In a letter released in POAC’s ruling on November 2007, the UK Secretary of State is quoted saying “Mere cessation of terrorist acts do not amount to
renunciation of terrorism. Without a clear and publicly available renunciation of terrorism by the PMOI, I am entitled to fear that terrorist activity that has been suspended for pragmatic reasons will be resumed in the future”. And he is right since just on 17 June 2003, two years after the claimed date that MKO had conducted no military activity of any kind since August 2001, the group’s members launch a series of most appalling self-suicide operations.
It began when Jean-Louis Bruguière, France’s anti-terrorism investigative magistrate at the time, first targeted the terrorist cult of Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO, MEK, NCRI, PMOI, NLA), officially designated as terrorists organization by the US and the European Union, in a European country since its settlement there and issued warrant for the arrest of Maryam Rajavi and a number of her accomplices for a multitude of terrorist charges. The officials in DST, French counter-intelligence, were well aware of the group’s terrorist nature when its HQs were raided. But hardly anybody expected that the group would engage in immediate cult-like reactions against the arrest of its she-guru.
Although the case is still under investigation by French justice system for a final judgment, those who are familiar with the nature of cults and their techniques of brainwashing were neither shocked nor surprised by the widespread self-burnings of MKO’s members, male and female, that left two deaths and others deformed. It was all done as a cult order to protest the arrest of the she-guru Maryam Rajavi who is steering the cult in the absence of her husband whose whereabouts is still unknown. And it worked well, since soon the French police surrendered to the wills of the protesters and set the leader free.
Not only has the group failed to present evidences to acquit itself of terrorist charges, distribution of new evidences such as reports of abusing its own insiders, repeated assertion of its re-designation in the US and the EU terror lists, its failed lobbying efforts to be removed from the terrorist lists, legal complaints of defectors and families to prosecute the organization for its anti-human activities against the members, and its glorification of terrorism are all proven facts that convince any country, where its members are settled, to take precautionary measures against any possible terrorist plots.
Intrinsically a terrorist organization, MKO has never denounced violence and terrorism publicly. In fact the group’s glorification of violence and terrorism remains as a major security threat and an appropriate means of accomplishing its cultic ends and safeguarding its HQs. In a few messages delivered from his hideout in the past recent years, Massoud Rajavi has particularly provoked continuation of suicidal operations as an emergency exit from the raised crisis. The self elected leader of Mojahedin has mainly focused on the preservation of two cult dynamics as the strategic guidelines in his messages, namely, Maryam Rajavi and Camp Ashraf. Rajavi in his message of March 25 stated:
At the present, it is a national duty on any Iranian and especially on our victorious opposition forces throughout the world to preserve two things which have turned to be two sides of the same coin. On one side rests a portrait of Maryam and on the other side, a perspective of Ashraf. I urge you one by one to struggle like Maryam and along with her day and night to mint the coin and achieve the end. 1
The expulsion of MKO from the Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki’s reiteration that the group is no longer welcome in Iraq following the expiration of the UN mandate for the international forces is of the greatest crisis the group has ever faced. It has to do something to come out and as usual, application of violence seems to be the best choice for the organization. In the past there came the order for the members to self-immolate for Maryam. Now it is Camp Ashraf that is under threat of being closed down and they already have the orders what to do.
According to an issued statement by the Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, MKO sent one of its members on a mission of suicide operation to target Iraqi national security forces in charge of the camp. The operation came to absolute failure when the attacker turned himself in to Iraqi security forces and disclosed the details of his mission.
As it is typical of MKO, it denied claims stated by Iraqi officials that a member of the group was planning a suicide operation. But one thing is right for certain that the group has to leave willingly or unwillingly. It can no more beguile Iraqi government as it did with France through the push of its suicidal operations. For sure it is good news for the camp residents who have long been looking forward to being released from the bonds of the abusive cult.
We are only half way through January and the EU terrorism list (from which the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation has been removed) has still not been announced but the MKO (aka the Rajavi cult, MEK, NCRI, NLA) has been unable to refrain from showing its true nature.
Iraq’s National Security Advisor has reported the arrest of an MKO member who is currently in custody after surrendering himself to an Iraqi security unit. The man, who is a resident of Camp Ashraf, was about to perform a suicide mission, but could not go through with it. According to a statement from the office of the National Security Advisor, the MKO member has claimed the MKO use severe torture and brainwashing on its members. He claims that: “I was sent with a clear and precise plan to perform a suicide mission in this Iraqi base”.
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=5720
This news will come as no surprise to those who know the MKO. Looking at Massoud Rajavi’s track record over thirty years, nothing more or less than this could be expected. While he was able to send over 2,000 civilians their deaths back in 1988 in the failed Eternal Light operation, he has since then sent numerous smaller groups to perform suicidal terrorist attacks in Iran with the added instruction that if captured the person should use their cyanide pill to kill themselves. More recently, MKO were instructed to set fire to themselves to protest the arrest of Maryam Rajavi on terrorism charges in Paris. Two died and several others sustained serious injury with their permanent disfigurement and disability a direct result of Rajavi’s order.
Massoud Rajavi who owns the MKO also owns the blood of the members and will spill it whenever he needs to. In this case to rescue himself from the mess he has made in Iraq. The MKO members are his capital which buys him power. They are expandable assets which have been used and reused shamelessly by western agencies who have found this a useful and cheap resource in their ‘regime change’ armoury. It is clear that the neoconservatives and Zionists are using the MKO against the Iraqis, and are helping them by facilitating the impunity enjoyed by MKO leaders at the cult’s headquarters in Europe.
