Camp Ashraf Affairs

Call for an end to MKO hunger strike

Anglican Church leader backs MKO supporters
The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for an end to a hunger strike outside the US Embassy in London by supporters of the terrorist Mujahedeen-e-Khalq Organization (MKO).

The supporters are protesting against the treatment of some 3,000 MKO members, whom have been confined to Camp Ashraf in Iraq since the US invasion of the country in 2003.

Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Church, on Monday expressed deploration for the conditions of the camp, adding that it was a humanitarian issue "of real magnitude and urgency," AFP reported.

The United States, Canada, Iraq and Iran have designated the MKO as a terror organization. It was only recently removed from the Council of the European Union’s terror list.

The group is responsible for many acts of terrorism in Iran, helping former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the massacre of Iraqis, and killing civilian and military personnel working for the US Department of State.

The US military officially turned control of the camp — which houses MKO members regarded by NATO forces as protected under the Geneva Conventions — to the new Iraqi government on January, 2009.

Residents of the camp claim that an Iraqi raid there in July left several people dead. The demonstrators in London, meanwhile, are asking Washington to reclaim responsibility for Camp Ashraf.

Baghdad has repeatedly vowed to close the camp, but Williams, who has met with several of the protesters over the past few days, said returning the MKO members to Iran endangered their lives, urging authorities to investigate the matter.

He further added that a UN monitoring team must be established to visit the camp.

September 22, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Dr. Rowan William support for Saddam’s Private army

Archbishop of Canterbury stresses US, Iraqi governments have duty to protect People’s Mujahedeen from abuse

Dr. Rowan William support for Saddam's Private army LONDON – The head of the Church of England said Sunday that Iraq and the United States have a duty to protect Iranian refugees in a camp in Iraq from violence or abuse.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said events at Camp Ashraf northeast of Baghdad "constitute a humanitarian and human rights issue of real magnitude and urgency".

"There is a strong argument in terms of international law that the Ashraf residents are ‘protected persons’," he said in a statement.

Iraqi forces launched a deadly raid on the camp, in Diyala province, in July, killing 11 people, raising concerns about residents’ safety.

Iraq gained sovereignty over the camp on January 1, following the expiry of a UN mandate that had given US forces responsibility for the camp.

"Both the government of Iraq and the government of the United States — as the agency responsible for the transfer of the residents to another jurisdiction — have an obligation to secure the rights of these residents and to defend them from violence or abuse."

The archbishop said a UN monitoring group should be established to visit the camp, which is home to 3,500 People’s Mujahedeen members and their families.

Williams, who met a group of Ashraf supporters last week, urged protesters in Britain to end their hunger strike in support of the camp residents.

US ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill earlier this month vowed to press the Iraqi government, which the Mujahedeen say answers to Tehran, to live up to assurances to treat the residents humanely and make sure they are not repatriated to Iran.

The People’s Mujahedeen, an Islamic movement, was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran. It has subsequently fought to oust the clerical regime which took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The group set up Camp Ashraf in the 1980s — when former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was at war with Iran — as a base to operate against the Tehran government.

September 22, 2009 0 comments

Camp Ashraf – Mojahedin Khalq – UK says Geneva Convention does not apply

Iraq: Human Rights

Sir John Stanley: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what Camp Ashraf - Mojahedin Khalq - UK says Geneva Convention does not apply representations he has made to the Iraqi Government on the deaths and injuries to protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention following the recent attack on Camp Ashraf by Iraqi forces; and if he will make a statement. [290777]

Chris Bryant: Our ambassador in Iraq has written to the Iraqi authorities to ask for a review into the recent events at the camp. Officials from our embassy in Baghdad are continuing to follow developments, and will shortly undertake a further visit to the camp.

Our view remains that the residents of Camp Ashraf are not entitled to ‘protected persons’ status as the Fourth Geneva Convention ceased to apply in Iraq after 28 June 2004, following the end of active hostilities and occupation.

