Articles

++ News in English about the Mojahedin Khalq was dominated by interviews with reporter Gareth Porter who has been promoting his new book, Manufactured Crisis. In it he reveals the MEK’s role in pushing false reports and documents into the nuclear crisis playing out between western governments, the IAEA and Iran. The fact that this misinformation did not even originate with the MEK further undermines its credibility as a group.

++ Atefeh Eghbal is an internal critic of the MEK who last year started the campaign for the immediate transfer of Camp Liberty residents to third countries, and was subsequently labelled by the MEK as an agent of the Iranian regime and subjected to a vicious denunciation campaign. Eghbal has written a short article about the MEK members’ families who also support the group under the title, ‘A simple question which has never been answered’. The article highlights the complaint of these sympathetic families that, “While they are in Camp Liberty we have no contact with our loved ones, but even with those few who have recently arrived in European countries and in Albania, the MEK still don’t allow us to contact them”. Eghbal poses the question, ‘The MEK leaders constantly praise the MEK members as “beacons of revolution”, and every six months come up with another set of signatories pledging themselves willing to die for the Rajavis, why then are they so hysterically afraid of a simple telephone conversation between these so-called ‘masters of the revolution’ and their mothers?

++ Iraj Mesdaghi, who started out by criticising the MEK in a positive effort to benefit them and help their survival rather than see them disintegrate, has a note on Pejvak Iran website about Maryam Rajavi’s claim that she has been chosen as ‘Woman of the Year’. He says the God Believers Association which made the award is headed by Dr. Raj Baldev, Cosmo Theorist, Ph.D (Astro), D.Lit. D.Sc (HC) He has been introduced by the MEK as an expert in Universe Theory. In fact, according to his own website, he is a fortune teller, born in India in 1927 in Montgomery which is now in Pakistan. He is expert in using water, the tips of fingers and toes, together with the time and place of questions to predict the future for both families and in international affairs. He uses what he calls the ‘well-known Sarjatik system’ to answer questions from individuals, groups, regions or countries.

++ Edalat (Justice) Society, which participated as an NGO in the UN Human Rights Convention in Geneva, has reported that the MEK tried to provoke its delegation and even physically attacked them because they were exposing the terrorist nature of the MEK. The MEK failed because such activity had been predicted and security at the UN was ready to prevent such problems. Once again, says Edalat, these incidents show that, contrary to what western governments claim, Maryam Rajavi is the same terrorist she has always been.

++ The latest reports from Albania are that eleven new people have arrived there. However, ex members who are living separately from the MEK in Tirana are saying that the UNHCR representative in Albania has told them they will not be given refugee status and will get no passport. Some commentators believe the UN has been pushed by the MEK to annoy members just as they pushed American army to annoy members who wanted to transfer from Camp Ashraf to the TIPF. The ex members were told ‘if the Albanian government gives you something, good luck! Otherwise, tough!’ Interestingly this report also says that immediately after the UN visit, Esmail Mortezai from the MEK, who claims to be working under the protection of the Pentagon, approached them and told the ex members “Don’t worry. To Hell with the UN and the rest of them! Come back to us and we will take you to European countries as we always have done”. The UNHCR representative had also told them that their accommodation was limited to four months and after that they will have to either pay for it or go. Again the MEK immediately stepped in and said, “We will take care of it ourselves”. Other reports say that the police in Tirana and the MEK themselves have placed CCTV and guards around their accommodation. The ex members believe this is to put pressure on them to either go back to the MEK or run away by themselves to escape the country, which is very dangerous. Even so, several have declared they will chose the second option and have asked the others to speak out on their behalf if they are killed along the way. On top of this, the Albanian government has told the ex members that, “Although people from the MEK are free to talk to you, and you have to talk to them because they are taking care of you, your families from Iran are not allowed to come to visit you”. Many organisations and other ex members in the west have written to Albania and the UN to ask “is the UNHCR working for Esmaili Mortezai, the MEK and Mossad, or is it supposed to help rescue refugees from the traps of terrorists?”

++ This week saw the anniversary of the Halabja chemical attack. In 1988, Massoud Rajavi announced the formation of the MEK’s National Liberation Army (or Saddam’s Private Army as it is known), in Iraq and organised a few operations in that region. On 16 – 17 March 1988, Halabja came under chemical attack resulting in 5,000 deaths. This was part of the Anfal campaign in which a total of 182,000 people were killed by the Baath army. The MEK were part of the intelligence gathering operation both before as well as afterwards. Many have written articles about the MEK’s involvement in Halabja and identify this as the beginning of the MEK’s collaboration as mercenaries for Saddam’s Mokhaberat.

