After international pressure was brought to bear on the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) cult in Iraq by the governments of Iraq and the US, the organization was eventually persuaded to move from Ashraf Garrison to Camp Liberty in return for its removal from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTO). According to Rajavi this move was a tactical setback from which to prepare the group for further advances.
In recent years Rajavi’s major strategy, as the totalitarian leader of the MKO cult, has been to have the MKO name removed from the American FTO list, and the members and supporters were constantly promised that ‘once this “obstacle” is removed, the Iranian regime will immediately be toppled’. The cult leader Massoud Rajavi, who prefers to remain in hiding in order not to be required to answer any questions, must now be confronted with this logical query: ‘now that the obstacle has been removed, when will the Islamic Republic collapse?’
Now that Rajavi’s followers have been re-located to Camp Liberty, the cult is pursuing the line of ‘returning to Ashraf Garrison’; although in Camp Liberty the same cultic relationship is being imposed and Rajavi’s captives are under the same severe mind control regime as before. In an audio communiqué delivered to the inhabitants of Camp Liberty on December 5, 2012, Massoud Rajavi announced that he is now more proud than ever about his past terrorist activities.
The MKO leadership in Liberty has instructed the members to show the conditions of Liberty being as difficult and inhumane as possible to use in a propaganda campaign to force the authorities to allow them to go back to Ashraf. They have even been advised that ‘if some die in this campaign it is for a worthy cause’.
For instance they obstruct the water outlets in order to flood the ground with waste and then send the films and pictures around the world and blame the UN and the Iraqi government for it. They also prevent the sick from receiving medical care and even let them die just for propaganda purposes. Rajavi even uses the dead to achieve his ruthless goals.
The cult leadership has also instructed those in charge to keep the members as busy as possible in order to prevent them from thinking about the deadlock they are trapped in. This is a routine cultic practice, to occupy and exhaust the followers in so many useless tasks that they have no time to think about anything.
A prime example of the imposition of this micro-control regime is that the male members have been told to count the number of times they have managed to ‘control their gaze’ and the number of times they failed to do so and therefore let their eyes see what they should not.
The fact that Liberty is much smaller than Ashraf means that gender apartheid cannot be imposed in the same way as before so it is much more likely that the male members see the female members. In such a case the male member must immediately ‘control their gaze’ (close their eyes and stop looking) since it is a terrible sin to look at Massoud Rajavi’s wives and sully their chastity (this is the way all female members of the organization are generally described inside the organization). Each male member is told to count during the week how many times he managed to control his gaze and stop looking at a female member and how many times he did not manage to do so and then write a report about it in detail and discuss the reasons. These reports must be read out by individuals in weekly sessions and then they will be insulted and humiliated for acting indecently toward Rajavi’s wives.
Imagine the how excruciating is for a person to live for a whole week just complying with such an outrageous demand. He must be constantly vigilant as to whether he might spot a female member, and then make a note whether he controlled his gaze or not, and then, at the end of the week, he must write a report about it.
The MKO led by Massoud Rajavi is a perfect example of a destructive mind control cult which must be dealt with by cult psychiatrists and cult experts. For anyone conducting research into destructive cults, this one certainly provides an excellent illustration.
After more than six years of hard efforts by the Kurdocide Organization and many other supporters, in early December 2012, the Swedish Parliament in a majority vote formally recognized the Anfal Operation, launched by ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam against the Kurds in the late 1980s, as genocide and crimes against humanity. The Anfal Operation refers to the deadly attacks on the Kurds in the final stages of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, which included Saddam’s use of poison gas to decimate inhabitants of the Kurdish town of Halabja.
Just about three weeks after the justly made decision, some defected members of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCR) voiced their preparedness to give a testimony before the Swedish parliament about MKO’s key role in the massacre of Iraqi Kurds during the rule of the ousted Saddam. Reportedly, through last few weeks the Swedish Parliament is working to also officially recognize this joint Saddam-MKO military plot, called Operation Morvarid (Pearl), as another crime against the Iraqi Kurds.
The presence of MKO in Iraq for the accomplishment of joint strategic objectives in line with local and regional transitions expanded MKO-Saddam coalition far beyond a simple collaboration that ended in an ideological unity. The extent of their cooperation covered a broad range of issues, but here the focus is on the role of Mojahedin in the bloody suppression of Iraqi Kurds that made many internal and external critics to strongly disapprove of the heinous crime as a blatant violation a nation’s rights.
Besides many documentaries and confessions of the eye-witnesses, the Department of State in a 1992 report has clearly stated that “The NLA’s last major offensive reportedly was conducted against Iraqi Kurds in 1991, when it joined Saddam Hussein’s brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion”. The fact is also stated in The State Department Office of the Coordinator for Counter-terrorism when it released the list of designated terrorist organizations; “The MEK’s relationship with the former Iraqi regime continued through the 1990s. In 1991, the group reportedly assisted in the Iraqi Republican Guard’s bloody crackdown on Iraqi Shia and Kurds who rose up against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Press reports cite MEK leader Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to “take the Kurds under your tanks”. Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times quoted former members of MKO on Mariam Rajavi’s commandment: “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards”.
