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Female torturers of the MEK cult

In January 2021, Damien McGuinness of BBC published an investigated report on “Nazi Ravesbruck camp”, where “female SS guards enjoyed home comforts at a camp where they tortured thousands of inmates”.

Presenting testimonies of victims of these women, the author of the article suggests, “Sometimes the women are portrayed as exploited victims. At other times as sadistic monsters.” He points out a very crucial fact about female tortures who are dedicated to the cause of an ideology, “The truth is more horrifying. They were not extraordinary monsters, but rather ordinary women, who ended up doing monstrous things.”

Nazi Ravesbruck camp

What the BBC correspondent concludes is true in other ideological, extremist movements. In September, 2017, Jane Lavender of the Mirror reported on “horrifying confessions of female ISIS torturers” who revealed they enjoyed hurting women – especially in front of dads and husbands. The woman was a member of an all-female jihadist gang and told how she relished torturing her female victims in front of their distraught families. “The terrifying reality of life as a female ISIS torturer has been laid bare as a deserter reveals she “enjoyed” hurting other woman”, write jane Lavender.

female tortures in the ISIS

This was not the only report on female tortures in the ISIS. Other news outlets such as Aljazeera and Daily Mail published accounts on female jihadists who killed and tortured people in Syria, as a new horrific phenomenon in the history of human rights abuse. However, the international community must come to know that female torturers could have been found in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) since the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, settled the hegemony of women in his cult of personality, during the 1980’s.
The news media have not been able to cover firsthand accounts on female torturers in the MEK because the group severely controls arrivals and departures of its camps. Nonetheless, the testimonies of defectors of the group, who expose dreadful facts on maltreatments and tortures committed by MEK commanders, mostly female, against their own members, are simply accessible.

Maryam Sanjabi

Maryam Sanjabi, escaped the Cult of Rajavi in 2009. She eventually wrote a book about her experience of living inside the MEK. She writes of female commanders who interrogate and torture dissident members inside the cult-like system of the MEK.

Mahvash Sepehri

“Mahvash Sepehri was one of the major commanders to suppress every voice of dissent in the group,” Maryam writes. “About two hundred members were tried by Mahvash Sepehri. They were eventually jailed in solitary confinement, mentally and physically tortured.” Maryam Sanjabi believes that Mahvash Sepehri is the responsible for killing a girl named Nasrin Ahmadi under torture.

Mohammadreza Mobin

Mohammad Reza Mobin, former member of MEK wrote a series of articles on female torturers in the Cult of Rajavi. He revealed horrific facts on how members of the group were interrogated and tortured by female commanders. In particular, he explained about a woman named Forough Pakdel.

“Forough Pakdel was one the main commanders who tortured me,” he writes. “Along with Fazel, she interrogated me. They almost tried to kill me during the six months of solitary confinement.” MohammadReza endured the most sever tortures, as he says, only because he had criticized the leaders’ discriminatory attitude toward members.

Nasri Ebrahimi, a female ex-member of the MEK joined the group when she was only 14. It took her only two years to be a victim of torture by female commanders. “The interrogators were usually, Fahimeh Arvani, Forough Pakdel, Mahnaz Bazzazi, Mehri Haji Nezhad, Batul Rajai and Hajar Tahmasbi,” Nasrin says.
“They wanted me to confess that I was the agent of the Iranian regime and I did not want to confess such a false allegation.”, Nasrin says. “During the entire time of the interrogation sessions Mahnaz Bazzazi and Forough Pakdel were shouting at me, calling me names.”
About the human rights violations committed by female commanders of MEK, the testimonies of former members are countless. Women in the MEK commit crimes, due to the same reasons that other women in Nazi and ISIS establishments committed them.

In a radical system, moral boundaries can be simply transformed or removed. The leader who rules the system –that can be Hitler, Abubakr Baghdadi or Massoud Rajavi—allows violence. In these totalitarian systems, members are charged with strict tasks in the hierarchy. The tasks should be done without any excuse. As a result, any criminal task is normalized in the hierarchy. Victims of the violence are considered as not being human kinds.
Female commanders of the MEK are brainwashed in such a radical totalitarian system that can turn ordinary women to torturers.