This latest fiasco in the Rajavi saga is surely the result of negligence and apathy of the European Union toward the MKO which apparently couldn’t summon the energy or interest to properly investigate the MKO and deal with it accordingly. A feat which has been assiduously performed by successive US Governments since 1994 and which has resulted in the MKO retaining its terrorism designation to date with the added information that the group is a cult. However, the Bush Administration has also proved itself to be overly greedy in wanting to have their cake and eat it. The US army has ‘protected’ this ‘terrorist’ outfit for five and a half years in Iraq in spite of repeated demands by the Iraqis for removal of this known FTO, which collaborated with the former regime, from Iraqi territory.
It is surely time for the international community as represented by the UNHCR and UNCHR to to help the Iraqis ensure that all the individuals held captive in Camp Ashraf are accorded their basic human rights. Rajavi’s victims must be given the opportunity to renounce violence and to leave Camp Ashraf for third countries or to accept voluntary repatriation to Iran. Any delay in dismantling this notorious cult is to condemn the inhabitants to enforced membership of an illegal paramilitary terrorist group.
The ideological schism of 1975 constitutes one of the critical phases of MKO. Following the mass arrests of 1971, the leadership cadre found it necessary to review the past events to find the reasons underlying the strategic failure of the organization. Since two ranking members of organization, Taqi Shahram and Bahram Aram, were converted to Marxism this review led to the overall ideological shift of MKO to Marxism. However, one of the organization activists, Dr. Karim Rastegar, informed Rajavi, already in prison, of the conversion of the organization leaders. Not only did Rajavi desist to make any reaction to their perversive activities but also accused Rastegar of cynicism and fundamentalism up to the time when the ideological shift of the organization was declared openly through Marxism wing manifesto.
This event influenced the imprisoned members to a great extent and many more converted to Marxism and declared it openly. Although after the declaration of the Marxism wing Rajavi falsely made a promise to make his best to modify and revise the ideological principles of MKO, he failed to do so and instead held grab to ideological and political purging of those prisoners who were in favor of religious leadership in Iran. The consequences of the declaration of the Marxism wing inside and outside prison necessitated it for Rajavi to deny having any relation and inclination to Marxism since the past history of Marxists in preventing social movements of Iran like the destructive activities of Tudeh party in the course of nationalization of oil industry and betrayal of Shahram and Aram led to the intensification of the sensitivity of religious prisoners toward Marxists. Then, Rajavi was expected to revise organizational principles taking a firm position against Marxists and in favor of religious prisoners.
However, all those trying to find the roots of the June 1981 crises are unanimous that the position taking of Rajavi in this phase was intentionally aimed at keeping distance from religious forces and especially clerical leaders while inside prison. They acknowledge the fact that his twelve-point declaration, first distributed orally from inside the prison, formed the main pillars of his position taking and he acted amateurishly in demarcating with the ideological shift of the organization and its founders. Two out of the twelve points were more effective in intensifying the crises between Rajavi and religious prisoners. One pointed out that the organization would keep its previous position toward Marxists. In other words, it considered the converted members as an opportunist group not real Marxists so there would be no change in the organization relations towards them. The second and the most important point was triggering a more intense reaction on the part of religious members calling them reactionaries.
It is evident that jailed Mojahedin under the leadership of Rajavi considered Marxist members as their ideological allies and even preferred them to members with religious inclinations. These events as well as Rajavi’s declaration letter intensified the crises inside prisons even more. Saeed Shahsavandi, already an intimate friend of Rajavi, putting the contents of the twelve-point letter in writing expounds on the course of events after the declared manifesto of Marxist Mojahedin. Almost all members except Rajavi believed in the necessity of revising the ideological principles of the organization at that particular period of time. According to Shahsavandi:
I dare say that almost all high rankings but Rajavi came to the conclusion that the organization had made some mistakes in the past that were to be modified and these modifications were to have religious and in political terms rightist inclinations. 1
He further refers to the internal and external trends inside prison trying to revise the fundamentals and principles of MKO and revive Mojahedin making them free from dualistic views replaced by pure religious position and Rajavi’s opposition to these trends by issuing his twelve-point declaration. As he puts into words, almost all political trends and individuals were to find the roots of MKO schism and also a solution to terminate the crises. Yet, Rajavi paid no attention to the existing conditions and issued his twelve-point “declaration of MKO position toward leftist perverted opportunist trend” worsening the conditions.
It has to be pointed out that some prominent figures outside prison like ayatollah Motahari wrote a letter to ayatollah Khomeini, at the time living in Najaf in exile, referring to the deviation and schism of Mojahedin asking him to find an immediate solution for their challenges:
Marxist views have been slinked into some political groups like Mojahedin. They were primarily a political group and are gradually turning to a religious sect with their own ideology and interpretations from Islam. They claim to have come to a point where they no longer need religious instructions and teachings. They respect both Marx as Shiite Imams and also claim to be true Muslims. Others have converted to Marxism declaring it openly. 2
References:
1. The interview of Saeed Shahsavandi with the voice of Iran, part 38.
2. A review of the life of ayatollah Motahari
Research Bureau – Mojahedin.ws – January 18, 2009
- The threat made by cults must be taken as serious because this methodology requires a large-scale complicated recruitment and manipulation process to which no one is immune. Ann Singleton the British woman who was once a member of Rajavi’s cult( MKO/PMOI) believes that “the irony was that I was in a state of modern slavery. I was mentally chained to the Mujahedin… Psychological manipulation can happen to anyone, any time. If you’re lucky, you end up with a timeshare”
Since all the cults function the same way, the website Howcultswork.com gives a very helpful definition of cults and their tricks to recruit and keep members:
Cults, wonderful on the outside but on the inside are very manipulating. Cult leaders are desperate to trick you into joining. They are after your obedience, your time and your money.