There are more than enough evidences that corroborate MKO’s collaboration in suppression of the Kurds and even the group’s own high-ranking insiders have vehemently insisted on the necessity of the joint operation although hardly making any direct reference to the Kurds-killing crime. For instance, Bijan Niyabati, the detached leftist ideologue still a zealous supporter indirectly writing in behalf of MKO, has referred to the key role MKO played in Operation Morvarid and its necessity. He points to the fact that MKO took part in this operation as a token of their gratitude to the regime of Saddam Hussein and also in order to win his absolute trust:
“The Operation Morvarid may be considered as a remarkable military and political victory for Mojahedin as well. Morvarid stabilized MKO’s stance on Iraqi soil. Both Iraqi regime, somehow owing its survival to the presence and resistance of Mojahedin, and Mojahedin, for the first time making alliance with a regional and strategic ally tolerating one of the extraordinary revolutionary and radical organizations that is a remnant of the cold war era and bears to pay the regional as well as international costs of such an alliance, see in each other the features of a strategic ally. Mojahedin proved to be not only a trustful ally but also accounted as a parameter of power in regional fluctuations.” (A Different Look at Mojahedin’s Internal Revolution, p. 108)
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had the consequent international reactions. Saddam’s suppression of Iraqi Shi’it and Kurd insurgents caused widespread internal backlashes against Saddam’s regime that lost its control over a number of cities and angry dissidents began to march towards Baghdad. Located in the northern region, Rajavi’s forces could well help Saddam to impede the advance of the uprising people. Receiving the order, Rajavi launched the Operation Morvarid (Pearl) to suppress the insurgents. The bloodshed sent many Iraqi Shi’ts and Kurds to their death and Rajavi justified the operation as a self-defense but he never explained the reason and logic behind the involvement of MKO in Iraq’s internal affairs and suppression of Saddam’s opponents.
Camp Ashraf was Rajavi’s ideal and practical milieu for thought reform techniques
As one among many of the psychological techniques used to control the minds of the insiders 
under the tag of ideology, MKO inaugurated the ideological revolution to introduce a charismatic authoritarian leader to exert control over every aspect of his adherents’ life and to establishing a totalitarian pyramidal structure where the chosen devoted commanders would act as the leader’s deputies in his absence. But the leader needed certain facilities to implement the newly devised mind control. The most important prerequisite was of course a remote place isolated from the outside world to disconnect the contact of their followers from the outside world, particularly from their families and friends and even from their past. To phrase it in technical terms, MKO was desperately in need of a cultic milieu, the most central in creating the thought reform environment as depicted by Robert Jay Lifton:
“The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he sees and hears, reads or writes, experiences, and expresses), but also – in its penetration of his inner life – over what we may speak of as his communication with himself. It creates an atmosphere uncomfortably reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984.”
Initially, a place had to be found to meet Rajavi’s needed features for the thought reform environment, a place totally cut and isolated from the modern world. But Rajavi had already made his decision on the place even before the initiation of the ideological revolution when he met with Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, on 9 January 1983 in France. Consequently, grabbing at the granted opportunity to enhance close relations with Saddam and Iraq’s Baath Party, Rajavi made his flight to Iraq after the French government pressed the organization to leave the country’s soil. To justify his relocation to Iraq, Rajavi reportedly announced that he had decided to settle in Iraq as it was a strategic site to carry out operations aimed to overthrow Iranian regime.
He moved to Iraq at a time when the Iraqi forces had many kilometers of Iranian lands under their boots, a move that none of the opposition could tolerate. No doubt, MKO was empty handed when it arrived in Iraq in 1986 and in need of aid. Rajavi’s consequent meeting with Saddam and then with other Iraqi ranking officials followed with dollar allocations as well as granted military camps and logistics boosted a broad collaboration that lasted until the fall of Saddam. Settled in Iraq, the members were forced to stay on military compounds, the biggest one being Camp Ashraf.
In fact, when Saddam in 1986 granted Camp Ashraf to MKO, it was nothing more than a piece of wasteland as it is geographically the case with other parts of the region. But Saddam’s granted huge sums of money cut from the pocket of the Iraqi people, and Rajavi’s physical and psychological exploitation of his cult’s victims, turned the scorched piece of land into an oasis that none of the people around it had the right to enter nor to use. Nobody knows the many secrets behind this forbidden land; nobody knows the whereabouts of those who entered the mysterious stronghold and never came out; it is full of souls who are claimed to have died of unknown causes, suicides, heart or brain stroke, cancers and self-immolation. Under any brick and stone you can come upon scores of men’s lost lives, wills and wishes. And nobody forgets many instances of the confirmed unearthed mass graves reflected in the Iraqi media.
Once Dr. Ali Shariati, the late Iranian thinker, in one of his books entitled “Ye Brother, That’s The Way it Was” written soon after his return from Egypt, related the sad history of how the Great Pyramids had been built. He regretted that what people appreciated as wonders were the product of many victimized, oppressed people who had been brutally exploited by the pharaohs to build the wonders. Neither Rajavi is to be compared with the Pharaohs nor the Pyramids with the Ashraf nor the latter’s victims with the former’s. But, it is rather a shame to witness such things happening just in the modern third millennium. And the history is repeated just in the heart of Iraqi deserts where “the pearl of the desert”, as some locals call Ashraf, emerged out of some land hardly you can chance upon green life. It has been repeatedly stated that Rajavi is the one who has openly raised the slavery flag over his bastion with no clear objection to it. His victims are the laborers who are enslaved physically and psychologically; they have to work for him and worship him as well.
