++ Several Iraqi news agencies published news that Maryam Rajavi met with the Saudi ambassador to France. According to sources at the Saudi embassy Rajavi has asked for the MEK to be used in Yemen to fight the Houthis on behalf of the Saudis and has presented the MEK’s CV from the time of Saddam to advertise her cult. [Editor’s note: The average age of MEK members is over 55.]
++ The MEK will hold its annual celebration of armed struggle on 13 June at Villepinte near Paris. Evidence is emerging as before that the MEK is compiling hired speakers and a paid audience. Each year the MEK pays hundreds of students and needy people to travel to Paris where they can enjoy a cheap weekend break on condition they spend two or three hours at the rally clapping and waving flags. The Villepinte show will also act to launch the book by long term MEK lobbyist Struan Stevenson. The book is an attempt to whitewash his support for the MEK by spinning it as a humanitarian gesture. While the MEK prepares in Villepinte to pretend it is a peaceful, democratic opposition, the MEK’s Farsi websites and media are on overdrive in support of ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, referring to these vicious, lawless killers as “tribal leaders”. In its papers, the MEK viciously attacks the government of Iraq for re-taking Ramadi.
++ After MEK operative Mehran Kakavand attacked Mansour Nazari in Paris last week, many commentators said they recognised him from photographs and knew him personally inside the MEK. Such witnesses explained that Kakavand had undergone specialist training with Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard to learn to kill people with his bare hands. In this respect they point out that he failed in his mission this time because of public scrutiny (French police were at the picket). Complaints were addressed to the French government asking why Saddam-trained killers are operating there.
++ The Investigative judge in the case of the MEK and Mehdi Abrishamchi added a new claim of violent activity, defamation and intimidation of witnesses to the charges. This new case was brought by Mohammad Karami who presented his evidence to the judge. In the previous week a similar, evidenced case brought by Ghorban Ali Hossein Nejad was added when he showed defamatory leaflets to the judge and described MEK threats to kill him if he gave evidence.
++ This week marks the anniversary of 4th Khordad – when the founders of the MEK were executed by the Shah. Farsi sites published articles with two distinct views. One view is that the current MEK and Rajavi have no connection to the original aims and ideals of the MEK. Another view is that because it was founded with the belief of pursuing political aims through violence, it has ended up exactly where it always would have regardless, with MOSSAD and ISIS and etc.
++ On the nuclear issue – some commentators ask why the National Council of Resistance of Iran has a website with six or seven languages but nothing in Farsi. What relevance does the NCRI have to Iranians in that case?
In English:
++ Anne Khodabandeh of Iran Interlink attended the FECRIS Conference in Marseille as a representative of a UK charity, The Family Survival Trust. She reported a highly successful Conference to which she contributed by briefing Serge Blisko, head of Miviludes, on the possibility of analysing and confronting terrorism without falling into the false debate about religion.
(FECRIS is the Europe wide Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Cults and Sects. FECRIS operates at an international level with representation at the UN.)
++ Mazda Parsi of Nejat Bloggers says ‘Mrs Rajavi, Your Propaganda Just Doesn’t Work Well’. The article uses an article by Eldar Mamedov of the European Parliament to pick apart the MEK’s failed attempt to interfere with parliamentary business through undue influence.
++ Iran Interlink gave an analysis of what might be behind the publication of a book by long term MEK lobbyist Struan Stevenson. From the pre-sales blurb, the book, titled ‘Self-Sacrifice’ appears to be Stevenson’s attempt to re-frame his support for the MEK as a humanitarian gesture in spite of being, by his own admission, being warned off by the UK government and MI5. Iran Interlink suggested the MEK’s motive behind publication of this book is that it provides (perhaps unbeknown to Stevenson) fabricated ‘ammunition’ for its regime change agenda which it can use to attack Iran.