Family in the Mujahedin-e Khalq

Destruction of family in the Rajavi’s terrorist cult

Authors, analysts and experts on cults often express their concern over the destructive effect of cults on the foundation of family and family relations, and clarify why cults, due to some features that they all share, may not tolerate the family structure. Regarding the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), which adopts cult-like approaches and is considered a terrorist group, the situation is even worse. On the occasion of the belated International Family Day May 15, we will take a look at how the MEK views family.

The MEK terrorist group was founded in 1965 as an Islamist-Marxist group opposing the Shah. Soon after establishment, the group started its violent and armed struggle against the regime. At the time, the group was involved in liquidating the opposition along with its own members who were critics of the group. A short while after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the MEK came into serious conflict with the political system, which led them to enter an armed phase and assassinate Iranian officials and ordinary citizens. In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, the MEK sided with Saddam, enjoyed the financial and military support of the former Iraqi dictator, and continued carrying out its terrorist operations both against Iranian and Iraqi citizens.

It was during these years that the MEK’s leader, due to failure in his military attack against Iran, decided to drastically change his approach within the group and as a result, the group took on a more cult-like dimension which continues up to now.

The MEK is a cult of personality and acts based upon a certain hierarchy which emphasizes the concept of “Revolutionary Family”. The concept is not new; however, it became more prominent in 1989 within the framework of the “Ideological Revolution”. According to this framework, all male and female members of the cult are brothers and sisters. They constitute a family, which must remain obedient and loyal to its leader. Focusing on the group’s goals, which are set by the leader, and blind obedience to the leader are superior to any sort of family ties.

How the MEK behaves towards family members

Critics of the group reason that the way MEK treats families will in fact disrupt the dynamics of the family. Statements and memoires of the group’s defectors as well as analysis of the group’s historical records all verify the views of these critics and reveal that families are, to a great extent, negatively influenced by the MEK’s militant approach.

The most fundamental measure of the MEK against families was taken after the imposed Iran-Iraq war. The group’s leader blamed families for his humiliating defeat in war. In his opinion, loyalty to family has an inverse relationship with loyalty to the leader. Therefore, the process of forced divorces began. Children were separated from their parents and banished to Europe. All women were forced into marriage with Rajavi in a cult-like ceremony and marriage was banned afterwards. It must be mentioned that since the group’s presence in Iraq, any type of contact with families had already been forbidden. These limitations existed even after the group was relocated to Albania and they continue up to now. Overall, there are very strict rules regarding families in this group which have led to chronic emotional distress of members and disintegration of family ties.

Furthermore, evidence suggests that women in the MEK are sexually exploited. Leader of the group is said to enforce strict rules about female members by limiting their personal freedom and depriving them of the right to work and receive education. Former members of the group have reported gender segregation, limitations in veiling, prevention of marriage and hysterectomy within the group.

The children growing up in the MEK are also brought up in an unconventional and strict manner. Such actions severely affect children’s well-being and growth. According to irrefutable evidence, children were forcefully separated from their parents and placed under surveillance. They were sent to some European countries. Based on interviews with the group’s defectors in Europe, the MEK sent some of the children to families, who supported the group, in order to strengthen their ties with them and also to receive financial support from European charities. This money would later be spent on the military affairs of the group. Some of the children went through ideological training and some were sent to streets to collect donations from people. These children were taught to lie and say that their parents are political prisoners in Iran or have been executed to be able to attract people’s attention. Also, in multiple cases, the children suffered malnutrition and experienced sexual violence by their new family.

Although the group was expelled from Iraq and resettled in Albania, they still continue their strict policies about families. MEK defectors believe that family ties can seriously weaken or dismantle Rajavi’s group. That is why the group’s leaders are by no means willing to change their anti-family approach because any change could lead to a huge wave of defection and shocking revelations concerning the group’s practices.

Assassinating Iranian families

This cult-like strictness in dealing with families is only part of the story of how the MEK treats families. Since the 1980s, thousands of Iranian families have fallen victim to the group’s acts of terror. The MEK assassinated a significant number of Iranian citizens inflicting irreparable emotional and psychological damages. As their assassinations targeted both males and females from all walks of life, it is perfectly conceivable that loss of a mother or father would place family members, especially the children, under unrelenting pressure.

There are also many cases where the whole family were assassinated. For example, in Iranian northern province of Gilan, the MEK terrorist group assassinated a father named Shahgaldi Almasi along with his two young sons who were farmers. Another case is that of an Arab family called Beit Salem who were all on a motorbike when they were attacked by the MEK. The attack left the parents and their two young sons crippled for life.

Other methods of assassination that the MEK used were also unbelievably inhumane. There are many instances of breaking into a house and shooting the targets before the eyes of their families. For example, MEK terrorist went to a house in Mashhad and rang the bell. A young girl opened the door and they told her to call her father to come to the door. When her father arrived, the MEK terrorists assassinated him in front of his daughter. These crimes and other similar ones have caused a great deal of emotional damage to family members, especially women and children.

Now that the MEK has targeted families, it is very important to take serious measures to reduce the emotional damage caused by the anti-human acts of this group. International authorities should pay a visit to the impenetrable camp of this group in Albania and conduct a detailed investigation. The leaders of the group should stand trial for the crimes they have committed against Iranian families and citizens. The political approach of some countries opposing Iran has caused them to turn a blind eye to such behaviors that violate human rights. The media, if focused on the dark history of the group, can uncover the truth and set free all the people incarcerated in the group. Meanwhile, families of terror victims seek justice. The International Day of Family can be a good opportunity to take note of these people and take a step to reduce their pain forever.

Habilian Staff Writers

February 27, 2024 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Why the MEK separated children from their families

After the defeat of Operation Forough Javidan (aka the Eternal Light and/or Mersad) (August 3-7, 1988), Massoud Rajavi, who was in charge of the operation, instead of accepting responsibility and responding to his erroneous analyses, held a series of meetings for the failure of the operation in the spring and summer of 1989, in which he laid the blame on the warriors of the so called “National Liberation Army” and members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO). His point was that “you”, the warriors, thought of your spouses, instead of fighting the enemy with all “your” might. Even if you did not have a spouse, you were thinking of your imaginary spouse. Therefore, you did not give your whole existence to me. The cause of that failure is you! And solution?! “Eternal divorce of men and women”; both in practice and in mind”! Without making the issue of ideological divorces public, with the announcement of Maryam Rajavi becoming the first person in charge on October 17, 1989, the ideological revolution (second stage) was officially announced.

