Official: Baghdad soon to close MKO file
Iraqi National Security Advisor Muvafaq al-Rubai said here Friday that Iraqi government will in next few months close dossier of the terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO).
“The MKO is a terrorist group and a cancerous tumor in Iraq; The crimes and sins the group has committed are evident and well-documented. Several thousand Iraqi citizens have fallen victims of the terrorist organization and we have provable evidence, that we will submit them to Iraqi courts,” said al-Rubai in an exclusive interview with IRNA.
He said the MKO was stationed in Iraq by former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein and contrary to then regulations in Iraq, getting involved in suppression of Iraqi people’s Intifadha in 1991 and massacre of Kurds and Shiites.
He added that after formation of popular government of Iraq, the MKO has taken provocative moves against legal government of the country over recent years.
He went on to say that Iraqi courts have issued arrest warrants for 14 MKO members.
On removal of the MKO from Europe’s list of terrorist organizations, he said the MKO case is complicated and the European courts have thus far removed the outfit from the terrorism list and re-entered them into the list three times.
He said that the MKO will soon be put in the EU terrorist list.
“We have asked the EU to contribute to settlement of problem with the MKO and their exit from Iraq; we have recently discussed the issue with ambassadors of the countries and they have vowed to cooperate.”
The People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI alias, aka MKO, alias or NRCI) have been removed from the list of organizations considered terrorist by the
European Union. Just when the U.S. confirmed on their own … who can understand.
It is true that the decision to withdraw from the European list is motivated solely on technical issues and form such aspects of rights of defense.
But now, France has appealed this decision and the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs reiterated that for it, PMOI did have its place on this list.
Moreover, the text that was adopted makes it clear that several countries among the 27 "are not convinced that the Mujahedin were away from terrorism". It will be recalled that the process of withdrawal, the Swiss and the French had launched new accusations against PMOI.
It is therefore likely that PMOI will return to this famous list in July. Unfortunately, in the meantime, it has had time to recover the many assets it owns and those it had received from Saddam Hussein as a salary for being executive of his dirty works …
The modern definition of a mind control cult is any group which employs mind control and deceptive recruiting techniques. In other words how cults trick
people into joining and coerce them into staying. This is the definition that most people would agree with. Except the cults themselves of course!
According to howcultswork, cults use coercive manipulation techniques to keep their members in. All former members of MKO affirm the indoctrination practices in the cult of Rajavi.
Ibrahim Khodabande, a former member of the cult, writes:’’ the cult like activities and creation of gods, and the creation of a relationship of total submission and the use of mind control tactics which eventually results in insane and unbelievable actions like self immolations”
Cults include various types such as religious, commercial, political ….
Religious
Cults that use a belief system as their base are very common. Their belief system could be standard Christianity, Hinduism, Islam or any other of the world religions, or they may have invented their own belief system. What makes them a cult is the fact that they use mind control, not what they believe.
Commercial
Cults that use commercial gain as their base are called "cults of greed". They will promise you that if you join them and follow their special programme for success then you will become very rich. Often they will hold up their leader as an example and explain that if you do what he or she says then you will be successful too. Commercial cults use mind control to get you working for them for free, and to make you pay for an endless stream of motivational tapes, videos, books and seminars all of which are supposedly designed to help you succeed, but in reality are designed to enhance the cult’s mind control environment and keep you believing in their almost impossible dream of success. Of course they never mention that the primary way the leaders make money are by selling these motivation materials to their group! For more information see below under the section, "Pressure Selling".
Self Help & Counseling
Cults that use "self help" or counseling or self improvement as their base often target business people and corporations. By doing their courses and seminars they claim you and your staff will become more successful. Business people locked away in hotel rooms are subjected to quasi-religious indoctrination as they play strange games, join in group activities, and share their innermost thoughts with the group. Once you have completed one course you are told you need to do the more advanced course, which naturally costs more than the last. These cults will sometimes request that you do volunteer work and that you help recruit your friends, family and work mates. These groups specialize in creating powerful emotional experiences which are then used to validate your involvement in the cult. The religious overtones are couched in terms which don’t sound religious. They usually come to the surface as you near the end of a seminar. Many people have been bankrupted by involvement with these cults.