Besides providing an ideological bastion for cultic practices and total disconnection of the insiders from the outside world, MKO needed a strategic bastion as it was an armed organization at war with Iranian regime. Strategically, MKO needed a military base close to Iranian borders for training and a military depot for substantial munitions especially after the formation of the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA). And from a political point of view, MKO regarded Ashraf as the symbol of power and resistance in its propaganda campaign for certain reasons, to impress Iranian and non-Iranian supporters and western politicians and also to recruit new members by a superficial depiction of a utopia.
Massoud Rajavi is in danger of losing everything he ever had. The devastating significance for him of losing Camp Ashraf should not be underestimated. A 40km square piece of land 
containing a nuclear bunker, arms caches, a satellite communications system, its own water and power supplies, dormitories, refectories, meeting rooms and leisure facilities, has been replaced for the residents by a 1km square area with prefab huts for living quarters. And their marching orders to leave Iraq ASAP.
Worst of all is that Rajavi has lost the ability to completely isolate his people from the outside world. As hard as the MEK leaders try to keep it closed, Camp Liberty is porous to external access as Camp Ashraf never was. It is regularly visited by representatives from the UN, EU, US and various NGOs and security at the camp is taken care of by Iraq’s security forces. The Iraqi authorities have even kept open a hotel in Baghdad, hired during the transfer process, to house any residents who do not wish to live in the basic conditions of Camp Liberty.
All this has made it possible for people to leave the MEK. It is a slow and difficult process of attrition because the cult maintains an iron grip on the residents through its psychologically coercive, high-pressure indoctrination process which is characterised by a daily confession and punishment regime for every single person from rank and file to leadership. The danger that is absolutely paramount in Rajavi’s mind is that sooner or later the cult will be dismantled, its membership dispersed and he will be left alone.
It is in this context that the controversial US Library of Congress report which asserts that Iran’s Intelligence agency has 30,000 employees should be placed for meaningful analysis and assessment.
The leaked report has been quickly and decisively exposed as a sham. And it should be clear to careful readers that the (privately commissioned and paid) report hasn’t been written for the MEK but has been written by the MEK; it contains much MEK cult jargon and many second language-user errors. Beyond this, the sources for much of the content can be traced directly to MEK websites which are, unsurprisingly, no longer functioning.
Why would the MEK risk publicising this easily refuted piece of nonsense?
Educated observation of its behaviours and statements will reveal that the MEK is not an actual player in the political scene, and that much of what the cult does publicly is really designed for internal consumption rather than as part of a policy platform to confront Iran. (Anyone who has direct dealings with MEK members will know that expecting transparency or consistency from them is like asking a drunk to walk in a straight line.
By commissioning this report Rajavi has created a fraudulent narrative with which to deceive his followers. His intention is to persuade as many as possible to remain in Camp Liberty, rather than be transferred to third countries by the UNHCR, by giving them false hope and expectations for the future of the MEK.
What Rajavi is saying through this report is that in spite of being incarcerated in Camp Ashraf and then Camp Liberty for ten years doing nothing, the MEK is in fact engaged in a serious head to head fight with the Islamic Republic of Iran in the shape of the Khodabandeh family. The Khodabandehs are libellously depicted in the report as “agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence”. According to Rajavi’s narrative the Khodabandehs are at the forefront of a massive spy network spread throughout the world and tasked to destroy the MEK. He has chosen to ‘promote’ the Khodabandeh family to this position because they are the most prolific and effective English language critics of his cult. He can motivate the residents of Camp Liberty to stay on in order to fight this enemy.
Rajavi has bigged up the Khodabandeh family and the hundreds of former MEK members who are vociferous in their criticisms because he is being defeated by their exposures. He has created the excuse that they are the face of the Iranian regime and extremely powerful and that is why it is so difficult to defeat them. (Interestingly only days ago Rajavi told the residents inside the camp that if they hear anything bad about him -he means the allegations of sexual abuse against women members -they should ignore such talk. Their only task is to accept his leadership and be confident that, in good time, he will answer his enemies. In other words he is instructing the MEK not to think, only to unquestioningly obey.)
But Rajavi’s deceptive narrative continues: do not be concerned about this fight with the regime, do not run away from it, because the MEK has the backing of the most powerful people in the American political establishment, the Israeli lobby and the Neoconservatives. Rajavi promised that the report would receive massive coverage in the American media and be supported at the highest levels in the American establishment as evidence that the only way to confront Iran is military action; that is, war.
His intention is to convince the MEK that he has found a replacement for Saddam’s regime in the Israeli lobby and Neoconservatives in Europe and the US. (In other times he has been prepared to fake mercenary status for the MEK to imply such support.)
The problem for Rajavi is that this didn’t happen. The report was leaked to the press as planned, but there was no media fest. Instead the report was pulled back "for revision" when the Library of Congress realised the shoddy piece of work was ripe for investigation: how was it possible for a group like the MEK to infiltrate its disinformation into the ‘Irregular Warfare Support’ office of the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office in the Pentagon? The investigation has even gone as far as Brussels where Members of the European Parliament are now being questioned about their use of this unpublished, un-attributed report to interfere in the asylum process for Iranian refugees.