The inner world of the Mujahedin, if examined at all, is still a mystery to Western observers, and it is the Mujahedin’s deliberate policy that sustains it. For this reason, little importance has been given to this aspect of their organization. However, cult culture is one of the most dangerous forms of society. Firstly, because the most basic human rights deprive members of even the right to think. The Mujahedin have carried out forced marriages and later forced divorces, separated children from their parents, and placed them under the care of their supporters in various countries.

The MEK children

The sacrifices that each member of the group had to make were expressed in a series of “ideological revolutions” led by the group’s leader (Massoud Rajavi). The leadership called on members to disassociate themselves from any physical or emotional attachment in order to increase their “fighting capacity.” In the case of married couples, this stage of the “ideological revolution” required them to divorce their emotional ties with their spouses. Massoud Bani-Sadr reports on how this process took place .

during the “ideological meeting of” high-ranking and executive members “after the defeat of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization in Iran:

The first thing I had to do in Baghdad was watching the videotape of an ideological meeting for “executive and high-ranking members.” The meeting, called “Imam Zaman”, began with a simple question: “To whom do we owe all our achievements and everything we have?”. Rajavi did not claim to be the Imam of our time as I thought, but only said that we owe everything to the Imam of our time… The aim was to show that if there is more unity, we can reach Tehran. Our leader, as he was with the Imam of Time and God; He was willing to sacrifice everything he had (which was all of us!) To God, claiming that all he had in mind was to do what God wanted him to do. We were expected to conclude that there was no barrier between Rajavi and Imam Zaman. However, there was a barrier between us and him [Rajavi]… Which prevented us from seeing him clearly. This “barrier” was our weakness. If we recognized our weakness, we would see why and how we failed in Operation Forough Javidan (Mersad) and elsewhere.

Massoud and Maryam [Rajavi] had no doubt that the guardian in all our cases is our current wife.
The organization’s order for “mass divorce” caused a great deal of psychological distress and confusion. Massoud Bani-Sadr describes the atmosphere inside Camp Ashraf during this period:

The atmosphere of the camp was completely different… The misery was unceasing… Everyone seemed to be in the new phase of the “ideological revolution.” The only legitimate discussion was about the revolution and the exchange of relevant experiences.

Nothing else mattered. There was no outside world. . . Even poor single people had to divorce their weaknesses, without knowing what those weaknesses meant. Apparently, the answer was to divorce all the women or men they loved. Only later did I realize that the MEK was seeking not only a legal divorce but also an emotional or “ideological” divorce. In my heart, I had to divorce Anna [his wife], and in fact, I had to learn to hate her as a barrier between our leader and myself.
Rajavi announced at that meeting that as our “ideological leader” he had ordered the mass divorce of our spouses. He asked everyone to hand over their rings. It was the strangest and most disgusting meeting I had ever attended. It lasted almost a week.

Rajavi told his followers that the defeat of the Forough Javidan (Mersad Operation) was not a military mistake, but was rooted in the members’ thoughts about their spouses. Their love had weakened their will to fight. In 1990, all the women in the camp were ordered to get a divorce – and the women replaced their wedding rings with pendants on which Massoud’s face was engraved. The couples separated and their children were sent to “to be adopted” by MEK supporters in Europe.
In essence, the next phase of the MEK’s ideological revolution was one year after the divorce of the families to destroy family bonds completely. Under the pretext of the war in Iraq, Massoud Rajavi ordered that all children be sent from Iraq to Europe, the United States, and other countries. About 800 children were sent from Iraq to other countries and handed over to Mujahedin supporters in those countries.

Manuchehr Abdi

MEK commanders called on all members to expose sexual misconduct publicly. Manouchehr Abdi, 55, who also left the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO) in Albania, said, confessionals were held every morning. He says that even the feelings of love and friendship were illegal. “I have to admit that I missed my daughter,” she says. They would shout at me, they humiliated me, they said that my family was the enemy and that nostalgia for them was to strengthen the hands of the mullahs in Tehran.

Batool Soltani joined the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization in 1986 with her husband and infant daughter. At first, her family was able to live together, but in 1990, she says, she was forced to divorce and she abandoned her five-year-old daughter and new-born son, who had been sent abroad to be brought up by MEK supporters. Soltani claims that she has been forced to have sex with Massoud Rajavi several times since 1999.

In fact, the Ideological Revolution turned the Mujahedin into unusual and confusing creatures. The idea that made the MEK a cult stems from internal developments in 1985. Whatever the outcome of these issues, it is clear that the Mujahedin is not a normal organization.

Elizabeth Rubin, an American journalist, gave mysterious reports during her visit to the Mujahedin camp. She describes entering the camp, which was mostly made up of women:
You feel like you have entered the imaginary world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around. About 50% of the soldiers are men. But as I turned around, I saw women dressed in khaki clothes and flowery scarves walking back and forth along the streets in white vans or army green trucks, staring forward, a little dazed or sometimes purposeful.
“The MEK is the only army in the world whose command corps is made up mainly of women,” said Elizabeth Rubin.
Many analysts, including Rubin, describe the MEK as a cult and point to the group’s loyalty to the Rajavis. Older women were reportedly forced to divorce their husbands in the late 1980s, and younger girls could not marry or have children.
“Rajavi liked to have women around him and reformed the command structure to replace men with women, this time calling it the ‘Constitutional Revolution,’” she said. He [Massoud Rajavi] was also politically savvy, adding a fascinating flavor to their public relations in the West.