Mazda Parsi

September 9, 2021 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The soldiers of despair

She was about twenty when she left Iran in 1995 together with her husband, Haidari, and her two daughters, Elahe and Roya. The couple arrived in the Netherlands, where they applied for political asylum. The government refused it. The Mojahedin contacted her husband and asked him to join. Having been never politically involved before, he hesitated. His wife explains: “they told us that if we joined the organization, they would help us obtain political asylum in Holland”. Hoping to legalize their situation, they agreed to collect funds (She uses the word “beg”) for the organization.

Three years later, propaganda and brainwashing has succeeded in convincing the couple to move to Iraq. The trap slowly closed on them. Massoumeh was forced to give her two children to an Iranian nurse, a member of the movement. In 1998, using a forged passport,she arrived in Iraq, via Belgium and Jordan. Her husband joined her one week later. The young woman states: “I was personally seduced by Maryam Rajavi’s position on women’s liberation and by the idyllic picture they painted of the situation in Iraq. But we were soon confronted by a reality that was far less attractive”.

As soon as they arrived in Ashraf camp, the Haidaris were separated from each other. They agreed, in writing, to end their married life, to break completely with their families and to write a daily report summarizing what they did, heard and saw. They conformed to the group and underwent military training. Massoumeh learned to handle many different weapons, maintain liaison between networks operating on both sides of the border and even to carry out bomb attacks inside Iran.

In 2001, this young “people’s fighter” took part in an operation in Tehran itself. She marched dozens of Kilometers into Iran, with her fellow women commandos, carrying thirty Kilograms of explosives. On the way back, she was arrested near the town of Ourumieh. After intensive interrogation in the police station,she admitted everything she knew about the organization and was sent to prison. One year later, she was freed and returned to live with her parents in Tehran. But her troubles continue: her husband is still in the Ashraf Camp and does not know that she is alive. Her “death” was announced in “al-Qamar al-Monir”: or “shining Moon”,her nom de guerre.she has had no news of her children, Elahe and Roya, aged nufrse with whom they wee placed is to longer in service. The Netherland success. They remain missing. Have they,too, been sent to Iraq?

Describing the situation among the Mojahedin at the time she left Camp Ashraf, Massoumeh says:” the fighters were weary and losing hope. Those who admitted this were harshly disciplined. I did not know that there were special prisons for Mojahedn. I learned that later from former members I met after I returned to Iran. In fact, we were very badly informed about what went on inside Iraq and knew even less about events outside the country. We had no access to newspapers,magazines or books. Our only source of news was the movement’s own television station. There were no holidays. The few times we left the camp, it was only to bring a sick person to a Baghdad hospital and return right away. All emotional ties were forbidden by the organization. For example, we were not allowed to keep photographs of our own children, write letters to them or our parents, or become friends with anyone else. Since sexual relations had been banned, women could not become pregnant or have babies”.

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

September 8, 2021 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Sobhani spent eight-and-a-half years in solitary confinement inside MEK camp

Mohammad Hussein Sobhani spent eight-and-a-half years in solitary confinement inside the MKO’s main camp in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, from September 1992 to January 2001. He was subsequently held in Abu Ghraib prison and left Iraq in 2002.

Sobhani first came in contact with the MKO in 1977, a year before the anti-monarchy revolution. By 1979, he was working “professionally and full time” with the organization. When the headquarters of the armed wing of the organization relocated inside Iraq, he followed suit. By 1991, he had risen in the ranks of the organization and had become a member of the Central Committee. However, ever since the “ideological revolution,” when divorces were mandated, he became uncomfortable with the path pursued by the leadership. His differences with the leadership of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi and other members of the Central Committee reached a climax in 1992. Masoud Rajavi argued for remaining in Iraq regardless of the end of the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam Hussein’s defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991, he said. Rajavi still hoped that fighting between Iran and Iraq would resume, and based the organization’s strategy on such a development. Sobhani says he found the possibility of a new war highly unlikely given the dismal state of Iraq’s armed forces. Other members of the Central Committee saw his arguments as a challenge to the Rajavis’ leadership:

Mohammd Hussein Sobhani

As long as my criticisms were mild, I was left alone. But as soon as I persevered in my questioning, their behavior changed dramatically. In the beginning, I discussed my concerns personally with the leadership, Maryam and Masoud Rajavi. I also brought up my concerns with other members of the Central Committee. These discussions reached a dead-end. Once they became certain that I didn’t share their views, on August 28, 1992, they convened a meeting (neshast taiin taklif) to determine my faith and to decide if I was staying with the organization or not. The process began with intimidation, verbal abuse, and beatings. Of course, since I was a high ranking official, I was treated better than ordinary members. I was told that my criticisms and questions were just an excuse to quit the struggle. Their conclusion was that I was a quitter (borideh) and didn’t have the strength to continue the struggle any longer.