++ New articles and documents have emerged about Mansour Ghadarkhah the film maker, connecting him financially to the MEK and, more than that, showing that he moved from Germany to Los Angeles with his German wife and children by the order of the MEK because of his dirty history in Germany.

++ Ebrahim Khodabandeh and Ali Moradi were in Kermanshah this week talking about cults and terrorism and related issues. They held a press conference hosted by Kermanshah TV station in which they answered reporters’ questions.

++ Mehr News reported that the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaifar, told reporters, “Following the process of checking the residents of Camp Liberty, I can announce that 423 have been vetted and have no problem to move back to Iran. This number might increase as the rest of them are processed. The names of the 423 have been given to the UN office.” On the subject of extradition he said, “This is a general issue and is not just about the MEK. I can tell you that the Prosecutor General of Iran has a planned trip to Baghdad next week to visit his counterpart and you can ask him about this while he is there.”

++ Representatives from Iran Pen (Ghalam) Association, Iran Fanous Association, Iran Setaregan and others, reported on pickets they held during the UN Human Rights Convention in Geneva and some interviews in which they have stated their demand that the UN intervene directly to curtail the head of the cult and start rescuing the individuals. They pointed out that UNAMI has repeatedly said that MEK leaders are obstructing the transfers, but the Iraqi government has complained that the UN will not allow Iraqi officials to take action to rescue the residents. The protestors said, “Allowing the head of a terrorist organisation to stop you is not good enough! They are the problem and you must push them aside.”

++ Mohammad Javad Hashemi Nejad, General Secretary of Habilian Association, had an interview with the Reporters Club in Tehran about the MEK and their latest position. He pointed out that at this point there is evidence the MEK have now passed the point of being an opportunistic group and is now proud of being a mercenary group. He also said that Massoud Rajavi is in hiding for two specific reasons. One is that the evidence of crimes against humanity and war crimes is so overwhelming that he can’t escape it even though he is supported by some western intelligence services. Second is that his masters prefer to portray Maryam Rajavi as the leader of the terrorist organisation so it has a softer face and can continue claiming they are supporting human rights.

++ A letter with several signatories has been sneaked out of Camp Liberty. Homayoun Kohzadi has published parts of it in anonymity as the signatories asked not to be named. The letter says, “First how happy we are for all of you who have escaped from Hell. Second please do not mention our names, we have already taken enough risk because we weren’t even sure if this letter would reach you or be intercepted by the MEK. We have been clearly ordered in a message from Maryam Rajavi that in case of our deportation or even moving us out of Camp Liberty we must stage a minimum of 100 self-immolations every day in the camp to ensure that the international community will stop this process.” They letter says the message continues, “This is a military order, there is no yes or no, it must be obeyed. After this announcement the leaders in the camp broadcast the sound of a clock on the loudspeakers around the camp to indicate that the clock has started ticking from now. While it ticks the commanders from every group have brought paper and pens so we write our readiness for self-immolation and sign it. To encourage us they wrote their own papers first and said ‘we are ready’. We are writing this letter to the only people we know to ask you to do whatever possible through the UN, the Red Cross and anywhere else, to help us because, as Rajavi is saying, the clock is ticking. We don’t want to be burned and we don’t want our friends to be burned either.”

++ On the occasion of Norooz many western and eastern leaders have sent messages congratulating Iranians on their new year, including Obama, Biden, Cameron and Haigh. We saw that Maryam Rajavi also made an announcement which was, as usual, irrelevant to Norooz. Instead Rajavi claimed that events in Iraq prove that we won and Iraq, Iran, Syria and western governments who supported them against us, all lost. During Chahar Shambe Suri the week before she again asked for an uprising in Iran, which apparently nobody even heard. But still, the Norooz message was better received. Many people copied it and put it out as a refreshing joke for Iranians at the start of the new year.

