of the ICJ,” Khodabandeh clarified. “The documents of the national court were actually submitted to be investigated by the ICJ. The final result will be imparted to the French and Albanian governments [where MEK leaders are located].”

Ali Akbar Rastgou

What was the case about?

“The complaints should include the cases that the ICC court can prosecute,” Khodabandeh said. “The ICC prosecutes the crimes that are of concern to the international community. So, a petition was launched on an international reliable website to gather signatures. Until the day we submitted the documents, 4000 had signed the petition. To this date, the signatures have raised a lot more. This means that the crimes of MEK leaders are of concern for the international community. The signatures were filed in 182 pages and delivered to the court together with other papers. The list includes signature from all over the world. It was also accompanied with lots of text, audio and video messages in support of the petition.”

The signatures are a demo of a part of the international community who are concerned about the crimes of MEK leaders.

Which crimes that MEK leaders committed will the Court prosecute?
These crimes are crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It has been proposed that the Court should prosecute the crime of aggression but the state parties have yet to agree on a definition. Below are brief definitions of the crimes as agreed to in the Rome Statute. According to the ICC, crimes against humanity are crimes that are “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” They can include acts such as: murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, forcible transfer of population, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, other forms of sexual violence, persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity, enforced disappearance of persons, the crime of apartheid and other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

According to the ICC statute, the crimes that are “widespread” and “systematically” committed against a group of people, are included in the crimes against humanity. “First of all, modern slavery is a crime that worries the International community,” Khodabandeh explained. “Therefore, Brainwashing is a crime. Mental and physical pressures under the name of sessions called current operation, solitary confinement, physical torture and death penalty typically took place in the 1990s in Camp Ashraf in the era of Saddam Hussein regime. The MEK leaders suspected 700 members of their group as being the agents of the Iranian government. These people were tortured. Some were killed under torture. Some people were disappeared in the MEK. These are all cases of crimes against humanity.”

The CEO of Nejat Society stated that whatever the outcome of the trial will be, the world will know that Maryam Rajavi’s democratic gesture is entirely deceitful because she has committed the most serious crimes against her own members. “The victims of the MEK were not from their enemies but they were completely under the authority of the group. They were devoted to the cause of the group.” Khodabandeh presented some examples of cases who were killed or disappeared in the Cult of Rajavi. Yaser Akbarinasab who committed suicide due to the severe mental pressure he underwent in the cult and Soheil Khattar who was killed in the group.

About the reaction of the MEK leaders particularly Massoud Rajavi, Khodabandeh says, “Rajavi can bother himself to file his complaint against every person he would like to, in courts of Albania or France. This is what former members of his group just did and then pursued in the ICJ.”

Currently, the petition created by 42 former members of MEK is under investigation in the international court of the Hague.

August 11, 2021 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Participants of Nejat Conference Speak of the grieves imposed by the MEK

The two first days of the five-day online conference of Nejat Society were broadcast on Saturday and Sunday, August 7th and 8th. The conference is attended by former members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) and families of those who are still taken as hostages by the group leaders.

The followings have been taken from the speeches of some of the participants of the first and second day of the conference:

Conference of the Nejat Society perusing to support the International trial of MEK leaders

The brother of Morteza Ghadimi, member of the MEK: “I hope that our letters, complaints and petitions be effective. My parents are both very old. They are still awaiting my brother release from the Cult of Rajavi.”

The sister of Alimadad Sadeghi: “Alimadad has been enduring the brainwashing system of the Cult of Rajavi for over four decades.”

The sister of Habibollah Qasemi: “We ask for visiting our loved brother in Albania.”

The brother of Hossein Nematollahi: “My brother was in the prisons of Saddam Hussein for ten years and since then he has been captive in the MEK. We signed petitions. We wrote letters but there was no answer.”

The sister of Alkhas Kouhpeyma: “We had no news of my brother. We just realized that he is in the MEK after his friends returned to Iran and told us about the fate of Alkhas in the MEK’s Camp Ashraf. We went to Ashraf several times but we were not allowed to see my brother.”

The niece of Mahmoud Talebi: “My uncle was a prisoner of war but he was deceived by the MEK recruiters and was delivered to Camp Ashraf. The MEK leaders never let him contact us and never let us visit him.”

Mahmoud Dashtestani

Mahmoud Dashtestani, former member of the MEK: “We challenged the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi by running this petition. I am one of the complainants and witnesses of the MEK’s atrocities, in the court. We will pursue our complaint in the International court of the Hague.”

Abbas Pourmohammad, former member of the MEK: “The MEK leaders took our whole life. There is no financial motivation here. We stand by those who have been looking forward to visiting their loved ones for over thirty years. Thirty years is so long!”

