The anti-Iran Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization, considered by many as a dangerous terrorist organization, will hold its annual meeting in Paris on Saturday.
By Chris Den Hond
++ This week, Elahe Sharifpour-Hicks, renowned human rights defender, participated in an online discussion for the Saudi outlet Iran International in London. The programme focused on the water shortages and disturbances in Khuzistan. In the middle of the discussion, Sharifpour-Hicks pointed to evidence that the MEK had been involved in taking over the peaceful demonstrations in an attempt to turn it into violent overthrow of the regime. This prompted both the other participants and presenter together to vigorously attack her, denouncing her as an ‘agent of the regime’. Straight after this programme another Saudi paid outlet, ‘Independent’ in Farsi, from London, followed up in attacking her. After that the Albanian troll farm was put into motion to carry on the attack. In response to that, Dr Muhammad Sahimi the well-known academic and opposition personality, published a brief note on social media looking at the situation from different angles.
Starting with all the evidence including the self-proclaimed evidence from MEK about their involvement – which appears to confirm what Sharifpour-Hicks said. Then going through the history of the output of the Saudi outlets and the troll farm in Albania and how they tie up together. Then Sahimi points out that Sharifpour-Hicks, as a human rights defender has not looked into the background of Iran International, believing it to be a genuine, normal television company rather than a Saudi propaganda channel, and has fallen into their trap. For Iran-Interlink the question is not about the outlets, they are known people and, from the other side, Sharifpour-Hicks is a known person too with her reputation intact. The question is, how is it that when it comes to their outlets, the Saudis do not want the name of the MEK to be made public, even though they are using them and their troll farms. They want the MEK but don’t want them named. Unfortunately for them, Maryam Rajavi can’t shut up and could not resist making it public that the MEK were there killing people. It is worth mentioning in this regard, that several police were shot and killed during the disturbances, and that the coalition between the MEK and Ahwazi separatists, whose videos show them shooting people, goes back a long time, not least including the terrorist attack on the military parade in Ahwaz in September 2018.
In English:
++ In a spectacular display of political illiteracy, the MEK launched an attack on Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and critic of the MEK. For years the MEK used Alireza Jafarzadeh in the US as their frontman, even banning him from speaking Farsi in order to create a more convincing Americanised persona. But since the MEK is a cult and as in any cult the members must be kept in an insecure cycle of promotion and demotion, so Jafarzadeh has been removed and now Ali Safavi has been brought out in his place. Safavi and Jafarzadeh are among a handful of MEK members who were recruited as students in the US and UK at the time of the Iranian Revolution. Their English language skills were key to their use in what the MEK calls their public relations department. Sadly, they were not recruited for their political abilities, and in spite of talking to endless numbers of politicians and media over the years, their political knowledge and skills have remained at best at the level of a first-year undergraduate student. Hence the attack on Michael Rubin.
Safavi’s attack was then rehashed and republished in paid and unpaid media, with the Albanian troll farm doing its work to amplify and spread the message. This kind of organised character assassination is not new to the MEK, and no matter whose idea it actually was for Ali Safavi to publish this writing against him, the purpose, presumably, was to warn others off from criticising the MEK. However, all this does is to reveal the MEK’s stupid idea of politics: oppose any and everything to do with Iran because ‘the regime’; when the Republicans are in power, attack Democrats, when Democrats are in power, attack Republicans. Michael Rubin published a dignified response to the MEK’s diatribe in The National Interest, explaining in simple terms that even the MEK could understand, exactly what is the trouble with the Mujahedin al-Khalq [Sic]: in short, “The MKO’s tendency to cry wolf hinder and obstruct the real fights against the Iranian regime, Iranian terrorism, and the Islamic Republic’s covert nuclear program”.
Jul 30, 2021
The horrific atrocities of a notorious anti-Iran terrorist group MKO have come under the spotlight as it prepares to hold its annual summit. In the following report, we will see how the Wests stance on the group has revealed its double standards.
To download the video file click here
Sharang Romouzi Bagherjani was born in Tehran on March 21, 1963. He has a high school education and was a member of Housing Foundation (Persian: Bonyad-e Maskan) of Islamic Revolution, an Iranian post-revolutionary organization devoted to housing activities in rural and underserved areas.
Sharang Romouzi Bagherjani
Sharang was a single man who Lived in Tehran. On Tuesday, March 16, 1982 he was assassinated by the MKO agents in Tehran’s North Kosh Street (khosh-e Shomali).
An American scholar who is a harsh critic of the Iranian government investigates the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) as a fraudulent source on Iran. Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a correspondent of the National Interest warns about what he calls “The MKO’s tendency to cry wolf” about the Iranian nuclear program.
Presenting a summary on the MEK’s background and the current Iranian society, he notifies that “the hatred ordinary rank-and-file Iranians feel for the MKO is the group’s Achilles’ heel”. Rubin confirms the fact that “the MKO activists counter both by accusing anyone who criticizes them as being a regime agent and arguing that their record of success exposing Iranian secrets shows the depth to which they have infiltrated the Iranian regime”.
