++ Several former MEK members attended meetings held by the S&D Group in the European Parliament about terrorism. Reza Sadeghi Jebelli contributing from the audience in one meeting said: ”you have the MEK here in this building right now (he showed them leaflets from the MEK) holding a meeting supposedly about human rights in Iran. If you have a terrorist group in your building then nothing you say about terrorism has any credibility. Clean your own house first.” Formers, however, say that when they talk individually with parliamentarians about the MEK they know them to be a cult and dismiss them with contempt.
++ This week Rajavi’s sites have been busy claiming that recent criticisms by formers and human rights activists are all ‘because the regime is afraid of us’ – the reasoning being that anyone who criticises us is an agent of the Iranian regime and ‘they’ all belong to the Iranian regime, therefore… Rajavi’s sites refer to the case of Shabnam Madadzadeh (see last week’s Digest) whose case embarrassed genuine human rights advocates who had previously said Iran had wrongly arrested and imprisoned her on national security charges, only to be proved wrong when the moment she was freed she aligned herself with the terrorist MEK. Those human rights groups which had supported her now denounce her. Rajavi just says ‘they are all agents of the Iranian regime’ and just as ridiculously she says ‘Madadzadeh is proof that we have young people in the MEK as well’.
From Tabriz, a trusted source and friend of Iran Interlink who has family inside the MEK wrote ‘Being in Tabriz I can assure Maryam Rajavi that only the government of Iran is keeping you alive, nobody else here cares a pinch about you. If it wasn’t for the government, nobody would hear of you. But I see why they do it. You are the example to point out the double-standards and hypocrisy of France, the UK and America. They are also able to claim ‘all my opposition is like you’.’
++ Mohammad Javad Hashemi Nejad, General Secretary of Habilian Association, had an interview with media in Tehran on the issue of Iran and Saudi Arabia. He said ‘when the Saudis started using the MEK through Al Arabiyeh and sending Prince Turki to talk in Paris and thereby opening up their use of MEK, we discovered what a tight hand the Saudis are holding. We didn’t know before how weak their hand is and we will not overvalue them again. The MEK is being
used as a loudspeaker for every other terror group that is being fed by the Saudis against Iran. But Iran has the situation under control and all their activities have been prevented and the people arrested. For example, during Arbaein there were over twenty teams with plots to conduct terror acts. Not one of them was successful and the perpetrators are now either dead or in prison.’
++ Mohammad Hussein Sobhani wrote article for Iran Pen Association arguing with various reasons and explanations that Maryam Rajavi has failed repeatedly to replace her husband Massoud as leader of the MEK. Sobhani says that ‘each time she tries to do what Massoud used to do, she fails miserably. Now the question remains, is there nobody in this organisation among all these people who is better than her? Why are they insisting she stays when it’s clear she can’t do the job?’
In English:
++ Former MEK members Isa Azadeh, Ghorbanali Hossein-Nejad and Reza Sadeghi Jebelli participated in the EU Press Club Conference during which they had the opportunity to speak with journalists, reporters and media staff from different European states such as Albania. The formers explained the situation of the MEK cult hostages, particularly after their relocation to Albania. They elaborated on different aspects of the cult’s manipulative techniques including isolation and forced celibacy. The former members shared their own experiences with the Conference attendees.
++ Speculation over President-elect Donald Trump’s potential cabinet appointments continued last week with articles covering various aspects of the conundrum but sharing one common denominator – Americans’ support for the Mojahedin Khalq terrorist group and the continued vexed question as to how such supporters might be placed to somehow engineer regime change in Iran during the Trump presidency.
++ The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) warned in article ‘Nuclear Deal Opponents Urge Military Confrontation with Iran’. A panel of lawmakers and policy met as the “hawkish” United Against Nuclear Iran organisation. NIAC reported that among those who attended, Senator Joe Lieberman had “appeared at a Capitol Hill event this week organized by the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a shadowy group formerly designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department. They have a long history of using violence and terror both against their own members as well as when they were serving as a military force for Saddam Hussein in Iraq.”
December 09, 2016