..as the MKO or the so called PMOI members, our mind didn’t work tactically. We couldn’t understand it…Now that I see, I figure out that the operation was a failure from the beginning. Moving in a line on tanks in an asphalted road had no possibility to success but nobody knew that at the time…Afshin who liked colt very much took out his colt and killed all of th captives..
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani-Part 19)..Being a good speaker or having executive skills was prior to ideological competence to be selected as a member of leadership council in MKO/PMOI/MEK..When the members started their compliments, Maryam and Masud Rajavi waited for their words to be listened completely and the atmosphere of the hall be influenced by the compliments. Then they apparently complained that they were not glad with such a compliment.
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 18 )..To choose the members of the leadership Council, the main criterion for Rajavi was how much they are devoted. There is a formula in MKO discussions:They ask:”why Maryam” and then they answer: “because Masud”.It means that Maryam is the first woman linked with Masud..They tried to confirm that such devotion needs an extraordinary super-natural capacity..Maryam Rajavi said that we should love Masud instead of our husbands..
(Memoirs of Batoul Soltani – Part 17)Masud managed the meetings of the ideological revolution himself saying:”suppose that you have brought an Iranian youth to the organization[MKO/MEK/PMOI] and you want to explain and justify the ideological revolution to him. You should clarify it to him that he cannot be married and be a fighter at the same time. You should explain that one cannot think of sexual or emotional problems while one is struggling.
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 16)..During the training process that I passed after I entered into MKO/MEK/PMOI, they never dealt with Masud’s marriage with Firouzeh Banisadr in open organizational arguments. Later on, it was discussed in the higher levels of the Leadership Council. In 1994, we had a meeting in which the arguments about the MKO’s second founders were presented and Masud pointed out his marriage with Firouzeh. I don’t think the issue was transmitted to the meetings in lower levels of the group.
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – part 15) -The key approach to know a political or an ideological movement is to know its leaders in the first place. Masud Rajavi is the fixed axis of the organization[MKO/MEK/PMOI] where the leadership is very important. Every individual who enters the organization is under close observation all the time and the person’s actions or reactions are watched
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 14)..“If this operation had to be done before the formation of the Leadership Council, I would have had too much challenge to convince Mr. Hassan Nezam to prepare a unit for the operation, but now when I explain a plan for Ms. Roqayeh Abbasi or Ms. Mahvash sepehri, I don’t have to challenge them. I just tell them to do the plan and they go and operate it.”Rajavi alleged in a meeting after an armed operation..The pastime aspect of the leadership Council was used as a tool just inside MKO and not outside of it.
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 13) – Imagine Rajavi as a spider that everything in the organization forms around him, just like a spider’s web. Looking at MKO’s background shows us that after the fall of Shah, the organization’s process was alienated by Rajavi’s personal desires. I mean, gathering every single supporter and member together, step by step, and then performing every single operation, one by one, followed by Rajavi’s demands. Therefore when you say that MKO/PMOI/MEK is a cult of personality around Masud Rajvi..
(Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 12 )..In 1985 and 1986, Rajavi began his military campaign by bringing his innocent sympathizers from all over the world to Iraq by any means he could, including force, intimidation, and deception. They sent smugglers to gather homeless youth and bring them into the organization. When the recruits were transferred to Iraq, they settled in Camp Ashraf in North of Iraq. From the beginning, MKO/PMOI/MEK needed to have a section to organize its relations with the Iraqi government so it was established and named Foreign Relations Department.
Memoirs of Ms. Soltani – Part 11-2 – The organization recruited those who were out of job or those who had other problems and sent them out of the country through various ways… The duty of manpower part was to recruit those who had social problems and to send them abroad. They tricked many people outside and inside the country. They manipulated them using long-term emotional methods or they tried to control their thoughts in order to recruit them. Hence Masud Rajavi could gather a number of them in France.