Child Soldiers

The MEK children who speak out

The experiences of children of the Mujahedin-e Khalq have attracted a lot of attention in recent years, to the point that one of the most frequently repeated facts about human rights violations in the MEK deals with the issue of children.

Focusing on those who have written and spoken to certain media about their experiences as child soldiers or orphaned children in Europe and North America, you may find certain names. The experiences of children raised within or affected by the MEK are complex and often involve significant trauma.

The individuals like Hanif Azizi, Amir Yaghmai, Atefeh Sebdani, Parvin Hosseini, Ray Torabi, and Amin Golmaryami, are among those who have publicly shared their experiences. Their accounts often detail the challenges of growing up in the MEK environment, including separation from parents, indoctrination, and the psychological impact of the group’s activities.

These individuals have written about their experiences as child soldiers or as orphaned children in Europe and North America.

The experiences of these individuals, and others like them, are documented in various forms, including books, documentaries, memoirs, interviews, and journalistic reports. These accounts provide insights into the MEK’s internal dynamics, the treatment of children, and the long-term consequences of their involvement.

The MEK’s practices have been criticized by human rights organizations and former members. These criticisms often focus on the group’s authoritarian structure, the separation of families, and the use of children in political and military activities. The experiences of those who have left the MEK, particularly those who were children within the group, are crucial for understanding the impact of the MEK’s actions as a cult-like extremist group.

The mentioned-people have contributed to a growing body of literature and personal accounts that shed light on the MEK’s activities and their impact on individuals and families. Their stories are important for raising awareness about the MEK’s practices and the challenges faced by those who have been affected by the group.

In response, the group accuses its former child soldiers of being agents of the Iranian government to demonize the MEK.

However, the available sources do not provide credible evidence to support the MEK’s claims that former MEK child soldiers are Iranian agents. The sources, particularly those critical of the MEK, suggest that the MEK’s accusations are part of a broader strategy of demonization and propaganda, rather than being based on verifiable facts.

The MEK has been accused of various misconducts, including human rights abuses, and has been designated as a terrorist organization by several countries. The group’s history of violence, its controversial alliances, and the allegations of cult-like behavior all contribute to a lack of trust in its claims.

In recent years, children of Mujahed parents have testified in various ways about the violations of the rights of children who were involved with the MEK. Their testimonies are now part of the reliable and documented sources for investigating the crimes of MEK leaders. These testimonies are available for use in the trial of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi in a fair court.

Mazda Parsi

July 16, 2025 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Where are Mujahedin-e Khalq Schoolchildren?

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO) craves legitimacy. It pays retired politicians and government officials five- and sometimes six-figure honoraria in exchange for endorsements at rallies whose crowds it inflates by paying random students to attend in exchange for a free trip to Paris. Many of the American officials attending MKO rallies are ignorant of the group’s ideology, its history of terrorism against Americans, its support of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, its anti-American indoctrination, its embrace of Saddam Hussein, and the opacity surrounding the true source of its income, if not outright tax evasion.

Iranians deeply resent the group for its continued embrace of terror, as well as its cult-like behavior. That its leader Maryam Rajavi has held her position for 40 years hardly builds confidence in her supposed commitment to democracy. There is an irony, too, that her spokesman Ali Safavi will cast wild aspersions against critics who question the group’s democratic credentials and outlook, but then refuse challenges to identify even a single time when he criticized or differed in policy with Rajavi.

Iranian Americans have contributed disproportionately to American society and the American economy. Iranians are overrepresented in medicine, engineering, and in academe. They serve in the U.S. military and across the U.S. government. While these Iranians are Americans first, grateful for the protection the United States gave them when they fled religious dictatorship, they care about the country from which their families came and have strong opinions about its politics. Some lionize Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah. Others come from families associated with the Tudeh, the left-of-center party that rallied around former Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Still others are constitutionalists or republicans. Those Iranian Americans who join the U.S. government submit themselves to ordinary and even enhanced security clearances without difficulty.

Here, though, the Mujahedin-e Khalq is an outlier. The FBI, which handles most senior security clearances, does not clear Mujahedin-e Khalq members. The members of the cult refuse to face polygraphs and, when they do, reflect deceptiveness.
MKO behavior is strange in other ways. The MKO may talk a good game in its Paris rallies, but how many MKO members who are U.S. citizens or green card holders actually serve in the U.S. military? If the MKO is as pro-American as they say and has nothing to hide, why such a strange omission? Indeed, of all immigrant and political groups who come to America, the MKO may be alone in eschewing such service.

Other elements of the Mujahedin-e Khalq reality should also raise red flags among those considering accepting its cash. Safavi can vehemently deny that the MKO is a cult, but he distracts from the simple fact that few if any children of MKO members—they seldom marry outside their political movement—attend public schools or broader multicultural schools. Cults thrive by isolating members. The isolation that MKO children endure is extreme.

By this metric, there appears to be little difference between the Mujahedin-e Khalq’s American wing and Branch Davidians, Unification Church, or People’s Temple. Each may have had the right to their beliefs and politics so long as they did not contravene U.S. law, but in each case, the rhetoric of public-facing leaders reflected less the groups’ reality than did the internal isolation their children suffered. American officials should be very, very cautious when signing onto the MKO’s talking points or accepting their claims. Sometimes an honorarium is not worth the embarrassment sure to follow.

Middle East Forum, Michael Rubin

March 29, 2025 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Former child soldier’s account on “Constructive Criticism” in the MEK

Former members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) are not only familiar with the history and background of this organization through documents and media but also, they provide a first-hand and unmediated account of this undemocratic and totalitarian structure that simply negates the possibility of this organization being an alternative to the Iranian government.

Zhina (Zeinab) Hosseinnejad, a former child soldier of the MEK who spent her childhood and youth in the organization, although she is now a staunch opponent of the Islamic Republic, tries to inform Iranian public opinion about the nature of this destructive cult by occasionally publishing accounts of her time as a member of the cult. She is one of the former child soldiers of the MEK who testified against the MEK in the Hamburg court in Amin Gol Maryami’s case. She was also interviewed by some journalists and filmmakers in Europe.

In a recent post on her Facebook account, Zhina wrote about the concept of “constructive criticism” in the MEK. Reading this section of Zhina Hosseinnejad’s memoirs make it clear that criticism, even constructive criticism, is forbidden in the MEK’s ruling structure. Criticism leads to torture and harm to the critic, and this is proven repeatedly and in various situations in Zhina’s post.

Zhina’s account of constructive criticism within the MEK can be considered credible evidence to make any political force that thinks it can interact with the MEK reconsider. This is a part of her post on constructive criticism:
Whenever I hear the word “constructive criticism” about reactionary opposition groups, I recall the events in Albania, the days when I still believed in the change of the Mujahedin.

When we arrived in Albania, the atmosphere of suffocation had become a little less than in Iraq, so I was able to write explicit internal criticism reports regarding censorship, repression, psychological torture, and forced confessions in women’s meetings, and I demanded that the officials of the organization be held accountable to the public.

One of the so-called bright and “good police” officials told me; “Our apparatus still does not have the capacity to respond to criticism, since we are not the government, our system will collapse and weaken.”

But I still do not understand why at the time of repression, torture, corruption, and violation of people’s rights, they were the government, but when it came to accountability, they were not the government… Let’s move on.

After months of psychological pressure sessions, which finally led me to leave the organization, one day I told an MEK agent who was visiting my controlled apartment in Tirana; “I want to open a Facebook page and write the reason for my departure from the organization and post my criticisms publicly and constructively.”

