++ The death was announced yesterday of Hareth al Zaari, a backer of the MEK. Al Zaari escaped from Iraq in 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein to Jordan where he established the Association of Muslim scholars. This association was part of a cohort, which included Saddam’s daughter, fighting against the Iraqi government and trying to stop the progress of the country. Iraq had issued an arrest warrant against him. Al Zaari died in Turkey from cancer and his body will be taken to Jordan for burial. Although he was a fugitive he was very influential for the MEK; Massoud Rajavi was highly dependent on his patronage.

++ Widespread ridicule followed Maryam Rajavi’s annual invitation to the Iranian people to ‘rise up and overthrow their government’ on the occasion of the joyous Iranian celebration of Chahar Shanbe Suri, an ancient purification rite. The MEK treat it as though the Iranian people are doing it to support them. One Farsi comment was that “the next step will be for Maryam Rajavi to ask all the people of the world to take their socks off before going to bed at night and then the next morning claim that she made it happen saying ‘look, all the world supports me because they took their socks off!”

++ The Quarterly issue of Cheshmandaz Iran, whose editor is Meysami a well-known critic of Iran where he is resident, has published a two part article by Mohammad Karimi, also a known revolutionary at time of Shah who had been involved with the MEK at that time. In this final part titled ‘Mojahedin-e Avare’ (The Homeless Mojahedin), he goes into detail about the start of the MEK when he was with them and is a short but thorough history. In the same publication Maysami writes, “People ask me where do I think Massoud Rajavi is. My only answer is that after what he has done he is staying somewhere that he doesn’t have to answer to anyone for anything. I don’t know where but I know why.”

++ In reaction to Maryam Rajavi’s Berlin show to mark International Women’s Day, Mirbaghersaderi in Switzerland writes about this from the angle of Maryam Rajavi’s outstanding hypocrisy, her unique potential and ability in lying. The writer says she is far superior to anyone else in this skill.

++ Many people continue writing to their friends and family in Tirana. Hassanpiransar congratulates his friend Alireza Mirbagheri for moving out of Iraq but encourages him and his friends to take the next step and free themselves. He tells them not to be afraid. Hassanpiransar says “the MEK pay you $500 per month and this keeps their rope around your neck. The difference between that and the UN money is only $300 and I promise you, you will not collapse if you take that instead. The damage done by that extra $300 is much worse than struggling to make your own way. The MEK’s money is poison for you.”

In English:

++ This week, following Maryam Rajavi’s show in Berlin to mark International Women’s Day, several former MEK members have written open letters to political representatives of their countries of residence to protest and to inform.

Iran Zanan (Iranian Women’s Association) wrote to Otto Bernhardet in Germany after he met with Rajavi to ask him ‘Do you know who Maryam Rajavi is?’ The letter listed the human rights abuses specifically affecting women in the cult, including murders, forced hysterectomies, grooming for sex and ongoing incommunicado incarceration.

Mohammad Razaghi wrote to Manuel Valls, the Prime Minister of France warning of the danger posed by MEK members living in Auvers sur Oise who have been trained in the manufacture and use of explosives and chemical weapons; this training was provided by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard says Razaghi who is an eye witness to many of the MEK’s criminal and terrorist activities. Such MEK members living in France use false identities to evade detection by security services, he says.

++ Using the framework of Maryam Rajavi’s claim to defend the rights of women, Mazda Parsi in Nejat Bloggers says she should be challenged to identify the economic, political and social achievements of the women in her own camps both in France and Iraq. Parsi points out that “no woman in the MKO earns money or runs her own business. Women in the MKO are completely separated from men. Even women are not allowed to associate with their same sex comrades as friends. Friendship is forbidden. Celibacy is obligatory and a lot of other facts that prove that female members of the MKO enjoy no social achievements. They are not given the slightest opportunity to learn social skills. Most of them have no idea how to use a cellphone. About the political achievements of the MKO female members, it is enough to mention that the group has no significant role in the political scene of Iran.” Parsi says former members of the MEK are highly motivated to help rescue their former comrades who Rajavi is holding hostage.

++ PressTV reported that Rudi Giuliani made his lucrative annual pilgrimage to Europe to advocate for the MEK in a speech in Berlin. As expected, Giuliani’s speech, delivered to a captive audience of Polish and Czech students taking time out from an MKO funded all-expenses paid tourist trip, followed the usual trend of ineffectual nobodies being paid to make unwarranted and unwanted criticisms of President Obama’s efforts in the nuclear negotiations as part of a greater attempt by Zionists and Neocons to stymie the process. He described Obama as “extremely reckless”. Giuliani also wants the residents of Camp Liberty to be given refugee status. Press TV did not report how Giuliani proposed this should be granted – the residents continue to be held in incommunicado captivity by the MEK leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi – we can assume he didn’t elaborate.

++ Another MEK-paid advocate was unable to attend the Berlin show because of problems at home. The New York Times reported that the US “Justice Department is preparing to file corruption charges against Senator Robert Menendez… after a two-year investigation into allegations that he accepted gifts and lavish vacations in exchange for political favors for a longtime friend and political benefactor. The article focuses on Menendez’ friendship with Salomon Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye surgeon and the corrupt practices which ensued. It was left to Paul Mulshine in nj.com to focus on the senator’s use of his powerful position as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for “courageous efforts to keep the cowardly and evil Obama administration from caving in to the crazed Iranian mullahs who want to rain nuclear destruction on the U.S. and Israel”.

“The senator’s recent behavior should be seen in light of his affinity for another Mideastern group he champions, Mojahedin-e Khalq. You’ve probably never heard of it. But Bob Baer has… “These guys killed Americans,” said Baer, a former CIA agent who spent much of the 1980′ and ’90s in the Mideast. “They tried to kill one of my colleagues, but they ended up shooting his driver.” MEK, as it’s known, is an Iranian dissident group of Marxist-Leninist origins that operates from a base in Iraq called Camp Liberty. Menendez has become its prime spokesman in Congress – and also the prime recipient of donations from MEK sympathizers, according to an article on the Intercept site.”

++ Marcin Banasik writing for Dzienni Poliski24 newspaper exposes the MEK’s activities in Poland. The MEK created a Facebook page to lure students into participating in an all-expenses paid trip to Berlin for Rajavi’s show. But, said the paper, the students weren’t informed that the trip was paid for by a terrorist organization and that they were expected to support the MEK as part of the conditions attached to the trip.

“When we called the number given on the web, we were told that the organizers are associations supporting the struggle for democracy. The person responsible for compiling the departure list would not, however, give us a Polish contact for the tour. Facebook is the only information we had and it says that “the subject is the same as every year in Paris”.

The point is that in 2008 the People’s Mojahedin held a rally at Charles de Gaulle airport. That was attended by around 3.5 thousand Polish students and was met with criticism from Iran. The Iranian ambassador in Warsaw said that this event, in which a terrorist organization could deceive students, was a humiliation for Polish society.

Until yesterday the authorities of Kracow University did not know about the Berlin trip. In the same way as the Paris Conference, Professor Anna Krasnowolska from the Department of Iranian Studies at Jagiellonian University learned about the Berlin Conference in March from us. Professor Krasnowolska said “I advised my students not to participate in this. The way in which it is organized shows that the concept of democracy is foreign to the People’s Mojahedin”.

When articles began to circulate on the Internet showing the true face of the Conference in Paris, some students began to sell their tickets for the trip to Berlin. “I preferred to withdraw from participation in the meeting altogether. I even heard that the Americans refuse to issue visas to those who were at a similar conference”, the student from Krakow told us.”

++ Following on from a meeting in Brussels last week with MEP Nikolay Barekov, Davoud Baghervand Arshad, Isa Azadeh and Ghorbanali Hossein Nejad have issued another statement expanding on their position. The statement says “we believe the MEK is past the point of correction and it is not possible for a splinter group to arise. It is a cult and as such the corruption would pass to the new group. We believe any organisation that is pursuing regime change through violence and terrorism is wrong and does great harm. We believe the only way to achieve democracy is through non-violent means.”

++ Reactions to the MEK’s nuclear gaffe focus on two issues. One is the gaffe itself and questions how the MEK’s ridiculous paymasters can continue to pay them when they can’t even do the job. The second group talk about how the MEK betrays their own country and their own families as they continue to try to create conditions under which their mothers and fathers are suffering and may even be bombed by Iran’s enemies. It is shocking, commentators say, that the MEK are happy to see this happen.

++ Several more families have written letters addressed to their loved ones in the MEK along with their contact details (name, address, phone numbers) and have asked for people to spread the word and help their loved ones to get in touch. In response the MEK has, as usual, set about getting members to write, or actually writing for them, to attack their own families. Two ex MEK members now living in Iran, Sirous Ghazanfari and Massoud Taghipourian, have been specifically targeted by the MEK which accuses them of masterminding the family letter writing campaign. Both men who live in Azerbaijan Province, have written articles explaining that the MEK’s attacks only have currency inside Camp Liberty since nobody who has access to real world will take them seriously. The men say ‘you are in Camp Liberty and if you are really the person writing this then you are talking rubbish. This is exactly why we want you to have contact with the outside world so you will see how much you have been misled.’

++ Several comments have been made about the MEK’s proposed meeting in Berlin to mark International Women’s Day. The gist of most is that this event represents the beacon of Maryam Rajavi’s hypocrisy. It is well known that she uses any excuse to declare that she is still alive but using the issue of women after all she has done inside her own organisation, including grooming and pimping women for her husband Massoud Rajavi to rape, this is absolutely the peak of her hypocrisy.

++ Other comments have highlighted Maryam Rajavi’s annual announcement for the pre-Nourooz Chahar Shanbe Souri celebration in which she urges ‘the people’ to rise up against the regime. Several people have written pointing out that nobody ever takes any notice of her at all and she is making a laughing stock of herself by persisting in this ludicrous farce.

In English:

++ An article in The District Sentinel reported that ‘State Dept. Rules Out Iran “Secret Nuclear Facility” Lavizan-3 Allegations Pushed By Congressmen–Claims Appear Fabricated By M.E.K.’ Following exposure of the MEK’s false nuclear ‘revelation’ the State Department said that it has “a robust team of experts across the US government” examining Iran’s nuclear program who are involved in the so-called P5+1 negotiations. But, said the article, a “robust team of experts,” however, was not needed to cast doubts on the allegations that were made by the MEK-tied National Council of Resistance of Iran. They seem to have been fabricated in the most casual of manners. Shortly after its report was made public on Tuesday, a Daily Kos blogger with the pseudonym “Florida Democrat” pointed out how a simple reverse image search showed that what the NCRI claimed was an “image of one of the shielding doors at Lavizan-3 installed at an underground hall” appeared to be a photograph lifted from an Iranian safe company’s website. The MEK’s fabricated accusations were “reported without much scrutiny by Fox News, The Washington Times, and the Washington Free Beacon, in addition to The Post.” To make matters worse, the MEK publicly defended its report in a nine-point statement saying “through its sources within Iran, [it] was fully aware that these doors had been built by GMP Company for the purpose of being installed at Lavizan-3.”

++ Journalist Jim Lobe (Lobelog) pointed out that “Senator Robert Menendez has been the top recipient of campaign funding from donors with ties to the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), the cultish group that was until recently included on the State Department’s terrorism list, according to a new investigative report published Thursday by LobeLog alumni and occasional contributors Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton on The Intercept website titled: “Long March of the Yellow Jackets: How a One-Time Terrorist Group Prevailed on Capitol Hill”. Ali and Eli cite sources that cumulatively suggest that Menendez’s position may have been influenced by intense lobbying on the part of pro-MeK individuals, including the lobbyist for one of the MeK’s political fronts and Menendez’s immediate predecessor, Robert Torricelli. According to the article, Menendez accepted more than $25,000 from donors with ties to the MEK, making him the largest recipient from 2012, when the MeK was delisted that September, to the present.”

++ Iraq al Ghanoon, Baghdad reports that no country will accept the residents of Camp Liberty except Iran. “In an interview with Iraqi media, the Human Rights Minister of Iraq Mohammad Mehdi al Bayati said “the MEK has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and the United States hence has not been eligible for refugee status after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. We have however looked at their situation with the help of the Interior ministry but we have not found any legal basis for them to remain in this country”. He also added “We have informed the Red Cross and United Nations in Baghdad that Iraq rejects the presence of these people and their temporary accommodation is based only on the humanitarian nature of our help”. He added that “All other countries have declined to give asylum to these people, but Iraq has approached the Islamic Republic of Iran through our ambassador in Tehran and officials there have responded that all the MEK members have been pardoned and can come back to Iran without being prosecuted. There are, of course, 50 names of the leaders of this group who do not enjoy the blanket pardon given by Iran.

++ Jeffrey Lewis in Foreign Policy examines in detail the MEK’s history of false revelations about Iran’s nuclear programme. He says “Iran’s most notorious dissident group loves luring gullible U.S. officials and journalists into seeing a bomb factory beneath every building in Tehran. Dig a little deeper, sheeple.” His conclusion: “there is every reason to think the latest allegations by NCRI represent a politically motivated effort to derail the engagement of Iran over its nuclear program… Any agreement with Iran is destined to contend with a series of leaks like this. But let’s remember: The MEK and the United States have fundamentally different interests. The MEK highlights Iran’s nuclear programs — real, imagined, and downright fabricated — as a way to build support for regime change in Tehran. Hemming in the Iranian nuclear program through diplomacy removes one of the MEK’s most effective talking points in favor of bombing Iran. They won’t go down without a fight.”

++ An article by Iran Interlink titled ‘Behind the deceptive face of Maryam Rajavi’s Women’s Day meeting in Berlin’ exposes two recent examples of how the MEK manufactures information to concoct a false public image in order to pose as a genuine Iranian opposition group. The article refers to the MEK’s recent fabricated nuclear revelation which was widely ridiculed. More importantly though the article details how the MEK PR machine works step by step, first creating false information with which to deceptively recruit members of parliament and pay them to speak at meetings. The recent example is the March 7 meeting in Berlin to showcase Maryam Rajavi as a feminist in spite of the horrific human rights abuses she commits against women MEK members. The article focuses in particular on the involvement in this process of MEK activist Mohammad Moshiri – who is known to the FBI as a trained and dangerous MEK operative – and suggests that European political complacency is what allowed Moshiri access to take a photograph standing next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he could quite easily have stepped forward and killed.

March 6, 2015