The brother of Masoumeh Oladi: “The MEK kidnapped my sister when she was only sixteen years old. I will sue the MEK leaders until the last day of my life.”
Ruhollah Kabiri, former member of MEK: “I was in the MEK for 12 years, the pressures and grieves I endured in this cult are unbelievable.”

The brother of Issa Akbarzadeh: “My brother was recruited by the MEK fraudulent recruiters in Turkey. We picketed behind the gates of Camp Ashraf to visit my brother but the MEK leaders did not permit us to visit him.”

Gholamali Mirzaei

GholamAli Mirzaiee, former member of the MEK: “I returned to Iran eight months ago. The entire propaganda of the MEK about defectors is false. They just lied to us when they said that our family would not welcome us in Iran.”
Mohammad Karami, former member of MEK: “I came back to Iran a few years ago and I have witnessed the efforts of my friends to save their loved ones from the MEK. I ask the international court to aid families contact their loved ones.”

The father of Aliasgar Jaafarpour: “We have been asking to meet our children for several years. The MEK has deprived us from any visit and contact.”

The brother of Abbas and Asghar Faraji: “The requests of families of MEK hostages should be investigated. I am hopeful to visit my brothers again.”

The brother of Mohammad Khatibi: “I am looking for a way to visit my brother in Albania for even a few minutes. We want to be informed about their mental and physical health.”

The mother of Fereydoun Nedaei

The mother of Fereidoon Nedayee: “I am waiting. I will be waiting for you as long as I am alive. Why did you take refuge in the MEK?”

The above-mentioned sentences are just a few words quoted out of the heart-breaking stories of these suffering people. Many mothers, sisters and brothers have tears in eyes while speaking in front of the camera.

Nejat Society

August 9, 2021 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Nejat Members Online Conference to denounce MEK leaders

First day of a nationwide conference was broadcast by Nejat TV. Dozens of participants in the conference sought to peruse the international trial of MEK leaders.

The five-day online conference started on August 7th, 2021. The conference was hosted by Ali Moradi former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ cult of Rajavi) and an expert on the cult-like group.

Ebrahim Khodabandeh chief executive officer of Nejat Society presented a summary of the judicial process of the complaint against the leaders of the MEK in the Iranian judiciary system and the peruse of the complaint in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Ebrahim Khodabande, CEO of Nejat Society

According to Mr. Khodabandeh, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the last phase in the judiciary process against the individuals who committed crimes that concern the international community. “The entire documents on the Court in Tehran and the final verdict were officially translated and submitted to the international court in the Hague via our friends Aliakbar Rastgou, Ghafour Fattahian and Isa Azadeh,” he said.
The CEO of Nejat Society also explained about the petition run by Nejat Society that was registered on a reliable website and eventually was signed by thousands of people who supported victims of the MEK and the petitioners of the file against MEK leaders.

The participants of the conference included former members of MEK who were victims of the crimes committed by the group leaders, especially in the early years of the 1990s in Camp Ashraf and families of members who are still captive in the group’s camp in Albania.

Conference of the Nejat Society perusing to support the International trial of MEK leaders

The participants addressed the conference calling on the international bodies for the trial of the group leaders, particularly Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. Former members and families from all around Iran, Tabriz, Zanjan and Shiraz etc. spoke at Nejat TV.

As the representative of the 42 complainant of the file, Samad Eskandari expressed his pleasure for the referring of their complaint to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. “I ask the international court of the Hague to listen to the cries of mothers, sisters, fathers and brothers who look forward to vising their loved ones who are hostages of the Cult of Rajavi.”

The conference will continue until Wednesday, August 11th. .

Click here to watch Nejat TV

August 8, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Mother Saadat, mother of three victims of the MEK

Hamael is the mother of Mehri, Nahid and Mahmoud Saadat, members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). She has been looking forward to visiting her children for 33 years. She has been an active member of Nejat Society in the campaign to release victims of the cult-like group. She is called Mother Saadat by other Nejat members.
Mother Saadat has written several letters to her three beloved children. The letters have been never received by them. She also traveled to Camp Ashraf, Iraq, when the group was located in the Iraqi territory but she was not allowed to visit her children.

“What kind of justice is this?”, she asked in her last letter to the UN General Secretary, António Guterres. “The MEK has separated my three children from me for 33 years now. I miss my two daughters and my only son. Maryam Rajavi, one of the leaders of the group, who takes democratic gestures, has taken my children as hostages.”
Mother Saadat also declared her support for the recent petition run by Nejat Society to call for the trial of the MEK leaders. The petition has been signed by over eleven thousand people to this date.