As if the official was struck by electricity, she said; “No, no, don’t do it! Let me ask the higher officials.”
In short, from that day on, every night and every morning, sometimes even late, they came to me, saying things, threatening and tempting, that I was shocked, but all they did was to prevent me from opening a political page.

And the more I asked; what’s wrong with “constructive criticism”? The more they said; “Absolutely! Don’t write even a single comment! Go and live your life.”
“life” that from years until that moment before leaving Ashraf was a taboo. Life was shame, it was disgrace, it was betrayal and it made you deserve trial! All of a sudden it became good, it became important, it became necessary, it became gold!
And you know very well what criticism will turn into when they don’t let you make “constructive criticism” in time… and it did.

When the issue of some of us was brought to the European media and the German courts, some MEK accounts came to my direct message and wrote: “Don’t step on the blood of your mother and uncles! If you have criticism, make it constructive criticism! Why did you bring the issue to the media and the court?!”

I said; Oh No! what happened? Constructive criticism became good? You came a little late! Sweet Heart!
In short, we, the new generation of MEK, were not given the space and the right to even the slightest “constructive criticism” until the issue was brought to the media and the court.

March 12, 2025 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The MEK’s Use of Child Soldiers: A Human Rights Violation That Demands Accountability

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), often touted by its advocates as a legitimate opposition to Iran’s authoritarian regime, has faced mounting evidence of egregious human rights abuses, including the recruitment of child soldiers. While the MEK portrays itself as a democratic alternative to Tehran’s theocracy, survivor testimonies and investigative reports reveal practices that undermine this narrative. These allegations highlight the urgent need for international accountability and a reassessment of the support granted to this organization.

Testimonies from former MEK members expose a systematic effort to recruit and exploit children, particularly during the organization’s years at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Survivors such as Amin Golmaryami and Amir Vafa Yaghmai recount being forcibly separated from their families as minors and subjected to ideological indoctrination designed to suppress individuality and enforce obedience. This psychological manipulation served as the foundation for coercing children into roles ranging from logistical support to direct participation in armed conflict.

The trauma endured by these individuals has left long-lasting scars, manifesting as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alienation, and severe difficulties in reintegrating into civilian life. Such exploitation of children not only contravenes basic human rights but also highlights the MEK’s disregard for the fundamental welfare of its members. These narratives dismantle the MEK’s carefully curated image as a pro-democracy movement, exposing it instead as a group willing to sacrifice vulnerable lives for its militant agenda.

The MEK has aggressively lobbied for recognition as a democratic force, securing backing from influential politicians in Europe and the United States. However, the organization’s history of authoritarian practices starkly contradicts its claims. Allegations of child soldier recruitment are emblematic of a broader pattern of coercive control, including the suppression of dissent within its ranks and the enforcement of absolute loyalty to its leadership.

The MEK’s leadership has denied these accusations, often dismissing whistleblowers as propagandists aligned with Tehran. Yet, the consistency of survivor accounts and corroborative investigations by credible outlets such as “Le Monde” paint a damning picture. For international supporters, these revelations necessitate a moral reckoning: continued support for the MEK risks enabling practices that violate international law and basic ethical principles.

The MEK’s recruitment of children places it in the company of notorious organizations such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda and armed factions in conflict zones like Syria. These groups employ similar tactics—psychological manipulation, forced separation from families, and the use of fear and propaganda to secure loyalty.

However, the MEK’s centralized structure and political ambitions distinguish it. Unlike fragmented groups operating in lawless territories, the MEK’s leadership operates within a hierarchical system that oversees both militant activities and international lobbying efforts. This organization-wide complicity makes the MEK’s actions even more troubling, as they are not isolated incidents but part of a calculated strategy that implicates the group’s upper echelons.

Countries hosting or supporting the MEK bear significant responsibility for addressing these allegations. Albania, which has provided refuge to many MEK members, faces scrutiny for its role in sheltering an organization accused of grave human rights abuses. Under international law, including the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC), states are obligated to prevent the recruitment of children and ensure accountability for perpetrators.

For nations like the United States and European countries that advocate for the MEK as a counterweight to Iran, the ethical stakes are high. Ignoring the group’s documented abuses undermines their credibility as defenders of human rights and could tarnish their foreign policy agendas. Supporting the MEK without demanding accountability risks complicity in its violations.

The voices of survivors must drive the global response to these allegations. Their testimonies provide invaluable insights into the MEK’s exploitative practices and call for an end to impunity. Truth commissions, reparations, and legal action against those responsible are necessary steps to ensure justice for victims and to deter similar abuses in the future.

Moreover, the international community must reassess its engagement with the MEK. Support for opposition groups cannot come at the expense of fundamental human rights. By holding the MEK accountable, the global community can send a clear message that the exploitation of children will not be tolerated, regardless of a group’s political alignment.

The MEK’s alleged use of child soldiers is a profound betrayal of the principles it claims to uphold. Survivor narratives expose the devastating human cost of the group’s actions, challenging its legitimacy as a pro-democracy force. For the international community, these revelations are a test of its commitment to universal human rights. Accountability for the MEK is not just a moral imperative—it is a necessary step to ensure that justice prevails over political expediency.

Pouia Tajali – Geopolitika.ru

November 30, 2024 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Child soldiers speak of their nightmares years after leaving the MEK

Last week, some former child soldiers of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) spoke about their nightmares, which still torment them years after leaving the group. The pain that seems to be common to all the traumatized children of the MEK. Some have been able to recover from these sufferings, and some still have nightmares or at least remember them.
Mohammad Reza Torabi, a former child soldier of the MEK, shared this on his X account on August 14, 2024:
“I used to have nightmares of Mujahidin two or three nights a week. Of course, not only me, but all the children who escaped from this cult have these dreams. All our dreams are similar. I open my eyes and with the mentality I have now, I am again in the Mujahidin. I tell myself no! It is not possible, I ran away and I was outside, how did I come back to this hell again? I try to escape and get out and find a way out, but the Mujahedin and Rajavi officials don’t let me stand in front of them. They tell me that it is here and there is no way out. I wake up and my heart is pounding on my chest and I am afraid. Then I slowly come to my senses and realize that it was just a dream.”

Definition and causes of nightmare

Nightmares, like dreams, are the product of our brains, and their terrifying vision originates from inside us. Nightmares should not be confused with bad or unpleasant drteams. Nightmares are actually long, vivid and frightening dreams that usually threaten our survival, physical integrity, safety or self-esteem and fill us with fear. They can also cause intense feelings of fear, anger, sadness, confusion, and even disgust.
Some researchers call nightmares “repetition of threats”. The meaning of this term is that most people repeat the threats they have faced in real life in their nightmares. This is why most people remember the images and content of their dreams well when they wake up from nightmares. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022), the causes of nightmares are as follows:
– Anxiety and stress
– Trauma (physical or mental impact) or distressing events such as the death of a loved one
-Disordered sleep, lack of sleep, fatigue from long-term air flights, illness and fever
– Side effects of a specific drug or treatment
– Medicines or drug withdrawal such as sleeping pills
– Drinking or quitting alcohol
– Breathing disorders during sleep such as sleep apnea
-Sleep disorders such as narcolepsy or sleep anxiety disorder
-Eating shortly before bedtime