On August 31, 1992, Sobhani was moved to a prison and kept under solitary confinement for the next eight-and-a-half years.

After the first two months in prison, all of my beliefs in the organization fell apart. Up to that point I considered my differences with them as a matter of divergent political views; I wasn’t questioning the MKO’s underlying essence. I used to mark my prison walls each time I was subjected to severe beatings. There were many occasions of lesser beatings, but on eleven occasions I was beaten mercilessly using wooden sticks and thick leather elts.
Sobhani was handed over to Iraqi officials in January 2001. He spent one month in mukhabarat prison and then transferred to Abu Ghraib. He was held in Abu Ghraib until January 21, 2002, when he was repatriated to Iran in exchange for Iraqi POWs. In Iran, he was detained and interrogated by the Iranian government. After three days, he escaped from a low security detention center and fled Iran. He is currently living in Europe.

September 8, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

MEK celebrates its 57th anniversary as what?

On 5th September the People’s Mojahedin e Khalq celebrated its 57th anniversary. But here’s a serious question: ‘As what?’ Is the MEK a terrorist group; a propaganda merchant; a mercenary militia group; a resistance movement; a liberation force; a democratic, feminist opposition group; a government in waiting?

These are some of the descriptions attached to it by observers and by itself over its five-decade history. Sometimes it’s hard to pin down this chameleon like group. Just what, specifically, is the MEK?

Until recently, the MEK kept company with extreme Neocons, Israeli Zionists and Saudis; John McCain, John Bolton, Rudi Giuliani, even Mike Pompeo headlined the MEK’s act. Basically, anybody who took an extreme anti-Iran stance and was prepared to embrace the MEK was welcomed as an ally. Money, of course, changed hands. With a new Democratic president in the US and a new Israeli prime minister, it remains to be seen which version of itself the MEK needs to publicly promote. Whatever that may be, its current attachments, loyalties and pay masters place the MEK at the very heart of what used to be described as American Imperialism.

So, the irony cannot be lost on us that the MEK of today purports to celebrate its 57th anniversary as an armed anti-Imperialist group. The MEK was created in response to the deadly oppression of the Shah and US Imperialism in Iran. The MEK’s founders believed that peaceful protest would not bring about the profound change needed to oust the Shah and his western backers and declared armed struggle. As part of this armed struggle, the MEK assassinated six American personnel in Iran and targeted western interests such as airline offices in Tehran with violent attacks.

After the 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the MEK declared victory over US Imperialism. Its newspaper declared its extremist stance: ‘Let’s Create Another Vietnam for America!’ In its first two decades, the MEK attracted militant youth, prepared to kill and die for this cause. Those who have survived from those days make up the majority of the current MEK membership. After the mid-1980s, MEK leader Massoud Rajavi converted the group into a personality cult, using sophisticated psychological manipulation techniques to brainwash current and new members into obeying his whims. At this point, the terms of struggle became irrelevant, as every member’s real struggle was to stay loyal to an increasingly autocratic and unhinged set of terms: divorce your spouse and send your children away in order to focus solely on my leadership. Avoiding punishment and shunning became the fundamental preoccupation of every member.

Today, five decades on, it is unclear now whether these radicalised (brainwashed) members are able to think and gain the perspective needed to assess their predicament. Which is, the organisation they joined and devoted their whole lives to is built on the shifting sands of political and financial expediency and the base cowardice of Massoud Rajavi. The MEK of today is almost the opposite of the one they joined. Its ideology has evaporated and been replaced by mercenary expediency in the service of American Imperialism. So, by all means, let them celebrate 57 years of the MEK’s existence. But defining what that existence means has become an impossible dissociative conundrum for each and every member.

September 7, 2021 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Children; victims of MEK destructive cult

In the history of religious and destructive cults, children have always been the first victims. Whereas, among militant political groups around the world, there are few cases whose stories are as tied to children as the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MeK).

In 1990 and 1991, the MeK separated about 700 children from their parents and sent them to European countries via the Jordanian border. Rajavi did this without the heartfelt consent of the children’s parents.

