++ Last week Mohammad Eghbal,a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) wrote an article which was posted on MEK websites. The article was a rant and swearing badly against his two sisters in France who are running a campaign to help the people in Camp Liberty. This attracted a reaction from many Iranians outside Iran. Among them is Ghorbanali Hossein Nejad who worked with Eghbal in the MEK’s Arabic section for decades. He has explained why someone like this, an old man in his sixties from a highly respected and educated family, has written like a lumpen in the MEK system and has been so vulgar and offensive against his own sisters that he has even called them prostitutes.
++ Massoud Khodabandeh Facebooked a short note about Mohammad Eghbal and his sisters. Khodabandeh points out that the sisters are not against the MEK, rather they are internal critics. Form this it is clear that the problem for Rajavi is not criticism or critics or any other issue, his problem is how to keep Mohammad Eghbal inside the MEK. Eghbal was brought to Paris recently from Camp Liberty. This is the price he had to pay. He has had to estrange his sisters to ensure that he has no other physical or mental place to escape to, not even to them. Khodabandeh says, “Irrelevant of our different ideas and beliefs, I advise his sisters not to close the doors on him and to accept that this writing is from Rajavi himself and has nothing to do with their brother. And in whatever way they can they should pass this message to their brother, that they don’t disown him and he will be welcomed by them any time he comes out.”
++ The execution in Iran of MEK member Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani attracted various responses. Khosravi admitted that he was in direct contact with the MEK and had worked for them in the past. He provided intelligence from inside Iran to the MEK to give to MOSSAD. The IRI made public some of the documents he had passed, including military and other sensitive sites in Iran. The IRI clarified that he was not executed because he supported the MEK – pointing out that there are thousands of former MEK living freely in Iran who have not changed their beliefs and that Iran has no problem accommodating those beliefs – Khosravi was sentenced and executed for activities against the state on behalf of the MEK, including spying for Israel. Human rights organisations in the West have condemned the execution of Khosravi on the grounds of due legal process and opposing the death penalty. The US Department of State has also come out and condemned it. Prominent human rights activist Abdul Karim Lahiji, however, has gone further claiming he was clearly executed for his political beliefs. (He does not even say his political activities, but he does not offer any explanation of this.) Ironically he is a lawyer. Ironically none of these entities have ever condemned the even worse things that happen to members inside the MEK itself.
++ This week was the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini. Referencing the execution of Khosravi, a part of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speech was devoted to the West’s support for terrorism under the guise of human rights. He ended by saying the real enemy is not the brainwashed terrorists but those who feed them physically and mentally. Iran’s spokesman for the Foreign Ministry responded to the US State Department’s concern about the number of executions in Iran, pointing out that the US doesn’t have a leg to stand on while they kill people by drones and kill prisoners in places like Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Europe without trial. The spokesman said Khosaravi had undergone due process in a court of law, and according to our laws this is the punishment for spying. Observers and analysts inside Iran have written that the importance those in the West are placing on this specific execution is exactly because he was a spy for the MEK and MOSSAD and they are worried that this will increase the market price of agents sent to Iran because the danger has become more palpable. They point out that after the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists they have not succeeded in killing anyone else because their agents have all been tracked down and apprehended.
++ Farsi sites have been buzzing with exposures of the MEK’s agents who are actively trawling travel agencies and refugee camps in Europe to recruit the paid audience for the MEK’s June 20th rally in Paris. The speakers, as many point out, are already known creatures. In an article titled ‘Gholamreza Khosravi, victim of the Rajavi gang’s agenda’, Mohammad Alavi from Aryia Association in Paris has explained how the MEK have used this execution against Iran, but goes on to describe its specific use by Maryam Rajavi. In Paris the MEK are preparing large bill boards depicting Khosravi for the MEK’s annual rally on 20 June. This is so that Maryam Rajavi can sit underneath his image and claim him as her martyr as she did with the victims of self-immolation in 2003. She badly needs more blood. In addition, the MEK are desperate to pay any agent they can in Iran to find the family of Khosravi and convince someone from the family to be smuggled out of Iran to attend the rally in Paris as an MEK supporter. Alavi says that no one can condone execution for any reason, but using the issues of human rights and anti-death penalty to feed a terrorist organisation which itself claims to have killed 25,000 Iraqis and 17,000 Iranians is not something which will be washed away from the people who support it, and cannot be excused by saying “I’m getting paid”. You can’t claim fair exchange between blood for money.
In English:
++ Ahmed Qobadi in Mehr News writes about the MEK’s track record as a terrorist group and about the human rights abuses against its own members.
++ Press TV reports on the execution of Gholamreza Khosravi Savadjani who was “sentenced to death for providing documents and photos of Iran’s important centers including military sites as well as giving financial aid to the MKO and the media affiliated to the terror group. He had also tried to recruit for the terrorist organization. Khosravi Savadjani’s death sentence was approved by Iran’s Supreme Court after he was tried and sentenced at a Tehran branch of Islamic Revolution Court in the presence of his lawyer and the representative of the country’s prosecutor general.”
++ In a long analytical article for Middle East Eye, ‘Iran ponders its future in Syria – Iran’s support for the Syrian government is unflinching, but victory for its ally may not create the perfect regional outcome for Tehran’ Mahan Abedin writes about the MEK’s association with the issue of Syria. ““Jarba does not know who to meet in his foreign meetings”, that was the dismissive reaction by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to news of a meeting last week between Ahmad Jarba, the head of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, and Maryam Rajavi, the leader of a notorious Iranian opposition group… Jarba’s meeting with Rajavi is being widely seen in Tehran as a vindication of Iran’s Syria policy. By meeting Rajavi, whose group has killed over 17,000 Iranians since 1981, the Syrian opposition has sent an unmistakeable message of ill-will and hostility to Tehran. The meeting is also being interpreted as a sign of desperation on the part of the Syrian opposition who have been reduced to engaging with a discredited and exiled Iranian organisation.”
++ Mazda Parsi from Nejat Bloggers writes that the ‘MKO’s Irresponsible Fear-mongering Goes on’. “The Israeli backed MKO cult is determined to manipulate US policy. Claims about an Iranian “breakout” on the nuclear agreements are falsified. The MKO propaganda –led by Israel– repeats its fabrications with disturbing regularity. Neocon warmonger sponsors of the group also repeat after the MKO.”
++ Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of Iran Nuclear Scare told a Press TV interview that “he has evidence of MKO’s submission of documents to the German intelligence in 2004, claiming that Iran has been seeking to develop nuclear weapons. “And the MKO undoubtedly got them from Israel – A document that connects the MKO and Israel that the MKO had been laundering intelligence for the Israelis for years,” he said. Porter said there is “absolutely convincing evidence” that the MKO documents were “fabricated.” He said Israel and the United States started in 1983 fabricating documents against the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program by raising claims that Iran is running a “covert nuclear weapons program.””
June 06 2014