Michael Ware meets with high-level representatives of the MEK, a group that wants to overthrow the Iranian government.
Michael Ware, an Australian journalist from National Geographic, investigated the Mujahedin-e Khalq that he met during the Iraq War. He describes MEK as “the living epitome of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
He met them in Iraq back in 2005 when he was a war correspondent. After the American invasion of Iraq, he went to the Camp Ashraf, the MEK’s headquarters, and shot a footage. There he interviewed some female members of the group and now after more than a decade he’s “chasing down the story of who and what the MEK is now. How many of the MEK are left? Where are they and who is supporting them today?” He adds that he also wants to find the girls he met back in 2005 at Camp Ashraf.
He started his journey from Paris, “chasing an Iranian spy ring across Western Europe.” He has tried a lot to “get in touch with someone, anyone inside the group who will talk” to him. After 6 days, he could finally arrange a meeting with Shahin Ghobadi, an MEK spokesman, and found his way into the MEK headquarters. He sat with MEK’s high-level representatives, Mohammad Mohaddesin, Shahin Ghobadi, Farzin Hashemi and Sarvenaz Chitsaz.
His main question from the MEK representatives was about the method they want to use to overthrow Iranian government. But they did not reveal too much and they’ve gone “a long way around to not answering my question.”
He asked for a meeting with the girls he met at Camp Ashraf and they said they are in Germany.
“A look I catch here or there lets me know they are still ready to fight for the revolution,” he concluded.
Ware and his crew flew to Berlin, hoping to meet with the girls. Shahin Ghobadi joined them in Berlin and took them to a symbolic hunger strike, which was “part of a broader MEK propaganda war to gain both new recruits and support for their cause.”
He believed that Germany was a diversion and the girls were not there.
Although the MEK had warned them, if they went to Albania, they’d be on their own, they set off for Albania, where some 3000 MEK members are settled.
They went to the MEK camp, outside Tirana. Surprisingly, Shahin Ghobadi followed them to Albania, “to make sure things go smoothly here in Albania.” There, he was only allowed to “see what Shahin wanted” him to see. “He opened one door and shut another.”
He finally met with two of the girls and sat with them, hearing their story.
In the end, Michael Ware said that certainly the MEK is “still very much devoted to its cause” and they will happily give their lives.
You might have heard about or have seen the pictures of mass suicide of cult members in the United States like Jamestown and Davidians or you might see the news of suicide bombers of Taliban and ISIS in the Middle East every day. The victim-attackers of such incidents are all grown up under certain systems with same criteria. The system is considered a cult. Typical characteristics of cults are based on true accounts taken from testimonies of their victims, carefully studied by cult experts. The result of studies has ended with the crucial conclusion that the Mujahedin khalq Organization fits all criteria of a destructive cult.
Based on numerous evidences, the MKO was one of the first groups to commit suicidal terror acts against civilians. Besides, several group members committed self-immolations in European capitals to protest the arrest of their co-leader Maryam Rajavi by the French police, in June 2003. Two of the self-immolators died and the others became paralyzed forever. But, what is going on in the cult “milieu” that leads its followers to commit such violent acts against themselves and others?
Robert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author of a book titled “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism”. Dr. Lifton conducted a thorough study of American returned POWs to discover the process used to reform their thinking. Though his focus was on prisoners of war the criteria carry over to the cult mind control model executed in other cult-like systems including the Mujahedin Khalq that is better to be called “the Cult of Rajavi”.
Coincidently, some of the Iranian POWs of the Iran-Iraq war were deceived by the recruiters of Cult of Rajavi. They were not released even after the exchange of POWs following the end of the war .At first, newly recruited ones saw the leaders of the MKO as friendly and supportive compared with Iraqi officials. It took them a while to find out that they got trapped in a horrible controlling system.