During the war with Kuwait, Massoud Rajavi separated these children from their parents and sent them to European countries under the pretext of creating a safe environment for them.

Why Rajavi separated children from families?

In the second ideological revolution, which included forced divorce, Massoud did not have much success in the lower echelons of the organization. The inferior members opposed this order, using their children as an excuse to reject separation from their emotional partners. Therefore, Massoud who saw children as a great threat to his so-called ideological revolution thought of removing them.

The winter of 1990 coincided with the First Persian Gulf War. While Saddam was severely weakened, Massoud Rajavi used the dangerous conditions of war to achieve his sinister goals.

In fact, he was trying to carry out his sinister plan to remove the children, the enemies of the ideological revolution, from the territory of Iraq in order to guarantee his intended revolution.

Therefore, in the first step, the schools, recreation centers, and other nests of the members’ children, who numbered more than 700, were closed under the pretext of war condition. Then, they were transported to the anti-missile barracks inside the camp in fear and panic, with minimal means of survival and psychologically vulnerable conditions.

After a few weeks, the children became accustomed to the new situation, and the organization’s trick to forcibly relocate the children failed, and the parents still refused to separate them.

This time, the organization’s officials took cruel action and transferred the innocent children to Baghdad, the center of the airstrikes. Numerous bombings and the endangerment of children’s lives made it easier for the organization’s officials to obtain parental consent. So many of parents were content to move their children wherever the organization deemed expedient.

The first refuge for children after leaving Iraq was Amman, the capital of Jordan. There, the children, who had been in love with each other for years, were sent in groups to various European countries especially Scandinavian countries, Australia, Canada and the United States. Of those, more than 200 children entered Germany illegally under the pretext of leaving the Persian Gulf war. Germany was the second-largest children’s destination after Jordan.

During the presence of children in Germany, the MeK received millions of marks annually from child support associations. Children were returned to Iraq at the age of 16 after receiving organizational and ideological training.

Why did Rajavi return young children to Iraq?

After sending the kids to European countries, the organization did not allow any contact between the parents and their children. Rajavi pursued some goals for returning them, such as infusing new blood into the organization which was faced with a manpower crisis. On a deeper level, in Rajavi’s eyes, it was the last chance to return those children who had their parents killed in previous operations since all of them were transferred under pseudonyms and fake identities, and as soon as they reached the legal age, they refused to return or in case of a return, they could apply to leave because they had the original card and identity. Therefore, Rajavi was able to transfer many of the children who had been transferred abroad.

September 7, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Sufferings of the wife of an MEK member in 36 years of separation

Sedigheh Abbasi had just given birth to her third child when her husband Reza was recruited by the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). The newly-born baby, Fatemeh has not seen her father since she was born.

Ms. Sedigheh Abbasi ; Reza Ali Mirzaei spouse

Thirty-six years ago, Reza Ali Mirzai was deceived by the MEK and cut off from the outside world and in particular his family. Sedigheh was since then a single mother who grew her three little children in the absence of her husband. Under the cult-like pressure of the MEK system, Reza has not even called them during these years.
While the couple’s children, Mohammad, Mehdi and Fatemeh are all married and have children, their father, Reza is not allowed to call them or make a video call. Members of the MEK do not have access to the Internet, telephone and smart phones in the group’s Camp Ashraf.

However, the Mirzais have not stopped taking different actions to find a way to contact Reza. They have published open letters to the international bodies. They have written letters to the Albanian authorities. They have published video and text messages to their beloved father, as the last resorts to contact him.
“Reza please come back home,” Sedigheh tells her husband in her recent video message. “Come back here, let’s build a new life together.” She tries to make him sure that he will enjoy a normal life in Iran after leaving the MEK.
“You children need you,” she tells Reza. “Your grand children want to see their grandpa.”

September 7, 2021 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Two years in Solitary confinement; MEK survivor

Alireza Mir Asgari

Alireza Mir Asgari was a deputy director of one of the MKO’s military units in 1994 when he started to have concerns about the organization’s links with the Iraqi military. In January 1995, he was arrested and imprisoned. In June 1995, he was released after signing a contract promising to remain with the MKO’s forces. He was arrested again in 1998 and spent eight months in solitary confinement. In 2001, he arranged to escape, but his plan was discovered and he was imprisoned again until 2003, when he was turned over to Iraqi forces who then abandoned him along the Iran-Iraq border. He described his sudden arrest in 1995.