Cults use sophisticated mind control and recruitment techniques that have been refined over time. Beware of thinking that you are immune from cult involvement, the cults have millions of members around the world who once thought they were immune, and still don’t know they are in a cult! To spot a cult you need to know how they work and you need to understand the techniques they use. Teaching you these things is what this article is all about.
This article exposes the secret techniques cults will use to try and trick and control you. Cult leaders will not want you to read this, but read it anyway. Once you understand How Cults Work you will be better able to spot and avoid cult recruiters, and protect your family and friends.
The term cult seems strange to most people. They think that it is something far from their normal life, so they often have some misconceptions about the cults. In the second part of the article on howcultswork.com, the author clarifies some misunderstandings that are common among public about the cults:
Let’s eliminate some misconceptions about cults:
Cults are easy to spot, they wear strange clothes and live in communes.
Well some do. But most are everyday people like you and me. They live in houses. They wear the same clothes. They eat the same food. Cult leaders don’t want you to know that you are being recruited into a cult and so they order their recruiters to dress, talk and act in a way that will put you at ease. One cult has even invented a phrase to describe this, they call it”being relatable”.Since our focus here is the destructive cult of Rajavi, it should be said that “yes” some of MKO members are now living in castles like camp Ashraf or Camp Maryam but another large number who are mainly the recruiters and lobbying activists have apparently normal people who appear to be so good looking and friendly so it is very hard to spot them in the society due to their pleasant appearance.
Cults are full of the weak, weird and emotionally unstable.
Not true. Many cult members are very intelligent, attractive and skilled. The reality is that all sorts of people are involved in cults. One of the few common denominators is that they were often recruited at a low point in their life — more about that later.
Most of the members and ex-members of MKO are well educated people. Also the experts believe that the individuals with complicated minds who are eventually intelligent, talented people are more likely to be recruited by a cult because of their curiosity and interest in unknown adventures. The members and former members of MKO cult mostly master two or three languages. They have different skills such as computer work, arts, IT, political and technical science.
Cults are just a bunch of religious nut cases.
This is a common mistake people make thinking that cults are purely religious groups. The modern definition of a mind control cult refers to all groups that use mind control and the devious recruiting techniques that this article exposes. The belief system of a religion is often warped to become a container for these techniques, but it is the techniques themselves that make it a cult. In a free society people can believe what they want, but most people would agree that it is wrong for anyone to try to trick and control people.
About MKO, religion is only a mean to justify some of their activities. Relying on religion depends on their situation, for example to recruit a religious Iranian they claim to be a religious opposition but to deceive a Western politician they pretend to advocate a secular regime.
Refrence: Howcultswork.com
By Mazdak Parsi
“An Iranian resistance group that has been living in exile in Iraq for decades is no longer a welcome guest in the country’’ ,Anita McNaught the correspondent of Fox News in Iraq reported on January 12th. 
Ms. McNaught has based her documented report on evidences made by Iraqi Kurds who were victims of MKO’s atrocities while their cooperation with regime of Saddam Hussein to suppress Kurdish uprisings. Although, as McNaught reports “MKO denies involvement in the repression”, she cites the testimonies of Kurds including a Kurd military commander of Pishmerga who lost many forces of his battalion that was attacked by MKO, and a Kurdish researcher assured her that he has handed many secret documents of Baath Intelligence Service to Human Rights Watch; the documents show that MKO helped the Ba’ath forces to occupy Kirkuk province to resist Kurdish forces.
This two-page report of Anita McNaught gives some evidences on the terrorist nature of the MKO and as she quotes from Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group MEK “acquired its reputation as the ruthless tool of a thuggish regime.”
Finally she concluded with the viewpoint of a Western diplomat:”there is nothing we lose from Camp Ashraf except a huge headache and taxpayer dollars.”, as the reason of MEK’s expired role for the West.
Now that Fox News has too much evidence on the terrorist activities of MKO agents at least in Iraq. There is a question: why does Fox News hire AliReza Jaafarzade, the official member of MKO, as the foreign affair analyst?
Jaafarzade has never denounced his membership in MKO and has always advocated MKO’s cause in his so-called analysis on Fox News programs.
Why such a contradiction in Fox News’ policy?
Mazdak Parsi
As an organization designated FTO by the Department of State and as it is no more useful for the West, the only use of Jaafar Zade’s propaganda on FoxNews is to deceive the MKO members who are captured in Camp Ashraf, Iraq and Camp Maryam, France. Because they have no free access to the mass media, they only can view the Medias filtered by the cult leaders.
Therefore , the systematic propaganda of MKO on TV channels including FoxNews is an effort to keep the members hopeful to an uncertain future.
It is almost two years that Mojahedin.ws has suggested the necessity of reviewing the content of Masoud Rajavi’s so-called ideological revolution making its best to obtain its fulfillment which has been accelerated by means of communicating with the organization’s ex-members. Following the statements made by Batool Soltani, of the ex-leadership cadre of MKO, with the Sahar NGO on different aspects of MKO cultic relations including the ideological revolution, it seems necessary to have a further reference to the suggestion mentioned before. Among the statements on the personal, organizational, and political aspects of her life in MKO, that of ideological revolution is of utmost importance as she is the first female Mojahed ex-member paying enough attention to this fundamental issue.