In an interview with Elizabeth Rubin, 19-year-old Sahar says: “My mother was pregnant at the time of her arrest, and I was born in 1983 in Evin Prison. When I was one year old, my father was executed for supporting the Mujahedin. Now I drive a Cascavel (a Brazilian armored car). My mother is at another camp. This was one of the reasons I decided to join the army.
“Most of the girls I met grew up in Mujahedin Ashraf schools, where they lived apart from their parents,” Rubin said. Family visits were allowed on Thursday and Friday nights. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, many of these girls were deported to Jordan and then smuggled to various countries – Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where they were taken care of by Mujahedin supporters. When they were 18 or 19 years old, many of them decided to return to Iraq and fill the ranks of the youngest generation of Mujahedin. “Decided” is probably not the right word, though, because from the day they were born, these girls and boys were not taught to think for themselves, but to blindly follow their leaders. Nadereh Afshari, a former MEK member, told me, “every morning and night, children between the ages of 1 and 2 had to stand in front of a poster of Massoud and Maryam, greeting them and praising them.” Afshari, who was based in Germany and was responsible for receiving MEK members’ children during the Persian Gulf War, said that the MEK members did not accept her when the German government tried to attract MEK’s children to its education system. Many children were sent to Mujahedin schools, especially in France. Afshari continued: The Rajavis saw these children as soldiers of the next generation. They wanted to brainwash them and control them. This may explain the pattern of their story and life: a journey to power and enlightenment in the way of self-sacrifice inspired by the light and wisdom of Maryam and Massoud.

Amin Golmaryami

Amin Golmaryami is one of the children who was a victim of the ideological revolution in the Mujahedin and one of those who was separated from his family and sent to Europe.
In an interview with Amin Golmaryami, the German magazine “Dit” acknowledged that five pieces of evidence against the MEK had been upheld in a German court.

The court confirmed that what the MEK claimed to justify the smuggling of MEK children from Iraq to Europe in 1991 was not true. In fact, the group leaders did not want to save the children’s lives, but their goal was to destroy the family structure. The court found this to be perfectly acceptable, based on investigations and analyses by the journalist.
The court confirmed that Amin Golmaryami was a child soldier who was taken to Iraq by MEK agents, where he received military training based on available documents and the testimony of other former child soldiers.

The court confirmed that Amin Golmaryami did not visit his mother immediately after entering the Iraqi MEK camp (Camp Ashraf). It took him two weeks to meet with his mother in the presence of other female members who were watching them.
In fact, MEK agents promised Amin that they would take him to Iraq to stay with his mother for a short time and then they would return to Europe, but according to Amin and other child soldiers, they were not allowed to visit their parents for more than once a year in Camp Ashraf.

Amin Golmaryami came to Germany as a child. He says that when he was 15, he was taken from Cologne to Iraq with many other young people _ to a military camp run by an Iranian group called the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO). He is the first victim of this political cult to make his story public in his own name.

He rarely speaks German with an accent, yet occasionally uses words in his native language, Persian. They are not difficult to translate, they are more difficult to explain: Almaas-e Ensaani, for example, means “human diamond”. This is one of the main ideological concepts of the MEK that he fell into as a child, says Golmaryami: “The idea behind this is that everyone has a diamond inside them that has been damaged.” It is the person himself who is to blame for his desires – like the love for the family.

All this must be ignored. Only through loyalty to a leader can one be “cleansed.” This explanation is also recounted by other witnesses.

Amin Golmaryami was born in 1985 in the city of Abadan in southwestern Iran. His parents were former MEK members. In 1979, they and other opposition groups overthrew the Shah of Iran. However, the subsequent Islamic government did not allow the Mujahedin-e Khalq to have a share in the government and persecuted them. The MEK then carried out attacks on government employees and eventually fled into exile, most of whom fled to Iraq.

When a US-led alliance invaded Iraq in 1991 during the Second Gulf War, the MEK used the flow of refugees to send hundreds of children abroad. Today, the MEK says they did it to save them from bombs and war, but it was also to break the family structure and strengthen the fighting spirit. Amin Golmaryami and his two brothers Alireza and Hanif were there.
Amin Golmaryami remembers the journey in pieces. “My mother stood in front of the bus for a long time, crying and waving,” he said. They were taken to Germany. He and about 150 other children came to Cologne. Golmaryami was housed in a place in the Meschenich region, he recalls it as a dilapidated half-finished house. The children were there as young asylum seekers unaccompanied and under the care of Mujahedin-e Khalq staff and trustees. Ten of them slept in one room. Golmaryami says: I missed my mother very much. Some were beaten, and many had nothing to eat. Amin went to school and quickly learned German.

Most of the Iranian children were older than him and attended Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Cologne-Wieden. One of the teachers at the time recalled: The children were “happy and hardworking”. But there was also something fanatical about them. Some worshiped the leader Massoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam “like gods.”
He once stayed with a German school friend and was surprised that his parents both kissed him goodnight. “It was then that I realized my life was very different”, he says.

From the mid-1990s, some teachers noticed that the MEK children had suddenly disappeared from Cologne. 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds suddenly did not show up for classes.

Amin Golmaryami says that in 1999, his 18-year-old brother Hanif also disappeared. Hanif ordered Amin and their third brother Alireza to go to a secret meeting point in Westfriedhof, Cologne, to say goodbye to each other. Hanif said: I am going to Iraq. His destination was the headquarters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a military camp called Ashraf. The cadres had promised him that he would meet with his mother there. Amin Golmaryami says that he was shocked and shed tears when he heard these words.

Hanif Golmaryami, who now lives in Canada, says he missed her mother badly at the time and longed for motherly advice and hugs. The MEK cadres had assured him that if he did not like Iraq, he could return in a few weeks, and he believed them.
Amin once again saw his brother Hanif in a propaganda video shown to him and other children by the cadres: Hanif was marching in a parade Iraq. Eventually, he was convinced that he should follow the same path as his brother Hanif, and eventually he and his older brother, Alireza, went to Iraq.

Amin was afraid that his whole family and all his friends would gradually leave him. To be forced to stay alone in Germany. He envisioned Iraq as a large holiday camp. He was originally a minor, and he says, “they manipulated me.”
Upon entering the camp, he decided to leave, but his brother stopped him. Little by little he adapted to the situation, woke up at 4 in the morning, marched, and learned to shoot and drive a tank. And two weeks later he met his mother while the women accompanying him were spying on him.

After that, he only had the opportunity to meet his mother once a year, and he gradually hated his mother. He says he still feels the consequences of not having a normal family.

