News

++ Payvand Rahai Association met with officials in the Albanian embassy in Paris to present a letter of concern signed by 72 former MEK members in western countries. The delegation discussed the situation of former MEK members now in Albania who are under pressure there.

++ 20 more people were removed from Iraq and transferred to Albania and other places. Ashraf News, Arabic website, published photographs of a cluster of the MEK women standing in Baghdad airport looking old and miserable. In an interview, the head of the airport explained they were being transferred under the auspices of the UNHCR but their passports were being stamped with the word ‘deported’. Farsi commentators congratulated the families that there is movement again after a hiatus in the expulsions. Some say that although Rajavi tried for so long to delay the transfers, it is now at the stage that he can’t stop it. Albania is the last stop and Rajavi can’t do anything else beyond that. Majid Rouhi, who writes weekly for Iran-Interlink exposing Rajavi on one particular issue each week, this week wrote about the MEK in Albania. He says “They used to be called Rajavi’s unpaid Gladiators. But now we look at them, we see they are dead people walking.”

++ Iranian media covered the 34th International Film Festival in Tehran. There were two films which were based on the MEK. Ebrahim Khodabandeh who served for 23 years as the head of the MEK’s International Relations department and who left them in 2003, gave a speech about the films and talked about the internal situation of the MEK as a terrorist cult. The film ‘Cyanide’, an action movie directed by Behrouz Shoaibi, is set in the time before the revolution. The film starts with the MEK assassination of two Americans in Iran and then follows infighting within the MEK which resulted in changing the ideology from Islam to Marxism, and the consequent assassination of the remaining Muslim members like Majid Sharif Baghefi and others. The other film ‘Mina’s Choice’, directed by Kamal Tabrizi, takes place after the revolution during the time that Saddam’s army was hitting Iranian cities with missiles. The film exposes the way the MEK provided intelligence to the Iraqis so they could hit these cities. In this context the film follows relationships among the people doing this, and specifically relationships under the restrictions imposed by Rajavi – forced divorce and gender segregation, etc.

In English:

++ The official website of the President of the IRI reported a meeting between President Rouhani and President of the Belgian Senate Christine Defraigne. Without directly naming the MEK, Rouhani highlighted Europe’s sometimes discriminatory approach to the issue of terrorism, saying “Terrorism should be combatted anywhere, with any motto and terrorists should not be divided into good terrorists and bad terrorists for short-term interests,” added the President. He continued: “We were dealing with terrorism in the beginning years of the Islamic Revolution and they brutally killed our authorities and people; and unfortunately, the same terrorists are living and working freely in Europe”.

++ Mazda Parsi writing for Nejat Bloggers says that increasing rapprochement between Iran and the West will render the MEK ever more irrelevant. “As the leading enemy of the Iranian Government on the nuclear affairs, the US is now starting the first financial deals with Iran. The news of the US buying Iran’s heavy water marks a significant message to other players against the Iranian nuclear program. As a vocal opponent of diplomacy, the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO) has received the message so it has launched an aggressive propaganda against the deal.”

++ Ashraf News, Baghdad: Mr. Rinas Jano Mohammad Younis, a deputy of Kurdistan Democratic Party from Dahuk Province told Ashraf News, “Kurds have been victims of the MKO as it was cooperating with Saddam Hussein… The role of the MKO and the crimes it committed against Iraqi people including Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens is known to everyone,” Mr. Jano added. “Iraqi government has so far tolerated members of this terrorist organization because European countries have promised to receive it in their soil.”

The Kurdish parliament member considers the United Nations as the main responsible body to determine the future of the remaining members of this Iranian organization, in Iraq. “The UN has a heavy responsibility on the issue of the group since it has been a side of the agreement that was signed based on relocation of members of the Mujahedin Khalq out of Iraq,” Mr. Jano said.

The deputy of Kurdistan alliance in Iraqi Parliament denied that Kurdish alliance faction wants the MKO members to remain in Iraq. ”We support the rule of Iraqi government on its territory and the expulsion of any terrorist group that is hostile to neighboring countries of Iraq,” he stated. [Translated by Nejat Society]

May 06, 2016

++ Marking the anniversary of the execution of some of the MEK founders in 1971, Massoud Rajavi started promoting himself on MEK websites in a way that he wouldn’t do before. He now claims that during the trial he said ‘kill me, I am here to be martyred’. He claims that the judge was afraid of him. Commentators have reminded us of the documents which came out of SAVAK after the fall of Shah which show that Rajavi betrayed each and every founder member and several others and that’s why he was the only one not executed. This week many other documents about this have been posted online, including testimony from the former heads of SAVAK, and various people from inside and outside Iran who were there at the time of the trial and executions. Even some MEK loyalists have criticised Rajavi saying ‘if the founders were alive they would not accept raping women, siding with Saddam and separating children from their families Those founders had nothing to do with you.’

