“We were enduring the conditions of Iraqi camps when one day, they announced over loudspeakers that we get in line in the yard. We got in line. A few minutes later, a few men wearing suit and tie and two women arrived. A man –I later realized that he was Mehdi Abrishamchi—began to speak. He said, ‘We come from the Mujahedin Khalq. Brother Massoud says hello to you. We feel pity for you. We know that you suffer difficulties here. We are sorry and we want to take you to our own camp.’ Then Abbas Davari started speaking repeating the same nonsense.” Fazel recounts.
Fazel Farhadi was serving his army service as a soldier when he was taken as a war prisoner by Iraqi forces in Iran-Iraq war. The Iraqi forces took Fazel and other Iranian POWs to their camps which were terribly in shortage of food and hygiene. Fazel and a few of other POWs were deceived by the MEK agents to join the group’s camp in Iraq.
Fazel Farhadi
That day, MEK recruiters served the Iranian prisoners with lunch. During the lunch time, the prisoners used the opportunity to ask them some questions. Fazel asked Abbas Davari, “If you save me from here, when will you take me to Iran?” Davari promised him to take him to Iran after he joined the group’s so-called army National Liberation Army (NLA). “We will soon go to Iran and you will return to your family after you join the NLA,” Davari told Fazel.
“In the NLA you are free to take a few days off every week,” Davari fabricated some lies about their army. “You are even paid for the days you are off.”
The MEK agents left the camp after the lunch but they got back a week later. “This time they had brought us some gifts,” Fazel writes. “They said, ‘we are going to go to Iran in a few days and if you do not join us, you are not Iranian and we will not take you to Iran.’ We believed their fake promises. So, I and some of other prisoners told them our names and asked them to take us. They took us to Camp Ashraf two days later. Our dark days started from that very day.”
Initially, the Iranian prisoners were received warmly at camp Ashraf but just a few weeks later, they were treated like slaves; forced to labor without any payment. “I was exhausted with the repetitive and sever daily labors so I asked a commander to give me a few hours off to go to the town. He laughed at me! ‘What kind of off!?’ he asked, ‘Here we are in Iraq. We are fighting. There is no off here. Who told you such a nonsense!?’ I told him that a man named Abbas Davari had told me about it but he said that I was wrong. ‘Here is the place of war and there is no day off in war.’ he said.”
Fazel started complaining about the false promises and the lies that MEK recruiters had told them and asked to leave camp Ashraf to get back to the Iraqi camp. He was not allowed and instead he was threatened to death. “I suddenly found out that the lunch and gifts were a trap to capture me and other POWs,” Fazel states.
“Rajavi and his commanders are just a bunch of fraudulent liars,” he says. “I spent 16 years of my life in the cult of Rajavi, in a closed atmosphere. I waisted my life in the MEK. Rajavi resorts to any dirty deals to achieve his dire ambitions. I hope that Rajavi and his allies will be brought to trial in near future.”