Other children who were separated from their families in the MEK’s camp include Hanif Azizi. He grew up in a military camp in the Iraqi desert. His parents were soldiers of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Revolutionary Movement in Iran. After his father was killed in the war, Hanif, who was nine years old, was sent to Sweden with his brother. He is having a hard time adapting to the new country. For the first two years, they were with a family of Mujahedin supporters, but due to domestic violence and lack of love, the Department of Children and Adolescents removed them from the family and gave them custody to a Swedish family. As a teenager, he was in contact with the Mujahedin insurgent movement again. Eager to socialize and meet his mother, he went to Iraq to join the MEK. There he was brainwashed and decided to join the Mujahedin. But he was allowed to return to Sweden to settle some issues and to bring his younger brother back to the Mujahedin. As he waited to return to Iraq with the Mujahedin, talking to different people and thinking about what had happened to him, he realized that his decision to return to the Mujahedin in Iraq was not his own, but influenced by them. This is how he changed his mind and decided to stay in Sweden. He is now a police officer in Sweden.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK/MKO) is accused of separating hundreds of children living in the MEK’s camps in Iraq from their parents and sending them from Iraq to various countries between 1990 and the beginning of the 1970s. The number of these children is estimated between 700 and 900 people. By doing so, the Mujahedin deprived the children of their parents and destroyed the family structure. The Mujahedin Organization has never published any report on the fate of these children and the situation of many of them is unknown.

The Mujahedin is also accused of illegally returning dozens of the same children from various European countries to Iraq for several years by deceiving them and promising that these children could go to Iraq to see their parents. Their departure from Iraq has forced them into the army. Some of those children in the military now talk about what happened to them through interviews or memoirs.

Conclusion: About 700 to 900 children under the age of 1 to 17 were separated from their families under the pretext of the war in Iraq and the protection of children in the Mujahedin Organization and were sent to European countries and other countries.

During the distant years, many of the parents of these children lost their lives and were never able to see their children again.

Some of these children, wishing to see their parents again and being deceived by Mujahedin supporters, returned to the Mujahedin camp after many years and underwent special care and brainwashing. Some of them also saved themselves and turned their backs on this dreadful organization forever. The fate of some of these children is unknown. Although “liberation and equality of women’s rights” was both a political goal and a strategy in the MEK, it forbade women and mothers from their most natural right, namely motherhood and love, and for many years forbade women, children, and, of course, fathers. He tortured them with brainwashing and sheer obedience and gained the will and decision-making power.

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November 22, 2023 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

The story of a single Mujahed father and his three sons

Having been forced by the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to divorce his wife, Heidar Babai had to raise his three kids alone. He left the MEK in the early 1990s because he did not agree to divorce his wife, Nasrin Yunesi. Massoud Rajavi had ordered all married members of the group to divorce their spouses. A few years later Rajavi ordered members to give their children over to the MEK human traffickers to smuggle them to Europe and North America.

Nasrin and Heidar had two children, Hammed and Hamaad when they left Iran to join the MEK in Iraq. Under the order of the group, first, Heidar left his wife and two sons for Iraq and went there through Pakistan border. Then, Nasrin and Hamaad were smuggled to Iraq by the MEK agents. The MEK agent had coerced Nasrin to leave the six-year-old Hamed in Iran.

Heidar was in the MEK’s camp in Iraq when he talked to Nasrin on the phone, and he found out that Hamed was not with her. He shouted at the poor woman who was already mourning for her older son. “I shouted at Nasrin,” Heidar writes in his memoirs, “But I knew that it was not her fault. She was in that path because of me.”

Heidar Babaei and his three sons

Once, Heidar, Nasrin and Hamaad gathered in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, they could maintain their family center for a while. Heidar and Nasrin used to work in different units of the MEK army, Hamaad was kept in the buildings established for Mujahedin’s children. At night, they would stay with each other in their room in Eskan buildings.

In July 1988, Heidar took part in Forough-e Javidan, the MEK’s cross border operation against Iran, financially and logistically supported by Saddam Hossein. He was seriously wounded, hospitalized for several months. It took him a long time to be allowed to call Nasrin. Nasrin was crying, she could not believe her ears. She had been told by the commanders that her husband was killed.

Forough-e Javidan was a catastrophic defeat for Massoud Rajavi who had the illusion to capture Tehran in three days. He wanted to justify his failure not by his logical thinking but by blaming members for being preoccupied by wife and life!
Therefore, the order for forced divorce was issued. Heidar did not obey the order. He kept on seeing Nasrin and Hemaad. For a short period of time, they were the only family who would still go to Eskan to be together at nights. He had to walk a long distance in dark to reach Eskan. Nasrin got pregnant with her third son, Pooyan, but the MEK leaders did not let Heidar know about it. They forced Nasrin to stop the family visits.

Following the order, a lot of the MEK members announced their willingness to leave the group. It was not just a simple request to leave a normal group. In order to leave the cult-like structure of the group, members had to be indoctrinated, punished, imprisoned and if none of the tactics succeeded, they were surrendered to Iraqi authorities. Heidar was lucky to be able to gain a passport for himself and his family, but ultimately he had to leave Iraq without Nasrin and Pooyan.

A few months took Heidar and his second son Hamaad to reach Netherlands. They lived in refugee camps. At the time, Massoud Rajavi had issued his second order to totally collapse MEK families. This time, he had ordered the separation of children from their parents. Nasrin had to leave the two-months-old Pooyan to MEK human traffickers. They had taken him to Netherlands, but the MEK authorities did not want to give the boy to his uncle Siroos who lived there.

Heidar made efforts to get his little son back. The poor baby was left with a MEK female defector who wanted to use him to take refuge from Dutch government. His brother, Siroos could finally take the baby. When Heidar reached Netherlands and saw his son for the first time, named him Pooyan.

The single father and his two sons had to stay in a refugee camp for two years. He was then given a house by the government. His efforts to contact Nasrin in the MEK was totally futile. “Each time I tried to contact her via the MEK offices, she would call me in a few days and would insult me,” he recounts. “This was not my Nasrin, the love of my life. She was always polite; she would never shout at me. I was sure that she was under pressure by the MEK to make me stop looking for her.”