The causes of nightmares of the MEK child soldiers

According to the large number of memories, documents and evidence about the prevailing atmosphere within the Cult of Rajavi, it seems that at least the first three are the most true causes of nightmares regarding the child soldiers of the MEK. Of course, as he says, Mohammadreza has gotten rid of this suffering due to the beautiful life he has built for himself outside the cult. He attributes the end of his nightmares to the birth of his young son Ryan:

“But since Ryan Azadi was born, those nightmares have ended. I don’t know what the mechanism is, but what a blessing. These days, I am very proud of myself for having the courage to escape from that hell. Life is beautiful.”
But another child soldier of the MEK, who is active on the X social network with the username Aylin Moghadam, said in the comments to Mohammad Reza’s post about his endless recurring nightmares:

“I also have nightmares almost every night, they hold meetings for me, previously by Masoud Rajavi, now Maryam Rajavi has entered the scene, with her scary face looking at me with anger, and in my dream, I say ‘why am I here while I had gone out, how did I come back?’ and I scream asking for help Everywhere I go there is barbed wire…
“Another recurring nightmare of mine is that they forcefully tell me to get on a tank and fight. In my dream, I say that I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m tired. I don’t want to ride an armored car. They say that no one asked you if you want to get on and… I wake up crying again.

“In my dream, I don’t have anything, they have thrown away all my things, they force me to wear boots and tell me that you have to clean this whole desert of grass and… they regularly hold meetings for me and yell at me, I wake up with tears still on my face and after that most of the time I can’t sleep anymore I don’t know how long I’m going to have nightmares.”
Even reading Aylin’s nightmares is heart-breaking, let alone knowing that Aylin and people like him and Mohammad Reza experienced these fears in the MEK camps. Being isolated in the deserts of Iraq, participating in self-criticism and inquisition meetings for long hours, forced participation in military operations and conflicts, are all real and tangible experiences for the child soldiers of the MEK.

Aylin, who doesn’t want his real identity to be revealed and seems to be still trapped in the atmosphere of terror created by the MEK leaders, has a lot to say, but he avoids revealing:
“Unfortunately, I avoid saying many things for some reasons, because the MEK agents are very much looking for who I am, and I want them to fail.”

Only from the content of his nightmares one can understand what fear and anxiety, trauma, sleep disorder and excessive fatigue caused by the MEK system have done to the soul and spirit of this former child soldier.

Is there a remedy for the suffering of the children of the MEK?

Although Azadeh Masoum has left the MEK some years ago, got married and become a mother, the birth of her child has not stopped her from having nightmares, but her deep motherly love and concern for her daughter has affected her nightmares as well. She writes to Mohammad Reza in comments:
“Unfortunately, I still see them, I even dreamed once that my daughter was with me and she was taken from me and given to another sister in an “organizational ranking change”. I was going crazy, when I woke up, I felt very bad.”

A few days later, impressed by the traumatic experiences of the MEK child soldiers, the author came across a post on the Facebook account of Atefeh Sabdani. Although Sabdani has no experience as a child soldier, she has experienced terrible traumas as a child of the MEK. She is now a 38-year-old mother of three children. The experience of a bad dream that her five-year-old daughter had the night before prompted her to write about it on August 16th, 2024.

The scream of the little girl woke her up and she rushed to her room to comfort her. She hugged her and soothed her by saying, “mommy is here”. The child calmed down, but Atefeh was thrown to her childhood, orphaned by the MEK, separated from her mom, left with feelings of helplessness and lack of security, and the experience of sexual assault by her foster father, who was a supporter of the MEK, and he had taken Atefeh and her two brothers and two other children under his custody in order to receive the social aids that the Swedish government pays children.

It is in the midst of night and Atefeh Sabdani, a successful Swedish citizen, influencer and author of a best-selling autobiography, is suffering from anxiety and shortness of breath from recalling bitter childhood memories. She had nightmares from the age of 5 to the age of 10 and 15 with no one to soothe her, she is still not completely healed from her traumas. She writes about this:

“Although I am actually 38 years old. And no matter how much I have walked through the path of healing and distanced myself more and more from my past, it still sneaks up on me. At night, as if to remind me of who I am and where I came from. Don’t forget. My five-year-old daughter sleeps peacefully. Now, I have to comfort myself.”

Mazda Parsi

August 19, 2024 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

What was Aalan doing with a Kalashnikov at Camp Ashraf’s guard tower?

According to a document published by Amnesty International in January 1999, child soldiering is one of the worst forms of child labor abuse. Participation of children in the armed forces, especially in armed conflict, has devastating effects on their physical and mental integrity. Due to the small size and agility of children, they may be used in very hazardous assignments, and inexperience and lack of training may cause higher casualty rates among children. However, 1999 was among the same years that the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) was smuggling the children of its members from Europe and America to Iraq, to join its so-called Liberation Army.

On May, 2024, Amir Yaghmai, a former child soldier of the MEK published a photo from that era on his account on X social network and wrote:
“MEK claims that it has had no child soldier. This is a picture of me at the age of 14 in a military uniform at Camp Ashraf. After 1 year of active brainwashing by the authorities, I was transferred from Paris to Iraq in 1998, and this captivity lasted for 6 years. until the arrival of the American forces.”

Amir Yaghmaei at Camp Ashraf-Iraq

According to Amnesty International Child soldiering is usually a full-time occupation, which implies long hours of work and little possibility of returning home. Child soldiers are separated from their homes/families and rarely receive education.
On August 7, 2024, in the comments of Amir Yaghmai’s post and in order to validate it, another former child soldier named Azadeh Masoom published a photo of herself and two other child soldiers of the MEK. In this photo, the famous face of the child soldiers of the ME#K, Alan Mohammadi, can be seen next to Azadeh. In a few short sentences in caption, Azadeh refers to several dimension of child soldiering in the MEK’s army:
“This is the photo of Alan, 13 or 14 years old, who the MEK said she committed suicide with his weapon. What was a 13 or 14-year-old kid doing with a weapon? I was 17 years old sitting next to her, and Maryam Zuljalal, who is sitting on my left, I guess she was 17 years old because we were classmates when we were children.”

Alan Mohamamdi-Azadeh Maasoum and Maryam Zoljalal

Based on the Amnesty International document, most of the children who participate as soldiers in the conflicts either never went to school or dropped out in the early years of school. This concept can be proven in a sentence from Azadeh Masum. She does not know exactly how old was the girl on her left, Maryam Zuljalal, but based on this, she guesses that she is the same age as she was at the time, seventeen years old, because they were classmates when they were children. This means that these two teenage girls stopped going to school before the age of 17 and were deprived of education while they were under the legal age. Alan’s condition was worse. She was no more than thirteen years old when she was brought to Camp Ashraf.

Another former child soldier, Mohammad Reza Torabi also emphasizes the reality of Alan’s child soldiering and her opposition to staying in the oppressive and suffocating environment of Camp Ashraf by re-sharing the photo of Azadeh Masoom:
“Another crime of the MEK. Azadeh, who like me managed to escape from the grip of the MEK cult, is talking about Alan Mohammadi, a girl who was tricked by the MEK when she was 13-14 years old and was sent from Europe to Iraq and Camp Ashraf. From the very first days, live all of us, she started receiving military training and was given a Kalashnikov to guard in the towers around the isolated camp. Finally, due to the pressure of the MEK organization, Alan decided to end her life by pulling the trigger of her Kalashnikov in the watchtower. She preferred death to continuing her stay in the MEK cult.
Now MEK say, we didn’t have child soldiers. So what was Alan doing with Kalashnikov in the guard tower?
Curse the Mujahideen and Rajavi!”