Eventually he asks and answers a crucial question: “If the MKO is able to so deeply implant themselves in Iran’s most sensitive and security-conscious organs, the logic goes, it demonstrates that they both have support and are far better positioned as an opposition group than anyone else. The former is betrays crass amateurishness, and the latter is simply false.”
To Prove that the MKO has no support in Iran and as the result it cannot simply infiltrate in the sensitive and security organs, Rubin studies “just how many exposés and supposed intelligence coups the MKO have bungled or gotten wrong”. Referring to his own work experience between 2002 and 2004, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an aide on both the Iran and Iraq desks, he writes: “It was not uncommon for Iranian American activists from a range of organizations with very little presence or history to request such meetings. They would present us with documents purporting to be smoking guns of one sort or another.”
Therefore, for Rubin and his colleagues, “provenance was always a concern”. “How did the person in front of me or my colleagues acquire such a document?” he states. “Without exception, when we investigated, the documents turned out to be fraudulent, and often had figurative MKO fingerprints on them.” Rubin suggests that investigating such documents was “a time waste”.
He believes that the so-called National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the cover organization of the MKO cult-like group, “often gives bombshell announcements about new discoveries in Iran”. As one of the several examples that Rubin offers, he recalls that on February 24, 2015, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI deputy director, gave a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, in which he purported to expose a new secret uranium enrichment facility. “It turns out, however, there was less there than met the eye.,” Rubin reveals. “An image the NCRI provided of an “underground hall” was actually a screenshot from a company making safes. Nor did the facility have the electrical infrastructure necessary to run an operation Jafarzadeh described.”
Rubin accurately suggests that the MKO is actually a proxy force of other powers in the region, particularly, Israel. “The MKO relies less on secret access and more that the organization recycles Israeli, American, and Iranian media reports,” he writes. “While the MKO says its exposés are proof of the degree of its infiltration, a more plausible explanation is that the intelligence services of other countries use the group to launder information.”
The removal of BaniSadr was the beginning of his secret life. Rajavi later said that the cult had hidden BaniSadr in a house in central Tehran after he was ousted from the presidency. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) then offered him to leave Iran with their help, and he accepted. The MEK used their infiltrating elements to prepare the situation for escape. They left Iran forever on Tuesday, July 28, 1981, on a Boeing 707 aircraft, piloted by Colonel Moezi, the Shah’s special pilot.
Massoud Rajavi Escapes to Paris, Flees Tehran
With the shah’s regime in shamble following the victory of the 1979 Revolution Massoud Rajavi finds himself sidelined from power – an undesirable in Iran’s new political landscape.
Robbed of what he felt was his due, Rajavi will rebel against the authority of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and ultimately that of the people, by plotting terror acts against his own fellow nationals.
Hunted by the newly established for committing heinous acts of treason against innocent civilians and state officials, Rajavi fled Tehran for Paris where he planned to ask for political asylum.
Ali Akbar Rastgoo, himself a member of the MEK / MKO recalled the events as follow: “After the group failed to topple the new government (1981) Rajavi escaped to France. If in fact he felt that power had been usurped from the people he should have stood his ground and resist … as he claimed he would. But he chose to run away, he chose to abandon his men not to have to stand trial. Interestingly enough he omitted to save the two people who could have clouded his authority and thus prevent him to proclaim himself commander in chief of the movement: Musa Khayabani and his wife, Ashraf Rabiee. Rajavi already had his eyes set on Abolhassan Banisadr’s daughter, whom he quickly married following his arrival in France to consolidate his position vis a vis the French authorities.”
Before betraying his countrymen Abolhassan Banisadr was a fervent revolutionary and first elected president of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Following the Iranian Revolution, Banisadr became deputy minister of finance on 4 February 1979 and was in office until 27 February 1979. He also became a member of the revolutionary council when Bazargan and others left the council to form the interim government. After the resignation of the interim finance minister Ali Ardalan on 27 February 1979, he was appointed finance minister by then prime minister Mehdi Bazargan. On 12 November 1979, Banisadr was appointed foreign minister to replace Ebrahim Yazdi in the government that was led by Council of the Islamic Revolution when the interim government resigned.
Banisadr was elected to a four-year term as president on 25 January 1980, receiving 78.9 percent of the vote in the election, and was inaugurated on 4 February. Khomeini remained the Supreme Leader of Iran with the constitutional authority to dismiss the president. The inaugural ceremonies were held at the hospital where Khomeini was recovering from a heart ailment.
The Majlis (Iran’s Parliament) impeached Banisadr in his absence on 21 June 1981, in charges of treason.
Rajavi’s marital ambitions were purely self-serving. By allying himself to Banisadr he hoped to seal the latter’s support and benefit from his influence among France’s political elite. A few years later he would divorce Banisadr’s daughter and marry the infamous Maryam Rajavi.