The next step for Heidar was the reunion of Hamed who had been left wandering among his dad’s and mom’s relatives in Iran, for six years. Heidar went to Turkey, he organized Hamed’s departure from Iran. He paid too much money to get Hamed’s passport to take him to his home in the Netherlands.

Now he was responsible for raising three sons who missed their mother very much. “My sons always miss their mother,” he writes. “Especially Pooyan who has never seen her. I was the only father who would take his son at school. Pooyan always witnessed other children whose mothers were waiting for them.”

Today, Heidar’s sons are grown up, but Nasrin is not allowed to visit them yet. She is still barred from the outside world in the MEK’s headquarters in Albania, called Ashraf 3. “I am sure that Nasrin has no access to the Internet,” Heidar writes. “She has not been able to read my memoirs, but the MEK has brought her to their TV channel to show me that she has no intention to leave the group, but I know that she is kept there against her will.”

November 8, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Grown up in the MEK, my therapists shed tears for me

The stories of children of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) can be documented as evidence of the existence of abusive practices and maltreatment in the group. All children of Mujahed parents are more or less survivors of traumatic experiences. However, not all of them find the courage to recount their sufferings after leaving the cult-dominated atmosphere. The most recently published account is that of Atefeh Sebdani whose traumatic childhood has even moved her therapists.

The story of Atefeh is so touching that her therapists could not help displaying compassion what is not so normal during the healing process. “How could she help me when she did not know which trauma she should work on?” Atefeh asked in an interview with the Iranian researcher Farah Shilandri.

Atefeh Sebdani published her autobiography, “My hand in mine” a few months ago in Sweden where she and her two brothers were smuggled by the MEK agents over three decades ago. Together with seven hundred children of the MEK, they had been separated from their parents and trafficked to Europe and North America under the order of Massoud Rajavi, leader of the MEK cult.
“The more I wrote, the calmer I got,” she told Shilandri. “But I also want to point out that there are many people who secretly contact me who are either defectors of the MEK, or are the children separated from their parents by the group, and they say that they are happy that someone has the courage to talk about this and in my opinion, this is a very important issue that should be raised. Many do not dare to speak out loud about this.”

As a survivor of the Cult of Rajavi, she clarifies why it is so difficult to dare to speak out, “I would like to point out is that we, the children of Mujahedin, have lost everything a person can lose, we have nothing more to lose. To the extent that we were not only deprived of our parents, but also erased our identity from our minds. They even planned our feelings, thoughts and beliefs. At first, it was difficult for me to understand this situation. Finding myself and finding my values was not easy for me, who had learned to deny myself, my character and my values.”

When Atefeh was 19, she left the foster parents who were members of the MEK and had imposed all types of child abuse against her, her two younger brothers and two other foster kids who were also children of Mujahed parents – a girl and a boy, the boy was later recruited as child soldier and sent to the MEK’s camp in Iraq, where he was killed. The killing of Hamid was one of the last traumatic events for the teenager, Atefeh.

To answer Shilandri about how her experience with therapists were, she says, “I have gone to different psychologists, but to no avail. I don’t want to raise myself up. But the fact is that my experiences and problems were so complex that psychologists did not know how to treat them. I visited for the first time for two phobias. But I did not get any results. The second time was after my foster brother was killed (as I said before, he and his sister lived in that house with us). My foster brother went to Camp Ashraf and joined the MEK, but he was killed during the Iraqi attacks on Camp Ashraf in 2011.”

According to Atefeh, the Mujahedin and the family who were in charge of her and her siblings were very happy and proud of his death which they called martyrdom. “But his death hit me hard,” she says. “This is why I went to the psychologist again on the recommendation of my colleagues. For two years, I went to counseling and psychoanalysis sessions every other week. I would talk, and the psychologist would just cry.”

Atefeh suggests that her book is like a statement to her that indicates that she stands by her belief. She believes that someone should write about what happened to children who have been victims of the Cult of Rajavi. “I consider it my responsibility to write and express the truth,” she says.

October 28, 2023 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

The collapse of Ali Asghar Zamani’s family, the outcome of joining the MEK

A family of four was collapsed immediately after they joined the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Ali Asghar Zamani, his wife and their two children were recruited by the MEK agents, in 2003.
The Zamanis did not have any idea that they were going to Iraq to the military Camp Ashraf. The MEK agents had promised them immigration to Europe to build a happy life there. But, for years their destination was the isolated camp in Iraqi deserts where the family fell apart.

Ali and his wife were forced to divorce. His initial resistance against this order did not work. His wife was finally separated from him. There is no married member in the MEK.

Their 17-year-old son was coerced to wear military uniform and their little daughter was taken back to Iran. Since then, they could hardly ever see each other. “During the twenty years of membership in the MEK, I could see my son four or five times, from long distance,” he recounts.

The group leaders wanted to hand the little girl to human traffickers to take her to Iran, but Ali refused. The leaders told him that he should scarify his daughter for the group cause. He promised them to get his daughter to Iran by his own and then turn back to Iraq.

After he left his daughter to his mother in Iran, he got back to Iraq, this time to save his son but it was not a simple process. He was not allowed to visit his son. In the MEK, family relationship was forbidden; leaving the group was considered treason. Breaking these rules would lead to punishment. “They didn’t show my son to me, and if I happened to see him, I would be under commanders’ control; we couldn’t talk or contact each other,” he writes in his official announcement for leaving the group. “Because any kind of family contact was considered against the organization’s ruling.”

However, Ali succeeded to talk to his son after the group was relocated to Camp Liberty, near Baghdad airport. Ali got sick but his son could manage to visit the UN officials in the camp. He was aided to leave the MEK and to immigrate to Europe.
The father got stuck in the MEK for about a decade more. He was not able to leave the group until last month. “As a dissident member, I was jailed in a room when the Albanian Police raided Ashraf 3 two months ago,” he writes. “When the Albanian police came to the camp for inspection, they locked me in the proper room where I was living. Two members watched over me so that I could not go to the police and ask for asylum.”

Finally, he could ditch his commanders on a day that they had come to Tirana to do some errands. He escaped the group and surrendered himself to Police. He was welcome. He joined Nejat Society Albania that aided him get back to free world.
“The life in the MEK was full of suffering; we were under constant suppression in the MEK,” he says. “I could not meet or call my children in all those 20 years but since I left the group I can talk to my son and his family every night.”

Ali Asghar Zamani had a family of four before their involvement in the MEK. Today each member of the family is in a separate place. His wife in in Ashraf 3. His son is in a European country. His daughter is in Iran, and he is looking for a new life in Tirana, Albania.

October 24, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

MEK and Children – Atefeh Sebdani

Atefeh Sebdani was born in 1986 in Isfahan. Her father was a member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), but her mother, without being a political person, was forced to obey her husband. Taking care of her three children, together with her husband she went to Camp Ashraf, Iraq. After Forough Javidan operation, Atefeh’s parents divorced each other under Masoud Rajavi’s order –in fact under the pretext of focusing more on the struggle.

In 1991, Atefeh and her two younger brothers, like other children of the MEK, were separated from their parents under the order of Masoud Rajavi. After being smuggled from Iraq, they finally arrived in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In her autobiography, Atefeh writes about the terrible tragedy of her and her brothers’ separation from their mother: “My youngest brother still was fed with breast milk and clung to the breast of every adult woman we saw on the way… When the boys fell asleep, I cried silently … I had promised to be good, and I was constantly afraid that they would separate us… I did everything for my brothers and became their mother.”

Atefeh waited until their teenage years for their mother to come and take them away, but apart from a five-minute phone conversation once a year, she got nothing else. Although, as she says, these short calls caused more psychological damage to that helpless girl.

She is now 37 years old. She is an engineer and has received many awards and recognitions as a digital strategist and business developer, but her passion for writing her autobiography has made her today a woman who has transformed her childhood tragedy in the Rajavi cult to an inspiring story of resilience.

Swedish publications, newspapers and websites present Atefeh Sebdani as a woman who as a child did not have a dream. Her life at Camp Ashraf, in Sweden and with the families who were supporters of the MEK, was full of catastrophic tragedies, and the only reason he decided to survive every day was the promise he made to her Mujahed mother: to take responsibility for his brothers.

Atefeh and her two brothers

During all her childhood years, she had to defend herself and her brothers alone by enduring the mental, physical and sexual abuses that the Cult of Rajavi imposed on them. The MEK had kept her and her brothers in their orphanage and adoption system with the hope that someday they would return to Camp Ashraf, Iraq as child soldiers, either as fighting soldiers or as “martyrs” for the organization’s propaganda purposes. As Atefeh writes in her book, for a long time she thought that every death was martyrdom!

A significant part of the biography of Atefeh Sebdani focuses on the analysis of the MEK as a cult and the leadership of Maryam Rajavi. Like other children of the MEK, he was used as a tool to participate in rallies and financial-social activities of the group.

Today, Atefeh Sebdani is a fierce critic of the leadership of the MEK. In an interview with the Swedish magazine Femina, she says: “I am angry that today no one accepts responsibility for all the children who were detached from their parents. We, children were never allowed to ask questions, we were exchanged between different aunts and uncles. ”

After her childhood meeting with Maryam Rajavi at the Ouver sur d’Oise, the MEK’s headquarters in the suburb of Paris, she understood the depth of cult-like tyranny. She tells Femina about that experience: “When I saw Maryam in the midst of all that luxury and protection, I felt like the emperor’s new clothes. Why, while my mother stayed in Iraq, became a soldier, lacked food and had to make the worst sacrifice a mother can do, Maryam was so elegant, and she was so honored?”

Today Atefeh lives with the love of her life Max, they have three children.

October 4, 2023 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

What is it like being child of an MEK member?

At the age of five, Atefeh Sebdani from Iran was put on a bus with her little brothers. They ended up in Gothenburg and grew up in a Mujahedin affiliated family. Her autobiography is unimaginably dark – but also very readable, GP’s Nina Morby thinks.

“All my childhood I thought that the word death was equated with the word martyr in Persian”, writes Atefeh Sebdani in his autobiography “Min hand i min”, which stands out in the large range of I-literature that dominates contemporary Swedish prose. The reader soon becomes aware of what the book is not: namely, another auto-fictional depiction of middle-class boredom and existential misery.

Sebdani’s story begins in Iran, a few years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The mullahs have overthrown the monarchy and installed an authoritarian, Islamist republic with little tolerance for dissent. Her parents are affiliated with the People’s Mujahedin, the Marxist-Islamist opposition group that desires a secularized and democratic Iran. The father is convinced that fighting for the Mujahedin is the only right thing, the mother is politically uninterested but has no other choice.

Atefeh Sebdani

Believing it is the best for Atefeh, the mother puts her and the younger brothers on a bus with an unknown destination. After many agonizing days and nights, they finally end up in Gothenburg, with another Mujahedin-affiliated family who is running the fight from Sweden. Atefeh is asked to call the adults mom and dad, and the other children siblings. At the age of five, she herself has already assumed the role of parent to her little brothers.

It is clear from the beginning that Sebdani’s autobiography hides a darkness, but exactly how dark it is cannot be imagined at first. The years that come after arriving in Sweden are a struggle to fit in and to stay above the surface. Atefeh’s foster mother forces her to do household chores while disapproving of her entire existence. During the dinners, she asks the family to openly air what bothers them with Atefeh, who is puzzled by how it all fits with the Mujahedin’s feminist ideology.

Ultimately, “Min hand i din” is a story about the author’s own upbringing, but through it also emerges the image of Gothenburg in the 1980s, as it could appear from the eyes of an immigrant girl.
Even worse, however, is the foster father’s constant abuse, his sexual harassment, the relationship she is then forced into with her foster brother. She feels like “A body that only existed. A body that obeyed the other body in the room. A body that was a maid. A nuisance. A body to have sex with”. Dejected, she takes out a razor blade in the shower, ready to end her life. Then she remembers the promise she made to her mother: to take care of her younger brothers.

Despite all the darkness, the book is pleasant to be in, thanks to the author’s flexible language. Atefeh Sebdani, who by day works as an engineer and lecturer, writes matter-of-factly and with a clear forward movement where every sentence is carefully formulated.