Mehri, Nahid and Mahmoud are in the MEK’s so-called Camp Ashraf three in Albania. They joined the group in 1987 when it was located in Iraq fighting against Iran alongside Saddam Hussein. They left their mother to fight for Massoud Rajavi but it was the end of their family union. The MEK media made Mehri and Mahmoud to take action against their mother labeling her as the agent of the Iranian government. However, the three siblings have been never shown together in the MEK media. Any family relationship is forbidden in the MEK.

August 7, 2021 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Nationwide Conference of the Nejat Society

Following the judicial activities of some former members against the leaders of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi Cult), and obtaining a final verdict from the International Court of Justice in Tehran, and referring it to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as well as following the growing wave of requests in various ways for the international trial of the leaders of this cult, especially Massoud and Maryam Rajavi on charges of crimes against humanity, a conference will be held with the presence of a number of families and former members from different provinces and cities of the country.

This conference will be broadcast online on Saturday, August 7, from 10:00 AM for 5 days on “Nejat TV” for the information of the public. Please inform the time and link of its broadcast to the knowledge of friends and acquaintances and also inform in cyberspace.

Click here to watch Nejat TV

August 6, 2021 0 comments

Missions of Nejat Society

Over Eleven Thousand Signatures for Anti-MEK Petition

A petition titled “Trial of MEK leaders” has been organized on the Nejat Society website since a few weeks ago. The number of signatories of this petition has exceeded 11 thousand to date.
The petition “welcomes the trial of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, PMOI, Rajavi Cult) leaders, especially Massoud and Maryam Rajavi in international courts”.

Link to the Petition

The initial court was held in the Iranian judicial system in Branch 55 of the Tehran international Court of Law to hear the complaints of 42 former members of the MEK, in March 2021. The complainants were subjected to solitary confinement, torture, and physical and mental sufferings in the MEK’s military base, Camp Ashraf in Iraq.
Out of the 11034 signatories, 424 people commented below the petition expressing their support for the campaign and their desire for the trial of Massoud Rajavi and other commanders of the group.

August 4, 2021 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

MEK leaders must be tried like all other cult leaders

There are a lot of stories on children and families trapped in cults all around the world. The accounts are all the same: a charismatic leader keeps a number of people including children in isolation; indoctrinates them, restricts communication and information from the outside world and uses a fear of the outside world to exert control over members. Although, defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) recount the same stories, the group’s propaganda vitrine shows up as a democratic group to oppose the Iranian Government.

Every day, we hear that Police has arrested cult leaders who have abused their followers in various ways. This is while the MEK leaders have had thousands of victims during the four decades of their cult-like ruling. According to many testimonies, Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the group leads a polygamist cult that deprives members of their liberty in any aspect of their life.

Look at these stories. All ends with denouncement and trial of the leaders of the cults although the number of victims were much less than those abused by the MEK leaders:

1. In October 2019, Dutch Police found on a farm property in Ruinerwold, Netherlands, six siblings, aged 18 to 25, found living in a secret room on the property. It is believed that the family had spent the past nine years preparing for the “end of times,” and believed the rest of the world was doing the same. With a group like that in Ruinerwold—that which is built into a family unit—the parent or parental figure fills the role of “cult leader.” Instead of recruiting individuals, members become children who may know no life outside of their parents’ particular worldview. “This creates a dangerously unbalanced power dynamic—and as these stories show, the result can be even more devastating than what happened in Ruinerwold”, police said.

2. A half-century before the six siblings were found preparing for the end of days in Ruinerwold, a doomsday cult in Australia—known as The Family—made international news when female leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, was accused of illegal adoptions and child abuse. Between 1968 and 1975, Hamilton-Byrne and her husband Bill acquired 14 children through illegal adoptions or from followers, who were encouraged to give their children over to the woman who soon started to call herself the female incarnation of Jesus Christ. The children were given falsified legal documents, the last name Hamilton-Byrne, and were told that Anne was their biological mother; some children were even grouped into sets of twins or triplets. To further emphasize the familial structure, Hamilton-Byrne dressed the kids in matching outfits and dyed their hair a matching platinum blonde.
The Family first came onto the police’s radar in 1980, when 10-year-old Kim Halm was kidnapped by her mother, a member of The Family. But it wasn’t until 1987 that the group would begin to fall apart when Sarah Moore, formerly Sarah Hamilton-Byrne, was expelled from the group for resisting the rules and rituals and went to police. The property was raided in 1987, and all children were removed from the Hamilton-Byrnes’s care. The couple fled Australia and eluded police for six years, until they were arrested by the FBI in 1993 in the Catskills in New York. They were extradited to Australia and charged with conspiracy to defraud and to commit perjury; they pled guilty to making a false declaration and were fined $5000 each.