Political
Cults that use political ideals as their base are well known throughout history. Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist USSR were classic examples of mind control on a very large scale. On smaller scales white and black supremacists, terrorists, and rebel groups commonly use forms of mind control to recruit and dominate their members.
Mujahedin-e-Khalq is considered as a religious political cult for they advocate their own version of Shiite Islam mixed with Marxism ideology.
Therefore they have invented their own belief system.
Besides, they have their deceptive ways to earn money including charity foundations of which some have been outlawed in Europe, so they can be called commercial too since all the members are exploited to work for free. The terrorist cult of MKO has long been dominating its members (victims) with an illusion of a political achievement in Iran. And this is only a mirage that they have convinced the members to see for years.
Reference: HowCultsWork
By Mazdak Parsi
Also Read:
Response to Sergio D’Elia, secretary of Hands Off Cain”, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (1) 
Caro D’Elia,
Our group had no intention of continuing to write about Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO), but encouraged by your recent e-mail we feel obliged to make a few points. In principle, we are not against the removal of MKO from the list of terrorists. Indeed, the movement is already in decline .Since the late nineties the internal dissent in Camp Ashraf is increasing and with the fall of the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, the MKO will be deprived of their basic logistics. However, there are things that continue to preoccupancy.
First, we believe that the leadership of MKO should answer the killing of civilian Kurds. I’m sorry, in fact, contradicting, but under Saddam the MKO were involved directly in the massacre of the Kurdish population. We have received confirmation and documentation of what we are saying by the Kurdish Democratic Party and by independent Tolerancy International, based in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan) and headed by a former minister of the autonomous Kurdish government, Hussein Sinjari.
Secondly, we are sure that the meetings in Europe with several supporters and / or members of MKO led you to find them available and courteous. The image that, in fact, the movement has manufactured in the West is a democratic organization. But the situation is different at Camp Ashraf. Some members of MKO have in fact discovered at their expense, the detention camps in which under the leadership of the movement they were subjected to torture, often led to death. Members of MKO are victims of their own cynical leadership. Shown below the records of known and authoritative organization Human Rights Watch on this topic.
The third point is that, as you say it, the movement does not have a libertarian government structure and in light of the facts that we have listed above and that we are committed to detail, are needed to reconstruct the truth about the movement. Surprisingly when Italian parliamentary delegations – and Sen. Perduca – go on a visit to Camp Ashraf and then write in the Italian media praises to movement who do not know at all.
Another point which we would highlight was well summarized by a message left to us by a supporter of MKO in Italy:”It is not far the day when Iran and the Iranians celebrate their freedom and democracy under the flag of the Mojahedin and their president Mrs. Maryam Rajavi.”This concerns us. We want a free Iran, celebrating their freedom under the flag of their country, not a movement, and having as president a leader elected by democratic elections.
For ease of reading we will share this letter / document into four parts. In this letter, write the abuses at Camp Ashraf (which will be divided into two parts), providing evidence. In the coming days, we will post additional material on the killing of Kurds and the armed forces and American civilian, take our information directly from the Department of State. The material here is, we were given by Human Rights Watch and the complete document in English of 28 pages is also available on-line.
Brief Background of MKO
The MKO was founded in 1965 by three student from the University of Tehran, Mohammad Hanifnezhad, Saeed Mohsen and Asghar Badizadegan. The three believed that a peaceful resistance against the Pahlavi government does not lead to any result, and that only armed struggle could fall to the monarchy. Their ideology, however, was based on an interpretation of Islam compatible with the Marxism. during 70s, thirteen members of MKO and Giodania go into Lebanon to be trained . The friendship with Yasser Arafat, remains over the years.
With the revolution of 1979, Massoud Rajavi emerged as a leader of the movement. Immediately after the revolution, MKO supported the revolution but after a while Khomeini excluded them from the division of power. It, therefore, led to an intense rivalry between the leadership of MKO and the regime of Iran. In 1981, members of MKO launched a campaign of armed attacks against the Iranian government. The same year, Massoud Rajavi moved to Paris. In 1986, France asked Rajavi to leave the country and find a new ally: the dictator Saddam Hussein. (In movies we are in possession of Rajavi called Saddam”the big boss”).