In addition, her recruitment in the leadership council of MKO leading to close relations and intimacy with the organization leadership, Masoud Rajavi and Maryam Azdanlu, has made her statements trustworthy and reliable. We do really appreciate her precision and sensitivity in this subject paving the way for other MKO ex-members to elaborate on various aspects of the ideological revolution of Mojahedin. Even her seemingly repetitious statements manage to clarify some untold truth on the real nature of MKO and its leadership.
Another factor highlighting the significance of her statements is that they may work to persuade other MKO members to break their silence on the critical issue of the ideological revolution of Mojahedin. Before, some factors like resorting deliberately to passivity and refraining to pose challenges to the organization in order not to be put under the attack of terror of personality were stated on the reasons why MKO ex-members have kept quiet on the issue of the ideological revolution while the fact is that merely grabbing at biography writing is of no effect and fails to present a challenge for Mojahedin; on the contrary, it is welcome by Mojahedin who aim to cover the facts on the real nature of their cultist relations the uncovering of which is a terrible nightmare coming true for them.
This issue is of a significance for Mojahedin that they have refused to show any reaction to their being accused of having cultic relations since they are well aware that even their common procedure of using bad language in this matter may be destructive since in that case they are obliged to elaborate on some cultic indices pertained to them leading to the subject being updated and widespread. Therefore, instead of taking an aggressive stance and offensive position toward this accusation, they have kept quiet even on the report of the US state department in April 2007 in which MKO was referred to as a cult of personality. Taking these facts into consideration may give us a better understanding of the significance of this issue and the necessity of disclosing the content of the ideological revolution of Mojahedin.
It is a fact that Mrs. Soltani’s disclosing statements have a wide variety of functions. First, the silence of Mojahedin on her separation shows the considerable importance of the subject for them. Second, disclosing facts on the relation of Rajavi with female Mojaheds by a detached female MKO member may pose a challenge of a high cost and many negative consequences for Mojahedin. Third, it is unbearable for Rajavi that females on whom he has made so much investment leave the organization. Mojahedin’s keeping silent proves that they are truly accused of censorship and banning the release of news in camp Ashraf among rank-and-files. In fact, in practice they prove their controlling and filtering of news spread lest Ashraf residents become aware of the separation of a member of leadership council.
Here it is worthy to refer to some major points on the consequences of Mrs. Soltani separation and the covert reactions of the organization to it underlining the importance of the subject. First, as she claims Masoud Rajavi has once asserted we have no separated female member so he dares not confirm the separation of Mrs. Soltani not to be accused of giving false promises to members as previously done.
Second, Mrs. Soltani claims that her separation is of great significance for the leadership of Mojahedin to the point that they hold grab to sending secret message asking her to go wherever she wants refraining to publicize her separation from MKO. However, her separation as well as the secret message of MKO leadership has been publicized at a high cost for Masoud Rajavi and MKO.
Third, Mojahedin are not willing to acknowledge the fact that despite all the controls exerted on members willing to separate and developing the hegemony of women on men, they failed to meet the desires and inclinations of members and women in particular and all the efforts made by Rajavi to stabilize the presence of women in MKO relations proved futile to the point that many female members leave the organization upon getting the least opportunity to do so. In addition, the way Mrs. Soltani has escaped from the organization reveals the amount of her frustration over the conditions of the organization.
Anyway, contrary to what Mojahedin leaders are after, Mrs. Soltani is expounding on the tragic and disastrous facts of the internal relations of MKO to which Mojahedin make no negative and public reaction. The fact is that despite her children being at the hands of Mojahedin as hostages and attempts to use them as blackmail for her keeping silent, she insists on revealing the real nature of MKO and Rajavi due to her years of suffering and pain inside MKO. Although her efforts are just for humanistic causes, she is to be appreciated and sympathized for the costs she has paid in the past and is likely to pay in the future.
Mojahedin-e Khalq rewarded for cooperation against Iran?
The State Department has again decided to keep the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO) with all its aliases on the US terrorism list. There are a growing number of people who are calling for the US to have done with the group once and for all. Commentators on several blogs and articles suggest the leaders be ‘tried in internationally approved courts and let the membership go home.’ But this ignores the heavy price that has been paid for the group both politically (Iran has constantly accused the US and Europe of double standards on terrorism for their palpable support for the MKO) and financially (one of the key indicators of the actual irrelevance of adding the MKO to western terrorism lists is the tens of millions of dollars, euros and pounds the group has been able to spend on legal challenges and propaganda to keep itself alive – money which must come from somewhere).
With MKO personnel permanently camped-out in most of Europe’s parliaments for the past two years it should come as no surprise that the group will be removed from Europe’s terrorism list when it is announced on January 15. In July 2008, the EU announced that there were “no grounds” to amend the list of terrorist organisations, which includes 48 groups, and EU officials insisted that the decision to keep the MEK on the list of the terrorist groups is not related to the Western efforts to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program.
What is behind this peculiar change which will redefine the group as non-terrorist in Europe?
As with removal from the UK terrorism list in June 2008, no material difference will accrue to the MKO. In his book on the Mojahedin Dr. Ronen A. Cohen says the MKO “does not have the characteristics of a classic terror organization as it does not initiate terror against innocents” – although the indiscriminate nature of many of its attacks mean 12,000 civilians have been killed in MKO operations inside Iran over two decades.
The most pertinent explanation for why removal from the lists is irrelevant is because the MKO even at the height of its military prowess in 1988 and with the full backing of Saddam Hussein and the west was unable to fulfil its aim of replacing the Islamic Republic with its own rule. Massoud Raajvi’s long term premise that such change would come about as a result of a popular uprising has been pragmatically replaced in the past five years with the conviction that regime change would be imposed on Iran from external powers – the USA, Israel – and that the MKO could reap the benefit of being there as a viable alternative when that happened.