Alireza Mir Asgari

I was arrested without notice on January 29, 1995. I was told to go to a meeting with a team who were preparing for operations in Iran. These kinds of discussions were a regular part of my duties. I was taken to a room and told to wait. Hasan Mohasel, one of the MKO’s top intelligence officers, came into the room and put a note in front of me saying that I had been arrested because I was an agent of Iranian intelligence and had infiltrated the Liberation Army. I couldn’t believe what was happening; I thought it was a joke and started to laugh. But Hasan Mohasel cursed me and told me to stand against the wall. Suddenly two or three more people entered the room and began to blindfold me and to tie my hands behind my back. I was in total shock. They put me in a car and drove around for forty-five minutes inside the camp. I was taken to a building; I didn’t know where it was. Hasan Sadat Darbandi, also known as Adel, removed my blindfold and threw me into a cell with many other prisoners. I could not believe it; I thought there had been a coup inside the organization. Each day, a number of prisoners were taken for interrogation. They were beaten badly; after they were brought back, their heads and faces were tremendously swollen.

After a couple of days, it was my turn to be taken for interrogation. They asked me why I had joined the MKO. I told them I came here to fight Khomeini’s government, but they said that wasn’t true. During the first couple of days of interrogation, they beat me mercilessly. It was very depressing; I really wanted to commit suicide. I was only seventeen years old when I left Iran and came to Iraq to join the MKO. I had spent my entire adult life in their camps.

Eventually, I gave up and agreed to sign the forced confessions stating that I had ties to Iranian intelligence. I was taken to a meeting with Masoud Rajavi, who told me that if I stayed for another two years, they would release me and send me to Spain.

Mir Asgari was released in June 1995. He spent the next two years waiting for the organization to release and transfer him to Spain. However, he was told that because of his wealth of information, he could not be released. His protests led to his imprisonment again:

On March 25, 1998, I was taken to a prison where my old case from 1995 was reopened. They said that based on my own confession, I was an Iranian agent and could not be trusted. I spent eight months in solitary confinement. During this period, I was told that my sister in Iran had been arrested and executed. Later I found this to be untrue.60

After recanting his request to leave Iraq, Mir Asgari was released. Since the organization was not going to allow him to leave, he started to design an escape plan. His plan to escape was discovered, and he was arrested again. He was kept in solitary confinement for nearly two years, from 2001 to 2003. A few months prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in February 2003, Mir Asgari was turned over to the Iraqi forces who took him to the Iran-Iraq border along the Arvandrood River [Shatt al-Arab] and released him there. He is living in Europe.

September 7, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The Mujahedin made me a killer

Naser Naderi : They made me a killer

Naser Naderi comes from Shah Reza, near Ispahan in southern Iran. He was 21 when he joined the movement in 1979. He participated in many military actions, but only admits one murder, that of Ardeshir Doudanger, a young security guard in 1981. Tearfully, he recalls:” I was unemployed, a social reject. They made me a killer. I am not proud of myself”.

His downfall:” it was 1981.90% or our networks in the city had been dismantled. I was one of the only people still active. The organization’s leaders counted on me a lot and I was very proud of that. In October they gave me a new mission. I was to kill the security guard on duty at the Al-Jihad Company; a firm specialized in road construction. I did it without thinking about its meaning or consequences. I went right to the company’s building and shot the young man. I emptied my revolver, firing at the guards who came to help him, and then ran away. The operation was a success. The BBC broadcast a story about it. After handling over the weapon to the organization’s leaders, I wandered through the fields alone, like a wounded wolf. Crushed by me sense of guilt, I turned myself in to the police three months later. But I did not admit committing the crime, only membership in the Mojahedin.

Arrested in the meantime, my immediate superior, Ismaeil Dadoghr, told the police I was the murder. He was soon to be tried and executed. I had to confess. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced me to death. During the second day of hearings, the victim’s mother came up to me and said,” did you kill my son?” I answered,” Yes, but I was not aiming at him”. She took some candy from her handbag and held out her hand:” eat them, my son liked sweets, too”. When she saw my chains, she cried out:” Let him go! He confessed his crime”. She appealed to the court to reduce my sentence. For a five-year jail term, I eventually served only 25 months. When I was free, it became a habit to pay my respects to Ardeshir Doudangher’s grave from time to time. But when I saw his mother arrive, I ran away because I could not look her in the eye”.