This is what Dr. Lifton calls Milieu Control. Milieu is the environment in which we live. It includes all our interactions on a daily basis. It includes the information we take in and the information we give out. It includes the people, places, events, and ideas that pass through our daily life. For a member of the Cult of Rajavi the milieu is restricted to their superior authorities in an hierarchy on top of which the Rajavis rule and their peers who are not reliable ones but they are rivals who have to watch you, spy you and report your deeds. The place, events and ideas are all those that the Rajavis define for members. This milieu implies isolation and solidity of thought that according to Lifton paves the way for “a thought reform milieu”. Actually, “thought reform” is an academic equivalent term for brainwashing.
Lifton suggests, “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.”
He seems to be describing the milieu of Camp Ashraf, Camp Liberty, the MKO headquarters in Paris and even its current base in Albania. The most recently defected member of the Cult of Rajavi Karim Aliyari was a POW of Iran-Iraq war. According to Nejat Society, “his name along with some other prisoners’ names were not registered on the Red Cross list. So as, after the war ended and an agreement signed between Iran and Iraq and RC to exchange POWs of both countries, the Baath Regime didn’t register their names on the exchange list of RC.” He was handed over to the MKO by the Baath officials.
Karim had had no contact with his family since he was captured during Iran-Iraq War in 1986. Finally Karim managed to liberate himself from the mental and physical barriers of the MKO cult in Albania and contact his family after more than thirty years. Some other members of the MKO who had been recruited while they were POW in Iraq, left the group after years of suppression. Immediately after their release, they began revelations against the Cult of Rajavi.
Dashtestani was a 16-year old teenager when he was captured by Iraqi forces in his way from Abadan to Mahshahr [two towns in SouthWestern part of Iran where Iraq invaded in 1979].In 1988, after ten years of imprisonment in Iraqi prisons when Mujahedin offered him help return to Iran, he accepted their offer. He was deceived by MKO due to two reasons .First because he was not informed enough and second was MKO’s dirty recruitment tactics and the mind control system that enhanced and abused them due to lack of sufficient information.
“In their mind control system they had to prevent the members’ minds getting into sexual or emotional thoughts. If you think of your ex-wife, you should write it and then read your confessions in the brainwashing meetings where your comrades will attack you, insult you saying that”you are wrong”,”damn you”.”That woman is not your wife any more”.”She is your ideological sister”.”She belongs to the leader”, says Mahmoud Dashtestani in one of his interviews after his release. [https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/3309]
According to Dashtestani and many other defectors of the Cult of Rajavi, The weekly brainwashing meetings are obligatory. You must confess a sin -a sexual one. It will be even worse if you do not confess anything. They take you to a place called Bengali where they talk to you for several days, putting you under too much pressure. They say that you definitely have some sexual thoughts that you are concealing. “Their arguments and sometimes quarrels in the meetings were justified as”human science”! What a human science! They call it monotheist”Anthropology”in which they use peer pressure as weapon. They say peer pressure is just like the leader,” he says. []
Dr. lifton labels the destructive cults like the MKO as “Cult of Confession”. The Closely related criteria of a destructive cult is confession. Not legitimate confession to God, but improper confessions. Any personal weakness, bad thought, failure to give 100% to the group, must be confessed. Even wrongs not committed can be confessed to help the leader achieve the utmost authority over members. Confession can have a purifying effect on the person confessing. It can also provide leverage to use on the person in the future as often happens in cult-like systems. Open confession sessions can create a sense in the group of personal uncertainty. If a seemingly strong person is confessing the weaker followers will feel less sure of their own purity. Public confessions can eliminate the sense of boundaries you need to maintain your individuality. Thus, gradually your individuality is ruined.
Good news is that those who returned usually quickly returned to the worldview and value system in which they were raised. In other words, brainwashing does not last if it is not maintained. Therefore, helping the MKO hostages get released from the bars of the cult should be a vital agenda for human rights bodies and international communities.
By Mazda Parsi
Inside This Issue:
- Mojahedin Khalq fugitive Mohamad Shariti inadvert-ently filmed at Maryam Rajavi’s HQ
- MKO former members met the EUP in Brussels
- MEK fits well into definition of cult
- Rajavi’s “crocodile tears for oppressed Syrians”
- Open letter to the Minister of Interior of Albania, Saimir Tahiri
- Keeping Iran a bogeyman to further destabilize the region
- Iranian Mojahedin member punished for stealing food cans in a Babrru market
Download Nejat NewsLetter ISSUE NO.44
Download Nejat NewsLetter ISSUE NO.44
Israel’s role in assassinations of nuclear scientists
(Mojahedin Khalq, Rajavi cult, Saddam’s Private Army, were trained by Mossad to assassinate Iranian scientists)
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Although Israel has a policy of not commenting on allegations of murder and terrorism, authorities and unnamed sources have hinted that Israel may be involved in the assassinations of four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.
Four Iranian nuclear scientists – Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan – were assassinated between the years 2010 and 2012. Another scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder.
Two of the killings were carried out with magnetic bombs attached to the victims’ cars. Rezaeinejad was shot dead in front of his wife and young daughter, and Alimohammadi was killed in a motorcycle-bomb explosion.
Reza Najafi, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Thursday at a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors that “Israel-hired terrorists” were behind the assassinations of the nuclear scientists in the Middle East.
“Unfortunately, the Zionist Regime has ignored the rightful requests of the international community in the last years, and having the blind support of some Western countries and with infringing all international laws and regulations, has pushed its dangerous military nuclear program forward,” the ambassador said.
The former Iranian envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, had called the assassinations of nuclear experts instances of “nuclear terrorism”.
During the time of the assassinations, there was speculation about the identity of the killers. The Israeli Mossad intelligence service and Israel Defense Forces were seen as the most likely perpetrators. However, the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), intelligence agents from Arab countries opposed to the Iranian government and the United States were also under suspicion.
While then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied any U.S. involvement in the killings, given the reported lack of U.S. intelligence assets in Iran, Israel neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.
In 2015, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in an interview with Der Spiegel that he bore no responsibility “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists”. Speaking about Iran’s nuclear program, he commented that, “it must be stopped”.
“We will act in any way and are not willing to tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. We prefer that this be done by means of sanctions, but in the end, Israel should be able to defend itself,” he said, hinting at Israeli involvement in the assassinations. He called the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers “a historic mistake”.
According to a report by CBS News several years ago, the Obama administration pressured Israel to stop carrying out assassinations inside Iran against the country’s nuclear scientists. This came amid Washington’s attempt to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.
Although Israel never admitted to carrying out the killings, Mossad officials concluded that the assassination campaign became too dangerous for its spies, said the CBS News report.
A well-sourced and convincing investigation from 2012 by NBC News in the U.S. concluded that “deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service”. It also cites two senior Obama administration officials as confirming that the MEK is responsible for the killings.
NBC quoted Mohammad Javad Larijani, a former top diplomat and current chief of Iran’s human rights council, as asserting that Israel’s secret service, Mossad, trained MEK members. This information largely came from the interrogation of a would-be assassin detained in Iran in 2010.
The MEK, however, denies any involvement with Israel, but Israeli commentators have confirmed the MEK-Israel connection.
The MEK was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in 1997, although the designation was lifted in 2012. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that, even while it was listed as a foreign terror group, MEK members received training from the Joint Special Operations Command in Nevada. During the confrontational period between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s nuclear program, the MEK was attractive to U.S. intelligence agencies as an opposition group in Iran.
Israel has a history of systematic assassinations, most prominent of which are targeted killings of Hamas leaders in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to an Israeli intellectual, “targeted assassinations have become the most significant and frequent form of Israeli military attack,” and serve to control Palestinian territories.
In 2013, a young Iraqi nuclear scientist, Mohammad al-Fouz, was allegedly gunned down by Mossad in the country’s capital city of Baghdad. A member of Fouz’s family told reporters that unknown gunmen targeted the young scientist when he was on his way back home. He had just published his new uranium enrichment formula in a number of Western journals before he died.
No evidence has been provided linking Israel to the murder and Israel denies involvement. However, earlier reports suggest Mossad’s involvement in the assassination of more than 350 Iraqi nuclear scientists and more than 300 university professors. The attack on al-Fouz was the most recent in a series of attacks on Iraqi nuclear scientists.
According to a report released in 2010 by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Israel refused to admit that it had been carrying out “targeted killings” for decades.
“There is no policy, and there never will be a policy or a reality, of willful killings of suspects. The principle of the sanctity of life is a fundamental principle of the Israeli army,” the report quoted the Israel Defense Forces as saying.
Israel has defended its use of assassinations and targeted killings as legal under international humanitarian law.
However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all individuals have the right to life, liberty and security. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also says the right to life must be protected by law and “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived” of that right.
According to the United Nations’ “Principles on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions,” governments must prohibit such executions and ensure they are considered offenses under their state’s criminal laws. It rules out “exceptional circumstances, including a state of war or threat of war” as justifications for such executions.
Mark Regev, the former Israeli prime minister’s spokesman, said in 2012 that it is preferable to arrest and bring “terrorists” to court, but that is not always possible. “Sometimes in the combat reality, the only real option is to eliminate,” he said.
Research by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), stated that from 2000 to 2008 the Israeli military carried out 348 “extrajudicial execution operations” in the occupied Palestinian territories. The attacks killed 754 Palestinians: 521 of whom were specifically targeted and 233 of whom were civilian bystanders, including 71 children and 20 women.
++ On International Women’s Day, many women formers have written about their experience of being females inside the MEK. They talk of spurious hysterectomies, rape, forced marriage, forced divorces and a myriad of other wrongs and humiliations. Some write about the present day and how the MEK refuses to acknowledge or treat women’s medical problems such as issues around periods, the menopause, cancers (breast, cervical, uterine, etc). Alongside these memoirs, the Iranian Women’s Association based in Germany attended a meeting in Brussels. Afterwards, they met with several MEPs and had the opportunity to explain the particular conditions for women inside the MEK.
++ To mark International Women’s Day, Maryam Rajavi emerged in Albania – which was not unexpected after having sent her lobbyists as emissaries to that country. The MEK blocked the public road between the two apartment blocks used by MEK, and dressed it up as the Oscars red carpet. Maryam Rajavi was filmed traversing this street from one end to another with flag waving MEK members on both sides. At the end she poses like an Oscar winner. What the MEK haven’t realised is that instead of looking at her, observers notice that the men and women lining the street are all over 60 years old. Rajavi tries to act as a humanitarian person by trying to kiss the stumps of a disabled woman in a wheelchair who has lost her legs in one of the attacks on the MEK camps in Iraq since 2009. The attacks took place long after international organisations and the government of Iraq had warned Rajavi that the camps are vulnerable and begged her to remove everyone to safety in third countries. Many MEK were killed due to Rajavi’s insistence that she get paid for the land of Camp Ashraf before anyone could come out. She used the members as bargaining chips, this disabled woman was one of them. Her parade received no coverage whatsoever from any media outlet. Whoever paid for it got nothing back for their expenditure. Even the MEK’s own websites reverted the next day to business as usual – attacking Iran, which is what they are paid for. Every day the MEK websites publish one sensational exposure or other about something that happens in Iran (they want to pretend they have people inside Iran). The sites promote non-rapprochement with America and the hope that America will go to war. These revelations about Iran have become so silly that a proverb has been coined for it, Iranians call it ‘the yoghurt strategy’. That means ‘the act of waiting for decades for somebody’s yoghurt dish to fall to the ground and break so they will be able to lick some up from the floor’. After forty years, the MEK are still waiting.
In English:
++ A film broadcast by National Geographic and made by Michael Wade exposes the MEK in a way that was certainly unintended. The film reveals four leading members contradicting themselves by talking about the MEK’s public version of their aims and their internal ideological version of the same. Even worse is the filming of an MEK member who has been on the US wanted list on charges of funding terrorism since 1985. It was thought he was out of reach in Iraq, however he is now resident in France in Maryam Rajavi’s headquarters at Auvers-sur-Oise where the film was made.
++ Nejat Society reported that former POW (Iran-Iraq war), Karim Aliyari was able to free himself from the clutches of the MEK while in Albania. He has now regained contact with his family in Iran.
++ Faryad Azadi, Paris reports that several MEK formers wrote to the Canadian Senate warning them about the presence of Shahram Golestaneh who is undertaking lobbying there under false pretences. Golestaneh poses as the head of the Iran Democratic Association. This is a bogus organisation and Golestaneh has been ordered to hide his membership of the MEK.
11 March 2017
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, three female defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq Organiation (the MKO) stated their steadiness in their efforts to liberate their friends who are still taken as hostages in the group.
Today, about 1000 women are kept in the MKO under the cult-like control of Maryam Rajavi.
Batoul Soltani, Homeira Mohammad Nejhad and Zahra Moieni are the disassociated members of the MKO who attended the European Parliament in Bruxel, Belgium on the Int. Women’s Day, March 8th.
During their visit with the EU representatives, they spoke of grieves and sufferings of a thousand Iranian women who are deprived from their basic rights under the rule of Maryam Rajavi.
Despite the propaganda launched by the MKO, these women could manage to bring the EU parliamentarian to hear the voice of the suffering women imprisoned behind the bars of the Cult of Rajavi.
The three female ex-members of the cult stressed their determination to keep on their work and support to fulfill the rights of their friends in the cult.
The women of the cult of Rajavi are enduring constant physical and mental pressure under the command of Maryam Rajavi. Modern slavery has made robots out of these women. According to the rules of the cult of Rajavi, female members are not allowed to marry and have children. They are not even allowed to contact their family. They are forced to wear hijab. Breaking the rules of the cult results in solitary confinement and mental and physical torture.
Massoud Rajavi has evidently told the five hundred members of the so-called Elite-Council of the cult that they are “maids” of Maryam Rajavi. A large number of these women have been serving Maryam in her headquarters in Paris for decades. Maryam Rajavi the co-leader of the cult is actually the executors of Massoud’s irrational and ambitious orders.
A list of women who have been physically and mentally tortured by the cult of Rajavi was submitted to human rights bodies and feminist movements.
Female members who are still captured in the cult of Rajavi are so horrified of torture that they cannot protest against the authorities of the cult. Some of these women are even in harder situation; they are imprisoned and isolated inside the cult; they are organizationally jailed.
Members of Women Association cult call on all justice and women’s rights movements and international bodies to investigate the case of women inside the MKO bases.
They probed the trial of Maryam and Massoud Rajavi in an international Court.
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, three female defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq Organiation (the MKO) stated their steadiness in their efforts to liberate their friends who are still taken as hostages in the group.
Today, about 1000 women are kept in the MKO under the cult-like control of Maryam Rajavi.
Batoul Soltani, Homeira Mohammad Nejhad and Zahra Moieni are the disassociated members of the MKO who attended the European Parliament in Bruxel, Belgium on the Int. Women’s Day, March 8th.
During their visit with the EU representatives, they spoke of grieves and sufferings of a thousand Iranian women who are deprived from their basic rights under the rule of Maryam Rajavi.
Despite the propaganda launched by the MKO, these women could manage to bring the EU parliamentarian to hear the voice of the suffering women imprisoned behind the bars of the Cult of Rajavi.
The three female ex-members of the cult stressed their determination to keep on their work and support to fulfill the rights of their friends in the cult.
The women of the cult of Rajavi are enduring constant physical and mental pressure under the command of Maryam Rajavi. Modern slavery has made robots out of these women. According to the rules of the cult of Rajavi, female members are not allowed to marry and have children. They are not even allowed to contact their family. They are forced to wear hijab. Breaking the rules of the cult results in solitary confinement and mental and physical torture.