Of these two, perhaps the latter version is currently more possible and perhaps probable even with a new US Administration in place.
So, what use do the MKO’s backers envisage for the group?
The protection of a uniformed anti-Iran mercenary group in Camp Ashraf in Diyali province for five years has been intentional. The price paid has been too great to allow jettisoning the group now, both politically and financially. However, it is important to note that even if it is removed from the UK, EU and perhaps US terrorism lists, the MKO does not enjoy governmental recognition or legitimacy anywhere in the world. Nor does any country need to give the group legitimacy in order to make use of it.
Essentially the use of the MKO is, as Rajavi himself has used them, as perpetrators and victims of violence. The MKO’s talent is that they are trained to kill and be killed according to Rajavi’s order. That they will do this to fulfil a western agenda without needing western approval is the group’s unique selling point and is enough to justify not continuing to label them as terrorists.
There is no doubt that for many observers the removal of the MKO from the European list will clarify the European position toward terrorism. Public opinion in the Middle East has never regarded western terrorism lists as about terrorism per se but as lists of enemies of western interests.
Inclusion of the violently anti-Iranian MKO along with groups which are genuinely anti-western has been a major discrepancy of all the western terrorism lists, a glaring error of political judgement. The MKO may have begun life as an anti-imperialist group with armed struggle its core value, and continued this path under the patronage of Saddam Hussein. But, since its forced disarmament at the hands of the US army, the group has been able to beguile western powers, including Israel, into believing it shares common cause against Iran and is a friend and ally of at least some in the west.
After spending hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda and legal fees to keep the MKO alive, these backers are now obliged to use this blunted tool in any way they can, perhaps to justify the expenditure, perhaps because they really believe the MKO can be an effective tool against Iran.
Anne Singleton, an expert on the MKO and author of ‘Saddam’s Private Army’ explains, “With a new Administration in the White House a pre-emptive strike on Iran looks unlikely. Instead the MKO’s backers have put together a coalition of small irritant groups, the known minority and separatist groups, along with the MKO. These groups will be garrisoned around the border with Iran and their task is to launch terrorist attacks into Iran over the next few years to keep the fire hot.
“The role of the MKO is to train and manage these groups using the expertise they acquired from Saddam’s Republican Guard. The price the MKO has had to pay is to accept their removal from their main base Camp Ashraf and relocate to other bases not their own. The inducement will be to remove the group from the terrorism list in Europe.”
Once the MKO has been declared in Europe as ‘no longer terrorists’, the group’s overt backers, Lord Corbett, Struan Stevenson MEP, Paulo Casaca MEP, and others who see the world, and in particular Iran, through neoconservative/Zionist tinted glasses will move to promote this coalition in their various circles.
Although it is tempting to cast this move into the sphere of betting both ways on the new Obama Administration’s Iran policy, the key trigger for this move has been the Iraqi government’s insistence on the removal of the MKO from Iraq and the handover of Camp Ashraf to Iraqi sovereignty. This has not been an unreasonable request of US forces over a five year period. However, it is only since the agreed handover of control of Camp Ashraf on January 1 that this became an inevitable outcome. For over a year, MKO backers in western parliaments have lobbied for the MKO to remain in Camp Ashraf on the grounds that the group would be massacred by vengeful Iraqis or forced back to Iran to face certain torture and execution. The falsity of this position has become exposed as the Iraqi government has continued to protect the group and has given repeated assurances that no one will be forced home against their will. Beyond this, the Iranian government’s own position on prosecuting leading members has made it impossible to send anyone back that Iran does not want.
The reason for the insistence on maintaining the MKO in Camp Ashraf – and now in new border based garrisons alongside other armed groups – has been because the only use for the group is to act as an irritant against Iran. If a full scale military attack could not be manufactured which would involve them, then small scale terrorist attacks are the next best alternative.
What all this overlooks, of course, is the human aspect of this group. For years former members of the MKO have warned of severe human rights violations perpetrated against the members. Human Rights Watch conducted its own investigation into the group’s recent history in 2005 and published a damning report titled No Exit. But more recently, those who escaped the camp since its capture by American forces in 2003 and who have managed to reach Europe, are alleging continued cruelties including unnecessary hysterectomies imposed on women to rob them of any hope of having children.
For five years the American army has effectively prevented any independent investigation into these allegations. The primary task of the Iraqi military now in charge of the camp must be to allow humanitarian agencies to access the camp’s residents and individually assess their mental, physical and emotional status. Anything less than this is to condemn 3,250 people to being part of an illegal paramilitary group without their active consent.
This still leaves the fundamental question of what the west will get from its investment in the MKO. It is looking likely that the US will cherry-pick whoever it wants from the MKO to perform in its new coalition strategy. The old, sick, disabled and disturbed will be left for the Iraqi government to deal with.
In view of western patronage of this group, albeit largely covert in nature since it does not acknowledge that it is the group’s willingness to die that is its main use, then it is western countries which ultimately have a responsibility, if not an outright duty, to rescue the group from Iraq. If the group’s membership is indeed moved to other bases in Iraq to continue involvement in acts of violence, then any blood shed will be on western hands not those who are defending their country’s security.
The non-Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), since the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, is seeking another alternative in the west. The MKO strove under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to become the Iraqi MKO and now is striving to become the Israeli MKO.