When he was freed, a stage director he had met in prison convinced Nacer Naderi to tell his dramatic story in a play. Lasting almost three hours, it was produced in Tehran and Ispahan toward the end of 1983. The play was a success:” the director told me that:” We are all bastards. In each of us, at some time, something stops working”. Nacer Naderi adds,”People liked the play very much. At the end, a women hugged me, looked me in the eye and cried. By allowing me to publicly admit my crime,the play let me cleanse my soul”.

Now 44, Nacer Naderi married the widow of his younger brother,who died at the front during Iran-Iraq war. The former Mojahed,who has raised his brother’s two children,says:”No, I am not healed from the pain I feel, the wound is too deep. My crime had no justifiable motive: it was not religious, ideological or even political. One day I may use a gun again, but this time it would be against the organization.

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

September 6, 2021 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

MEK ex-member: I was imprisoned for forty-five days

Ali Ghashghavi joined the MKO as a fighter in Iraq in 1989. He was arrested in February 1995 during the “security clearance” phase and was imprisoned for four months in Camp Ashraf. He told Human Rights Watch of his experience during this period.

One night in January 1995, I was called over by my superior and told that a member of the Central Committee wanted me in her office. I was excited to be meeting such a high level official at such an unlikely hour. I assumed there was much importance attached to this meeting. We got into a military vehicle; it was around midnight. They took me to a place inside Camp Ashraf called Iskan. It is at the far corner of the camp where a series of apartment buildings were used to house families [before they were forcibly broken up]. It was a rather isolated spot – barren desert and frighteningly secluded.

Ali Ghashghavi

There were a few people inside, five or six. I was taken to an empty room and told to wait. A few minutes later, another member, Hussein Nizam, was brought in. Hussein Nazim had spent many years inside the Islamic Republic’s prisons, so he knew something else was happening. I was somewhat naive and didn’t have much of a clue.

Suddenly the door opened and a group of people attacked us mercilessly, blindfolded us, tied our hands behind our backs, and put us inside a car. We were driven around for half an hour. We stopped inside an area that was approximately at the center of the camp. I didn’t know this was a prison until I was taken there. The prison was on Avenue 400 of Camp Ashraf near the water tanker. Until then, I had assumed that explosives or sensitive documents were guarded inside.

Our clothes were taken from us and we put on prison garb. We were led to a large cell holding nearly twenty-five prisoners. The prison cell was on the ground floor of the building; there was a small window near the ceiling for air circulation. A small toilet and shower were built at one end of the cell.

There was a period when prisoners were taken on a daily basis for interrogations and beatings. One method was to kick the prisoner’s legs and knees repeatedly with military boots with metal covers on the front. Another method was to put a thick rope around the prisoner’s neck and drag him on the ground. Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks – their head and neck as big as a pillow.

I experienced the pain of leg-beatings firsthand. During one of my interrogation sessions, the interrogator told me that if I don’t give them guarantees that I will stay with the leaders forever, he would kill me right there and then. I asked him “what worthier guarantee there could be than my coming here to join your ranks and fight against Khomeini?” He replied that now that the ideological revolution had been instituted and life was harder, people like me couldn’t bear it and wanted to leave. He said, “I can see it in your eyes that you are dying to quit the organization.”

He went to the next room while he told me how he was going to beat me up badly. He changed his shoes and put on a pair of these military boots. He came back, and two hefty guards held me. He began kicking my legs repeatedly. My legs are still unbalanced from these beatings. Interrogations sometimes lasted for up to thirty or thirty-six hours non-stop.

Ghashghavi was released in May 1995, after a meeting with Masoud Rajavi who told him, “The judicial branch of the National Liberation Army has acquitted you.” After this experience Ghashghavi, explored ways to escape Camp Ashraf. On March 20, 1998, he was imprisoned for forty-five days and then turned over to Iraqi intelligence agents. He spent another forty-five days inside the mukhabarat prison in central Baghdad before being transferred to Abu Ghraib. He was repatriated to Iran on January 21, 2002. In Iran, he was interrogated and brought before a court that sentenced him to nine years in prison. After sixteen months of imprisonment, he was given a forty-eight hour release to visit his family. He used this opportunity to escape and leave Iran. In August 2003, he fled Iran and is currently living in Europe.