Rajavi has exposed his weakness not only in Iraq where the residents of Camp Liberty are drifting away from his control, but in the heart of Washington. Exposure of the lies and distortions in the report mean that Rajavi is not being protected and promoted as he has said by powerful people in the capital. Not only that, the defeat he is facing really is at the hands of former members and not the powerful Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.
Perhaps now a line can be drawn under this issue and the focus of attention placed back where it belongs; Camp Liberty and the 3000+ cult hostages – and their families – whose future still remains uncertain.
Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton), Middle East Strategy Consultants
If you ask US Iranians to identify their community’s loudest mouthpiece for Neocon-MEK disinformation, chances are Hassan Dai would place high on the list. And it seems like almost every month something new appears to reaffirm that view.
Dai’s latest blunder came in the multiple orgasms he had covering a report linking two anti-MEK activists to Iranian intelligence. The report by the Library of Congress was leaked to Neocon Bill Kristol’s Washington Free Beacon. The MEK’s online operation immediately distributed the report with its own interpretation, and Hassan Dai followed suit a day later.
But Dai’s excitement was to be short lived. In what appears to be an unprecedented move by the Library of Congress, they retracted the report for inaccuracy, as its findings were revealed to trace back to the MEK.
In the aftermath of the embarrassment, the Library of Congress has distanced itself from the report and most of the report’s online occurrences have been pulled (fringe Neocon publications notwithstanding.)
Dai’s piece has yet to be withdrawn, and no corrections have been issued.
Publishing bogus stories using faulty sources is nothing new for Mr. Dai. The real story here is Dai’s emergence as the instrument of choice by the MEK and Neocons to spread their message in the Iranian community. If the MEK takes up an issue today, Dai can be expected to echo it tomorrow.
Dai’s latest misinformation debacle follows explosive revelations just weeks earlier exposing his deep financial ties with pro-war, pro-MEK, anti-Iranian racists like Daniel Pipes who coordinated and directed his attacks inside the Iranian community.
It is important to keep perspective however; by himself, Hassan Dai is a nobody. But for Rajavi and his Neocon sponsors, he serves a useful purpose. Daniel Pipes is happy to use Dai as a smelly brown megaphone to serve his ends, only to toss aside like a roll of toilet paper when its usefulness has reached its end. With Dai’s “journalistic” blunders piling up, it won’t be long before the Neocons turn to someone else to do their dirty work.
The Library of Congress has pulled a report on Iran’s intelligence activities from circulation after an American journalism watchdog showed that the widely cited text was playing fast and loose with the facts. 
American and international media outlets had jumped in the report’s claim that Iranian intelligence was employing 30,000 people, a figure called "ill-supported" by ProPublica, a New York-based non-profit reporting on public interest matters.
The report had been produced by a Pentagon office and posted to a US government intranet site before leaking to the public in early January.
And a massive Iranian intel staff wasn’t the only dubious claim brought to light by ProPobulica: the report also alleged, without much evidence, that Vienna was the European hub for the Iranian foreign spy network and that Tehran was gathering information by way of "signals intelligence stations" throughout the Middle East, with many of them in Syria.
"The report was pulled for revisions after the Division staff identified a passage that should have been caveated but was missed in the initial reviews," Federal Research Division chief David Osborne told ProPublica in an email.
Though the document was taken offline "for revisions," it has not gone back up in a modified form.
It was also the source of public humiliation in the UK after claiming explicitly that Briton Anne Khodabandeh (nee Singleton) and her Iranian-born husband Massoud were Iranian foreign intelligence operatives, even showing their pictures. Khodabandeh, a former member of the MEK, the exiled group fighting the Iranian government, has in recent years become a critic of the group, which was recently taken off the US government’s list of terrorist organizations.
To back up its claim that Khodabandeh was spying for Tehran, the report cited a 2007 essay written by Rabbi Daniel Zucker, who chairs a group called Americans for Democracy in the Middle East and is known to write often in support of the MEK. The website where his essay was published is no longer operational, but had linked to the also now-defunct iranterror.com as its source.
After seeing the report, even the MEK claimed that the Pentagon’s report showed that "Anne and Massoud Khodabandeh are agents of the mullahs’ Ministry of Intelligence and Security."
"Everything they’ve said is just made up," Anne Khodabandeh told ProPublica.
Despite such sketchy sources, the report was for all intents and purposes the official word of the United States government.
The Khodabandehs are refraining from legal action due to the costs of such a lawsuit and the fact that report does not credit an author.
MKO is a heavy burden on Iraq whose potential threats have to be drastically curbed
Despite the UN’s efforts in negotiating with immigrant-accepting countries to convince them to 
accept and shelter the MKO members, no country has yet agreed to let them on its soil as refugees. Labid al-Abawi, the Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister has recently stressed that the Iraqi government has complied with all its undertakings to ensure the rapid expulsion of the terrorist MKO from its soil saying: “The group [MKO] is now in the transit Camp Liberty in Baghdad and the UN will start their transition as soon as a third country is found for them”.