Massoud Rajavi has evidently told the five hundred members of the so-called Elite-Council of the cult that they are “maids” of Maryam Rajavi. A large number of these women have been serving Maryam in her headquarters in Paris for decades. Maryam Rajavi the co-leader of the cult is actually the executors of Massoud’s irrational and ambitious orders.
A list of women who have been physically and mentally tortured by the cult of Rajavi was submitted to human rights bodies and feminist movements.
Female members who are still captured in the cult of Rajavi are so horrified of torture that they cannot protest against the authorities of the cult. Some of these women are even in harder situation; they are imprisoned and isolated inside the cult; they are organizationally jailed.
Members of Women Association cult call on all justice and women’s rights movements and international bodies to investigate the case of women inside the MKO bases.
They probed the trial of Maryam and Massoud Rajavi in an international Court.
Mr. Ali Hajari was a Prisoner of Iran-Iraq war when the Mujahedin-e Khalq cult elements deceived him into joining the group.
It is now more than 30 years that Ali has had no contact with his family. Hajari family several times traveled to Iraq to visit Ali or at least get a news from him. However the MKO Cult leaders denied their requests. Ali; along with other MKO members was transferred To Albania. Still he has no contact with his family..
His sister; Mahin Hajari wrote a letter to him. Below you can read some part of the letter:
Hello my dear brother,
My dear brother , it is more than thirty years that you left us and we are waiting to see you again… Dear Ali , our dad passed away while his eyes were full of regret…
Do you know our aged, ailing mum traveled to Iraq several times to see you…. Her only wish is to at least hear your voice….
My dear brother please let us know about your health…call us.
Your sister, Mahin
Open letter to Canadian Senate. Sharham Golestaneh, high ranking member of Mojahedin Khalq terrorist Organisation in your buildings.
To the Canadian Senate.
The Honourable George J. Furey Q.C., Speaker of the Senate
Dear Sir,
We have been informed that a long-term agent of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (aka Rajavi cult, Saddam’s Private Army, MKO, MEK, NCRI), by the name of Mr Shahram Golestaneh has been tasked to infiltrate and influence the political establishments of Canada, including the Senate, to serve the terrorist organisation’s purposes and goals.
The Mojahedin Khalq has a known track record and is considered both as a dangerous cult and as a terrorist organisation by practically all the free world (including the US, EU, UK and Canada).
That is why Shahram Golestaneh has been ordered to hide his membership of this notorious cult, which after the fall of their last benefactor Saddam Hussain, is now working alongside the terrorist groups which incorporate the remains of the Saddam regime in Iraq and Syria, including ISIS. Shahram Golestaneh is now portraying himself as the head of a made-up organisation called the Iran Democratic Association.
Having said that, Shahram Golestaneh does not hide his full membership of the MEK when he needs to. On February 8, 2014 he gave a speech in the presence of the cult leader Maryam Rajavi in Paris pledging full loyalty to the cult. He bends over backwards to support the ideology, strategy and the tactics used by Saddam’s Private Army during and after the fall of the dictatorship in Iraq.
Evidence and documents attaching this man to the notorious terrorist organisation are not hard to find. We have attached some examples for your information.
Dear Senator,
We are a number of former members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation. We testify that Shahram Golestaneh is a high-ranking active member of this organisation who is hiding his true face behind the Iran Democratic Association in Canada. Many of us have worked alongside this man in the MEK and know him personally.
Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.
A group of former MEK members,Faryad Azadi,
Mr. Karim Aliyari was a POW of Iran-Iraq war, however his name along with some other prisoners’ names were not registered on the Red Cross list. So as, after the war ended and an agreement signed between Iran and Iraq and RC to exchange POWs of both countries, the Baath Regime didn’t register their names on the exchange list of RC.
Instead Saddam regime handed them over to the Mujahedin-e Khalq.
Karim had had no contact with his family since he was captured during Iran-Iraq War in 1986.
Finally Karim managed to liberate himself from the mental and physical barriers of the MKO cult in Albania and contact his family after more than thirty years.