The Family Cult

3. On January 14, 2018, two children fled their Perris, California home through a window—one turned back, but a 17-year-old girl continued on and was able to successfully call 911. When police met her, she showed them photos from inside the home, where she and her 12 siblings had been imprisoned for years by their parents, David and Louise Turpin. In the wake of the discovery, the couple was arrested and charged but pled not guilty to all charges until February 22, 2019. At this time, the couple changed their pleas to guilty on fourteen felony counts, including cruelty to an adult dependent, child cruelty, torture, and false imprisonment. On April 19, 2019, the couple was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years. All thirteen children received medical care in the months following their removal from the home, and the younger children have since been placed in foster homes.

David and Louise Turpin Cult

4. In February 2017, BBC reported of a polygamist cult. The daughter of the cult leader had been interviewed on the book she had written on her experience in the cult. Anna LeBaron’s father, Ervil, was the leader of a polygamous cult responsible for more than 20 murders. The killings continued even after his death thanks to a hit list he had left behind. Here Anna speaks for the first time about how she escaped from the cult – and her hope to “redeem” the LeBaron name.

polygamists’ cult

The list of cult stories is endless. The threat of cults seems to be haunting our children and youth everywhere but there is no cult in the world as free as the MEK that has built a glamorous headquarters in the small village of Manza in Albania. The group has settled a few thousand men and women in the rooms behind the barbed wires of that newly built camp called Ashraf 3. The inaccessible members inside the camp include elderlies who have been recruited by the group through deceitful techniques years ago, children who have been grown up in the group separated from their parents –who are now in their thirties and forties—and women who have been made marry Massoud Rajavi and have sex with him.

Mujahedin Khalq members’ children

The list of cases of human rights abuses in the MEK’s camp is long but the international willingness to bring leaders of the group to trial is not sturdy enough to stop the ongoing human right violations taken place in Camp Ashraf 3 every day. Read the stories of some of MEK victims: Somayeh Mohammadi, Batoul Soltani, Yasser Ezati, Alan Mohammadi, Nasrin Ebrahimi, Yaser Akbarinasab, Hadi Shams Haeri,…

August 4, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Quincy Institute: MEK, a proxy force for Israel and Saudi Arabia against Iran

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) has been documented as a main proxy force of the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia in their interventionist agendas in Iran, according to the new study published by Quincy Institute.

The new Quincy paper report on the controversies in the Middle East indicates that the instability in the region is not due to a sole ‘malign actor’. The report gives a qualitative and quantitative view of the region’s conflicts over the past 10 years. It shows several states to be interventionist to roughly the same degree.

According to the new research by Matthew Pettiis and Trita Parsi for the Quincy Institute, the reality of the interventionists in the middle east is complicated. Their new report, “No Clean Hands: The Interventions of Middle East Powers, 2010-2020,” looks at the last decade of conflict in the Middle East in which six states have shown themselves the most able to project armed power beyond their borders: Iran, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. “Iran is highly interventionist, but not an outlier,” they assert. “The other major powers in the region are often as interventionist as the Islamic Republic — and at times even more so. Indeed, the UAE and Turkey have surpassed Iran in recent years.”

The report also highlights the U.S. role is as “highly problematic”. “It is an active player in these regional interventions,” it reads. “In fact, five of the six most interventionist powers in the Middle East are armed by the United States — and also enjoy significant political support from Washington.”
The report investigates various aspects of interventions by the powers. They may include low-intensity intervention, proxy or remote warfare, combat troops on the ground and territorial conquest. A table has been planned by the authors to list each interventionist’s activities in certain countries in the region. The MEK has been mentioned in at least two cases.

President Trump and his good friends the Saudis (White House photo)

The MEK, has been used by Saudi Arabia in Iran since 1989 to date. “Multiple defectors from the Mojahedin-e Khalq, an armed Iranian opposition group, have gone on the record claiming that Saudi Arabia materially supports the group,” according to the report. “The MEK’s former head of security said that this relationship dates back to 1989 and included hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.”

The group was also a proxy force for Israel in the terror campaign against the Iranian nuclear scientists. Based on the Quincy report, Israel has been using the MEK operatives since 2007 to date. “Israel has cultivated relations with armed opposition groups in Iran,” Parsi and Pettiis state. “Two Obama administration officials confirmed that Israel had carried out the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists in 2011 through 2012 through Mujahedin-e Khalq operatives, and a former official confirmed their claims in a separate report. The official added that the U.S. military trained the operatives on U.S. soil.”
Matthew Pettiis a researcher at the Quincy Institute and an investigative reporter at Responsible Statecraft. Before joining the Quincy Institute, he worked as a national security reporter for The National Interest and a freelance journalist.

Trita Parsi, Ph.D., is an award-winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is an expert on U.S.–Iranian relations, Iranian foreign policy, and the geopolitics of the Middle East. He has authored three books on U.S. policy in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Israel. He is the cofounder and former president of the National Iranian American Council.

August 3, 2021 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts