Inside This Issue:
Download Pars Brief – Issue No. 85
Download Pars Brief – Issue No. 85
An Iraqi politician cautioned Washington against the consequences of its possible military support for the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).
“The MKO has asked the US to send weapons for the group again,” Kurdish politician Tahsin al-Fili was quoted by Iraqi Al-Masalah news website as saying on Sunday.
He said the request by the MKO is not a new one but will be followed by an “appropriate” response from the Iraqi political circles.
The Iraqi politician also emphasized that the Islamic Resistance groups in Iraq and volunteer forces will pressure Baghdad to take the necessary decision to expel the members of the group from the Arab country.
The MKO – listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community – fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They fought on the side of Saddam during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88). They were also involved in the bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991 and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.
The notorious group is also responsible for killing thousands of Iranian civilians and officials after the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979.
More than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings.
Back in December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to the former US military Camp Liberty outside Baghdad.
The last group of the MKO terrorists was evicted by the Iraqi government on September 11, 2013 to join other members of the terrorist group at Camp Liberty and await potential relocation to other countries.
Remember the brouhaha a few months ago when it was revealed that fighters of the Nusra Front, the al Qaeda
affiliate in Syria, had seized territory adjacent to Israel? The “let’s intervene in Syria” crowd was up in arms: this supposedly proved the absolute necessity of going full-bore into the region, with US bombing raids and unrestrained support for “moderate” jihadists out to overthrow Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. After all, we can’t leave our loyal ally, Israel, at the mercy of Osama bin Laden’s heirs, can we?
As it turns out, however, Nusra has left the Israelis alone – and, indeed, it looks like there is a de facto alliance between bin Laden’s boys and Bibi’s bombardiers. As the Wall Street Journal reports:
“Nusra Front, however, hasn’t bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer – and some of its severely wounded fighters are regularly taken across the frontier fence to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals.”
We are told by the Israelis that they don’t check the identities of these injured fighters: “We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening… Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border and they go on their way,” says one Israeli military official. This from a country one can’t enter from the United States without an extensive interrogation at the airport.
Like most reporting on Israel, this story is chock full of hasbara, with the disturbing news of terrorist fighters treated in Israeli hospitals leavened with a touching tale of a young Syrian boy given a prosthetic arm due to the beneficence of his Israeli hosts. Yet this is overlaid with some darker overtones. While reporter Yaroslav Trofimov is careful to note “it would be a stretch to say that the U.S. and Israel are backing different sides in this war,” he goes on to write:
“But there is clearly a growing divergence in US and Israeli approaches over who represents the biggest danger – and who should be seen, if not as an ally, at least as a lesser evil in the regional crisis sparked by the dual implosion of Syria and Iraq.”
Indeed, Trofimov’s reportage refutes his careful qualifications. He points out that, while leaving Nusra alone – its encampments are “yards” away from a border that is a frequent site of tours by Israeli schoolchildren – the Israelis have begun attacking Assad’s troops and their Hezbollah allies. He also cites Amos Yadlin, former chief of Israeli military intelligence and a likely defense minister if Bibi should lose the election, who avers:
“There is no doubt that Hezbollah and Iran are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy. Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy – maybe it isn’t Israel.”
This has always been the Israeli perspective, no matter who sits in the Prime Minister’s office. In a 2003 meeting with then undersecretary of state John Bolton, Ariel Sharon made a point of saying that, while the US should indeed attack Iraq, “Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq.” Israel is clearly taking a side in the religious civil war wracking the Muslim world: while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms supply weapons and money to Sunni jihadists fighting for control of the Levant – including not only Nusra but also ISIS – the Israelis are bombing Assad and sending injured jihadists back onto the battlefield.
None of this is very surprising. Israel has never hesitated to ally with the worst elements on earth in order to advance what its leaders regard as the Jewish state’s interests. From South Africa’s apartheid regime to the death squads of Central and South America, to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) – an Iranian exile group of Marxist terrorists – Israel has always given a helping hand to whoever merits it according to their amoral calculus. And as Israeli and American interests began to radically diverge – a process that has been ongoing since the demise of the Soviet Union – it makes perfect sense that they should align with our worst enemies.
The conventional wisdom that the 9/11 attacks showed there’s no daylight between the US and Israel – “We’re all Israelis now!” exulted the Israel Firsters before the smoke cleared over Manhattan – was quite wrong. Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan University “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” Al-Qaeda’s act, he averred, had “swung American public opinion in our favor.”
Yet American opinion has always been pro-Israel, with very little sympathy for the Palestinians: what Bibi meant was that the Israeli strategic perspective – constantly pushing for the US to fight its wars – was more popular as the Bush administration began its rampage across the Middle East.
However, this war fever was necessarily of limited duration: once the madness had worn off, and the backlash against the post-9/11 hysteria began to roll in, the US public turned against the War Party. That’s when the long range impact of the “war on terrorism” on the “special relationship” between Washington and Tel Aviv began to be felt.
It didn’t take long for the “We’re all Israelis now” propaganda to wear thin in Washington. For in order to defeat radical Islamism it was necessary for the US to split the jihadist base from the leadership and dry up the pool of recruits that were flocking to bin Laden’s banner. Far from drawing away from the Muslim world, it was more than ever important for Washington to court it – and to eventually take advantage of the Sunni-Shi’ite split in favor of the latter.
We are seeing this today in the war against ISIS, with Iranian-led Iraqi Shi’ite troops on the ground getting air support from the US – and the Israelis helping the other side, albeit as discreetly as possible, along with their de facto Saudi and Gulf state allies. The open propaganda war now being waged by the Israelis against their supposed American allies is increasingly taking on a military aspect in the battle for the Levant.
The Obama administration is determined to forge a deal with the Iranians for the simple reason that it cannot defeat the jihadists without occupying not only Iraq but also Syria and parts of Lebanon – a political, economic, and military impossibility. The Israelis, who see Iran as their principal – indeed, only – rival for regional hegemony are equally determined that this must not come to pass. The “special relationship,” which has been strained ever since the latter part of George W. Bush’s second term, has now reached the breaking point. And this is going to be true no mater who sits in the Oval Office.
Bibi is now playing the only card he has left: the well-funded and politically entrenched Israel lobby, which could formerly make or break politicians. Yet the power of this lobby has necessarily diminished over the years as the geopolitical realities of the post-9/11 era set in.
On the intellectual front, the publication of The Israel Lobby, by leading foreign policy “realists” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, set the tone for what was to come. In exposing the key role played by Israel’s fifth column in distorting the making of American foreign policy – and dragging us into the disastrous Iraq war – the book broke the lobby’s monopoly on elite opinion and set the stage for its subsequent political defeats. The lobby’s attempt to quash the nomination of Chuck Hagel was not only defeated, but the sheer nastiness of the smear campaign aimed at him discredited the Israel Firsters among key opinion-makers and in Democratic party circles.
The final straw was Sen. Tom Cotton’s “open letter” to Iran’s leaders – which was really a letter to the American people, telling them that in any conflict between Washington and Tel Aviv GOP hard-liners would side with the latter. The backlash against this open attempt to sabotage American diplomacy in the interests of a foreign power provoked outraged cries of “treason” and calls for the 47 Senators to be charged under the Logan Act. While Cotton’s letter hardly falls under the restrictions imposed by the Logan Act – and the call itself is a dangerous not to mention stupid invocation of the growing authoritarian impulse in American politics – this kind of reaction is telling. It shows that the American people are waking up to the inordinate – and inappropriate – influence wielded by the Israeli government on our domestic political scene, and that Bibi’s playing of this particular card no longer trumps the President’s hand.
And that’s a cause for optimism. For the Israel lobby and the War Party are, in many instances, virtually identical. Diminish the power of the former, and you have clogged the engine of the latter. Which is not to say the machinery that churns out endless war propaganda has been silenced – far from it – but it is getting more difficult to start it, and, once started, it tends to stall.
Justin Raimondo,
Today the world is obsessed with the threat of extremism. The menace of the Islamic State terrorists and their affiliates is touched all over the world. However, the international community should not be distracted from other extremists who are manipulating Western politicians under the guise of democracy and modernity.
While the world’s eyes are focused on and rising tensions in the Middle East, a former terrorist group from Iran is tromping through the halls of Congress, and garnering support from some of America’s most powerful and prominent politicians and officials, writes Sean Nevins of Mint Press News in Washington. [1]
In his documented, investigated article Nevins warns that the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ Mek) is not actually what it claims to be. He explores “how does a group go from being one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world to having an office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., with backing from the likes of the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton and former Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, among many others” . Based on documents and reports of the FBI, Human Rights Watch, and the Rand Corporation, Sean Nevins conclude that “not only is it an opposition group to the current Iranian regime, but it is a kind of cult” verifying the reality of the MKO’s anti-American attitudes by the group’s own journals. [2]
This is not the first warning to Western audience on the threat of the MKO cult. Many other journalists, historians, scholars and etc. have so far cautioned about the risks of supporting a group with a dark, violent history of extremist acts and a cult-like nature. The extremism that the world is exposed to by the side of the MKO can be much more destructive than the one from ISIS or AlQaida because the MKO is disguising its cult-like beliefs and policy under pro-democracy and pro-feminism slogans.
The case of the MKO indicates that the roots of extremism are based in cultic manipulation not religious beliefs. Mohammed Jebara who is chief Imam and resident scholar at the Cordova Spiritual Education and writer of books and articles on Islam, suggests that the extremism is originated from cult-like exploitation. “Most cults have two main distinguishing characteristics: A great opposition to critical thinking with an insistence on blindly following a set of dogmatic ideals, all the while giving their followers the false sense of self-determination and free choice,” writes Jebara.”Secondly, isolating their devotees with threats of heavy penalties, including death, for “apostasy” through “deviation” from their “path.” [3]
Jebara describes extremist ideas as “puritanical, self-righteous, judgmental viewpoints” that “always allege to be the ultimate truth’’. He notifies, “The modern extremists are not a new phenomenon, neither to the Islamic world, nor to the world at large. Puritanical sects have existed from ancient times, as fringes, and have even overtaken the mainstream of some world religions.” [4]
“If someone can be induced to believe in irrational, ludicrous and intolerant ideas, they can be led to violently enforce and act upon them, “concludes Imam Mohammad Jebara. His description of cultist extremists perfectly meets the substance of the Cult of Rajavi (the MKO). [5]
The peak of irrational, ludicrous and intolerant ideas was demonstrated in June 2003 after the arrest of the group leader Maryam Rajavi by the French Police. To protest her arrest, a number of her brainwashed followers and sympathizers committed the most irrational act; they set themselves on fire in European cities. Two women burned to death and others were paralyzed.
One of the two dead women was Neda Hassani who was in her 20s when she set herself alight outside French Embassy in London. Neda was a Canadian citizen with links to the MKO. After the arrest of the cult leader, she was indoctrinated to commit self-immolation in order to put pressure of French Police to liberate Maryam Rajavi. [6]
Prior to 2003, suicide operations to target Iranian officials and civilians were also carried out by the group terror teams as well as cross border terror acts against Iran.
Furthermore, as it was mentioned on the top of this post, cult-like treatment of members inside the MKO camps have been reported by several international bodies and investigated reports. Thus, what is crystal clear is that the MKO is not a democratic secular group. It is definitely an extremist cult of personality and is as dangerous as or even more dangerous than ISIS or al Qaida.
Mazda Parsi
Sources:
[1]Nevins, Sean, How To Stop Being Terrorists: A Guide For ISIS, Courtesy Of The MEK, Mint Press News, January 21, 2015
[2] ibid
[3] Jebara, Mohamad, Imam Mohamad Jebara: Fruits of the tree of extremism, Ottawa Citizen, February 6, 2015
[4] ibid
[5] ibid
[6]BBC News, Fourth person in fire protest, June 20, 2003
++ Mohammad Mohammady, brother of Somayeh who remains trapped within the MEK, has added to the series of writing about her situation. Mohammady had joined the MEK’s militia (youth army) as a teenager and knows many of the people still there, including some who have arrived in Albania. Mohammady reports that although the MEK at first gave these new arrivals accommodation and bribed them with $500 to keep quiet, the group has now evicted them and says the money must cover all their expense including accommodation. This of course is totally inadequate. Unfortunately they have also cut off their contact with the UNHCR and are therefore struggling to survive.
Alongside this, several people have written open letters to the Albanian authorities, including the Prime Minister and Ambassadors in their various countries of residence. In Paris a group of ex-MEK members met with diplomats in the Albanian embassy. They conveyed their gratitude for Albania’s generous acceptance of over four hundred refugees from Iraq. But presented evidence that the MEK is trying to re-create closed cult conditions in their country, to the detriment of the human rights of these vulnerable people. They said the MEK try to prevent contact with the families and the outside world and because these former MEK combatants have been so isolated and remain so ignorant, they are more easily manipulated. The delegation reiterated their warning that the MEK must not be allowed to create closed camps in Albania.
In spite of its efforts, the MEK has been unable to prevent many of the new arrivals from contacting their families, friends and former MEK members. Some do this straightaway, some are more fearful and take longer. But in all, there is a circle of contact and support among these groups which is growing all the time.
++ Continuing the controversy of the MEK’s publication of receipts and financial affairs to attack critics, several people have shown various reactions. Rowhani – former NCRI member and currently an ‘internal critic’ – has published his own facts and figures and ridiculed the MEK for not understanding how transparent they are for the outside world. He says, “If you think this will stop me from talking, be sure it won’t. Although when I left the NCRI I acknowledged that I can’t match you for money and propaganda, but I firmly believe that my truth and the facts will firmly win over MEK lies.” Other comments challenge these so-called internal critics to decide where they stand and ask why they are trying to prove to Rajavi that they are good people. Ex-members write, ‘no, you are not a good person. We are not good people. We all helped Rajavi in his crimes and immorality. You won’t escape your situation until you admit this to yourself. And then your eyes will be opened and you won’t keep wanting to justify yourself to Rajavi and you can join the rest of us in the real world. Until then you are still one of them and you haven’t left the cult.” A few others reacted to the MEK’s publication of these documents showing how millions of dollars have been paid here and there. They say that the French judicial decision not to investigate the MEK for money laundering when the MEK is blatantly admitting this is what it does, is as ridiculous as taking them off the terrorism lists.
++ C Bloggers (independent Iranian bloggers), has this week blogged about the MEK’s satellite channel Simayeazadi, with evidence and documents from the MEK’s own websites and TV. The fact that the MEK is the only Iranian entity using this satellite channel (any other Iranian programme has abandoned it and gone elsewhere), shows that they don’t have an Iranian audience – people simply don’t adjust their satellite receiver for just one Farsi channel. The MEK’s programme has almost no viewers, yet on one occasion the programme’s telephone-in was suddenly inundated by sixty callers apparently from inside Iran pledging to donate money – even though such a facility isn’t available to people inside Iran. The blog says it is obvious the MEK don’t care about Iranians and never have. The only purpose of this channel is as a lobbying tool to claim they have some support.
++ Iran’s right wing Kayhan newspaper demanded the ‘Monafeqin’ [hypocrites] be brought to justice and punished and killed. The article refers to members of the Green Movement and supporters of Mousavi. But Rajavi has gone into overdrive to say that ‘by referring to the Monafeqin, they must mean us and the Americans must stop them from killing us’. Commentators say Rajavi is writing this because of the backlash from ex-MEK members who have exposed his threats to kill them. This is a diversion from that issue. But it is also interesting that the MEK insist their name is hypocrites.
++ Saber from Tabriz (known to Iran Interlink) has analysed Maryam Rajavi’s latest speech in France. By examining her speech sentence by sentence he identifies contradictions and mismatches. For example, Rajavi insists the people of Iran are still resisting the government and haven’t given in. Yet she then insists on more sanctions on Iran without apparently understanding that one of the reasons for sanctions is to provoke the people to resist their government! Saber says it seems these speeches are not made by one person – and certainly not Rajavi herself. She is merely told what to say.
In English:
++ Another investigative article by Gareth Porter helps unpick the tangled thread surrounding the 1994 AMIA bombing in Argentina. Porter identifies that State Prosecutor “Nisman asserted that the highest Iranian officials had decided to carry out the bombing at a meeting on 12 or 14 August, 1993, primarily on the testimony of four officials of the Mujahedeen E-Khalq (MEK), the Iranian exile terrorist group that was openly dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian regime. The four MEK officials claimed to know the precise place, date and time and the three-point agenda of the meeting. When US Ambassador, Anthony Wayne, meeting with Nisman in November 2006, asked him about Argentine press reports that had criticised the document for using the testimony of “unreliable witnesses,” Nisman responded, according to the Embassy reporting cable, that “several of the witnesses were “former senior Iraqi [sic] officials, e.g. Bani Sadr, with direct knowledge of events surrounding the conception of the attacks.” Nisman’s suggestion that former Iranian president Abolhassen Banisadr had “direct knowledge” related to the AMIA bombings was a stunningly brazen falsehood.”
++ In an Open Letter to the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, Iran Ghalam (Pen Club) says “Once they arrive in Albania one of the first things all the new arrivals do is to contact their families and seek out other forms of support. The refugees are given time limited support by the UN refugee agency accommodation and a small living allowance which is deemed sufficient for them to settle in their new country and make new lives for themselves. And the MEK does not easily relinquish its control over these former members and has made every effort to prevent them from living independently. But more importantly, these new arrivals are desperate to tell their stories. They want to speak out about the suffering they endured, some for many, many years.”
++ A Sepinoud from Nejat Bloggers says hatred is one of the main tools used by the MEK to control members: “the cult leaders do not primarily focus on hatred rather, through deceitful methods, propaganda, and misinformation they create an atmosphere among its members in which hatred toward anyone except the cult leader thrives virtually unchecked. The manipulation and control in the cult is so strong that nobody can trust each other. Even the very close family members such as father and daughter or spouses distrust one another, having friendly relations is not allowed and considered taboo. The members are being brain washed and celibacy is forced upon them. In the cult, members are suspicious of each other. Members are made by coercion or enticement to snitch on each other. They are encouraged to curse one another in brainwashing sessions so as to create abhorrence, animosity, and hostility among members. The cult leaders try to empty members of all their humanity.”
++ NIAC Statement: “Washington, DC – Today, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion regarding aspects of cost sharing in NIAC’s defamation lawsuit against Seyyed Hassan Daioleslam [MEK operative]. In the appeal, NIAC won on several issues, overturning aspects of the lower court’s previous rulings, and resulting in a more favorable outcome for NIAC. While NIAC objected to the decision of the court that it should pay a fraction of the discovery costs, it is Mr. Daioleslam who must pay the large majority of the costs for his legal fishing expedition. This further accentuates the larger outcome of the case, in which Mr. Daioleslam backtracked from his accusations against NIAC and instead hid behind the argument that NIAC could not prove that he knew his allegations against NIAC were false.”
“…NIAC brought the lawsuit against Daioleslam in response to his false accusations that the organization was a lobbyist for the Iranian Government. Once in front of the court, Daioleslam had the opportunity to make his case for the truth. Instead, he changed his tune and did not seek to argue that his accusations were correct and truthful. He essentially abandoned the truth and instead argued that NIAC could not prove that he knew what he was saying was false, i.e. malicious. While we believe the evidence clearly showed that Daioleslam knew he was lying, based on his systematic disregard for the truth, neglect of readily available information that contradicted his conspiracy theories, declaration that he aimed to “destroy NIAC” in order to “bring down Obama,” as well as his support for the Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist organization, the judge felt this didn’t meet his standard and denied us the opportunity to take Daioleslam in front of a jury.”
Washington, DC – Today, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion regarding aspects of cost sharing in NIAC’s defamation lawsuit against Seyyed Hassan Daioleslam. In the appeal, NIAC won on several issues, overturning aspects of the lower court’s previous rulings, and resulting in a more favorable outcome for NIAC.
While NIAC objected to the decision of the court that it should pay a fraction of the discovery costs, it is Mr. Daioleslam who must pay the large majority of the costs for his legal fishing expedition. This further accentuates the larger outcome of the case, in which Mr. Daioleslam backtracked from his accusations against NIAC and instead hid behind the argument that NIAC could not prove that he knew his allegations against NIAC were false.
In short, Mr. Daioleslam further discredited his accusations against NIAC by backtracking from them once confronted in court. As this legal process draws towards a close, it is also clear that Mr. Daioleslam’s self-avowed efforts to “destroy NIAC” have patently failed. Over this period, NIAC has grown rapidly in terms of budget, membership and political influence. The Iranian-American community’s political participation is at its height, and the US and Iran are closer than ever to resolving their disputes peacefully, much thanks to the efforts of NIAC and its membership.
Further background on the case:
NIAC brought the lawsuit against Daioleslam in response to his false accusations that the organization was a lobbyist for the Iranian Government. Once in front of the court, Daioleslam had the opportunity to make his case for the truth. Instead, he changed his tune and did not seek to argue that his accusations were correct and truthful. He essentially abandoned the truth and instead argued that NIAC could not prove that he knew what he was saying was false, i.e. malicious. While we believe the evidence clearly showed that Daioleslam knew he was lying, based on his systematic disregard for the truth, neglect of readily available information that contradicted his conspiracy theories, declaration that he aimed to “destroy NIAC” in order to “bring down Obama,” as well as his support for the Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist organization, the judge felt this didn’t meet his standard and denied us the opportunity to take Daioleslam in front of a jury.
Judge Bates provided Defendant with unfettered access to all of NIAC’s computer systems, and yet Defendant was unable to produce a single shred of evidence to substantiate his false allegations. Daioleslam retreated from his outrageous claims when challenged to back them up in court and instead hired a million-dollar defense team backed by pro-war neo-cons and engaged in creating false and nonexistent discovery issues to facilitate exorbitant costs for NIAC. Ultimately Defendant filed a motion for cost sharing, seeking to shift Defendant’s wasted efforts in discovery to NIAC. Judge Bates found no evidence that NIAC intentionally destroyed electronic documents or manipulated electronic documents improperly despite Defendant’s misrepresentations to the Court of the contrary.
How did Daioleslam–a self-described independent journalist–put together a million-dollar legal defense team?
He didn’t.
It has been revealed that the Middle East Forum–a neoconservative group at the center of the push for broad sanctions and war–financed Daioleslam’s legal efforts as part of a campaign to prevent anti-war Iranian-Americans from having a voice in Washington DC.
That group’s reactionary founder, Daniel Pipes, is one of the most outspoken advocates for war with Iran and an aggressive critic of efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear challenge peacefully. Pipes has called for the U.S. to “empower Iranians” by working with the Mujahedin-e Khalq. In 2009 he famously said Iranians should vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reject the Green Movement to make war more likely. Pipes’ most recent work, in addition to his legal campaign on behalf of Daioleslam against NIAC, has focused on trying to prove that President Obama is a “closet Muslim.”
The legal team financed by Pipes’ organization attempted to bury NIAC in a long and cumbersome discovery process. As part of that process, they leaked NIAC emails and documents to neoconservative reporters ideologically opposed to NIAC’s anti-war agenda. Yet, even after combing through all of NIAC’s emails and documents in the discovery process, they could not produce a single shred of evidence to support any of Daioleslam’s false accusations.
The fact that a multimillion-dollar legal team could not find a single piece of evidence that NIAC has lobbied for the Iranian government is a public vindication against this outrageous accusation. This should discredit once and for all the politically motivated attacks against NIAC and expose the true aim behind these smears: to silence Iranian Americans who oppose war and crippling sanctions.
Hatred is one of the main tools of the Mujahedin Khalq destructive Cult’s leaders.
Spreading hatred among members, and between members and their families as well as between members and 
the world is a common practice and behavior in the MKO Cult.
In fact, the cult leaders do not primarily focus on hatred rather, through deceitful methods, propaganda, and misinformation they create an atmosphere among its members in which hatred toward anyone except the cult leader thrives virtually unchecked.
The manipulation and control in the cult is so strong that nobody can trust each other. Even the very close family members such as father and daughter or spouses distrust one another, having friendly relations is not allowed and considered taboo. The members are being brain washed and celibacy is forced upon them. In the cult, members are suspicious of each other.
Members are made by coercion or enticement to snitch on each other. They are encouraged to curse one another in brainwashing sessions so as to create abhorrence, animosity, and hostility among members.
The cult leaders try to empty members of all their humanity.
Ms. Nasrin Ebrahimi, former member of MKO Cult, while recalling his memoirs of the corruption of Massoud Rajavi as the cult leader states:” …As I said, Massoud Rajavi exploited women against men. In fact, women were Rajavi’s slaves who were misused to fight men this way he grew hatred between men and women in Ashraf.
Rajavi hides his true face behind women. He manipulates them to humiliate men; to make them work as hard as slaves…Rajavi made efforts to grow hate and animosity between men and women and in general among all members. He thought that growing hatred among members will lead all love and affection toward him.”
Massoud Rajavi as the cult leader considers the family ties poisonous for his cult of personality since he is completely aware of the power of family affection in comparison to that of cult-made affection towards him – as the cult leader, so as he has tried to cut cult followers from their family members both within and outside the cult.
Despite the MKO cult’s claims that the members have chosen their way willingly and that they are not eager to visit their families, still many first hand evidences of disassociated members of the cult as well as concrete evidences of human rights bodies prove that the members are under systematic mind manipulation. That is the fear from family members and the hatred is systematically cultivated in their minds.
The case of Mohammadi family who were deceived by the MKO in Canada is a worthwhile example. The 
Mohammadi family who were once supporters of the group have lost their daughter to the cult. They are still struggling to gain her release though. This is one example of many families who have lost their loved ones to this cult.
In a trip Mustafa had to Camp Ashraf as a supporter of the group, he realized that Somaye had made up her mind to return to her family in Canada. However since she didn’t have the citizenship, so she wrote a letter to the Canadian government and asked to help her get out of the Organization.
The father filmed that moments. Part of the letter reads:” I’m Somaye Mohammadi, Mostafa’s daughter. I ask that you aid my return to my former country, Canada as soon as possible. I was a political refugee in Canada for four years. I had even filled out my citizenship request form but I couldn’t get my citizenship before I came to Iraq and although I wanted to apply from here, I wasn’t able to , I don’t have my pass with me here and I wasn’t able to contact my family…..”
However, the next time her father went to Camp Ashraf on 6 May 2005 and the MKO conceded with the pressure of US forces that Mostafa see her daughter, many things had happened. Somaye was reluctant to see and talk to her father. She was repeating some same sentences with a frown on her face.
This was the last time Mostafa could see her daughter and talk to her. Batoul Soltani who was recently defected the group, told him about the sever supervision and control the organization put on Somaye. She was under sever mind control practices.
This is just a story among very many stories of families who have lost their beloved ones to the Cult of Rajavis. Those who have not been able to talk to their family members for decades.
A.Sepinoud
The evidence already available about Argentine Prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s death from a gunshot to the head creates a strong presumption that he was murdered. He was about to present publicly his accusation that 
President Christina Fernández de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Héctor Timerman conspired to absolve Iran of the 1994 AMIA bombing and lift the Interpol red notices on the accused Iranians.
And it was Nisman’s 2006 request for the arrest of six former senior Iranian officials for the bombing that prompted his push for those red notices. In the context of Argentine political culture, with its long experience of impunity for crimes committed by the powerful, the circumstances of his death have led to a general conviction that the government must have been behind his murder.
But there is good reason to be cautious about that assumption. Nisman’s case against Kirchner was problematic. The central accusation in his affidavit, made 96 times, according to press accounts, was that Kirchner and Timerman had sought to revoke the Interpol arrest warrants against the former Iranian officials. But Ronald K. Noble, the secretary general of Interpol for fifteen years until last November, denied Nisman’s accusation. Noble declared, “I can say with 100 percent certainty, not a scintilla of doubt, that Foreign Minister Timerman and the Argentine government have been steadfast, persistent and unwavering that the Interpol’s red notices be issued, remain in effect and not be suspend or removed.”
Noble’s denial raises an obvious question: Why would the Kirchner government, knowing that Nisman’s main claim could be easily refuted, have any reason to kill him on the eve of the presentation of his case? Why give those seeking to discredit the government’s policy on the AMIA bombing the opportunity to shift the issue from the facts of the case to the presumption of officially sponsored assassination?
The Kirchner-Timerman negotiation of an agreement with Iran in January 2013 for an “international truth commission” on the AMIA bombing that would have sent five respected international judicial figures to Iran to question the accused Iranians. That was a way of getting around the Iranian refusal to subject former high-ranking officials to Argentine justice. But Nisman was trying to prove that was an illicit cover-up for a cynical deal with Iran. He considered it “a betrayal of the country and his work”, according to his friend, Gustavo Perednik.
Nisman’s “criminal complaint” against Kirchner and Timerman claimed the government’s negotiations with Iran involved a “sophisticated criminal plan” to make a deal with one of the Iranians the prosecutor accused of the AMIA bombing, former cultural attaché Mohsen Rabbani. It asserted that Argentina promised Iran that it would lift the Interpol notices on the six Iranian in exchange for an “oil for grains” deal.
Nisman’s accusation was based on snippets of transcripts from 5,000 hours of wiretaps of conversations of allies of Kirchner government that have now been made public by a judge. One of the excerpts quotes Rabbani himself, in a conversation with an ally of Fernandez, as saying:
Iran was Argentina’s main buyer and now it’s buying almost nothing. That could change. Here [in Iran] there are some sectors of the government who’ve told me they are willing to sell oil to Argentina … and also to buy weapons.
The statement proves nothing, however, except that that Rabbani knew some Iranian officials who were interested in oil sales to Argentina. No evidence of Rabbani being involved in negotiating on behalf of Iran is suggested in the Nisman document, and the person at the other end of the line was not an Argentine official. So the conversation did not involve anyone who even had direct knowledge of the actual negotiations between the governments of Iran and Argentina.
The same thing applies to the other individuals who have been identified as speaking on the wiretaps in favour of such a deal. Those individuals are friendly with officials of the Kirchner government and friendly with Iran, but the actual negotiations were carried out by senior officials of the foreign ministries of Iran and Argentina, not by private individuals. The distinction between knowledge and hearsay is a fundamental principle in judicial processes for a very good reason.
The presentation of facts or allegations as proof of guilt, even though they proved nothing of the sort, was also a pattern that permeated Nisman’s 2006 “Request for Arrests” in the 1994 AMIA bombing. Contrary to the general reverence in the news media for his indictment of senior Iranian officials for their alleged responsibility for the bombing, his case was built on a massive accumulation of highly dubious and misleading claims, from the “irrefutable evidence” of Rabbani’s participation in planning to the identification of the alleged suicide car bomber. This writer’s investigation of the case over several months, which included interviews with US diplomats who had served in the Embassy in Buenos Aires in the years following the AMIA bombing as well as with the FBI official detailed to work on the case in 1996-97, concluded that the Argentine investigators never found any evidence of Iranian involvement.
Nisman asserted that the highest Iranian officials had decided to carry out the bombing at a meeting on 12 or 14 August, 1993, primarily on the testimony of four officials of the Mujahedeen E-Khalq (MEK), the Iranian exile terrorist group that was openly dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian regime. The four MEK officials claimed to know the precise place, date and time and the three-point agenda of the meeting.
When US Ambassador, Anthony Wayne, meeting with Nisman in November 2006, asked him about Argentine press reports that had criticised the document for using the testimony of “unreliable witnesses,” Nisman responded, according to the Embassy reporting cable, that “several of the witnesses were “former senior Iraqi [sic] officials, e.g. Bani Sadr, with direct knowledge of events surrounding the conception of the attacks.”
Nisman’s suggestion that former Iranian president Abolhassen Banisadr had “direct knowledge” related to the AMIA bombings was a stunningly brazen falsehood. Banisadr had been impeached by the Iranian legislature in June 1981 and had fled to Paris the following month – thirteen years before the bombing.
Nisman also cited the testimony of Abolghassem Mesbahi, who called himself a “defector” from the Iranian intelligence service, that Iranian officials had made such a decision sometime in August 1993. But Mesbahi was known by US intelligence analysts as a “serial fabricator”, who had also told an obviously false story about Iranian involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Nisman failed to mention, moreover, that Mesbahi had given a secret 100-page deposition to Argentine investigators in 2000 in Mexico in which he had claimed the planning for the attack had begun in 1992.
Nisman’s was so convinced of Iran’s guilt that he was ready to see almost any fact as supporting evidence, even when there was an obvious reason for doubting its relevance. For example, he cited Rabbani’s shopping for a van “similar to the one that exploded in front of the AMIA building a few months later.” In fact, however, as I reported in 2008, the Argentine investigation files include the original intelligence report on the surveillance of Rabbani showing that Rabbani’s visit to the car dealer was not “a few months” before the bombing, but a full fifteen months earlier.
