Ringleaders of the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization continue to bar meetings between families and MKO members in the terrorist group’s main training camp in Northern Iraq in a move to keep the confined group separated from the real world to keep a leash on the flow of information into and out of the camp.
The MKO ringleaders continue to insist on their inhuman policy while family members have camped out of the training base for over 16 months now to see their relatives.
MKO ringleaders have also cut all communication means and contacts between the camp residents and the outside world.
Families have, thus far, staged several protest outside the camp and called for the freedom of their relatives and children who are under various types of torture and pressure by their ringleaders inside the camp.
The MKO ringleaders are reported to be using torture and pressure on their own dissident members, barring the dissident members from leaving the organization and joining their families.
Earlier this month, an Iraq-based right group unveiled that ringleaders of the MKO have resorted to various forms of mass killing in a bid to exercise control over the group members and also to bring the group out of the current impasse in Iraq.
According to a report by Iraqi daily Motamar, also published by Edalat (Justice) Society web site – an organ of the families of the Iranian victims of terrorism – the Iraqi right group has sent serious warnings to civil society and human rights bodies as well as the Iraqi government about the ongoing humanitarian disaster in the MKO’s main training camp in Northern Iraq.
The Sahar Family Foundation also said that the MKO ringleaders are forcing the dissident members of the group to commit suicide, and if they refuse to do so, the leaders massacre defectors themselves.
The right group called on the Iraqi judiciary system, international court of justice and all international human rights bodies as well as the Iraqi and international media to take urgent action to stop the human catastrophe in the camp which, they said, now looks more like a slaughterhouse.
A November report by the Habilian Association, an Iran-based human rights group, said that under the direct order of MKO’s Ringleader Maryam Rajavi, leaders of the terrorist group in the Camp of New Iraq (formerly known as Camp Ashraf) allow their members to receive medical aids, healthcare and other services in return for given levels of cooperation.
Based on the order, dissident members are deprived of medicine and other medical services or, at least, face much hardship and difficulty in procuring their necessary medicines.
The right group added that the new measure came after protests remarkably increased inside the group, specially in the camp. Right groups are gravely concerned that a large number of MKO members may lose their lives soon if UN, human rights and Iraqi officials do not force the group leaders to end their tortures and pressures against the dissident members.
In relevant development, a report revealed in November that Ahmad Razzani, a veteran member of the MKO, had been killed inside the Camp.
According to an August report by the Habilian Association, the MKO leaders have increased their pressures and control over the members of the terrorist group to prevent possible defection and escape by unsatisfied members.
Reports also said that all exit and entry doors have been locked and none of the members, even those suffering from acute diseases and illnesses, are allowed to leave the camp.
MKO ringleaders have ordered the camp guards to stage snap inspections of the group’s members and their personal belongings under the pretext of finding the lost weapons.
Such behaviors have sparked discontent among a number of MKO members and made them escape the camp and return to their anguished families.
The MKO, whose main stronghold is in Iraq, is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.
Before an overture by the EU, the MKO was on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations subject to an EU-wide assets freeze. Yet, the MKO puppet leader, Maryam Rajavi, who has residency in France, regularly visited Brussels and despite the ban enjoyed full freedom in Europe.
The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).
Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.
A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.
According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.
Numerous articles and letters posted on the Internet by family members of MKO recruits confirm reports of the horrific abuse that the group inflicts on its own members and the alluring recruitment methods it uses.
The most shocking of such stories includes accounts given by former British MKO member Ann Singleton and Mustafa Mohammadi — the father of an Iranian-Canadian girl who was drawn into the group during an MKO recruitment campaign in Canada.
Mohammadi recounts his desperate efforts to contact his daughter, who disappeared several years ago – a result of what the MKO called a ‘two-month tour’ of Camp Ashraf for teenagers.
He also explains how the group forces the families of its recruits to take part in pro-MKO demonstrations in Western countries by threatening to kill their loved ones.
Lacking a foothold in Iran, the terrorist group recruits ill-informed teens from Iranian immigrant communities in Western states and blocks their departure afterwards.
The group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.
Leaders of the group have been fighting to shed its terrorist tag after a series of bloody anti-Western attacks in the 1970s, and nearly 30 years of violent struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In recent months, high-ranking MKO members have been lobbying governments around the world in the hope of acknowledgement as a legitimate opposition group.
The UK initiative, however, prompted the European Union to establish relations with the exiled organization now based in Paris. The European Court of First Instance threw its weight behind the MKO in December 2009 and annulled its previous decision to freeze its funds.
The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.
The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.
The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.
Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who also argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.
The MKO has been in Iraq’s Diyala province since the 1980s.
Iraqi security forces took control of the training base of the MKO at Camp Ashraf – about 60km (37 miles) north of Baghdad – in 2009 and detained dozens of the members of the terrorist group.
The Iraqi authority also changed the name of the military center from Camp Ashraf to the Camp of New Iraq.