MKO is not the Iraqi government’s sole serious problem to tackle with but one of the most complicated among many. Unrest, tribal insurgence and bombing are post Saddam legacies that have to be curbed. Based on official reports, Martin Kobler, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG), has strongly condemned the frequent wave of fomented unrests and bombings which have targeted thousands of individuals especially in northern and southern provinces. Expressing his concern, Mr. Kobler states that “I am particularly alarmed that attacks in disputed internal areas further aggravate the tensions there”.
The latest figures from UNHCR show that there are currently more than 70,000 Syrian refugees in Iraq, all fleeing the escalated violence in Syria to seek protection in Iraq. Majority of these refugees suffer from serious lack of basic living needs and the harsh living conditions and there is an ongoing joint cooperation to respond to the pending needs intensified in the camps particularly located in the sub-zero temperatures. Lack of healthcare services, clothing, inappropriate shelters to keep the cold off, the cold weather itself coupled with unhygienic conditions and more shortages have made displaced people vulnerable to a variety of diseases and have left them with no choice but to be engaged in a desperate struggle to survive.
Compared to these poor refuges, MKO’ members, if they insist to be recognized as refugees, are enjoying the convenience of living in an ideal location abundantly provided and left over by the US army. Any life-threatening shortage? Sometimes you cannot tell if MKO’s leaders are talking seriously or just kidding. For instance, they complain why they have to suffer walking on the mud-laden ground at the rainfall or, as they have recently accused Iraqi forces, be deprived of using forklift trucks because “moving of loads by residents during this period of time has led to orthopedic diseases, acute pains in the limbs and backs, and irreparable osteo-lesions”.
In a recent demand pressed by the NCR Secretariat, which MKO claimed to be an effort to end inhuman restrictions in Camp Liberty, the group called on “the United Nations and the US government with specific responsibility towards safety and security of Camp Liberty residents to adopt urgent measures to end torture of residents and inhumane restrictions on them such as depriving them of their own forklift trucks, and also to remove the aforementioned officers from Camp Liberty”. One may ask what the loads are, how heavy and abundant they are and where they have come from to need forklift trucks to carry and stockpile them in a transit camp!
The call comes after the disappointed news that the Iraqi government refused the demand made by MKO to return to the old location they had occupied for more than 25 years calling it City of Ashraf. Asserted by the Chairman of the Commission on Security and Defence and Parliamentary leader of the Coalition of State Law, Hassan al-Sanid, MKO will not return to Camp Ashraf in Diyala province after having been transferred to Camp Liberty near Baghdad. He further notified that “the Iraqi government, in coordination with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), will act speedily on the mutually agreed resolution to drive them out.”
Besides ceaseless complains and new demands as well as spreading unfounded rumors of a massacre threat by Iraqi forces, MKO denounces the Iraqi government for plotting to plunder “the residents’ property and expropriation of their property, without paying any compensation”. Not only the government but also Mr. Kobler is accused of cooperating to pave “the way for stealing Ashraf resident’s property and third massacre in Ashraf by Al-Maliki at behest of the Iranian regime.
The Iraqi government has so far tolerated the cantankerous, strange behaviors of an imposed remnant of the ousted dictator. Neither are they refugees nor prisoners of war waiting repatriation nor trusted temporary settlers to grant them limited autonomous, self-dependent living. It is just a heavy, unthankful burden provided with free, double rations whose potential threats have to be drastically curbed until they are transferred out of the country. How long more can the Iraqi government tolerate the impudence of the guests who have outstayed their welcome is a question that remains unanswered.
Cult leaders often tend to claim that they are so spiritually elevated that they know the “absolute 
truth” for the well-being of their followers. In this way, they apply various bizarre practices to blind the followers from observing the reality of maltreatments against them. In the cult, they are constantly kept under a sever mind control manipulative system that they cannot see their leaders abusive acts.
Once the member defects from the cult whether mentally or both mentally and physically, he realizes what has gone to him during the period of his engagement with the cult. He seriously gets motivated to denounce the cult and its leaders.
The majority of former members of the cult of Rajavi (the Mujahedin Khalq Organization/ the MKO/ MEK) are determined to reveal what they once thought as normal in the cult because of the responsibility they feel regarding the threat of the cult for both their former friends in the MKO and the humane community. Overwhelmed with feeling of anger and vengeance against Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, defectors of the MKO can help keeping silent over the human rights abuses they witnessed in the cult. Unsurprisingly, they are labeled by the cult as “agent of the Iranian regime” which is according to Mrs. Ann Singleton (a defector of the cult) a “one size fits all used to designate the victims” of the MKO [1]
Mrs. Singleton and his husband Massoud Khodabande and his brother-in-law Ebrahim are even mentioned as agents of the Iranian intelligence in the recent Pentagon report on Iranian intelligence. The misleading Pentagon report was noticeably run by the MKO’s agents in the US government. Iran Interlink offers evidences on the allegation:
The report is characterized by its mixture of allegation, assertion and allusion, much of which is not substantiated by evidence. The report blends fact and fiction in a manner intended to deceive and mislead. As such, this document is not an attack, it is a defensive act, it is a play on words intended to prevent informed discussion and stop important people being listened to. Indeed, the gratuitous mention of two specific individuals, Anne Singleton and Massoud Khodabandeh, who have consistently exposed the aspects of the Mojahedin Khalq which it most wants to hide – cult nature, human rights violations, mercenary relation to foreign agents – is the strongest possible indication of the provenance of this report.
