++ Twelve more Camp Liberty residents have been transferred to Tirana bringing the total in the last twenty days to 144. In the past two weeks, nine of them have separated from the MEK.
++ Farsi comments on the report of UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Ahmad Shahid, this week have welcomed the fact that although he spoke with MEK representatives in Geneva, they have not been able to influence his report. Shahid’s report does not reflect any of the MEK’s views. They wanted to feed him violence and regime change, but his report showed the vast distance between the MEK and genuine human rights advocates. In interviews Shahid said he had spoken with the Iranians in Geneva about the excessive number of executions, noting that most are drug related. He also welcomed the lifting of sanctions as a positive move for human rights.
++ This week AP reported that Maysam P will appear in court in Germany on charges of spying against the MEK. The MEK had reported this on their own websites before the AP report and named the individual as Maysam Panahi, which suggests they had prior knowledge of the case. Panahi is a former member of the MEK who escaped Camp Liberty in 2012 and was transferred to Germany by the UNHCR. Massoud Khodabandeh wrote in Facebook that ‘irrelevant to those who hold the MEK’s leash, it is clear that if anyone wanted to infiltrate the MEK to get information to pass to Iranian Intelligence services, they would certainly not spend years running away from the organisation and would, from the start, have stayed with them. It is as though a person who needs to find something in one particular room, packs up their belongings and moves to another city!’ Khodabandeh pointed out that ‘if those holding the leash believe that this kind of publicity which paints the MEK as victims will bring a higher price for them to be laid on the table for payment, they are vastly mistaken. The MEK is no longer a card to be played, it is finished. Even then, if, for some reason, they believe that Iranian Intelligence are completely mad or insanely stupid and are still interested in finding internal news on the MEK, then the logical suggestion would be for them to find an infiltrator inside the MEK in Auvers sur Oise rather than somebody who risked their life to escape the MEK and get to safety.’
In English:
++ Dalia Mae, Gumshoe News, ‘Destabilizers for Hire at Camp Liberty’. An article ridiculing the 7th of October (2015) Committee on Armed Services US Senate Hearing which heard testimony on the Iranian Influence in Iraq and the case of Camp Liberty. “And guess who was chairing the committee – John McCain…” In the meeting Joseph Lieberman iterated a typical Neoconservative misconception about Iran, the MEK and its currency as an opposition: “…And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian. We ought to be supporting them. This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence it’s going to — every piece of evidence is the contrary. So, I hope we can find a way — we used to do this, not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they’re a — they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do, because it would threaten the survival of the regime, which, from every objective indicator I can see, is a very unpopular regime in Iran.”
++ Habilian Association issued a report on the 2nd International Congress on 17000 Iranian Terror Victims featuring the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and a number of high administrative officials which was held on August 31, 2015. The report said, “Iran has the right to demand members of MKO from other countries and international organizations as they have committed crimes in Iran.” MKO’s extradition to Iran is an inevitable task and the group’s betrayals and crimes are to such a level that Iran must take all necessary measures to deal with the group …”
++ Mazda Parsi in Nejat Bloggers writes ‘Massoud Rajavi dead or alive? Who cares?’ in response to the testimony of retired Colonel Wesley at the Senate Armed Forces Hearing. Parsi writes, “whether Massoud Rajavi is dead or alive is definitely critical to two main groups not to the lobbyist or lawmakers. The first group who absolutely want to know about Rajavi’s whereabouts are victims of the terrorist acts of the MKO. Thousands of Iranian families are victims of the MKO’s blind mortar attacks, bombings and assassinations, as well as Iraqi Shiites and Kurds whose uprising was suppressed by the MKO – as Saddam’s Private Army – in 1991.
“The second group includes members of the Cult of Rajavi who lost years of their lives, isolated from the free world, under the manipulative cult-like system of the group or who are still taken as hostages in the cult. Families of the MKO hostages also suffer the cruelty of the MKO leaders, particularly Massoud Rajavi who first created the system of abusive and torturing of its members in the cult.
“Victims of Massoud Rajavi await his “appearance” because he should be brought to justice for the atrocities he committed against his own followers, and civilians in Iran and Iraq.”
++ “Rockets near Baghdad airport kill soldiers, Iranian refugees
“BAGHDAD (AP) — A barrage of rockets slammed late Thursday into a former military base near the Baghdad International Airport that houses an Iranian refugee group, killing three Iraqi soldiers, officials said. The Iranian exiles said at least 20 of their people died in the attack.
“Iraqi police said 16 rockets hit Camp Liberty, a former U.S. base that now houses the exiled Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. They said at least 16 soldiers guarding the camp were also wounded while the Iranian group, known as MEK, said dozens of Iranian refugees were wounded as well.”
++ According to Press TV “In an interview with Fars news agency on Friday, Wathiq al-Battat, the leader of Iraq-based Mukhtar Army, claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks [on Camp Liberty].
++ Iran Interlink commenting on the attack on Camp Liberty accuses Massoud and Maryam Rajavi of personal responsibility for the deaths. Their ideology can be stated simply as ‘shed blood for publicity’. Their refusal to allow the residents of the camp in Iraq to be taken to safety by international agencies in spite of themselves claiming such an attack was inevitable demonstrates their culpability for the deaths of the victims.