Despite the Argentine intelligence following Rabbani’s every move and tapping his telephones for all those months, Nisman cites nothing indicating that Rabbani did anything indicating his involvement in preparations for a terror bombing. The FBI official who assisted the investigation told me in a November 2007 interview that the use of phone metadata to suggest that Rabbani was in touch with an “operational group” nothing but “speculation”, and said that neither he nor officials in Washington had taken it seriously as evidence or Rabbani’s involvement.
The fact that Nisman’s two indictments related to Iran and AMIA were extremely tendentious obviously does not dispose of the question of who killed him. But whatever the reason for his being killed, it wasn’t because he had revealed irrefutable truths about AMIA and Argentine government policy.
Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. He can be contacted at porter.gareth50@gmail.com.
The Middle East Eye by Gareth Porter,
On Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015, Mr. Jamshid Dahmardeh returned home after 27 years of separation from his family.
Mr. Dahmardeh was taken as a war prisoner in an MKO – run cross-border operation to fight Iranian soldiers called Hanif during the Iran – Iraq war, in 1987.
Nejat Society, Sistan and Baluchestan office congratulates his return to Mr. Dahmardeh and his beloved family, wishing him happiness and prosperity.
With most respectful greetings to Mr. Edi Rama Prime Minister of Albania,
Your honor,
With all due respect, we would like to inform you that Iranian Pen club ( Kanon Iran Galam) consists of dissident senior ex-members of PMOI with more than 20 years of history with the PMOI whom are now Human rights activists and pursuing to save the lives of the rest of the members entangled in Camp Liberty in Iraq.
Our goal is to help the other members who have not yet been able to release themselves from the above said Cult to be able to join their family in the free world and start a new life. On this reason, we thank you and the government of Albania for your humanitarian efforts in accepting some of the members of People’s Mojahedin Organization which has removed these people away from the dangers of remaining in Iraq.
We believe that you and your government has demonstrated its commitment to human rights by taking this important step to save to lives of these unfortunate people. Unfortunately, but what we hear from Ex members of Mojahedin in Tirana is somehow disturbing. We hear that Maryam Rajavi is sending her top known agents from Paris and these agents, who are from her ‘Leadership Council’, are now trying to control the lives of the recently arrived people as they did in the Iraqi camps. Also, the Mojahedin Organization has taken advantage of this opportunity and has placed some of its commanders among the ordinary PMOI members who have been sent to Albania, in order to supervise and control them.
Once they arrive in Albania one of the first things all the new arrivals do is to contact their families and seek out other forms of support.
The refugees are given time limited support by the UN refugee agency accommodation and a small living allowance which is deemed sufficient for them to settle in their new country and make new lives for themselves.
And the MEK does not easily relinquish its control over these former members and has made every effort to prevent them from living independently. But more importantly, these new arrivals are desperate to tell their stories. They want to speak out about the suffering they endured, some for many, many years.
In this respect we would like to bring to your respectful attention the International Human’s Right Watch report in 2005. The report titled “‘No Exit’ – Human Rights Abuses inside the Mujahidin Khalq Camps Human Rights Watch, May 2005” reflects extensive violation of the human rights, although it was a drop out of the ocean. The report is based on the direct testimonies of a dozen former MKO members, including five who were turned over to Iraqi security forces and held in Abu Ghraib prison under Saddam Hussein’s government. The report details how dissident members of the shadowy Mujahidin Khalq Organization (MKO) were tortured, beaten and held in solitary confinement for years at military camps in Iraq after they criticized the group’s policies and undemocratic practices, or indicated that they planned to leave the organization. Amongst them Mr. Mohammad Hussein Sobhani a dissident member of the MKO after 20 years of activity in the Organization was jailed for eight years which was later handed over to Saddam Hussein being jailed in Abu Ghorab Prison and experiences severe tortures and psychological and physical mistreatments.
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/mena/iran0505/
We also would like to point at the reports of Mr. Alibakhsh Afarinandeh which has recently been released from this Mujahidin Cult and published in the Pejwak website. Mr. Afarinandeh explaines his and other dissident members’ imprisonment and tortures in 1994 in great detail.
http://www.pezhvakeiran.com/maghaleh-67274.html
Surely, The Family of refugees and Iranian people will not forget your great and humanitarian act of harboring their children in Albania. We are prepared to hand over the names and particulars of the discontented members and those who wish to defect from the organization as well as necessary files and documents.
With many thanks and regards
Iranian Pen club
Cc:
– Interior Minister of Albania
– UN Secretary General
– Embassy of USA in Germany
– Ministers of Affairs of the EU-
– Relevant MEPs
– Prime Minister of Iraq