The presence of a young teenage girl in the guard tower of a military barracks with a Kalashnikov is a clear example of a child soldier in a hazardous environment. The hazardous and accident-causing environment is one of the criteria that is discussed in details in the article 3 of the Amnesty International document.
Based on the article, child spldiering as a hazardous work is determined by the followings:
(a) work and activities which expose children to physical, emotional or sexual abuse;
(b) work underground, under water, or at dangerous heights;
(c) work with dangerous machinery, equipment and tools, or which involves the manual handling or transport of heavy loads;
(d) work in an unhealthy environment which may, for example, expose children to hazardous substances, agents or processes, or to temperatures, noise levels, or vibrations damaging to their health;
(e) work under particularly difficult conditions such as work for long hours or during the night or work which does not allow for the possibility of returning home each day.

The above-mentioned cases are all the hazardous conditions that the child soldiers of the MEK were exposed to in the camps of the group, including Camp Ashraf. In many of the available photos of child soldiers at Camp Ashraf, they are clearly in military uniform, Kalashnikovs in hand, and riding tanks and other military vehicles.

In the memoirs of child soldiers, we constantly hear and read about the dangers that threatened children’s spirit, body and dignity every moment inside the MEK. IN 1999, the Amnesty International document has recommendations to the international community on the necessity of banning the participation of children in war. These recommendations require the existence of a separate article in this regard in the convention against of child labor.

This is despite the fact that in the same years, between 1997 and 2002, the MEK brought at least 300 child soldiers from Western countries to Iraq. Many of them are still trapped in the MEK’s camp in Albania, a number of them were killed during violent clashes, and some of them, like Alan Mohammadi, committed suicide. And, some like Amir, Azadeh and Mohammad Reza are brave and self-made survivors of that era who chose to live in the free world not with the help of human rights conventions and Amnesty International, but with a little aid from the United Nations and with their own efforts.

Mazda Parsi

August 12, 2024 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Help MEK Child Soldiers Rebuild their Lives

Children in the military, including state armed forces, non-state armed groups, and other military organizations, may be trained for combat, assigned to support roles, such as cooks, porters/couriers, or messengers, or used for tactical advantage such as for human shields, or for political advantage in propaganda and even sexual abuse. There is huge evidence that the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK/ PMOI), as a para-military organization has used child soldiers.

According to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), thousands of boys and girls are used as soldiers, cooks, spies and sex slaves in armed conflicts around the world. UNICEF defines child soldiers as “any child—boy or girl—under eighteen years of age, who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.”

Trusting, vulnerable, and often intimidated, children can easily be manipulated, experts say. In combat, children can be daring and tenacious, particularly when under the influence of leaders of a cult of personality and their ideology or when compelled by political or religious zeal. Having been separated from their parents, children of the MEK were motivated by the group commanders to get back to Iraq to visit their parents after years but on the condition that they sign a document. They had to join the MEK’s army, the so-called National Liberation Army (NLA). So, they signed the recruitment paper and promised to fight for the group’s cause.

The MEK child soldiers were not only boys. A large number of girls also were employed by the MEK recruiters. Based on a UNICEF report, about 30 percent of armed groups using children include girls. Girls have vulnerabilities unique to their gender and place in society and suffer specific consequences. Asieh Rakhshani, Saba Haftbaradaran, Mahdieh Movahed, Faezeh Rajabi are the names of a few of MEK girls who were killed in armed conflicts. Alan Mohammadi and Neda Hassani committed suicide
Regardless of how children are recruited and of their roles, child soldiers are victims, whose participation in conflict bears serious implications for their physical and emotional well-being. They are commonly subject to abuse and most of them witness death, killing, and sexual violence. Many are forced to commit violent acts and some suffer serious long-term psychological consequences.

Former Child soldiers who have recently spoken out, have testified about most of the above-mentioned violation of human rights, in their testimonies. Amir Yaghmai, Amin Golamaryami and Ray Torabi were interviewed by the French newspaper, Le Monde a few months ago. The new documentary on MEK child victims, “Children of Camp Ashraf” was just released by Swedish TV channels and film festivals. And, there are many other contents on the violation of the rights of children involved with the MEK.

However, these are a few of hundreds of children who were separated from their parents, smuggled to the West and then again smuggled to Iraqi to attend the MEK’s military force. There are still a large number of young girls and boys who are in their thirties and forties, taken as hostages inside the MEK’s camp in Albania, isolated from the outside world. The reintegration of these young people into civilian life is an essential part of the work to help child soldiers rebuild their lives.

Mazda Parsi

July 29, 2024 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

MEK child soldier committed suicide due to mental pressures

Out of a thousand children of the parents who were members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), each of them suffered a different fate. The documentary “Children of Camp Ashraf” depicts the adventures of four of these children who were smuggled to Sweden and now they are Swedish citizens. However, in this documentary there are references to the lives of some other children: child soldiers who were victims of Massoud Rajavi’s destructive cult. Ehsan Shakeri was a child soldier of the Cult of Rajavi who was not left free by the MEK even after he had departed Camp Ashraf, Iraq.

Sara Moien’s documentary, Children of Camp Ashraf, narrates the story of Atefeh Sebdani, Amir Yaghmai, Hanif Bali and Parwin Hosseinnia. In a scene of the film, Amir Yaghmai is on his knee near the grave of his friend, Ehsan.

Who was Ehsan?

Ehsan Shakeri was living in Sweden together with his mother and daughter when the recruiters of the Mujahedin khalq deceived him to join the MEK’s so-called National Liberation Army, in Iraq. He became a member of the MEK’s militia force –better said, child soldiers but shortly after, he came to know that the repressive ruling of the Rajavis over the MEK is not tolerable. He criticized the group and he was labeled as mercenary of the Iranian government. The labeling was continued by the MEK propaganda until Ehsan killed himself.

The young emotional Ehsan could not bear the military life in the MEK where he had to receive military trainings, he had to attend self-criticism sessions and he had to forget family life. He had missed his mother and sister. Thus, he began questioning the commanders and eventually he became the problematic element for his commander, Zhila Deihim.
“Ehsan asked to leave the MEK and go back to Sweden several times but in response he was punished by Zhila Deihim,” former member of the MEK Reza Gooran writes in his memories about his involvement in the MEK. “Zhila jailed Ehsan in solitary confinement in Street 400 of camp Ashraf, beating him and insulting him”. Reza Gooran was in the same unit with Ehsan after they both left Camp Ashraf and joined the American temporary camp for MEK’s defectors (TIPF), in 2004.

Ehsan was good in English, so the American forces employed him as their interpreter. However, Zhila Deihim did not leave Ehsan alone, in TIPT. She used to come there to visit Ehsan asking him to spy on the other defectors who resided there. Therefore, Ehsan was called spy by his peers and consequently the Americans fired him just because the MEK commander wanted him to work as their mercenary.

Actually, Ehsan was not a spy but Zhila Deihim wanted him to be. Ehsan just wanted to get back to his family. Reza Gooran tried to support him in TIPF but both of them were under pressure, previously in the MEK and now in TIPF. “Ehsan was like my younger brother, I really loved him,” Reza says.