Human Rights Watch

September 5, 2021 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

MEK ex-member testifies on systematic torture in the group

GholamReza Shekari was twenty years old when he crossed the Iran-Iraq border in order to immigrate to Europe seeking a better life. As his bad luck had it, Iraqi security forces delivered him to the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). This was the start of 27 years of detention in the cult-like structure of the MEK. His requests to depart the group was not met as long as they were in Iraq. The group had confiscated his documents and told him that if he left the group, he would end up with torture in Iraqi prison.
After the group was expelled from Iraqi territory, Shekari was relocated in Albania in 2017 and eventually he asked to leave the group again. He was allowed to leave but he was under the group’s control as far as he was given a monthly payment by the group. In 2018, when he announced that he was not willing to work for MEK, the group cut off his monthly pension. Since then the UNHCR supported him financially.

A few months later, Shekari was interviewed by Luisa Hommerich, the correspondent of Der Spiegle. Hommerich’s investigative report on MEK, titled “Prisoners of Their Own Rebellion, The Cult-Like Group Fighting Iran” was published in February, 2019. As expected, The Spiegle’s article was labeled as the propaganda of the Iranian Government.

As Hommerich reports, “Gholamreza Shekari, a slender 50-year-old man with bony cheeks, says he spent 27 years as a member of the People’s Mujahedin, adding “the organization’s public face is liberal. Internally, though, it works by way of lies, manipulation and fear.””
“They spoke of freedom and democracy for Iran,” Shekari told Hommerich. “And then they promised me that they would arrange a visa for Europe for me.”

In March, 2019, Shekari officially declared his defection from the MEK. His statement of defection that was published by Nejat Society, contained horrific facts about the dark days he had experienced inside the MEK.
Eventually he began writing in Persian his account of the mental and physical torture he had endured in the MEK’s notorious Camp Ashraf, in a series of articles in Persian. This is an extensive account of what he mentioned about torture by MEK commanders in his interview with the Spiegle.

Shekari told Spiegle that he repeatedly asked when he would be allowed to leave. “But that turned out to be a mistake: According to Human Rights Watch, the organization began torturing members who wanted to leave the group or who asked critical questions in the mid-1990s,” Hommerich accurately states.
“They insulted me as a spy, beat my shins until they were bloody and put out burning cigarettes on my skin,” he told Hommerich. “After a week, he says, his lower legs were completely black. He rolls up his jeans to reveal scars covering his legs.”

Besides the strict regulations of the Cult of Rajavi that required absolute obedience, According to Shekari and many other defectors such as Bahman Azami, Adel Azami, Nader Naderi, Nader Chapachap, in 1994 and 1995, dozens of members of the group were imprisoned in groups and in solitary confinement, tortured and even killed by the commanders of the group. Defectors revealed the names of some of the torturers of the Cult of Rajavi. Mokhtar Jannat, Majid Alamian, Mahvash Sepehri, Assadollah Mosana, mohammad Eqbal and some other high-ranking members of the group were in charge of interrogating, beating and torturing the imprisoned members who did not even know what their accusation was.

After months of torture and imprisonment, Shekari told the Spiegle, “the leader Masoud Rajavi gathered all those who had been tortured”. “He threatened that if we ever spoke about it, we would be handed over to the Iraqis, which would mean additional torture or death,” Shekari added.

The group still claims that Shekari and other former members are agents to spread the disinformation of the Iranian Government. “The organization claims that we are all agents so that nobody believes us,” he told the Spiegle. “But I’m not working for anyone.”

This is just a short part of four episodes of Shekari’s memoirs of torture and imprisonment in Camp Ashraf:
“Majid Alamian and Mokhtar Janat, the two torturers and slaughterers received me…They took off my clothes. I was completely naked when Mokhtar began beating me. He gave me pajamas to put on. Again, they started beating on my head. I raised my arms to cover my head, he kicked me in the back. Then the major commander, who was called Kak Adel, came and told them to take me to the cell. They covered my eyes and took me around the place. Finally, they uncovered my eyes in a cell where about ten other of my comrades had been jailed.”
This was the start of Shekari’s five-months imprisonment, interrogation and torture in the Cult of Rajavi. He was under the most severe mental and physical pressures from January to May, 1994.

September 4, 2021 0 comments

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