++ In a documentary programme by Manoto TV, Hanif Bali, now an MP in the Swedish parliament, says he is lucky he didn’t end up in Iraq. He was removed from his MEK parents when he was three and fostered by eight different families. He says that when he became a teenager the MEK tried to persuade him to go to Iraq. He refused. Farsi comments on this story remind us that other teenagers under 18 were not so lucky and were deceptively taken to Camp Ashraf. Some were killed, some developed psychotic illnesses and depression, while still others remain trapped in Iraq.

++ There have been several articles about the situation of Tirana and how Massoud Rajavi is desperately spending money to stop people running away and stop defectors talking about the realities there. Commentators jeer that his main worries now are not about politics but about being exposed for all the crimes and immoralities that he has been committing all these years.

++ Last week and this week two interviews with Fariba Hashtroodi by Ali Limonadi were broadcast by Iran Farda TV. Hashtroodi, a journalist and author, had formerly been with the MEK as a member of the NCRI. In reaction to the interviews, the MEK went on overdrive everywhere to swear in the most horrible ways imaginable to attack her. They also forced every member of the NCRI to swear at her. Apparently this is all because in her interview she said “why is Rajavi claiming that anybody going back to their homeland Iran is a mercenary, while he himself has been mercenary for many different parties – Saddam, MOSSAD, CIA, Saudi Arabia, etc, taking money and working for different places against interests of his own country”. This is why the MEK is so hysterical against her. In the second interview LImonadi recollects trying to interview Marzieh the singer in Rajavi’s house in Paris. He said “I tried to talk with her, but I was so uncomfortable because she was surrounded by MEK people all the time and couldn’t talk freely. The atmosphere was really horrible, how this old woman was under so much pressure. I felt sorry for her. A friend told me ‘you’ve delved inside the beehive and come out alive. Well done!” Hashtroodi explains that “I left them for no other reason than that evidence was put in front of me by others which showed the MEK involvement in child labour, execution and torture along with other issues and I found I couldn’t turn my head away and deny it”.

In English:

++ In a series on ‘Elimination Projects in the MEK’ by Nejat Society, various deaths inside the MEK are examined. This week the story of Alan Mohammadi is told. She was among those teenagers returned to Iraq and trapped there as “one crucial sentence was repeated by the MKO leaders on various occasions: ‘Entry doors of Camp Ashraf are open but exit doors are closed’. Alan’s death in 2001 was variously explained as accidental, then suicide. Nasrin Ebrahimi who left the MEK and escaped to Europe says that if she committed suicide “it shows the extremely brutal atmosphere ruling the MKO. Yes, a lot of people [attempted or] committed suicide in Camp Ashraf including me but I’m sure that the 16-year-old Alan was murdered by the MKO”.

++ An article by Massoud Khodabandeh ‘Clinton-Albania deal ensures MEK (Rajavi cult) members stay as terrorists’ says western governments must do more to help defectors from any terrorist entity, including ISIS, to find safe passage out of their group. “if we stand by and allow Daesh, like the MEK, to dictate the conditions of how a defector is treated without making any effort to facilitate their safe exit, if we cannot offer a helping hand to those who wish to redeem themselves, then we are no better than the terrorists ourselves.”

++ Open Letter of 72 former Mojahedin Khalq members in Europe and North America to the UNHCR highlights the plight of Ehsan Bidi and Siavosh Rastar who have been left destitute because they refuse to return to the MEK to claim sustenance in Albania.

++ Voice of America: “Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said Thursday that preparations were underway in his country to set up a regional center for the fight against radicalism.”

++ Ashraf News, Baghdad. “Iraqi security sources revealed on Monday that five members of the MKO terrorist organization, who are in Camp Liberty in Baghdad, declared their defection and turned themselves in to security forces stationed near the perimeter of the camp.

“Police Colonel, Mohsen Jaber Al-Kanani, told the reporter of Ashraf News, ‘Five members of the Organization of Iran (PMOI) defected on Sunday from the organization and turned themselves in to security forces after they had enabled them to leave Camp Liberty’.

“Al-Kanani said that the Iraqi police handed over those five to the United Nations mission in Baghdad, noting that ‘the dissidents were Ali Hussein Khodabandeh, Mohsen Tayeb Zadeh, Massoud Bakhshi Zadeh, Syed Jalal Rahimpour, Manouchehr Shirazi,’ noting that ‘three of the dissidents are from Kermanshah province in western Iran’.”