In France, Massoud Rajavi and Banisadr form on 20 July 1981 the National Council of Resistance.13
Banisadr and Rajavi’s relationships would come to a brutal halt when the latter’s collaboration with Saddam Hussein against his countrymen became too much for Banisadr to stomach.
Rajavi and Banisadr’s escape from Tehran was made possible with the help of one of the shah’s former pilot: Colonel Moezi, the very man who facilitated the shah’s escape from Iran on the eve of the Revolution.
Terror spring
In response to a Newsweek article, the Iranian Mission Counselor at the UN Office in Geneva said that MKO terrorist group still retains its terrorist nature but the West is trying to purge this terrorist group.
On the occasion of organizing a meeting of Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist organization (MKO also known as MEK) held on July 10, 2021, in a report written by DAVID BRENNA, by examining the background and performance of MKO terrorist group, he tried to respond to the accusations raised against MKO through the elements affiliated with the group.
In this regard, the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Geneva sent a statement to Newsweek, emphasizing that the MKO terrorist group continues to maintain its terrorist nature and has collaborated with the Zionist regime in assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists.
Bahram Heidari, the Counselor of Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Geneva pointed to the meeting of the MKO terrorist group held on July 10 and said that it shows the depth of American political and moral decline of the opposition of the Islamic Republic of Iran which is deceived by such hated terrorist group who committed heinous terrorist crimes such as assassination, bombing, and sabotage in a way that this terrorist group has claimed lives of thousands of Iranian people.
He went on to say that MKO terrorists have maintained their terrorist nature and have continued to carry out assassinations inside Iran, including the assassination of Iranian scientists in collusion with the Israeli regime.
However, the United States and European Union have tried to ignore and purify the terrorist nature of this terrorist sect and use it as leverage against Iran, he emphasized.
Heidari also rejected the accusations against Assadollah Asadi, an Iranian diplomat imprisoned in Belgium, calling the accusations far from the truth.
He called the accusations raised against Asadi a conspiracy hatched by MKO terrorist group.
A controversial feature of the organisation was its decision in 1983 to ally itself with the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Massoud Rajavi moved to Baghdad in 1986 and the following year announced the formation of the National Liberation Army (NLA). The NLA fought alongside Iraqi forces against Iranian troops, an alliance that completely destroyed the organisation’s rapidly diminishing credibility inside Iran.
The signatures of the petition supporting 42 former members of the MEK Cult is on the rise.
The petition has been filed by Nejat Society Website for those who are seeking to file a complaint with international judicial bodies against the MEK leaders.
The signatories of this petition, call on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, as well as the governments of France and Albania, to work for the realization of the rights of the material, physical and spiritual victims of the MEK.
Ex-members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, PMOI, Cult of Rajavi), current members of the group and their families are all victims of its cult-like and violent practices during over forty years.
A court was held in the Iranian judicial system in Branch 55 of the Tehran international Court of Law to hear the complaints of 42 former members of the MEK, who were subjected to solitary confinement, torture, and physical and mental sufferings in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The court was held in March 2021 with the presence of representatives of domestic and foreign media and human rights and international organizations.
In this court, former members of the MEK spoke about the crimes committed by the Rajavi Cult against them and their families for more than 30 years, and some of them had the effects of physical injuries inflicted on them as a result of torture shown to the court judge and those present.
The file was finally referred to The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, under the Iranian judicial law and international justice, in the early days of July 2021.
Masoumeh Oladi must be in her late thirties, now. She was a high school student when she was recruited by an agent of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi).
“Masoumeh was a top student at school”, her mother Ghamar Moradi says. “She was deceived by an MEK agent named Marzieh Kabiri. One day in 2002, she left home and never came back. Kabiri called and told us that Masoumeh was with her.” They joined the MEK in Iraq.
The Oladis traveled to Iraq to visit Masoumeh in front of the group’s notorious headquarters Camp Ashraf, but they were never allowed to visit her. “We traveled to Iraq several times, not only we were not allowed to see Masoumeh, but also we were insulted, attacked by rocks and verbally abused,” her brother Behrouz says.
As a usual reaction by the MEK propaganda, Masoumeh was eventually shown up in the MEK’s TV in order to denounce her own family accusing them of being the agents of the Islamic Republic government.
Massoume Oladi family in front of Camp Ashraf
The Oladis, the mother, the brother and the three sisters, have been looking forward to meeting their beloved Masoumeh for almost 18 years. They have written many letters to the International human rights bodies and Albanian authorities. They have published several open letters and videos asking the MEK leaders to release Masoumeh or at least to allow her contact her family.
In the cult-like structure of the MEK, members are not permitted to have access to the outside world. In their most recent action, the Oladis supported the complaints made by MEK defectors against the group in the Iranian judicial system in Branch 55 of the Tehran international Court of Law and called on the international courts to bring the MEK leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, to justice.