The other indication is that the source of this specific misinformation is Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker. In a footnote the article “Disinformation Campaign in Overdrive: Iran’s VEVAK in High-Gear” is sourced at Global Politician, September 3, 2007, http://www.globalpolitician.com/23386-vevak-iran (accessed April 17, 2012). Interestingly, this website can no longer be accessed. [2]
However, the whole deceitful report –which was highly propagandized by the MKO – did not disturb the Khodabandehs. On January17, a few days after the report published Massoud Khodabandeh posted this status on his face book profile:
“I told my Mum that the Khodabandeh family was being attacked by the MEK in Washington and that she had been mentioned too. She said – I’m sure you three are more than enough for Rajavi and his cult, but if not, I’ll be happy to personally sort out Rajavi.”
For defectors denunciation of the violence committed in the MKO is kind of delightful job that helps enlighten the world community and release of their ex-comrades.
Ann singleton was among the first defectors to write about her experience with Rajavi’s Cult. She is the author of a book titled “Saddam’s Private Army”[3]. This is a sentence the review of the book published by Amazon.com:
”Told by a western woman who for twenty years had unique access to the secret inner world of the Mojahedin.”[4]
As you read on the book cover, "Saddam’s Private Army” gives a very detailed account and analysis on “How Rajavi changed Iran’s Mojahedin from armed revolutionaries to an armed cult."[5]
Regarding recently published testimonies of female former members about sexual abuse and women’s rights violations in the cult of Rajavi, Singleton’s book is perhaps the first document on the corrupt world created by Maryam and Massoud Rajavi. Singleton describes how Maryam’s ambitions lead her to promote herself in the MKO until she becomes Rajavi’s “personal assistant”. In 1984, Massoud who had been married to Firouzeh Banisadr – daughter of his then ally — divorced from her,” in this respect it is widely believed that she began a sexual relationship with Rajavi even before he divorced from Firouzeh in 1984. Singleton writes, ”She had been appointed head of Rajavi’s office and she worked closely with him in his office often not returning home at night for days. Before their marriage on 8th February 1985 Maryam hadn’t returned home to her husband Abrishamchi for several months. In this time. She had also attended a hospital in Paris for what is believed to have been a termination of pregnancy.”[6]
It took us just a few years more to learn about further violations of human rights in the MKO. Batoul Soltani, is a former member of the MKO’s so-called elite called “Leadership Council”. She bravely revealed horrifying facts about sexual abuse by Massoud Rajavi although she said that recalling those memoires is “awfully difficult” for her.[7]
Mrs. Soltani exposed a cultic ceremony in the MKO, called “Salvation Dance” (nude dancing) in which women of the “Leadership Council” were made remove their clothes in front of Massoud Rajavi and dance before him.”Get close to Massoud and unite with him”, Maryam said to dancing women.[8]
The former member of the Mojahedin Leadership Council added “They had portrayed the issue of having [sexual] relations with Massoud Rajavi in such a way that it appeared to us as the most sacred task. Mas’ud Rajavi also used verses from the Koran to justify his behavior.”[9]
A few months ago, Soltani together with two other former members, Zahra Mirbaqeri and Nasrin Ebrahimi once again denounced the MKO by receiving a list of 100 female members of the group who have gone under hysterectomy to be sexually abused by the Cult leader, Massoud Rajavi.[10]
Nasrin Ebrahimi had previously revealed that Rajavi had entitled the operation to remove women’s womb as “Summit”[11] referring to women’s extreme devotion to their leader. They lose their final sign of sexuality and motherhood, or as Mrs. Singleton says” to neutralize their sexuality”.[12]
Mir Baqeri said that the surgical operations were carried out to take out the victims’ wombs so that they would not be pregnant after being raped by Rajavi.[13]
Women of the Leadership Council were given a necklace on which Massoud’s portrait was graved earlier than they were made married with him. Zahra Mir Baqeri has one of the necklaces to show those who are concerned.
“Maryam Rajavi invented rituals such as being washed by other women members so as to ‘spiritually purify’ them, followed by the instruction to dance naked before both the Rajavis to prove they had ‘broken the physical and mental barriers’ to their total submission to Massoud. After these coercive practices, he would choose a bedmate for sex. The women have said that they did not agree to sex with Rajavi out of free will but because they had been coerced through deception into submitting to what they later came to recognize as rape.”, Ann singleton notifies.[14]
As she suggests:
“The facts are easily verifiable. The physical evidence of hysterectomy can be found in the women’s bodies. It is a matter of fact, not opinion. And if those who managed to escape the cult have evidence consistent with their accusations, does it not behove those people actually responsible for their welfare to conduct an investigation into the condition of the other named women in the MEK who are trapped incommunicado in (the ironically named) Camp Liberty.”[15]
There may be a much longer list of abuses committed in the Cult of Rajavi, as some of them were already reported by Human Rights Watch in 2005. This is what terribly disturbs the leaders of the MKO. To defend themselves they have no way except using their old tactic, labeling them “agent of regime”. Such reaction cheers defectors up as they see that they’ve been successful to bug the cult leaders.