21 March 2014

++ An outpouring of detestation followed a declaration by the notorious MEK stooge Mansour Ghadarkhah of his intention make a film titled ‘The Birth of Terror’ to “put Maliki in his place”. Several years ago, Ghadarkhah moved from Germany to the US under MEK patronage as his reputation had become so dirty in Europe that his activities for them were severely constrained. Ghadarkhah’s proposed film was soon denounced as a propaganda exercise against former members of the MEK. He had previously worked with the MEK in Germany to clandestinely film Ali Akbar Rastgou, a vocal critic of the MEK, and label him as an agent of the IRI in Germany to put this out on Youtube. Rastgou began legal proceedings and Ghadarkhah immediately retracted the film. This is just one example from his many years of creating websites and spreading disinformation against MEK critics in Germany. Accordingly, Ghadarkhah’s request for finance along with his bank details was seen as nothing more than money laundry for the MEK.

Facing this overwhelming reaction by Iranians outside of Iran, with tens of articles exposing his past activities, this week Ghadarkhah wrote an ignominious article, published on MEK websites, swearing directly at anyone who has criticised his actions. He goes to the extent that he calls them all the ‘worms from the guts of the mullahs’. Over thirty people who knew him better than most have commented about him and Rajavi. Iran Fanous says how disgusting are he and the MEK that they use such contemptible language. Amir Movasaghi from Aawa Association asks ‘are those wriggling in the shit of Massoud Rajavi the worms, or us who said no to Saddam even in Abu Ghraib prison?’ A more lengthy article was written by one of the recently escaped survivors who is currently in Europe and writes regularly for Iran Interlink under the pseudonym Ahmad M K. In a direct, open letter to Ghadarkhah, he challenges every point made with a series of searing fact based criticisms and demands that Ghadarkhah explain himself. Nader Naderi submitted a short note on his weblog to expose the fact that part of Mansour Ghadarkhah’s writing is an exact copy of a piece by NCRI member Manuchehr Hezarkhani, written in 2011 swearing against Dr Hedayat Matin Daftary who had previously left NCRI. Naderi points out, “It is plain to see that you haven’t even written this yourself, and whoever did has simply plagiarised an old text.”

++ Among Iraqi newspaper articles translated by Sahar into Farsi, Araq al Qanun has an article which quotes Ghorban Ali Hossien Nejad, Massoud Rajavi’s main Arabic translator now living in Paris, describing Zafer al Ani (a former MP) as the go-between for corruption between the MEK and whoever they can find to work with.

++ Website Al Haghaegh has translated the November 2004 Los Angeles police report concerning the MEK. Along with references to the MEK in US State Department reports and comments by US officials about the MEK, the article simply states, “This is what we are dealing with and what some Americans are supporting and lobbying for”.

++ In an interview with Ashraf News agency, Bushra Nawaf al-Rimahi, who is Iraq’s Parliamentary candidate for the Sadeqoun faction, described the MEK as “the Israeli base in Iraq” and claimed, ”Saudi Arabia and Israel use the Mojahedin Khalq Organization to threaten Iraq’s security and to destabilize the country”. Describing their presence in Iraq as illegal and not conducive to the national interest he said, “The Mojahedin Khalq are actively crisis mongering and making sedition among different political parties in collusion with Mossad officers”, adding that the MEK enjoys the support of some Iraqi politicians from the Iraqia List and the Islamic Party.

++ The Eastern Azerbaijan branch of Nejat Association published its letter to Nouri al Maliki supporting the message of a previous open letter signed by 52 former MEK members and families in Europe and America, which urges Maliki to intervene to push aside Massoud Rajavi and his wife as the main problem to solving the crisis of Camp Liberty and asks for the gates of the camp to be opened. Many individual families have written similarly asking for help.

++ The MEK advertised on its websites that an unknown group called the Association of Believers in God have chosen Maryam Rajavi as their Woman of the Year for 2013. This has become a joke for many people who have pointed out the most ridiculous aspect of this is the list of losing candidates which included Sonya Ghandi and Michelle Obama, and their like. Paid adverts are one thing, they say, but Rajavi’s ego has apparently become so inflated that she now needs to position herself above all others.

++ This week an MEK lobbyist held a fundraising (money laundry) event in California. Paid speaker Patrick Kennedy is quoted saying, “If you want to see the bright future of Iran under the rule of the Mojahedin Khalq just look at Ashraf camp now”. Bahar Irani has ridiculed Rajavi’s lobbyists saying, “No matter how much money they get, they don’t even spend ten minutes reading the news. If they had they would have seen that the sham city of Ashraf has since collapsed and nothing remains but wild dogs and concrete. Having said that, how little they think of their listeners’ intelligence to compare a collapsed camp with a country. No wonder the MEK’s own supporters never listen to their TV or read their sites.”