Here and there the story is interspersed with italicized, shorter and more poetically written texts that resemble diary extracts. There, Sebdani writes about the longing for the mother, about the memories from the first years in Iran and Iraq. As a reader, you become greedy for these small excerpts, which offer another layer closer to the author’s innermost core. They could have been more.

But it’s a parenthesis. Overall, “Min hand i min” is a very readable autobiography that provides insight into what it is like to escape from one country and grow up in another, and what it means to be a woman in an environment where male desire rules.

Reading it is like being welcomed into a girl’s room, getting to share the author’s many secrets, and being lulled into the belief that most things will, in the end, be good.

By Nina Morby – Goteborg Posten – Translated by Nejat Society

October 1, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Atefeh Sebdani on the escape, the cult-like movement and the new book

Atefeh Sebdani was only five years old when she boarded a bus in Iraq that was to take her to Jordan.
She had her two little brothers with her.
Their mother was left behind.
- The little child Atefeh died there and then and at the same moment I became an adult.

As the bus began to roll, the terror within Atefeh grew. She saw her mother, who had just urged her to be good, to take care of her little brothers and promised to see them again soon, standing outside.

Atefeh and her two brothers

- Mother was my breath, identity and great security who did everything for us children, but then and there my anchor and all my security disappeared. With my mother, I left parts of myself that became difficult to find again.
Atefeh wanted to scream, but sat quietly so as not to worry her little brothers.
The bus was to take them from the Iraqi military camp they lived in to Jordan. When they got a piece of bread on board, Atefeh divided it in two and gave each piece to her brothers even though she herself was hungry.

- My youngest brother was still breastfeeding and tried to breastfeed all the grown women we met on the road, says Atefeh when we meet in connection with the release of her biography Min hand i min.
Before the farewell at the bus, the family had been on the run from Iran for two years. They slept in the open and sometimes sat on the streets begging. Potatoes became their only food.

– Boiled potatoes with salt, potato wedges, mashed potatoes and fried potatoes. Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. It was more or less the only thing we ate, we couldn’t afford anything else.
The family managed to get to a military camp in Iraq where people had fled a regime that was hunting them for their involvement in the People’s Mujahedin resistance movement. Atefeh’s parents joined the growing group of young Mujahideen followers and were promised a home, security, education and a vision of a united, free and democratic Iran. But they were also introduced to weapons and plans for coups.

In order to focus on their task, a divorce was required of all spouses. They would be loyal to their supreme leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, but they would also be forced to leave their children behind.
Life in the camp became everyday life where the children went to school, bathed, sang in the choir and took part in various activities.

- It was like a paradise in the middle of the desert. But in 1990, the political situation became increasingly uneasy, says Atefeh.
Bombs fell and Atefeh remembers the adults covering the ears of the smallest children after they threw them into the shelters. Once back up, they were met with enormous devastation. At the same time, as long as she had her mother, she felt safe.
- It was no longer safe to stay in the camp and that’s when the fateful decision was made to send us children to Europe, says Atefeh and tells us that she is one of 800-1,000 children who were separated from their parents during this the period.

So the children were used as tools in the movement

The bus journey continued further away from mother. Strange adults, whom the children would call aunts or uncles, whisked them across national borders.
- I did everything for my brothers and became their mother. I cried silently to myself when the boys had fallen asleep. I had promised to be good and was constantly carrying a fear that they would separate us, says Atefeh.

In 1991, the siblings came to Sweden. Here they were met by “Aunt Marzieh and Uncle Ahmed”.
Atefeh and her brothers were forced to call them mom and dad. They were supporters of the same movement as Atefeh’s parents and told the authorities in Sweden that they were relatives, which was the only way they would be allowed to stay.
- From that day we officially became refugees in Sweden, says Atefeh.
From the very beginning in the new family, where there were two other foster children as well as a biological one, Atefeh was taught not to ask for her mother.
- We were not allowed to ask, feel or think anything. The days turned into weeks which in turn turned into months and I heard nothing from my mother. We children were used very strategically in their politics and one of their strategies was to keep saying that we would be reunited with our parents. That way they could keep us within the movement and use us as tools.
At regular intervals, Atefeh had to take part in various demonstrations. She was told that they were part of the fight for a free Iran and that the sooner the country became free, the sooner she would see her late mother again.
- All free time and even during lessons we skipped, we focused on politics in the form of demonstrations, manifestations, meetings with decision-makers and the like, says Atefeh, who describes in his book how it could look:
“‘Death to the terrorist regime in Iran! Death to the terrorist regime in Iran!’
With their fists in the air, the members screamed so loudly and often that by the end of the day we had no voices left. We children imitated the adults and pumped our fists just as intensely and shouted even louder with our bright voices. The adults loved watching us do what they did. They smiled and patted us on the head. We would probably make good freedom fighters as well.”

The time went by. Once a year, mother called, but there were no happy moments because they were eavesdropped and the calls also disturbed Atefeh’s survival mechanisms.
- When you live in the reality I did, I needed to find ways to cope with my everyday life. There was only room for missing my mother in my bed at night. The days were just about fighting through. I had been thrown into a sea of sharks and was constantly trying to find ways to cope. So when those calls came, it was like tearing down all the protective mechanisms I had built up, says Atefeh.

She gets upset when she thinks about everything that went under the radar.
- I’m pissed off that nobody today takes responsibility for all the children who were torn from their parents. We children were never allowed to question, we were shuffled between different aunts and uncles.
She further believes that no one has taken responsibility, instead they have chosen to back the organization and keep the Mujahedin behind their backs. Atefeh has been told that she lied about everything or that they didn’t know what happened, even though all the signs were clearly there.
- It’s completely bizarre. Hundreds of adults who agreed to so many children being separated from their parents. No one has questioned except those who are no longer followers.
The headquarters of the Mujahedin was in Auvers in Paris. Atefeh says that it was their Mecca, a dream destination that everyone strove to get to, not least to meet the president of the movement, Maryam Rajavi.
– Being allowed to visit our headquarters was something that only selected people were allowed to do. Including me, says Atefeh and tells about the occasion that made her feel disgust rather than fascination.
- When I saw Maryam in all the luxury and care, I was struck by the feeling of the Emperor’s new clothes. Why would she be doing so well and be so celebrated while my mother remained in Iraq, became a soldier, was short of food and had to make the worst sacrifice a mother can make?