Amir Yaghmai, former child soldier who had left the MEK too and was in TIPF at the time, confirms Reza Gooran’s account in the Club House room, attended by former members and former child soldiers of the MEK. He says, “I was in TIPF with Ehsan and Reza. Reza was so supportive to Ehsan. The American forces had jailed Ehsan in solitary confinement for one month. Then he was released and he went to Iran inevitably and from there he immigrated to Sweden. The MEK labeled him as a mercenary of the Iranian government publishing several announcements to accuse him of being the agent of the Iranian intelligence in its websites.”

Ehsan Shakeri was announced as the agent of the Islamic republic by the MEK just because he had gone to Iran and had stayed there for a short time before moving to Sweden. Based on the MEK rhetoric, returning to Iran equals with working with Iranian government which is the enemy of the group.

“In 2009, –I do not mean that it was just because of the MEK but—he was under severe mental pressure and finally, as what Reza said, we heard that Ehsan hanged himself by the neck in the jungles of Sweden,” Amir Yaghmai says. “He was a child of ours (Mujahedin); his father had been killed. His mother and sister live in Sweden. The MEK shot him by calling him “mercenary! Mercenary! mercenary! I was the only witness there. I saw what he endured. If I were in his shoes at the time, I might have gone to Iran too. Once he came to Sweden trying to build a new life, the MEK constantly published announcements against him.”

Ehsan was never a mercenary, neither for Iran nor for the MEK. He could not manage to endure such accusations. He committed suicide after enduring too much mental pressure.

By Mazda Parsi

July 6, 2024 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

The Children of Camp Ashraf Documentary

The documentary “Children of Camp Ashraf” is based on the life story of four Swedish citizen whose parents were members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The film was directed by Sara Moien and produced by Linda Mutavi. Since January 31st, it has been screened in two Swedish festivals, Goteborg film festival and Tempo Documentary Festival. It was aired by the Swedish TV channel SVT, on June 17th.

Children of Camp Ashraf is about Amir Yaghmai, Parwin Hosseinnia, Hanif Bali and Atefeh Sebdani. They are four of the children of Mujahed parents who ended up in Sweden. Sara Moein’s extremely engaging documentary, presents a rich archive material about the experiences of its protagonists who suffered a traumatized childhood in the MEK’s system. They are trying to reconnect with the group in order to visit their parents, who are now in Albania.

Camp Ashraf, mentioned in the film’s title, was a military camp in the desert of Iraq, near Iranian border. The film depicts how the children lived and grew up there, until they were smuggled to Europe and North America. The parents of these almost 1000 children remained in Camp Ashraf to continue fighting, while their children were displaced. The children in the film were placed with mujahedin sympathizers in Sweden. One of the participants, Amir Yaghmai later returned as a child soldier to Camp Ashraf.

https://dla.nejatngo.org/Media/Documentary/SVT-Children-Ashraf-1.mp4

June 29, 2024 1 comment

The cult of Rajavi

We, child soldiers of the People’s Mojahedin

THREE former members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (people’s fighters), an Islamo-Marxist inspired movement which led an armed struggle against the Shah and then against the Islamic Republic of Iran, tell Le Monde about their imprisonment as teenagers , their warrior youth under the rule of this group and the pressures to which they were subject
Also known as the Organization of Iranian People’s mujahedin, this movement, which today presents itself as a peaceful alternative to the regime in place in Iran, has been removed from the lists of American and European terrorist entities, after renouncing the use of violence.

STOCKHOLM, COLOGNE (GERMANY)

special envoy
I had without a doubt learned to shoot a Kalashnikov, to drive a tank, to maneuver in a minefield and to fight. It was in Iraq, in 1998: Amir Vafa was then a child soldier of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, people’s fighters). The forty-year-old, who now lives in Sweden, accuses this Iranian organization of having separated children from their families, of having exerted psychological pressure against them and of having made them prominent warriors to overthrow the Islamic regime in power in Tehran since the 1979 revolution.
It took time for Amir Vafa fifteen years after deserting the ranks of the MEK, in 2004, to dare to speak publicly about his experience. Among his former comrades in the trenches, he was the first to have testified under his real identity, in 2019. in the Persian-speaking media Mihan TV. Following a long time under the influence of the organization, “I had to rebuild myself”, he explains to Le Monde, during a meeting in a Stockholm café. “And then, I was afraid of reprisals.”
After renouncing armed struggle and violent actions in 2001, the group in exile, also known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), managed to remove itself from the American and European lists of terrorist entities where it once had appeared for years. Presenting itself as a peaceful, democratic and non-nuclear alternative to the Tehran regime, it still enjoys considerable influence in the West today, particularly in the United States and France. Around 2000 members live in Albania today.

Now my life is stable and I need to tell what other children and I suffered, said Mr. Vafa calmly, now the father of two little girls. Following his example, tongues began to speak. Two other ex-child soldiers agreed to describe to Le Monde their personal trajectory within the Mujahedin-e Khalq, with their faces uncovered. Around ten former members also gave their testimony, some on condition that their anonymity was preserved. According to them, at least several dozen children passed through the organization’s battalions. Asked by Le Monde about the key points of this investigation, the MEK did not wish to respond. They subsequently sent an email to Le Monde discrediting in advance our witnesses whose identity they do not know, calling them notorious agents of the “mullah regime”. On its website, the organization claims that these children joined the liberation army of their own free will.

Born in Paris in 1983, Amir is the son of two People’s Mojahedin activists who fled repression in process. This organization of Islamo-Marxist tendencies, which appeared in the 1960s, took an active part in the 1979 uprising which dethroned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah. Like the other opposition forces, it suffered the irresistible rise in power of ayatollah Khomeini, who then endeavored to eliminate them after speedy trials before the revolutionary courts.

The People’s Mojahedin responded violently. In 1981, seventy-two leaders of the young Iranian theocracy died in a series of explosions in Tehran. The injured number in the dozens: Ali Khamenei, the current supreme leader and highest authority of Iran, lost the use of his right arm in one of these attacks. That same year marked his departure into exile for members of the MEK, including Amir’s parents and their leader, Massoud Rajavi. The latter chose to set up its headquarters in France.
Born in the 1980s to Iranian parents close to Mujaheddin-e Khalq, who led an armed struggle against the Shah, then the Islamic Republic, three former recruits tell exclusively to “World” about their enlistment in this movement removed from the list of terrorist organizations of the European Union in 2009

Below is a handwritten letter from Amir Vafa’s mother, in which she invites her son to the portraits of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, leading couple of the People’s Mojahedin.

Amir VAfa Yaghmaei as a child, in Iraq, he poses alongside Maryam Rajavi.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran (CNRI), political showcase of the movement, volts during the day in Auvers-sur-Oise (Val-d’Oise), Esmail Vafa Yaghmai and his wife are welcomed less than 15 kilometers away, in Osny , among a family of sympathizers.

The Middle East was then on fire and blood. The hostilities opened by the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, against his Iranian neighbor in 1980 triggered a conflict which would not stop until eight years later. In the grip of civil war, Beirut is seeing the rise of armed groups financed by Tehran. In the hope of obtaining the release of French hostages in Lebanon, Jacques Chirac, appointed prime minister in March 1986, agreed to cancel the right of asylum that France had granted to anti-Khomeini Iranian. Massoud Rajavi left France in 1986. Police operations increased in Auvers-sur-Oise. In December 1987, the expulsion order was signed.

