Ali Mohammad Rahimi Alashti, announced his defection from the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) on New Year’s Eve. He left the MEK’s camp Ashraf 3 in Manez and joined the office of Nejat Society in Tirana.
According to his announcement, he was in the MEK for 34 years. “I was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war and I was taken as a war prisoner by Iraqi forces in 1886,” he says. “I was transferred to Iraqi POW camp and I was kept there for 4 years.”
In 1990, the war was over but the POWs had not been exchanged. The MEK recruiters came to the disastrous Iraqi POW camps and tried to convince the Iranian prisoners that the MEK’s camp was a better place to stay.
Rahimi joined the MEK but soon he found out that it was not a better place in any way. “I should note that the entire 34 years that I was in the MEK, I witnessed nothing except for lie, deception and fraud,” he states, “We were under the most severe mental torture in the brainwashing sessions of the MEK.”
When the group was relocated in Albania, the cult-like ruling kept on working. Based on Rahimi’s testimony, once the MEK was settled in a European country, it was not reformed to a better organization but the restrictions and cult-like pressure even deteriorated.
Last year, he finally asked the group officials to allow him to leave the group. “The daily routines were boring and exhausting,” he explains why he left. “I could not see any future for my life. There was no possibility to contact my family so I decided to leave the group.”
The MEK leaders did not let him go immediately. They forced him to stay for one more year. During the last year of his stay in Ashraf 3, he endured more mind control meetings but, he was determined to leave.
He closes his announcement letter by saying: “Today, I announce my defection from the MEK. I joined Nejat Society Albania and from this time I will have no relationship with the MEK. I am going to be by the side of Nejat Society in order to fulfill its humanitarian objectives.”