Since 1985 when the Internal Ideological Revolution and the Divine Leadership of the Rajavis were introduced within the MKO, and the cultic characteristics reached their full development, and since 1986 when the leadership of the MKO moved to Iraq under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and participated in the war against Iran and as well as suppressing the people of Iraq as Saddam’s private army, the organization not only had no presence inside Iran but it was also much hated as far as the Iranian people were concerned.
Since then until the fall of Saddam Hussein, the activities of the MKO against the Iranian regime included border assaults and sabotage activities and sending terror teams from Iraq inside Iran with the aid of the security forces of Saddam Hussein as well as political propaganda in the west. The assaults and terrorist activities were of course ceased when the dictator was toppled in Iraq and the organization was disarmed by the American forces in 2003, and therefore the activities of the MKO were limited to political propaganda in the west; the sort of propaganda of course which would pave the way for terrorism in the future.
Hence since that point up to now the MKO and its leadership have relied not on the Iranian people but on foreign powers to gain rule in Iran and at the present time they are seeking an alternative for Saddam Hussein (this time in the west of course) and have based their strategy on gaining support from potential enemies such as the US, Israel and the UK in place of the previous toppled enemy.
Therefore the presence of the MKO now is merely in the form of the Ashraf garrison (the MKO base in Iraq) and the Maryam garrison (the European base of the MKO in France) which initially is the problem of the newly formed government of Iraq and then the western countries, and is by no means the concern of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As far as the Iraqi government is concerned, this government knows the MKO as a terrorist group and one of the many miseries left from the era of Saddam Hussein for the people of Iraq and a threat for Iraq’s internal security; and therefore the Iraqi government is demanding that the Ashraf garrison be closed forever, and righteously expects the western governments who have had their use of the organization against Iran to accept them in their countries for their retirement stage.
The political process to de-proscribe the MKO in the EU was begun some time ago. As the UK initiated the proscription of the organization (for any reasons), now the UK is again stepping forward to remove their name from the EU list of terrorist groups, and most likely this will be done in the very near future.
What consequences will arise if the MKO is kept in or removed from the EU list of terrorist groups?
As far as Iran is concerned, the MKO is a matter for the past and whether they are designated as a terrorist group or not would not have the smallest effect. Neither when they moved into the list were any facilities created for the Iranians and nor when they move out will any problem arise in their way. The opposite of course applies for the MKO.
As far as the European countries are concerned they know best how to deal with a terrorist cult in their own territory regarding their national security. If the EU is convinced that the organization is no longer a terrorist group so be it, and we do hope that their judgment is right and the MKO and its leader have truly put aside terrorism; although we do not have any indications for such assumptions.
From the Iraqis’ point of view, who demands that the MKO (who have cooperated with Saddam Hussein in killing innocent people) leave Iraq, de-proscribing the MKO in Europe is good news since the west has no excuses for not accepting them in their countries any more. In the last meeting we had with the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs they explained that the ministry had invited all European ambassadors in Baghdad to a meeting and urged them to accept the members of the MKO in their countries as political refugees, but they all rejected the request and their excuse was that the group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the EU. But now the Iraqis can of course put their demands forward again.
But the only side who would really suffer from de-proscribing the MKO in Europe is of course the prime victims of such a destructive cult, meaning the members who will be more mentally manipulated when this is shown to them as a victory of the cult and will ensue their continued mental captivity; and therefore their families must pay the price by being away from them and have no news from their beloved ones.
On the issue of closing the Ashraf garrison in Iraq, the MKO is trying hard to make it an entirely Iranian concern. The west is also following the same pattern and demanding an increase in the price of the MKO supposedly for a deal with the Islamic Republic, and perhaps the policy of de-proscribing them in Europe which has started sometime ago is in this line. The MKO is pretending in its propaganda that it is a major issue for Iran and they claim to the world that Iran is striving to get hold of the inhabitants of the Ashraf garrison to take them to Iran and put them on trial and torture them and eventually kill them. Anyone who has the least of knowledge of the MKO surely knows that the claim made by the MKO is somehow ‘escaping forward’ [farar be jelow]. The MKO is merely trying to create such an atmosphere in order to falsify the main issue. Certainly the Islamic Republic is not seeking to get back dead bodies which the owners don’t want anymore. On the contrary Iran logically is trying to smartly use the dissidents of the MKO against it (refer to the quotations made from a western diplomat in Iran in an article written by Geroges Malbrunot in Le Figaro dated December 23) and it is obvious that the Iranian regime is more eager that they are moved to Europe in order to send back the products of a terrorist cult in the shape of human robots to their original place. It is also worth mentioning that in the time of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq, Massoud Rajavi the leader of the MKO did not send the group’s defectors to Europe and instead handed them over to the Iranian regime. He said clearly on many occasions that the Iranian regime would not do anything to the members of the MKO who have no arms in their hands.
The leaders of the MKO claim that if the US forces move from the Ashraf garrison and leave the posts for the Iraqis, they would not have security in Iraq. This could be true since many Kurdish and Shiites groups in Iraq know this organization as their ruthless enemy who cooperated with Saddam Hussein to suppress them and would wish to take revenge. The solution of course is not for the US to keep their forces there for their security forever. The answer to this problem is that the western governments take them back to their own countries in order to preserve their security. It is worth pointing out that most of these people were political refugees in the west and have been recruited and sent to Iraq from there to join in the National Liberation Army.