By Mazda Parsi
References:
[1]Singleton, Ann, Do not Disturb – Criminals at work in Camp Liberty, IranInterlink, January 5, 2013
[2]Iran Interlink, More smoke and mirror from the MEK propaganda factory, January &, 2013
[3]Singleton, A, SADDAM’S PRIVATE ARMY: How Rajavi Changed Iran’s Mojahedin from Armed Revolutionaries to an Armed Cult, IRAN INTERLINK, 2003, ISBN 0-9545009-0-3
[4]http://www.amazon.co.uk/Saddams-Private-Army-Mojahedin-Revolutionaries/dp/0954500903
[5] Singleton, A, SADDAM’S PRIVATE ARMY: How Rajavi Changed Iran’s Mojahedin from Armed Revolutionaries to an Armed Cult, IRAN INTERLINK, 2003, ISBN 0-9545009-0-3
[6]ibid. Page 57
[7] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/3261
[8]ibid
[9] BBC Monitoring, Massoud Rajavi accused of "sexual exploitation" of women, September 22 2010
[10]Fars News Agency, MKO Ringleaders Abuse Female Memoires Sexually, December 25, 2012
[11]Fars News Agency, The Ideal Summit Mujahedin Khalq makes women unfertile, October 15, 2008
[12] Singleton, Ann, Do not Disturb – Criminals at work in Camp Liberty, IranInterlink, January 5, 2013
[13] Fars News Agency, MKO Ringleaders Abuse Female Memoires Sexually, December 25, 2012
[14] Singleton, Ann, Do not Disturb – Criminals at work in Camp Liberty, IranInterlink, January 5, 2013
[15]ibid
It is natural to see defected members being demonized as the paid agents of Iranian regime
Pretty remarkable in MKO-run propaganda machine is a strange paradox. It highlights anti-Iranian regime sentiments and demonizes whoever is attached to it and minimizes whatever might cause MKO fall into disrepute of being represented as an undemocratic terrorist cult. It 
fuels global rage against Iranian regime but praises the group and its leaders as pro-democratic unity devoted to peaceful campaign against all cruelties and violations of human rights! MKO is not the first in history clinging to such a paradox but following the footsteps of countless bullies who were determined to shift the focus of public attention and rage away from their own devious intention and plans to a hateful image of a “single adversary”.
For example, Stalin‘s collective label for his foe was the bourgeoisie or exploiter and Hitler aimed his propaganda at a similar enemy, mainly Jews. As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:
“The art of all truly great national leaders at all times consists…primarily in not dividing the attention of a people, but in concentrating it upon a single foe…. It belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category.”
Learning his lessons from the dictators and leaders of the personality cults rather than the great men of peace, Rajavi, as the leader of a terrorist cult, came to grasp that the first rule in any struggling movement is to have an enemy to challenge and overcome. Thus, a particularly important place in the struggle matrix of MKO was assigned to Iranian regime as the sole adversary along with those it accused them to be siding with it. In fact, MKO requires the existence of enemies, internal and external, all associated with the single adversary at all times because too many enemies arouse suspicions and questioning. That is exactly outlined by Hitler for MKO to adhere to:
“Once the wavering mass sees itself in a struggle against too many enemies, objectivity will put in an appearance, throwing open the question whether all others are really wrong and only their own movement are in the right. And this brings about the first paralysis of their own power. Hence a multiplicity of different adversaries must always be combined so that in the eyes of one’s own supporters the struggle is directed against only one enemy.”
And all roads in MKO’ propaganda blitz end to demonizing an opponent and critic as a hand joined with and paid by Iranian regime. Inflicted as a harsh psychological punishment, the insiders stand on the verge of being suspected agents of the enemy in case of making protests, just as any detached and escaped member is accused to be. Indeed, the threatening omnipresence of the enemy acts like a Damocles Sword that protects MKO against the internal threats. As Eric Hoffer depicts in his The True Believer:
“Suspicion is given a sharp edge by associating all opposition within the ranks with the enemy threatening the movement from without. This enemy-the indispensable devil of every mass movement-is omnipresent. He plots both outside and inside the ranks of the faithful. It is his voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his stooges. If anything goes wrong within the movement, it is his doing. It is the sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors”.
Asserted by majority of defected members, any suspected dissidence and defiance of leaders or taken decisions within the group would be harshly repressed. Unfortunately, there exist no tangible evidences to prove anti-human practices within MKO but the confessions made by the defected members themselves whose confessions MKO tries to misrepresent as untrustworthy voice of the enemy that speaks through the mouth of the dissident.
That is how suddenly three defected ranking members of the group, Massoud Khodabandeh, a high-ranking and highly trusted member working as a computer expert and deeply involved in intelligence activities as well as providing security for the group’s leadership, and his later wife Ann Singleton, an English born veteran who defected MKO, and Ibrahim Khodabandeh, Massoud’s brother, also a ranking member highly trusted by MKO for illegal acts and international smuggling programs, turn to be agents of Iranian regime after starting to talk and exposing against MKO. And there more to name whom MKO has so far refrained to mention.
For sure, the most reliable information one can have access to concerning cultic and atrocious practices inside MKO are those revealed by the active defected members like Khodabandeh brothers who were the closest to the group’s leading echelon. And of course it is natural to see them being demonized as the paid agents of Iranian regime while they are enjoying their free life and feeling a responsibility to do their best to help rescue more enslaved victims out of the cult.