++ Reza Akhlaghi from Foreign Policy Association held a discussion with Gareth Porter following publication of his book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold History of the Iranian Nuclear Scare. Asked why he wrote the book Porter explained, “Because I had come to realize that the news media account of the issue had been terribly misleading… The real trigger for my beginning to think along those lines was the discovery of evidence that the crucial evidence in the official and media account had been falsified.” The source of this falsified account was the MEK and behind them Israel. Porter continued, “Karsten Voigt provided the most crucial revelation in my book – that the documents that had been described in the news media as having come from the purloined computer of a scientist participating on a covert Iranian nuclear weapons research program, were in fact given to the BND, the German intelligence agency, by the MEK, and that the BND had concluded that the MEK source was “doubtful”.” These documents were given to the MEK by Mossad and Porter concludes “The complete story of those documents in the book, however, includes the evidence I found in my investigation that they were fabricated by Israel in order to advance a strategy of provoking a military confrontation between the United States and Iran”.”

++ Iran’s Justice Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said that individual terrorist MEK members should be handed over to Iran to be put on trial for their crimes against the Iranian nation, which include “killing thousands of our citizens, damage to Iranian public property and helping our enemies… In order to restore the rights of the Iranian nation and enforce justice, these traitors must be punished”, Pour-Mohammadi said. Criticising lack of progress by UNAMI in removing the MEK from his country, Iraqi Minister of Justice Hassan al-Shammari had said on March 3rd that Iraq would be sympathetic to a request by Tehran to extradite named MEK members. Pour-Mohammadi said, “The handover of the criminal traitors (MEK agents) to Iran does not need a request, but if the Iraqi justice minister has made such a suggestion, we will again lodge an official request to turn them over to our tribunals”.

++ Nejat Association reports that the MEK have joined with a Sunni terrorist group that seeks to kill Shiites. A Sunni group named Talaye Jaish Muhammad (Vanguards Army of Muhammad) confirmed the MEK’s membership in its establishment. The group issued a statement on March 3rd to declare that it is seeking to kill Shiites. Talaye Jaish Muhammad called on all Sunni organizations in Arab and Islamic countries in Asia, North Africa and Syria to form a large army and to support armed Sunni insurgents in Iraq and Lebanon. According to reliable sources Talaye Jaish Muhammad have recruited members in different regions in the world including Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon and the Mojahedin Khalq Organization.

++ Mazda Parsi from Nejat Bloggers writes about “Women’s rights according to Maryam Rajavi”. After detailing the gender specific oppression and sexual abuses endured by women in the MEK, and praising those who have spoken out after their escape, Parsi concludes that as long as the cult member is “mentally and physically imprisoned by the leaders, every order by the cult leader may sound normal and sometimes necessary, but as soon as they find the least opportunity to break through into light and a normal life, they find out the agonies and abuses they have suffered.”

++ Ramin Mazaheri reporting from Press TV said that a French group, which warns against violent cults, “recently faced the dangers of the Mojahedin Khalq an anti-Iranian terrorist group whose leadership is based just outside of Paris. Association PEACE bravely held a demonstration in the MEK’s hometown, and was quickly confronted by the routine violence of their members”. According to Mazaheri, Association PEACE studies cults and warns people so as to prevent further indoctrination and more ruined lives. Although many are painfully aware of the MEK’s violent history says Association PEACE, many French people are kept in the dark. Despite the mass graves recently uncovered at the MEK’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq, their massacre of Iraqi Kurds for Saddam Hussein and the assassination of Iranian citizens and leaders, the MEK still has friends in high places. Those friends do not include any Iranian citizens, but they do include France’s political elite.

++ Reporting on a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Christina Wilkie writes in Huffington Post, “All dressed in their trademark yellow shirts… MEK members attended Thursday’s hearing to advance a bold proposition: that the thousands of their adherents still living in Iraq should be granted asylum and moved to the United States… Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) emerged Thursday as the most vocal proponent of this plan, which was also championed at the hearing by Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). Rohrabacher aimed his questions at the only witness testifying that day, Secretary of State John Kerry.” Sidestepping the question whether the survivors of Camp Ashraf would be given refuge in America, “Kerry went on to describe a new position he had created within the State Department, that of senior advisor for Mujahedin-e Khalq resettlement. In October of last year, he appointed Jonathan Winer, a longtime Kerry adviser and an expert in international law, to the position.

14 March 2014