Chris Bryant, House of Parliament,

September 21, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Hunger Strike: Idiot Behavior or Negative Reaction

Imposing hunger strike on Ashraf residents is a reality. It is a being which is now showing off in Camp Ashraf but it is not a truth. According to MEK leaders “the reality is the wisdom”: a formula that was only made to intrigue public opinion. This rationale is based on covering the true facts. Hunger Strike: Idiot Behavior or Negative Reaction

In political terms, hunger strike is a behavior that is acted as the last resort to achieve some logic demands while MEK leaders imposed hunger strike on the members to draw American attention and protection to themselves although the isolated members are totally unaware of the regional or international affairs going on.

With their silly demand, Rajavi’s gang is in fact driving to an amazing paradox. They forgot their reaction to September 11th disastrous attack on twin towers of WTC which ended with the death of thousands of innocent Americans and non-Americans.

At the time, Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Azdanlou held a public meeting in Camp Bagher zade, celebrating the event, cheering with victorious gestures.

Massoud Rajavi told his brainwashed members:”this was the reactionary Islam to do this to America, Wait for the revolutionary Islam when it shows its iron fist”.

During the meeting he tried to combine the violent acts of Usama Bin Laden with MEK’s terrorist trends, to conclude his own plan for the audience. In the September 11th meeting at Camp Bagher zade, he said:”If those courageous forces of Usama Bin Laden who are not well organized and are only able to commit military acts could enter our organization, they would be able to achieve many other objectives.”

In fact, Rajavi believed that terrorist acts should be led in MEK manner under its coherent organizational system, and then the objectives would be better achieved.

Thinking deeply about the ill mind of MEK’s ideological leader who just thinks of terror and killing to achieve power, brings questions on the motive of current hunger strike in Camp Ashraf. How could MKO leaders ask for favor of Americans whom they cheered their massacre on Sep.11th. A look at the two contradictory events recalls us that hunger strike of Ashraf residents is a deceitful behavior for vain goals.

The recent report issued by RAND notifies the motives of MEK leader for spying for the US and receiving the support of American officials.

It is clear that American political, military and security officials are determined to stop using MKO since their role is expired. Thus victimizing Ashraf residents, forcing them to go on hunger strike, is an idiot behavior which is like a suicide. But as usual the leaders of MKO will not bear the least expenses; instead they use the blood of the residents as the fuel of their propaganda machine. The members are the only ones to pay the raison of Rajavi’s blind strategy.

By Arash Rezaiee

September 13, 2009 0 comments

USA

U.S. will stick to plan for Iraq pullout

U.S. will stick to plan for Iraq pullout – [U.S. monitoring MEK situation at Camp Ashraf]

The United States expects to keep to its plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within a year despite a spate of bomb attacks, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday.

"During this year we’ll ensure that our troops are withdrawn on schedule, by the president’s timetable," U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In their place would be a "strong healthy relationship between the U.S. and Iraq," he said.

U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein and 130,000 troops still remain to help secure the country and train Iraqi forces. They withdrew from urban centers in June.

President Barack Obama has set a deadline of August 2010 for the removal of U.S. combat forces and all American troops are to be withdrawn by the end of 2011. Some 4,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died and millions displaced in the past six years.

Hill said the Aug. 19 bombings that killed nearly 100 people at the Iraqi finance and foreign ministries had been "particularly horrifying" but he believed the Iraqi people rejected a new cycle of violence.

"The bombings in recent months show that we still have to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq that tries to rekindle violence," said Hill, who has been ambassador since April. "To the great credit of the Iraqi people, they have not risen to the bait."

The top U.S. commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Charles Jacoby, said he believed that most of the high-profile attacks since June had been carried out by al Qaeda, and that any accelerated U.S. troop withdrawal may hinge on whether those attacks subsided.

DISSIDENTS
"It’s too early really to say right now whether the operational environment is going to support accelerated troop withdrawals. We’ll be ready to do that if we’re asked to and if we think that the security environment has improved," Jacoby told reporters at the Pentagon in a video-conference from Iraq.

"One of the questions is how much longer al Qaeda can continue these types of high-profile attacks. They are not frequent … we will see if they punch themselves out."

In the Senate, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said that if Iraqis rejected a bilateral security pact with the United States in a possible referendum next year, "then I believe we have no choice but to withdraw all of our forces as quickly as we can."

Hill also said the United States was monitoring the status of Iranian dissidents who were arrested in Iraq in July when Iraqi security forces moved into an Iranian exile camp.
He said U.S. officials had sought and received assurances from Iraq that the 36 detainees would be treated humanely and not sent back to Iran.
"We have made it very clear to the Iraqi government, that we are interested in the well being of these people, the preservation of their human rights; that they should not be forcibly repatriated to Iran," Hill said.

Residents of Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border say the Iraqi government killed at least seven people when security forces moved in on July 28, an incident that raises concerns about the dwindling U.S. influence in Iraq. Thirty-six camp residents were arrested by Iraqi police on charges of rioting.
Camp Ashraf is home to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) dissident group, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Iraq and Iran. The U.S. military had awarded the 3,500 camp residents protected status after they agreed to surrender weapons in 2004.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous)
By Susan Cornwell

September 12, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization members' families

Sha’aban Izakian Family Worry about the fate of their son residing in Ashraf

Nejat Society Mazandaran Branch visit Sha’aban Izakian Family

Nejat Society, Mazandaran Office reported that its members visited family members of Sha’aban Izakian. They succeeded to see his old mother, together with a number of recently defected members.
Nejat Society Mazandaran Branch visit Sha'aban Izakian Family
During the visit, the brother asked about the situation of Ashraf residents. One of the defectors explained the current situation ruling the cult in Camp Ashraf while the old mother was listening to him carefully. Then she began talking of her memoirs of his son “Musa”.
After, she listened to what others said about the actual condition of Camp Ashraf and the recent incidents; she got so upset and worried about the fate of her son who hasn’t contacted them for years.
The mother was moved by visiting the ex-members of MKO who succeeded to return home.
She was so motivated to see Musa again that she cursed Rajavi as the person who caused the separation of her son from her speaking of other disasters Rajavi caused on their neighbors and friends, she said:
Nejat Society Mazandaran Branch visit Sha'aban Izakian Family “Rajavi ruined a lot of families in this quarter. Kamran Khala’tbari and Iraj Taleshi are two of our neighbors who are now captured in Camp Ashraf. Hamide Kouzehgar was also in Ashraf but she died there due to cancer and was buried there too. The house behind ours is her Father’s.”
Mustafa shaa’ban Izakian, Musa’s brother showed his deep concern on the fate of his brother, asking Nejat Society to help them visit their brother and release him from the organization which has always used its members as tools of Rajavi’s ambition.
At the end, Mrs. Izakian condemned the acts of MKO during the eight years of Iran-Iraq war and asked for serious moves to release his son from Iraq.

September 10, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK as Human bargaining chips in deals with Iran

Seven summers ago, in a crowded conference room of a Washington hotel, an Iranian exile leader gave the first detailed public account of Iran’s until-then secret nuclear projects at the cities of Natanz and Arak. It greatly turned up the volume of a seemingly endless international controversy over Iran’s nuclear intentions.

The disclosures, on August 14, 2002, did little to earn the group that made them, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), merit points from the U.S. government. A year later, the Washington office of the NCRI, the political offshoot of Iran’s Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) resistance movement, was shut. The State Department placed the group on its list of terrorist organizations. (The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, had been given that designation in 1997).

Now, another five summers later, two dozen MEK supporters are on hunger strike across from the White House to exhort the U.S. government to stick to promises to protect some 3,500 members of the organization in a camp north of Baghdad. Iraqi forces stormed Camp Ashraf in late July and the MEK says nine residents were killed in the initial assault. Two have since died of their injuries.

Hunger strikes in solidarity with the residents of Camp Ashraf were also taking place in Berlin, London, Brussels and Ottawa and at the camp itself. They draw attention to an arrangement that was both unique and bizarre – an enclave of people labeled terrorists by Washington but protected by U.S. military forces – and speak volumes about erratic U.S. policies on a group hated by Iran’s theocracy.

Those at Camp Ashraf, including around 1,000 women, have become, in effect, bargaining chips in the complicated relationship between the United States, Iraq and Iran. The raid on the camp coincided with a visit to Iraq by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. What better way for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to demonstrate that the Iraqis, not the Americans, are in charge now that Iraqi troops have assumed control under the Status of Forces Agreement signed last year?

What better way, too for Maliki, once derided as an American puppet, to show Iran’s hard-liners and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated government wants to tighten relations with Tehran? The raid on Camp Ashraf drew applause from Iranian officials, including Ali Larijani, the hard-line speaker of parliament. "Praiseworthy," he said, "even though it is rather late."

The MEK was founded in 1965 by leftist students and intellectuals opposed to the Shah of Iran, and it played a part in the Islamic revolution that toppled his rule in 1979. But it soon fell out with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and was banned in 1981, when it began a campaign of bombings and assassinations of government officials.

WARNINGS OF HUMANITARIAN DISASTER

In 1986, under an agreement with Saddam Hussein, it established bases in Iraq from where it launched cross-border raids into Iran.

Since 2003, when U.S. forces disarmed MEK guerrillas in Camp Ashraf and took over its protection, the government in Iran has repeatedly demanded that they be turned over to Iran. Their prospects there would be bleak, more so at a time when the Iranian government is staging mass trials of people who demonstrated against Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June.

In an open letter to President Barack Obama, in the form of a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times, MEK supporters this week warned of a humanitarian disaster unless U.S. forces reassumed control, at least temporarily. "The long-term solution to the problem is the presence in Ashraf of United Nations forces or at least a U.N. monitoring mission."

This is not the first time that the MEK has served as a bargaining chip in Middle Eastern politics. The group was placed on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations in 1997 at a time when the Clinton administration hoped the move would facilitate opening a dialogue with Iran and its newly elected president, Mohammad Khatami, who was seen as a moderate.

The European Union put the MEK on its terrorist blacklist five years later. Critics of the decision saw it as kowtowing to Iranian demands to avoid harming important trade relations. After years of legal wrangling, the EU took the MEK off its list of banned terrorist organizations on Jan. 26, a decision that infuriated Tehran.

Somewhat ironically for a country described as the world’s "most active state sponsor of terrorism" by the U.S. State Department, Iran said the EU’s decision meant Europe had "distanced itself from the path of the international community in fighting terror."

The Obama administration has shown no sign of even considering taking the MEK off the terrorist list and thus further complicate its already complicated relations with Iran. Is abandoning the people at Camp Ashraf to an uncertain fate an option?

Bernd Debusmann August 20th, 2009

September 9, 2009 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

As US Eases Out, Iraq Takes Control of Terrorist Camp

We cannot accept the presence of such organisation inside Iraq

The women formed a human chain while the men chanted, confronting Iraqi troops moving into their compound. Gunfire rang out, and the soldiers waded in with batons, wooden bats and automatic weapons.

As US Eases Out, Iraq Takes Control of Terrorist Camp

By the end, officials said, 11 Iranian exiles were dead _ shot, beaten or run over by military vehicles.

Throughout the confrontation, American soldiers who once protected the Iranian opposition group stood by. According to U.S officials, they had no legal authority to intervene. One video taken by the exiles even shows soldiers get into a white SUV and roll up their windows as the bloodied men plead for help.

The deadly melee at Camp Ashraf, the base of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, provides a glaring example of what can go wrong as the U.S. military scales back and the Shiite-led Iraqi government flexes its muscles.

The U.S. military guarded the camp since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 under an agreement that made its 3,400 residents "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions. The military stopped observing the agreement after a new security accord with the Baghdad government took effect in January, U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Frayne said.

Responsibility for the camp then passed to the Iraqi government, which promised not to use force against the group. A small contingent of U.S. military police still monitors the camp, but the military said they were under orders not to intervene in the July 28 confrontation.

"We could not become decisively engaged with a situation that really is up to the sovereign Iraqi government to settle in a peaceful manner as they have assured us that they would do," a senior U.S. military official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"Even in a situation that allowed engagement, we didn’t have nearly the amount of forces present to jump in the middle of this fray," he said.

Iraqi officials said they were trying to establish a police station at the camp. And there are numerous other issues on which the Iraqi government could go its own way _ like the fate of anti-al-Qaida Sunni militias, which are strongly supported by the U.S. but now seem to get less backing from Iraq’s Shiite leaders, or the multiple disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdish north, which the U.S. has sought to mollify lest they explode into violence.

"These kinds of things are only going to happen more often and in other places, and the U.S. has to decide what are we going to do about it," said Army Reserve Col. Gary Morsch, who was stationed at Camp Ashraf and maintains close ties with the exiles there.

The bloodshed brought rare criticism by Washington of the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. But U.S. officials tried to balance it with the larger policy goal of handing over greater responsibility to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while U.S. forces reduce their presence.

"Iraq was trying to extend its sovereignty to Camp Ashraf. We understood what they were trying to do. They did not do it well," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington two weeks after the raid.

Camp Ashraf and the presence of the Iranian exile group have long been a source of friction between Washington and Baghdad. For years, Iraq’s Shiite-led government has wanted to remove the group, because of its past ties to Saddam. Iran, a close Shiite ally of Baghdad, has also been pressing for the expulsion of the group, which seeks the overthrow of Tehran’s clerical rulers.

The Iraqi treatment of the exiles could also be an indicator that Iran’s influence in Baghdad is growing as Washington’s wanes, though Iraqi officials staunchly deny the raid was at Tehran’s behest.

"If you want to know how independent the government of Iraq is from the Islamic Republic of Iran, watch what happens to the people of Ashraf," said Raymond Tanter, president of the Wshington-based Iran Policy Group and a member of the National Security Council in the Reagan administration.

Baghdad "wanted to establish its independence from the United States and possibly was motivated to show that independence by cracking down on Ashraf," he said, pointing out the raid coincided with a Baghdad visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The People’s Mujahedeen is deeply controversial. Critics call it a cult with an ideology mixing Marxism, secularism, an obsession with martyrdom and near adoration of its leaders. The U.S. considers it a terrorist organization, albeit one that has provided the Americans with intelligence on Iran. The European Union removed it from its terror list this year.

The group _ also known by its Farsi name the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq _ is the militant wing of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran. It carried out a series of bloody bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s, though it says it renounced violence in 2001.

The MEK fought alongside Saddam’s forces during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, and Saddam set up a number of bases for them _ including Camp Ashraf, their last remaining foothold in Iraq, located in a barren desert stretch north of Baghdad, 50 miles from the Iranian border.

After Saddam fell, U.S. troops took control of Camp Ashraf and disarmed its fighters, confining them to the 30-square-mile compound. In return, the military signed the agreement with the camp’s residents giving them protected status.

The exiles transformed Camp Ashraf into an oasis of well-kept gardens, water fountains and palm trees along marked-out streets, where the residents _ including 900 women _ live in barracks-like housing segregated by sex. Morsch, 58, of Bucyrus, Kan., recalls how American soldiers guarding the camp got to know the residents well, sharing meals and inviting each other to celebrations.

The government has barred media visits to the camp since the raid.
The Iraqi government says it was exerting its right to establish a police station in Camp Ashraf and blames the violence on the resistance by Iranian exiles. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told the AP on Monday that the forces entering to set up the station were met by "demonstrations with people wielding sticks, swords and knives."

The U.S. military sent a medical team into the camp two days after the raid and 19 people were transported to an American hospital with serious injuries. Iraqi forces also detained 36 men accused of violently resisting the raid, prompting a hunger strike by some camp residents demanding their release.
The fate of Camp Ashraf’s residents remains up in the air.

The Iraqi government has forwarded several proposals, including sending them to third countries other than Iran, where they would face possible execution. "The world has to help us find a place for them," al-Dabbagh said, reiterating the promise to treat them humanely and not to forcibly expel them. "We cannot accept the presence of such an organization inside Iraq."

The People’s Mujahedeen insists that the protected status agreement has not expired because of a clause saying it is valid until the situation is resolved. The group has called on the Americans to reassert control over the camp until another arrangement could be made, such as the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.

September 5, 2009 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

The fall of Ashraf: Collapse of Rajavi’s strategy

Years ago, when Rajavi’s strategy for “ cutting the regime’s finger tips” failed, he fled to Iraq and claimed a new strategy called “ New Liberating Struggle” and formed a tool to fulfill this strategy ; “ Iran Liberation Army”. This strategy was allegedly taken due to the particular situation ruling Iraq which was fighting Iran.

Liberation Army and Camp Ashraf were introduced by Rajavi as the symbols of the new strategy. Considering that Rajavi was always seeking for manipulating the members’ minds, labeled all his acts as ideological; he claimed himself as ideological leader; his so called Liberation Army was also the ideological aspect of his strategy.

Following the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq, the Liberating strategy and consequently, the existence of Liberation Army came under question. Thus Rajavi tried to remove the label of being remnant of the war, launching a deadly attack on Iran, through his “Eternal Light Operation”. The attack ended with heavy casualties for the group and expiration of that strategy but heavier casualties were collapsed on Massoud Rajavi as “owner of the theory.”

Rajavi couldn’t admit this fact so he continued his presence in Iraq and prolonged strategic existence of his organization in Iraqi territory. Camp Ashraf found a typical ideological aspect in Iraq.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1992, Rajavi was disappointed since he could see no more hope for another war between Iran and Iraq. His NLA theory was blocked in Iraq that was attacked by the US in the first Gulf War.

Rajavi didn’t want to admit the failure of his strategy so urging on his so called armed struggle strategy he tried to heighten pressure on Iraqi internal relations and to band members from leaving the organization in order to cover his scandalous failure.

Second American invasion to Iraq, once more, pointed out the fact that NLA and also MEK’s existence in Iraqi territory was not feasible. Massoud Rajavi insisted on the presence of his disarmed NLA in Camp Ashraf, although he and his wife fled the Camp to France.

To flatter American forces, Rajavi ordered his members in Camp to sign an agreement with US army. The MEK were engaged to condemn any act of violence, but residents of the camp continued wearing military uniforms and chanting “Viva NLA, solid arm of heroic Iranian people.” however, NLA was an army neither in form nor in content.

The last step of Iraqi government to inform Rajavi that he can’t stay in Iraq any more, was the takeover of Iraqi security by Iraqi forces but Rajavi still forces his members to maintain Camp Ashraf.

Why does Rajavi never admit the failure of the so–called Liberating struggle insisting on it?

The reason is that Ashraf is the symbol of Rajavi’s strategy and ideology. Losing Ashraf results in losing everything, at least for a few years.
If Rajavi accepted to leave Iraq, he would accept the failure of many of his claims and slogans such as:

• Being the alternative to IRI
• Being the Leadership of new revolution or resistance
• Being the president elect of resistance

Now that Iraqi government has gained the sovereignty on its territory, the recent ultimatum to MKO for its expulsion from Iraq would leave Rajavi with many questions.

Why didn’t he leave the liberating struggle strategy in 1998 after the cease-fire between Iran and Iraq?
Why did he maintain his members in Iraq despite the fact that their presence in Iraq was of no use?
Why did he capture a large number of people physically and mentally for years?
Why did he encourage the residents to resist against Iraqi forces, causing them to die?

He might have left his slogans and accepted the failure of his strategy and ideology. Maryam Rajavi’s statement, on her conditional return to Iran, Massoud Rajavi’s letter to Experts Assembly, are signs of deviation in MKO’s strategy. The outcome of this deviation will end the Rajavis with disastrous problems including denouncification of the cruelty they impose on Ashraf residents, capturing them behind bars of their cult-like organization.

September 3, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

MKO former member open letter to Vidal-Quadras

I am responding to your recent speeches in the European Parliament in relation to Iran in which you express support for the Mojahedin-e Khalq organization led by Massoud Rajavi. As a former member, I have known this group since 1979. Because of them I spent five years of my youth in Mr. Sadeqi: As a former member, I have known MKO group since 1979 Iranian prisons; including two years in solitary confinement in Gohar Dasht in Karaj. I also spent the years from 1997 to 2006 as a prisoner of the MKO in Camp Ashraf, Iraq.

I was sent to Camp Ashraf after several years of fundraising work for the MKO in Canada. I was originally sent for a six month military training stint, but in fact they never allowed me to leave. (As you know, none of the people at Camp Ashraf have any legal status in Iraq and their passports and personal documents are confiscated by the MKO leadership to prevent them leaving. Ref. RAND report.)

After considering your support for this military cult, I just want to ask you, and give you the benefit of the doubt, if you honestly and purely, as the freedom lover you make claim to be, believe in your own use of the term ‘democratic’ in relation to the MKO. How do you know that? By visiting Camp Ashraf?

I should remind you and your colleagues that these are visits carefully pre-arranged and organized by the MKO leadership. Where did you go while you were at Camp Ashraf, to whom did you speak? I was there while so many people like yourself and like Paulo Casaca visited. We saw by whom you were escorted and of course we were not allowed to approach you and talk to you. All those people around you were MKO intelligence and security personnel, the same people who are responsible for the suppression and mistreatment of rank and file members.

Did it ever occur to you that everybody you were introduced to and allowed to speak with was saying exactly the same things like a broken record. Maybe you didn’t think of this because when it comes to it the MKO are expert at manipulating and deceiving people with their red carpet treatment and their provision of gifts like Perisan rugs and fancy goods.

In your speech you used the words ‘pressure’ and ‘harrasment’. Do you have any idea what your Rajavi has done to us? The beatings, humiliation, swearing and constant mental pressure aimed at anyone who wants to leave, or even to say anything critical of what Rajavi has ever said. Where you then? Why has no one asked any international human rights organization to come and visit Ashraf independently?

Many tragedies have taken place within the confines of Camp Ashraf. But no more, not for the rank and file members like myself. On the contrary, with the takeover by the Government of Iraq in January 2009, and the recent publication of the RAND report, they see some light at the end of the tunnel at last.

But as for Rajavi and his high rank killing machine, of course you said that you recently visited Camp Ashraf and that such allegations are absolutely unfounded. Are you a man of your word? Are you prepared to return to Camp Ashraf with a different, non-MKO organized delegation to see if you are right or not? I make only one suggestion; that I be permitted to come along with that delegation and show you the real Camp Ashraf and take you to places so that you could freely talk to the rank and file members. What do you say about that? Since your speech is presumably not political and is purely humanitarian, so you should not have any objection to this suggestion. In fact, I am sure you will be happy to prove your words, especially as you think that everybody in Camp Ashraf is there voluntarily.

In the end however I have so many things to say and explain to you and your colleagues. But for now I just wanted to ask how you can be so sure of what you say? How many former members, or even ordinary Iranians have you spoken to before you came to your conclusions? I myself am ready to come and talk about freedom and democracy and voluntary action and anything else that you and your colleagues want to discuss.

Don’t you think for one moment how strange it is that everyone who backs the MKO repeats exactly and precisely what Rajavi himself says? But that when it comes to listening to what former members say both MKO backers and leaders alike scream their hearts out that they are all agents of the Iranian Intelligence ministry?
Why is that? Could it be that Rajavi doesn’t want people like yourself – western, liberal, democratic, freely elected representatives – to talk to people like me?
Rajavi knows that if you talk to us you will have to think twice before you repeat whatever they want you to.

If you are truly a freedom lover, I think it’s only fair, not for me, or even for the Iranian people, but first for yourself to take these steps. Because I believe that if you are a humanitarian person then one day, maybe not long from now, as events unfold, you will see the truth and you will think back to this day and wish that you had taken a different stand. I just want you and other purely humanitarian people to remember that, along with my fellow brothers and sisters, victims of the Rajavi cult, I would remind you that little streams will, at last, join the ocean.

Reza Sadeghi, Paris

August 30, 2009 0 comments

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