Sara Delban is one of the children of Mujahed parents. Although she never experienced the life in Camp Ashraf, she is considered a victim of Mujahedin-e Khalq’s cult-like system.
Now in her forties, she is a critic of both Iranian government and the Cult of Rajavi. She believes that the ideology of the cult caused her mother’s devotion to the MEK and the collapse of her family.
She writes:
“I have never been in the MEK for a single day. I was not among the Ashraf children. My mother was a member of the MEK before the 1979 revolutuion. She was one of the academic elites at Tehran University who found her way into the group and dragged my father into this pit. She was arrested with my father in 1961. My father was released a year later and my mother two years later, but they continued their activities. My mother’s family was generally part of the 1979 uprising in some way. They were either Tudeh, or Fada’i guerrillas (Communists), or Mujaheds. But my father came from a traditional, religious, and almost non-political family that generally supported Khomeini, and he joined the MEK because of my mother’s love.”
Sara was only three years old when her parents left her behind in Iran and joined the MEK in Iraq. However, Sara finds it a blessing that she owes to her grandmother because her mother tried to take her to Iraq and trap her in the trap of the MEK, but she was unsuccessful due to her grandmother’s wisdom. She writes about this:
“My mother sought to transfer me to Iraq around 1989 to 1990, and we did not know until then that my father had been killed. I remember once that two of my mother’s relatives came to my grand ma’s house to take me and my brother from Pakistan to Iraq. My grand ma’s opposition prevented my transfer. She was my greatest supporter until she died during the coronavirus pandemic and then I left Iran.”
The only information available about Sara Delban is the content she personally shares on her X social media account. The young woman has pinned a widely-shared video from the documentary Children of Camp Ashraf on her account. The video shows moving scenes from 1991, when children from Camp Ashraf are loaded onto buses to be smuggled out of Iraq and eventually end up in orphanages, foster families and MEK’s team houses in Europe and North America.
In the video’s caption, Delban refers to an important aspect of her own and his brother’s lives and the oppression his parents suffered because of their allegiance to the MEK:
“Maybe if it weren’t for my grandmother’s resistance against transferring me to Iraq and Ashraf, I would be in this film because of my mother’s betrayal and stupidity! Maybe today I would be a prisoner in the Cult of Rajavi, with a green or red scarf sitting behind an account, posting the hashtag #NoSheikhNoShah! Someone like my brother. Sometimes, fate can be so cruel.”
Sara’s father was killed in one of the MEK terrorist operations. As a daughter of a female member of the MEK, every new piece of information she receives about the internal relations of the MEK reveals horrifying truths about her parents. Perhaps hearing about Massoud Rajavi’s mass marriage with the women of the organization’s elite council has caused her to share these words recently:
“For three months, the thought of ‘I’m happy my father was killed’ has been tormenting me! Right from the day I found out that my mother, like all members of the MEK’s Elite Council, danced naked in front of Masoud Rajavi with a few other people and was then married to him”
This post by Sara Delban has received special attention and surprise from users. Many users from different political stances have expressed disgust towards the MEK and praised Sara’s courage in telling these bitter truths about her mother.
She is an example of more than a thousand children who have been harmed in various ways by their involvement with the MEK. She speaks of strange contradictions that many of the MEK’s children have experienced.