AN IDEOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

Amir was not yet 3 years old when his parents flew to Baghdad. Saddam Hussein offered Massoud Rajavi and his supporters a welcome worthy of a head of state, a land located 20 kilometers north of the Iraqi capital Camp Ashraf, where permission was given to them to organize armed struggle against the common enemy in Tehran. Like all the children of Ashraf, Amir was then in parades. He went to school during the day. “I slept in a boarding school at night,” he says. His father, Esmail Vafa Yaghmai, official poet of the Mujahedin, devoted himself to writing songs to glorify the movement. His mother, Akram, is responsible for communications and, later, its logistics. He only sees them on sporadic occasions.

On July 22, 1988, a ceasefire, signed under the aegis of the United Nations by Baghdad and Tehran, put an end to the war. But, three days later, Massoud Rajavi announced a major offensive. Baptized.

Foroughe Javidan (eternal light), supported by the Iraqi air force, the operation aims to seize the large Iranian city of Kermanshah, located more than 150 kilometers from the Iraqi border. By its own count, the organization lost 1,304 men in the fighting.

Amir Yaghmaei at Camp Ashraf-Iraq

The failure of this offensive will have dramatic repercussions. In Iran, first, where political prisoners – sometimes unrelated to the MEK – are executed. Within the organization, then, which is carrying out an ideological revolution supposed to bring fighters deemed unmotivated back into line. For militant couples, divorce is made obligatory; family ties would undermine the struggle. In that same year, 1989, Maryam Rajavi – who married Massoud Rajavi in 1985 after divorcing Mehdi Abrishamchi, one of the important figures of the group – was propelled to the top authority of the organization. According to former members of the movement interviewed by Le Monde, it was then that the transformation of the movement began, which began to exert all kinds of psychological pressure on the family unit, from which children in particular would suffer.
In 1991, during the Gulf War triggered by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, several hundred of them were sent far from their parents, to Europe, the United States and Canada. They became emissaries of the cause in West, where they participate in donation drives and rallies, distribute leaflets, etc. According to testimonies collected by Le Monde, the objective was also to further break down family ties. The Mujahedin-e Khalq, in their response addressed to Le Monde, reject this accusation, explaining that Amir was sent by his parents, as other children, during the war and the bombings of Tinak in 1994, to find themselves safe and secure in Sweden. Amir, then 8 years old, was taken in by the Iranian family who had already hosted him in France when he was a baby and who lives in desert but in Sweden.

“I missed my parents a lot”, he remembers today. “I was convinced that they would soon free Tehran from Khomeini’s yoke and that we would all return there to live together. The little boy doesn’t know it, but his father has decided to move away from the hard core of Ashraf. When we were still in Europe, I had read philosophy books written by Voltaire and Spinoza, the latter tells us. “Little by little, I lost faith in Islam and the ideology of organization. I felt that this would not allow us to access democracy.” In 1993, he left the Iraq for France, where he joined the CNRI, the political body of the movement, in Auvers-sur-Oise. Esmail Vafa Yaghmai broke with the organization in 2004 and has since lived in Paris
IN 2003. US ARMY SOLDIERS ARE IN BAGHDAD. FROM THE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE, THE MUJAHIDIN FIGHT A COMMON ENEMY BUT REMAIN HISTORICAL ALLIES OF THE FALLEN IRAQI DICTATOR

DON’T THINK YOU’RE TOO YOUNG

Father and son meet again in France in 1992. Amir lives again. He learns French, he is a good student. During his free time, he goes to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he meets children his age, with a background similar to his own: “I had already met some of them in Iraq, they were like my brothers and sisters.” The center provides them with history lessons glorifying the fight against the Shah of Iran and then against the first Islamic regime: “It was exultant, it was like the scenario of an action film in which we were the heroes called to liberate Iran.” Amir is not the only one to feel this attraction: More and more teenagers wanted to join the fight in Iraq. Several are leaving. In Auvers-sur-Oise, Amir sees comrades in videos projected in the center, where they are filmed in uniform, brandishing a Kalashnikov or on top of a tank, to the background of martial music: “They had become real fighting so much. In front of the camera, they claimed that their previous lives were insignificant”. At the same time, he received a letter from his mother, who remained in Ashraf, urging him to join her. “You know better than me the number of your friends who are here”, she wrote to him, in February 1998. “When I see them, I asks when my dear Amir will finally come. When you have joined our army and I see you in these formal clothes all my dreams will be fulfilled except that of bringing, together, aunt Maryam Rajavi to Tehran.” She adds: “Don’t think that you are too young. You are better than me that the mujahedin who fought against Khomeini’s mercenaries. When we were still in Iran were younger than you.”

In the envelope, his mother slipped two photos: one of Massoud Rajavi, the other of his wife. Maryam Rajavi, proclaimed by the organization as the future president of Iran in 1993, is revered by the group and its sympathizers; she embodies the revolutionary woman who will bring the Islamic regime to its knees. Within the MEK, the highest military functions are often entrusted to women, a singularity put forward by the organization to prove to the West its commitment to gender equality. For young Amir, Massoud Rajavi is the father of all, an impeccable man, like a god, and Maryam, the leader, he wants to go and fight in Iraq. His father is opposed to this, insisting that he obtain his baccalaureate in full. Amir does not give in. “I felt inferior to the other children because my father had left the field for politics, which was considered less prestigious. All my friends were going to Iraq, I wanted to join them.”

“I fought for him to stay”, his father assures us today. Then he resigned himself, signing a form which authorized Amiz’s departure. He left for Jordan on July 7, 1998, in the company of Sara (a pseudonym used at the request of his father, still an active member of the group), a minor like him. With around ten other children, he was taken to Baghdad: “My mother was there, waiting for me.”

Akram, who hasn’t seen her son for seven years, looks happy. Amir, for his part, has the feeling of being with a stranger. Reunions with comrades from Auvers-sur-Oise in the dusty alleys of Camp Ashraf comfort him. Then begins military and ideological training for hours, square bed, revolutionary songs, shooting and combat lessons to learn how to kill the Pasdar adversary [member of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of Tehran) with the bayonet. The rules are strict. Diversity is forbidden. No one goes out without special authorization of this camp surrounded by barbed wire, towers of observation and guards in their bunkers. Soon, teenagers must, like their elders, engage in public sessions of self-criticism. From the beginning of the years 2000s, once a week, everyone must write out his sexual fantasies. Friendships also are supervised. It was forbidden to lunch twice in a row next to the same comrade, insists Amir.

A deleterious atmosphere hidden from view, confirmed by a 2009 study carried out by the think tank close to the American army, RAND Corporation. The organization is described as a sectarian movement, most of whose recruits were introduced illegally in Iraq. Trapped in this country after the confiscation of their identity papers, they are subjected to military-type discipline, to strict separation of the sexes, and must observe an almost religious devotion to the Rajavis. Descriptions that the MEK refute.

After military training, Amir became a soldier. In April 2001, his unit was ambushed by Iranian regular troops near Dehloran, Iran. One of his comrades, Shahram Juyandeh, was killed. This 42-year-old former Iranian soldier had been captured during the Iran-Iraq war and locked in an Iraqi prison before becoming a Mujahedin-e Khalq fighter. “His death changed me forever”, says Amir. Back at the camp, the survivors of the unit are welcomed as heroes by their superiors. A hearty dinner treats them, but the teenager feels nauseous. By attending so much of the funeral of his martyred friend, he could no longer bear the touch of his Kalashnikov. Two months later, during an extraordinary congress in Iraq, the organization announced that it was putting an end to its military activities.