The followers set themselves on fire in protest

Atefeh began to question the whole system and found everything uncomfortable.
- It was in connection with the supporters starting to set themselves on fire in a protest that I started to feel really bad. It was such a grossly inhuman incident, but the members praised their actions.
But it was when Atefeh learned that her foster brother Hamid, who had gone to Iraq to become a soldier, had been killed that she began her fight to get her mother out of the sect.
- It’s still painful to talk about, Atefeh says and falls silent for a while.
- I got to see a film on YouTube that showed an execution of my brother, a film that was used as propaganda. They had sent Hamid completely defenseless, straight to the bullets to die. I realized that this is the same kind of propaganda I have seen about other so-called martyrs. Now it was about my brother and it was only then that the chips were down, their deaths were part of an elaborate propaganda machine.
Now Atefeh realized that it was a merciless organization she was dealing with and began to think about the criteria of what a cult is, and began a long process to get her mother out.

Today Atefeh lives with the love of her life Max, together they have three children

This is how Atefeh lives today

Today Atefeh lives with the love of her life Max, together they have three children.
- He became my reason to want to continue living and I felt for the first time really loved, again. And with his simple questions, I understood my warped reality.
Atefeh sees how the Mujahedin work hard lobbying at a high political level. But her desire to encourage others to help where she sees children in harm’s way has been greater than the fear of what the Mujahedin might threaten her, as a defector, with.
- If you see signals or have a gut feeling, you should trust it. I hope that you as an authority will realize what responsibility you have.
She wants to tell about what she has been through also for her own sake, for the little child whose hand was torn from her mother’s over thirty years ago.
- I have always loved the power of words, both in written and spoken form. But I’ve never had to give space to that side because I’ve been so controlled. As a child I had no dreams, I never planned to grow up. Today I want to take my place and am proud of myself. I choose to tell the little girl who managed despite everything and who now gets to live out a dream she didn’t even know she had.

By FRIDA FUNEMYR – Femina; Sweden’s largest magazine for women – published in Swedish, Translated by Nejat Society

September 30, 2023 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Listen to Atefeh, the little girl smuggled to Europe by the MEK

“My Hand in Mine” is an autobiography authored by Atefeh Sebdani. She was born to parents who were members of the Mujahedin_e Khalq. Atefeh and her two brothers were residing in the group’s headquarters, Camp Ashraf, Iraq, until the group’s leader Massoud Rajavi ordered to smuggle all children from Iraq to Western countries. Atefeh and her brothers were smuggled to Sweden.

Atefeh Sebdani’s inspiring story was published in Swedish language and by the Swedish publication Albertbonniersforlag. This is the publisher’s description about the book:
A little girl clings to her mother, but grown hands pry her from her mother’s arms.

Later, the girl sits on a worn-out bus driving along dusty roads towards an unknown destination. She has her arms around her little brothers and comforts them with her mother’s last words: We will see each other again soon.

Why do you abandon your children? Atefeh is five years old when she and her brothers are smuggled to Europe. The parents are soldiers in an Iranian resistance movement and remain in the organization’s military camp. In a stroke, the five-year-old is the mother of her brothers.
“Min hand i min” is a story about growing up with no one to hold on to but yourself, about abuses that are skillfully cleaned up and about a society that fails to see the vulnerable child. But it is also a story of a stubborn burning vitality, and of the courage to finally break free.

Atefeh and her two brothers

This is a review on the book published by the Swedish newspaper Gothenburg Post:
“Despite all the darkness, the book is pleasant to be in, thanks to the author’s supple language. Atefeh Sebdani … writes matter-of-factly and with a clear forward movement where every sentence is carefully formulated … a very readable autobiography that gives insight into how the is escaping from one country and growing up in another, and what it means to be a woman in an environment where male desire rules.”

The number of children of the MEK members who were smuggled to European and North American countries mounts to 700. Many of these children –about 300– were later sent back to Iraq under the pretext of visiting their parents but they were recruited by the MEK’s army as child soldiers. They were forced to wear military uniform and to receive military trainings.
The stories of MEK child soldiers are distressful. Several of them were killed in the MEK. A number of them could manage to leave the group. A few of them dared to speak out in the news media and social networks, like Amin Golmaryami, Amir Yaghmai, Zhina Hosseinnezhad and Ray Torabi.

Of those who were lucky and were not sent back to Iraq, a few have written their autobiographies. Hanif Aziz, 40, now a Swedish police officer, is the son of Mujahed parents too. He published his tragic autobiography of an orphan who strived in Sweden, in the early 2021, in Swedish language. The book was titled “Suburban snout”.

September 27, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Ray Torabi: People of Iran should hate the MEK more!

Mohammad Reza (Ray) Torabi, a former child soldier of the People’s Mujahedin Organization (PMOI/ MEK), once again spoke about his distressing experiences of captivity in this cult to inform Iranian people.

Having spent the best part of his youth, from the age of 16 to 35, in what he calls the “evil cult,” he lost his father under the torture by the cult’s leaders, and now he speaks of a mother who is has been terribly brainwashed by Masoud and Maryam Rajavi.

Ray Torabi, the son of Ghorban Ali Torabi and Zahra Siraj, says that his mother gave him the label of being a mercenary of the Islamic Republic. With a bitter smile, he calls his mother “the follower of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi” who has been so brainwashed and deprived of human values by their destructive cult that she seeks denies the love of her son.

Ray’s reaction to this difficult situation and the unpleasant news that his friend brought him from Albania, is reflected in his video message on hi8s Facebook account with a sense of sadness or resignation. His self-confidence helps him with the unkind words by the side of his mother.

As a matter of fact, he regards MEK leaders the criminals who have drained all human values from the hearts and minds of their members. He calls Maryam Rajavi “dishonorable” and “traitor” and not only considers her claims about human rights and democracy false, but also finds her deserving of trial and prison for her crimes against her members.

In the end, Torabi calls on the people of Iran to have a deeper understanding of the MEK and eventually hate this destructive cult more than before.

September 17, 2023 0 comment

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