Whether the MKO is designated as a terrorist entity or not and whether the US forces stay outside the Ashraf garrison or not makes no big difference to anyone and we are not much concerned about it. As far as the Sahar Family Foundation in Iraq is concerned and we have focused our attention on it, the inhabitants of the Ashraf garrison must enjoy free meetings with their families in some place outside the garrison and without the presence of the MKO authorities and they must have the benefit of having contacts with the outside world and also to have the mental pressures and thought controls lifted from them; and we will stay firm in Iraq and continue our activities until we reach this very important humanitarian goal.
An Iranian resistance group that has been living in exile in Iraq for decades is no longer a welcome guest in the country and may have no choice but to
return to Iran, where some of its members fear they could be tortured and possibly executed as traitors.
Some 3,400 members of the militant group the Mujahedin-e-Khalq — the People’s Mujahadeen of Iran, or MeK — have lived at Camp Ashraf, a 14-square-mile base north of Baghdad, since Saddam Hussein invited them there in 1986.
But the current Iraqi government, which took control of national security on New Year’s Day, has made it clear that it wants the MeK out. The government is unmoved by a sustained international campaign by the group that has included demonstrations and sit-ins in Washington and Geneva, Switzerland.
The MeK was founded in Iran in the 1960s, when it organized as a group opposed to the rule of the Shah. For more than two decades, it carried out a campaign of bombing and sabotage against the Iranian government, including the killing of U.S. citizens working in Iran in the 1970s, which led it to be designated an international terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
The MeK cooperated briefly with the clerical regime that overthrew the Shah in the Islamic Revolution, but then it turned against the nation’s new religious leadership, as well.
Despite its history of violence and its official designation as a terrorist group, some U.S. officials have been sympathetic toward the MeK because of the potential that it could be used as a card against Iran. But now that the Iraqi government wants the MeK to leave Iraq, the group’s designation as a terrorist organization is preventing other countries from offering its members a new home, and they fear they may have no choice but to return to Iran.
On Jan. 1, during a visit to Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki re-stated his government’s position:
"Iraq is determined to put an end to this organization because it is affecting relations between Iran and Iraq. This organization participated in many operations that harmed Iranian and Iraqi civilians under the Saddam regime."
Al-Maliki was referring to evidence that the MeK collaborated with the government of Saddam Hussein, particularly during the Kurdish uprising in 1991 when thousands of Kurds were massacred. The MeK denies involvement in the repression and cites supporting statements from, among others, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
Hopes had risen among MeK members and their overseas supporters that they had found a means of remaining in Iraq when the U.S. Embassy said on Dec. 27 that American forces would "maintain a presence at Camp Ashraf … to assist the government of Iraq in carrying out its assurances of humane treatment of the residents."
"It means the United States has recognized its responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our people in Ashraf," said Ali Safavi, an official of NCRI, political wing of the MeK.
But the U.S. government no longer considers MeK members in Iraq to have the protected-persons status the U.S. gave them in 2003, and is privately supportive of Iraqi government efforts to encourage the residents to leave.
The U.S. also doesn’t have the final say, as the Iraqi government assumed responsibility for all detainees on Jan. 1 under the terms of the Security Agreement.
The MeK once had the finest tank division in Iraq and harbored hopes of leading a resistance army back into Iran to topple the Tehran government. But it was disarmed in 2003 by Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, then of the 4th Infantry Division, who put U.S. guards on the gate.
By then, the MeK had many enemies in Iraq as well as in Iran.
Nabaz Rasheed Ahmed, 61, a commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in 1991, said MeK forces attacked his battalion in Chiman, Kirkuk province, in 1991.
"Mujahideen fighters who were backed by Iraqi army helicopters and tanks attacked my battalion in March 29, 1991. They killed many of my Peshmergas and wounded a lot, including me," he said.
The military architect of that uprising was Neywshirwan Mustafa, 64, who now is chairman of the powerful Kurdish media group Wusha Corporation. When told that the MeK denied helping Saddam in his crackdown on the Kurds, Mustafa said:
"That is not true. They were working in cooperation with the Iraqi Army…. They attacked many bases belonging to the PUK.
"They occupied the road from Kanar to Kirkuk. They occupied a hospital in Kanar. They killed a doctor and many other civilian people. Saddam Hussein was protecting them in Iraq".
Abdullah Safir, 59, a Kurdish English teacher who lives in Kifri, in Kirkuk Province, says he was there when the MeK mobilized against his town in 1991.
"I knew they were opponents of the Iranian regime at the time. I did not expect them to intimidate people in a country in which they were guests, and to interfere in internal issues."
Safir recalled how the MeK shelled Kurdish towns "at random," took locals hostage, and in one incident attacked a busload of young people from Kifri, killing all 20. He remembers seeing some of the bodies when they were brought home and said that one or two had been run over by MeK tanks.
Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, which analyzes the causes of conflict, has also investigated the MeK’s role in Iraq.
"The MEK has yet to own up to its intimate relationship with the Saddam regime, which protected it and deployed it against its enemies when this served its purpose," Hiltermann said. "It thus acquired its reputation as the ruthless tool of a thuggish regime."
Shorsh Haji, a researcher on Kurdish issues who lives in the United Kingdom, escaped from Iraq after the 1991 uprising with many Iraqi secret police documents and worked with New York-based Human Rights Watch to analyze the content. He said the mukhabarat — a branch of Saddam’s intelligence service — wrote in their reports that the MeK "heroically resisted the rebels and traitors who wanted to occupy Kirkuk."
The intelligence the MeK had on Iran made them most useful to Saddam — and later, to the United States, Haji said. And that, he said, accounts for the protection the U.S. gave them at Camp Ashraf.