AFTER THE FIRE FESTIVAL

The Iraqi invasion by the United States in March 2003 changed the situation. Massoud Rajavi brings together the fighters whom he urges to go to the border with Iran. Amir was there:
Massoud told us: “In this conflict, we are neutral, but the first rocket that falls on us means that we are no longer welcome here and that we will have to leave Iraq immediately. If the Americans ask us to leave, we’ll answer them. We’re going home.” Other members present during this speech and who have since left the group told Le Monde about identical memories. After these words, Amir maintains, we all shouted: “Here we go.” No one was afraid anymore, we thought we were finally going to get out of this purgatory.

The departure remained etched in Amir’s memory. It was after the night of the Fire Festival, the last Tuesday of the Iranian year, which is traditionally celebrated with family – March 18, 2003. He and his comrades climbed onto tanks and headed to the Iranian border. “I was a gunner in a 735 (Soviet Hlindé), at my side, Amin Golmaryami, who loaded the shells.” In the evening, the vehicle was simulated in the trenches. “In the morning”, he added, “we had political sessions.”
The plan to attack Iran will never happen. One day, Amir’s unit was targeted by the American army. “Their soldiers had surely mistaken us for Iraqis”, he believes today. Upon seeing the Gl, the young man is overwhelmed by a wave of hope: “I thought that the West would save us from the organization”. In the meantime, Massoud Rajavi has disappeared. The organization has never stopped broadcasting written or audio messages attributed to the enigmatic leader but some former members believe he was killed in an American bombing. Others imagine him leading a clandestine life in a country other than Iraq.

The soldiers of the US Army are in Baghdad. Iraq is a new political chessboard that Washington believes it can master. From the American point of view, the MEK fights a common enemy – the Iranian Islamic regime, but are historical allies of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. The organization has powerful relays in Congress, but it remains labeled terrorist. Ultimately, these are troublemakers who must be neutralized. Under the influence of an ultimatum, the MEK signed a disarmament agreement on May 10, 2003, and agreed to regroup in Camp Ashraf alone. Under the 4th article of the Geneva Convention, their members enjoy, from the summer of 2003, the status of protected persons.

The organization agrees to let Amir go, not without having him first sign a certificate according to which he has always been well treated. This document will be used to discredit him when he breaks the omerta, in front of the cameras of Mihan TV, in 2019, to reveal his past as a child torn from his family, raised in the Rajavi cult and prepared, from the youngest age to become a soldier. “The MEK would never have let me leave without this paper”, but they are careful not to specify that, Amir is indignant. Once he left the organization, he briefly worked as a translator for the dentist at an American military base. For the first time in his life, he has access to the Internet. He dreams of returning to Europe, but the lack of identity papers makes it difficult for him. Initial approaches to France failed. Sweden responds favorably. On October 5, 2004, he flew to Stockholm, definitively abandoning all activity within the MEK.

Yaghamee and Golmaryami- Anti-MKO protesters at a court in Hamburg in April 2021. (Twitter)

Many do not dare to take this step. This is for example the case of Amin Golmaryami, who was in the same tank as Amir during the American invasion. “Being afraid of what awaited me outside because, according to the propaganda in Camp Ashraf, the Mujahedis who left the organization were often raped by the Americans”, remembers Mr. Golmaryami, during an interview with Le Monde in April 2023, in Cologne, Germany, where he has lived since leaving the organization ten years ago. Today he regrets not having followed Amir

Born in 1985 in Iran, Amine spent part of his childhood in Iraq. His father was killed during Operation Foroughe Javidan, launched in 1988 by Massoud Rajavi against the army of Imam Khomeini. In 1991, he traveled to Germany with his two older brothers. The three boys were passed through several shelters supervised by the movement. In Cologne, Amin is a teenager of his time, peroxided hair, pierced ears, who listens to rap and goes out with girls. Nothing that seems to predestine him to a future as a fighter for a group with Islamo-Marxist aspirations in Iraq. But there are the summer vacations spent at the MEK headquarters, in Auvers-sur-Oise. And what he is told tirelessly: “in Baghdad, he could find his mother and the affection he misses so much.” It is this hope that pushes him to leave in 2001.

“But they never told me that I would very rarely be allowed to see her and talk to her,” says Amin, who felt manipulated.
The reunions are frustrating and the military training repels him. But the fate reserved for dissidents paralyzes him. According to an investigation carried out in 2002 and 2003 by Human Rights Watch, published in 2005 under the title Prohibited Exit on violations of human rights in the MEK camps, dissident members are sent to the jails of Abu Ghraib by the organization so that they are under good control. Some are repatriated in exchange for Iraqi prisoners of war. [Their release of prison] made it possible to obtain direct information on the conditions prevailing in the MEK camps, information previously inaccessible to the outside world. The MEK described this report as biased and oriented.

CAMP CLOSURE

After 2003 and the American invasion, living conditions became even harsher. After the mysterious disappearance of Massoud Rajavi in Iraq, his wife, Maryam Rajavi, was arrested on June 17, 2003, in France. Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, then head of the Territorial Surveillance Directorate (DST), does not mince his words, this terrorist type organization, sectarian and with autocratic functioning, has always been compared with movements like the Khmer rouge. The reaction of his supporters, however, was unexpected. Attempts at self-immolation by fire increased in Paris.

London and Bern. The charismatic leader was released a few days later and the accusations of terrorism were not substantiated. In 2014, the charges for financial crimes were dismissed.
Far from the media agitation, in Iraq, a young comrade of Amin committed suicide. Yaser Akbari Nasab and could no longer bear the absence of the leading couple, he was a fragile boy who lacked direction: he killed himself by self-immolation, in Camp Ashraf, in 2006. That same year Nouri Al-Maliki came to power in Baghdad. The new Iraqi prime minister maintains close relations with the Iranian Islamic regime, whose influence in Iraq is strengthening. The Mujahedin are no longer welcome in the country. The closure of their camp is imminent. Violence around Ashraf is increasing.
Faced with the police who were shooting at us, we only used boxes and stones to protect ourselves, Amin remembers. In 2009, at least eight mujahedin were killed, several hundred were injured. Another raid, in 2011, resulted in the death of more than thirty mujahedin

Like other witnesses interviewed by Le Monde, Amin believes today that their leaders did not seek to protect them: On the contrary, they sent us in front of the bullets to increase the number of victims. Their goal, he believes, was to put pressure on Europe and the United States to remove the organization from terrorist entities and to facilitate the resettlement of its members in another country. In 2012, the forced displacement of some 3,000 residents of Ashraf, parked in the former American base of Camp Liberty, in the suburbs of Baghdad, and the absence of any attack confirmed by the group for more than a decade ended up convincing Washington to remove the group from its blacklist, three years after the European Union.

“Any contact with UN agents (from the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)) who regularly went to Camp Liberty had been forbidden to us by the leaders [of the MEK]”, assures Amin Golmaryami. The young man tries a ploy: he discreetly slips a distress message into the bag of a UNHCR employee, written in English by a friend and hidden inside a packet of cigarettes: “I hope that you will understand the urgency of this meeting that I am requesting because I feel a strong pressure regarding my future”. You can read this undated missive that Le Monde was able to check with the UNHCR.
He was quickly summoned for an interview which, at his request, was repeated every two weeks: “At this study, it was important that the Mujahedin knew that my case was being closely followed. Faced with pressure and reprisals from the group, it was a guarantee for my safety.” His request will not succeed, but while Camp Liberty is in turn the target of attacks, the Mujahedin obtain, under pressure from the United States and from the UN, permission for Albania to settle on its territory, near Tirana. Amin and his two brothers were among the first to go to this new headquarters, in May 2013. The members there were still few in number, and the rules were relatively flexible: “We had picnics in the mountains around Tirana. We could finally speak to each other freely and have friendly gestures.”

