In 1978, aerial photos of 912 brightly clad followers of Jim Jones, dead by cyanidelaced drinks and gunshots in a steamy Guyanese jungle, were shown in magazines and on television, reappearing with each subsequent anniversary of the end of Jonestown. And in early 1993, television news programs showed the Koresh cult’s shoot-out, then several weeks later its flaming end on the Texas plains.
…In a message issued in 2006, Mojahedin leader Massoud Rajavi set his cult members a deadline of January 2009 by which time he told them if the Mojahedin had not overthrown the Islamic Republic of Iran, then all the residents of Camp Ashraf would be free to stay or leave: “Anyone who wants may leave, and I will myself throw out all those who are worthless. I will keep the rest who are pure, and then, I will tell them what they can do for me”…
there are two Iranian dissident groups in Iraq: Mujahedin-e-Khalq and the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan. Do the Americans have any links with these two?
It was only yesterday that the news came out with the reports of the removal of an additional 85 children from a polygamist remote compound Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect, bringing the total to 137 survivors. Officially released, State troopers, Texas Rangers and investigators from Child Protective Services raided the ranch on Thursday night to serve search and arrest warrants after a 16-year-old girl complained of sexual and physical abuse within the cult.
Reported by BBC originally in Persian, a group of Mojahedin-e Khalq’s detached members arrived in France. It is the first of a number of groups that managed to leave Iraq for a Western country. In the past months, groups of separated members have struggled to get to Western countries through neighboring countries
At a press conference in Paris on April 5, 2008, the first series of survivors of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation, aka the Rajavi cult or Saddam’s private army, announced their escape from Camp Ashraf in Iraq and their arrival in Europe. The Mojahedin, which is proscribed as a foreign terrorist entity in the US, UK, EU and Canada, was bombarded and disarmed by the US army
I was acquainted with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO) in the university. They spoke about freedom and justice and also Islam and recruited me into their organisation. The same year, that is December 1987, I was sent to Iraq for a short visit and I returned back to Turkey. The following year I was asked to go to Turkey for a short visit again and I accepted. But this time my passport was taken away from me and they did not let me go back to Turkey.
… The American officer in charge recorded my particulars and after full investigation and taking orders from his superiors realised that they have been deceived by the MKO persons and I have been subject to a conspiracy where the Iraqi police was made to get involved. He asked the Iraqi police personnel to release me and after I finished my job to escort me back to my taxi that was still waiting for me, and do not let the MKO people bother me anymore or harm me. Meanwhile the American colonel talked to me on the line and assured me that there would be no problem for me and he expressed his wishes that I would make a safe return back to Baghdad …
Our enemies have put their backs into growing disunion between us, especially during recent 30 years after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Iran and Iraq have many things in common. All of us remember the era of Saddam in power during which the Baath party played the dividing role among different Iraqi peoples and groups and also applied its every means for the establishment of disunion and bloodshed between Iran and Iraq.
Hoshiar Esmail says the biggest mistake of his life was to leave his safe exile in Switzerland and to return to the Mojahedin-e Khalgh (Volksmujahedin). In 1998, he went to Iraq, where the armed Iranian opposition group, equipped with weapons and money from the former Iraqi regime, led the struggle against the mullahs’ regime. But since then the political situation in Iraq has changed fundamentally. The Shiite and Kurdish-dominated government is pursuing a course of rapprochement with the former enemy Iran, which culminated in the recent visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.