One MeK member told FOX News that the group gave the U.S. the names of "32,000 Iranian agents working inside Iraq." She also mentioned MeK’s purported role in revealing the extent of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, though subsequent reports support the view that Israel actually provided the information for the MeK to release.
Iraq has told the residents of Camp Ashraf that they must be gone by March of this year. It has promised they will not be forcibly repatriated to Iran, but it is not clear where else they could go.
Sources told FOX News that the Iranian government has a list of 50 "most wanted" MeK members, around 20 of whom are believed to live at the camp.
In recent years Iran has made much of a new policy of humanely "readmitting" former MeK members into Iranian society, with the help of a group of ex-members called the Nejat Society, which means "Rescue."
Behzad Saffari, legal adviser for the MeK, told FOX News: "Anyone who repents or remorses the past are welcomed by the Iranian regime and can be used against the MeK. They are a useful commodity. But anyone who goes back to Iran and still keeps the ideas of the MeK — they will be executed."
Approximately half of the residents of Camp Ashraf are under 30 years old, too young to have been part of the MeK’s fighting past.
But this may partly explain why the MeK has outlived its usefulness. A Western diplomat told FOX News: "There’s nothing we lose from Camp Ashraf except a huge headache and taxpayer dollars."
Qassim Khidhir Hamad contributed to this report
By Anita McNaught
Despite its recent widespread campaign and arranged rallies even in subfreezing temperatures of some European countries calling to be removed from the list of proscribed terrorist organizations, Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCRI, NLA) can never abandon the extremely violent strategy of armed struggle that is intermingled with its ideology. In fact, the militant infrastructure constituted the group’s started struggle against the Pahlavis monarch.
MKO started its first armed activities in August 1971; the first was a plan to blow up a main high-power electrical tower located in Sologhan, Tehran; the second was to prepare a blacklist of SAVAK agents, the ousted Shah’s notorious security system. In August 1971 the regime was preparing to celebrate the Festivities of 2500 years of Iranian Monarchy. Not following the line of the main Iranian cleric leaders, particularly Ayatollah Khomeini, MKO were inspired by their opposition moves and position takings against some decisions made by the regime. In respect to the Festivities, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a statement to boycott the regime’s glorification of monarchy. It gave MKO an opportunity to think of its first daring armed action that could really shock the regime. As Hanifnezhad stated at the time; “Now that an eminent clergy has boycotted the festivities, it would be too bad to sit immobilized. We do have to do something. If God willing, we torch the celebration. (1)
Had the group succeeded, it could have been a great achievement because the damage would cause outages in gusts’ residence as well as in the performance of the celebration itself. However, SAVAK agents were already waiting for the saboteurs at the place and arrested four Mojahedin members before they could realize what was happening. It was more because a second armed party had tried the same plan the previous night and the regime had kept the report censored to avoid expansion of panic and disturbance:
The team was aware not in the least that the Fedayan (Devoted) Militant had sabotaged the high-power tower on the previous night causing it to slant a little. The security forces had swarmed all over the religion and trapped the team that was arriving in a car; the engineer Samavati, Alireza Tashayyod, Mohammad Seyyedi Kashani, and Nabi Moazemi were all captured. (2)
The organization’s next the so-called spectacular feat, although lacking a military nature, was to prepare a blacklist of SAVAK agents. The importance lies in the fact that the regime tried to withhold the identity of its security forces from the public while it was curtail for the dissident groups to keep a watchful eye on the agents in their vicinity if they were to accomplish their armed activities. Having no access to SAVAK’s authentic information files, Mojahedin gathered the needed information from any possible source such as the media. An information team had the responsibility to obtain the needed information to synthesize them into a whole complete body.
Despite all its maneuvering feats and attempts, no sooner had Mojahedin Khalq started their armed action than the SAVAK struck the great blow that shattered the organization and eliminated more than half of its cadres. After the mass arrests, some free members, who had escaped arrest, planned to kidnap Prince Shahram, Shah’s nephew, with the hope of exchanging him for the arrested cadre awaiting their execution. They had decided to take Prince Shahram to the airport and fly to Libya along with the released prisoners where they would set the Prince free.
The kidnapping operation, however, failed and the kidnappers fled, notwithstanding the precisely made calculations. Later on, the kidnapper team was arrested and the plotters revealed to be Hanifnezhad, Ali-asghar Badizadegan, and Rasoul Meshkinfam. Thus, MKO’s first activities of violence and terror turned out to be complete failure that caused the arrest and execution of all its leaders but Rajavi who closely aligned himself with SAVAK.
When SAVAK arrested the cadres and seized their safe-houses, it issued an analytical report pointing to a number MKO’s weaknesses that led to its breakdown, including:
– The hierarchical order of the relation between the ranks was not yet fully developed. In general, the organization did not benefit from a well-developed echelon.
– The members did not live in secret and performed their organizational orders under their ordinary tasks.
– The members identity was not kept secrete from the others.
– The documents and the arms were not kept and stored with extreme caution.
– The arms were not distributed among the members and, expect in some cases, they were not trained for sabotage operations. (3)
The Islamic Revolution, however, set the remnants of MKO free from prison. Now they had free access to SAVAK’s secrete files to learn about their past mistakes and correct them. They learned how to reorganize violent and terrorist plots rather than reviewing their ideology to clean it of malignancies. Just when they found the opportunity to carry out their first terrorist operation, they proved to be talented trainees that had outstripped their trainers.
References:
1. Maysami, lotfullah; from the Movement to Mojahedin, p. 387.
2. Maysami, lotfullah; those who have gone, p. 41.
3. Ruhani, Hamid; Khomeini’s Movement, vol. 3, p. 635.