In Iraq, a dire fate awaits the last holdouts from Ashraf. On September 1, 2013, violence resulted in a massacre. United Nations investigators counted fifty-two corps, most of them executed. Pointed out, the Iraqi government denies any responsibility in this bloodbath. Far from this hell, and at the gates of Europe, Amin only has Germany in mind. He escaped in 2014 and ended up returning to the country of his adolescence. His first act as a free man was to go eat at McDonald’s, the second was to ask for political asylum, which he obtained the following year. Today he has German nationality.

Mohammad Reza Torabi

A FAMILY MATTER

In August 2019, he was joined in Cologne by one of his comrades, Mohammad Reza Torabi, a former soldier of the Mujahedin-e Khalq like him. The man experienced a similar journey, with an adolescence in exile in a family of welcome to Canada. His sympathetic speeches promising reunions with his parents who remained in Iraq made him decide to leave in 1999. He was then 17 years old.

The first contact is disappointing. His mother is cold and distant, his father is not present. The next day, she said that he had died a few years earlier of a stroke, but there were details in his story that were wrong, recalls Mohammad Reza Torabi, during an interview with Le Monde, organized, in April 2023, in Cologne, where he also lives. His doubts do not shake his faith in the organization. It then seemed natural to him to continue a fight started by his parents and uncles. For him, as for many other members, the People’s Mujahedin are, above all, a family affair.

Mohammad Reza Torabi’s uncles were executed in the early years after the 1979 revolution. His parents were arrested in 1982 while trying to flee Iran. He was still just an infant. Sentenced to five years of incarceration, his mother, Zahra Seraj, kept him with her during the first year, in Evin prison, in Tehran. He was then sent to his grandmother. His father, Ghorbanali Torabi, was imprisoned for seven years. Upon his release in 1989, the family fled to Iraq to join the MEK.
Returning to Ashraf at the age of 17, Mohammad Reza Torabi is a zealous member. He was quickly assigned the task of picking up the young arrivals. Our objective was to brainwash them, to make them forget their previous lives in order to instill in them the ideology of the People’s Mojahedin, he states bluntly. “My dedication was flawless.” With hindsight, he judges that he himself was the victim of manipulation while regretting the evil (that he) committed in the context of these functions.

In 2003, he was sent with a combat unit to the Iranian border. His spring appeared in a book published the following year by journalist Saul Hudson working for the Reuters agency. Embarked in the American army, the journalist questions Mohammed Reza Torabi, who declares himself very happy to have women as commanders: “As I spoke English, I was the spokesperson for my unit with the American troops,” underlines he today

His unwavering loyalty has earned him the rare privilege of accessing the Internet. This is how, by entering his father’s name in the search engine, he discovered a short article published on the website of the Nejat organization, considered by some to be close to the Iranian intelligence services. The author of the article, Alireza Mirasgari, knew Mohammad Reza’s father well before leaving the MEK and returning to Tehran in 2003. According to this dissident, Mohammad Reza’s father died in 1994, following torture inflicted in a detention center at Camp Ashraf. For the young man, these revelations can only be a web of lies, elaborated to fuel the enemy’s propaganda. But doubt sets in.

Mohammad Reza Torabi was one of the last mujahedin to leave Baghdad for Tirana in August 2016. In this city, he began life again and fell in love with freedom. Former comrades, who have already left the movement, are urging them to defect. He reconnects with his host family in Canada: They helped me a lot, giving me self-confidence and supporting me financially. After laborious negotiations with his superiors, he managed to escape from the group on March 3, 2017 – a date he will never forget – and moved in with a former member of the organization, in Tirana.

Still obsessed with his father’s death, he resumes his research and finds the report of Human Rights Watch, dating back around dozen years, which denounced the purges carried out within the organization between 1994 and 1995, against members suspected of harboring divergent opinions: Abbas Sadeghinejad (a dissident ) told Human Rights Watch that he witnessed the death of another detainee, Ghorbanali Torabi after the latter returned from an interrogation session in the cell he shared with him.

The break is clear: “It’s as if, all these years, everyone – except for me – knew the truth about my father’s death. Certain executives that I had frequented were directly responsible for his death. Even today, this idea pisses me off.” In August 2018, Mohammad Reza crossed the border into Greece on foot, managed to obtain a false passport and eventually arrived in Germany, where he obtained refugee status in April of the following year.

DENIGRATION CAMPAIGNS

Currently, Mohammad Reza Torabi is married to a German woman, their first child was born in January 2024. He is a supervisor in a primary school. He regularly sees Amin Golmaryami, and both are in permanent contact with Amir Vafa in Stockholm. With other former mujahedin children, they exchange news about the organization on Whats App groups and support each other. Many have fallen into drug addiction or alcoholism, or suffer from psychological disorders, they lament. All three are among the lucky ones who were able to reconnect and build a stable and healthy life.

Amir Vafa obtained a certificate which has recently enabled him to work as a soil pollution control engineer. He appears in a documentary film, The Children of Camp Ashraf, released in Sweden in March. Sara, the teenager who went to Iraq with him in 1998, never left the MEK. His father visited him, under the supervision of the organization, at the end of 2016, in Tirana. Amin Golmaryami has been studying visual arts at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne since October 2023. One of his projects focuses on mujahedin child soldiers. When his son was born, in 2022, he had the word home (house in English) tattooed on his hand. “I finally have my own family, a home of my own”, he says.

The previous year, he had agreed to tell his story to the weekly Die Zeit. The MEK sued the media outlet Justice for disseminating false statements, demanding the removal of the article. In January 2023, the organization lost the lawsuit. Even before publication, Amin Golmaryami’s mother sent a letter to the weekly denouncing disgusting manipulation. She also accuses the author of the article, Luisa Hommerich, of being in the agent of the mullah’s Gestapo. “This subject was one of the most difficult, the most distressing and the most passionate of my career”, testifies Luisa Hommerich. “I am happy to have done it and am grateful for the courage shown by my reciter.”

Amir Vafa’s mother spoke on the People’s Mujahedin television channel, Simay-e Azadi, after her son’s confessions to the Persian-speaking media Mihan TV, according to her, sold to the Iranian intelligence ministry. Amin, Amir and Mohammad Reza continue to denounce the group’s sectarian practices on social networks, despite the outpouring of insults and the online smear campaigns carried out by the Mujahedin-e Khalq and their sympathizers. Of course, their comments are taken up by the Islamic Republic of Iran. But these men, who have no sympathy for the regime in Tehran, want their story to be heard. Twenty years after the death of his father, Mohammad Reza Torabi is just beginning to mourn. He wants to file a complaint against the MEK for murder and child trafficking.

“We were entrusted to this organization, which betrayed us and led us to war”, states Amin Golmaryami. “Many of our friends are dead. Some set themselves on fire. Today, the Mujahedin are incapable of admitting their wrongs or asking us for forgiveness. The very people who claim to be fighting to restore freedom to the Iranians should start by restoring it to their members.”

By GHAZAL GOLSHIRI, Le Monde

June 22, 2024 0 comments

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