Rajavi forged ideological revolution as a forge to shape the adherents as he wished
Delivering a speech in the manner of a sermon in Paris in 1985, Massoud Rajavi addressed the 
members saying: “This [ideological revolution] is to test you; we need iron men. We seek new versions of power and capacity. Those Mojahedin who pass through this forge will be more rough and resistant”.
Believing to be the smith, Rajavi likens his forged ideological revolution to a forge to shape the adherents as he willed. In this new system of values, the standard for a faithful Mojahed were set to measure the members’ degree of loyalty and commitment to the organization and leadership. The imposed revolution before being considered an extraordinary way of initiating change in MKO can well be defined as an internal coup d’état to accomplish Rajavi’s own ambitions and promoting him to the highest and unbeatable status of a hegemonic leader and even above that. Of course, it was not so easy a task to compel members to surrender to the Rajavi’s selfish ambitious on their own will and to dissolve in a leader whom many believed to be inadequate to assume the status.
Since MKO is heavily built on a hierarchical structure, the members are controlled and organized under the command of higher ranks who in turn receive orders from higher command echelon. It made it much easier for the organization to impose the change on the members through such a forced stratum either through persuasion or designed processes of penalization. As the members would be provoked by persuasive heroic deeds of the responsible ranks, the statements of submission had to be first made by them. In this way, the rational thinking power of the rank and file had to be paralyzed under the impact of the impressive expressions of emotional parodies. Consequently, through a new plot of a systematic fashion of letter writing, the ranking members were allotted to write consecutive open letters of congratulation to the newly wed Rajavis, and Massoud Rajavi himself in particular, appreciating the heroic move and the initiated new phase in MKO.
There were countless volume of these letters, known as the letters of ideological revolution, with identical themes of expressing total devotion to the leadership and his novel ideological revolution. Resorting to these crafts to subjugate its own insiders was in direct contrast to its democratic slogans advertising on the political scene. There are more than enough volume of these letters as evidences all published in the organization’s official gazette Mojahed soon after the unconventional marriage. Writing of her unconditional dedication to ideological revolution, Mina Khiyabani, the teenage member wedded to Mahdi Abrishamchi soon after he divorced Maryam Azodanlu, in her letter addressed to Rajavi stated:
I hope to be close behind you and devoted to your emancipating revolution with my soul. To be worthy to follow the path, I need to be cleaned of whatever evil and element of filth. I bow to you to the extreme of my appreciation of your high status, and appreciate your miraculous move of self-sacrifice, that is far above the martyrdom of many thousands, that has guaranteed a history. Now I believe to be all blameworthy before this revolution. I hope this revolution will act as a motivation to reinforce iota of values within me to make me capable of being under your command as once I was. *
Mohammad Seyyedi Kashani, one of the oldest, experienced veterans whose organizational activities even exceed that of Rajavi, was another devotee who directed a letter in which he stated:
Dear Massoud, I will call you brother no more. You are my sage. Dear to my heart. You are my teacher…. many things have undergone a change in the organization and also inside us. I am sure that the last rusted layers of the old world would be eliminated from within the forces and sympathizers. Obviously, in our most favourite organization the real Mojahed is the one who is more unselfish and capable and also most cherished before God. *
In another letter from Mohammad Hayati, another member of MKO, we read:
I congratulate the blessed marriage of my ideological leader Massoud and Maryam. Definitely and knowingly I recant for failing to understand the grandeur of this leadership. *
In the letter of Hussein Abrishamchi, Mahdi Abrishamchi’s junior brother and a commander in chief of the organization, addressed to the Rajavis it was stated:
I wish I could kneel before you [Maryam] and Massoud as the forerunners of this great revolution and take my oath of allegiance. *
Mohsen Rezai, a member of central cadre, in his testament of allegiance to Rajavi earnestly supplicated salvation from him:
Great men have marvellous power of attraction and repulsion. Now I see it in you and you can influence all. Anybody endowed with an iota of humanism and nobility falls in your love and you repel whoever walks in the wrong path. I am sure that you will be among those closest to God in the Day of Judgment and I am also sure that you will take my hand for my salvation.*
Mahdi Abrishamchi, playing his own influential role in the ideological revolution, was one of the most enthusiastic espouses of the move started by his ex-wife and Rajavi:
This ideological move shed light on all of us. We were purged of our filth and dirt by passing through the hearth of purification that Rajavi demonstrated. Now our ideology is shining and we are different people. We have the honour of surpassing all those that ceased to follow the path. Now I dare say that , after this revolution, we are true members of Mojahedin, aren’t we? We pride ourselves on being his [Rajavi] followers and disciples; he is our mentor and educator who trained us and we hope he will do in future, and he will. We praise God for leading us to the right path through Massoud and Maryam, otherwise we would have gone astray. *
As seen, in all these letters the ranking members insist to state that the crystallized ideological revolution has led to great changes within them and the structure of the organization as well. According to many assertions made by Rajavi, Mojahedin are engaged in a never-lasting change until all intended objectives of leadership have been accomplished.
* The quotes are all from Mojahed issues 241, 242, 247 published in 1985.
Mojahedin.ws, January 17, 2013
http://www.mojahedin.ws/en/?p=16982