The “ideological revolution” of the MKO
In 1985, Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Azdanlu got married. Massoud and Maryam Rajavi became co-leader of the movement. They announced the marriage is an”ideological revolution”resulted from tremendous sacrifices made by both spouses. Maryam was first married to the deputy of Massoud, Mehdi Abrishamchi. The”ideological revolution”of Rajavi was imposed on the movement and required”sacrifice”. First, the leadership has asked its members to divorce by their husbands and wives, ordering”mass divorce.”
In the book “Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel,”the former member of MKO, Masoud Banisadr (not to be confused with the former president Abolhasan Banisadr) fled from the movement in 1996, recounts a meeting for senior officers of the movement page. 37 of the English version.
The first thing I was required to do in Baghdad was watch a videotape of an ideological meeting for “executive and high-ranking members.” The meeting, called “Imam Zaman,” (in the Shiite faith is the hidden Imam), started with a simple question: “To whom do we owe all our achievements and everything that we have?”… Rajavi did not claim, as I thought he might, to be the Imam of our times, but merely said we owed everything to Imam Zaman… The object was to show that we could reach Tehran if we were more united with our leader, as he was with Imam Zaman and God.
“He (Rajavi) was ready to sacrifice everything he had (which in fact meant all of us!) for God, asserting that the only thing on his mind was doing the will of God,….we were expected to draw the conclusion that no “buffer” existed between Rajavi and Imam Zaman; yet there was a buffer between ourselves and him [Rajavi] … which prevented us from seeing him clearly. This “buffer” was our weakness. If we could recognize that, we would see why and how we had failed in Operation Forogh [Eternal Light] and elsewhere. Massoud and Maryam [Rajavi] had no doubt that the buffer was in all our cases our existing spouse…
In the next letter, provide the following themes:
“Birth of dissent in Camp Ashraf”
“Violation and Abuse of Human Rights in Camp Ashraf”
“Testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch.”
Anticipation of the next letter:
Testimony of Sayed Amir Mowaseghi, collected by Human Rights Watch
Sayed Amir Mowaseghi entered a part of MKO in 1984 and was imprisoned by the Iranian government from 1984-1987. After his release, went to Pakistan, from where he could reach Iraq and join forces in the MK 1988.Nel in June 2001, had decided to leave the movement, but he was not allowed. A session of court”was agreed in September 2001 with the presence of Maryam and Masoud Rajavi, who have not granted permission to leave the MKO.
Immediately after it happened as testified:
“I was brought to a gathering of about 600 people. I was dragged into a crowd, I was taken to blows, kicked, verbally abused. I was then led in a caravan, which they called Bangala, I was confined in isolation until 2 June, 2002, and then I was handed over to Iraqi government forces (of Saddam Hussein). The Iraqi forces have put me in the prison of Abu Ghraib, I was then sent back to Iran on 18 March 2003.”
ANNA-MAHJAR of Barducci – Secretary of the”Arab Liberal Democrats
http://www.agenziaradicale.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7265&Itemid=52
Translated by Nejat Society
Ex-member says MEK ‘is like a cult’
Anne Khodabandeh, a former member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation at her Leeds home. Lorne Campbell / The National
When the European Union removed a militant Iranian opposition group from its blacklist of terrorist organisations last month, it drew not only protestations from Iran but also the contempt of a former member who claims the group is little more than a cult.
The Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, or the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, and sometimes known as MKO), a leftist Islamist organisation that has vehemently opposed the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979, was taken off the EU’s terrorism blacklist on Jan 26 at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, the culmination of intensive lobbying by the group and its European supporters.
But Anne Khodabandeh, née Singleton, a former member of the group for 20 years, was sceptical.
“Well, at least this shows the EU blacklist for what it really is – nothing more than a list of friend and foe,” she said.
“But realistically I don’t think it will make any difference to them in Europe. They will continue to carry on with their propaganda and fund-raising activities. They will continue to have their base in Paris where they hold their own members captive in isolation.”
Mrs Khodabandeh, 49, now a computer programmer, runs Iran-Interlink, an organisation that aims to inform the public about what she says is the reality of the MEK and provide assistance to former members, as well as current members who want to leave.
Mrs Khodabandeh said the group enforces strict segregation of men and women – even forcibly separating or divorcing couples – and employs psychological manipulation and mind control. She pointed to the practice of self-immolation at MEK demonstrations in Europe and the United States as further evidence of the group’s “cult-like” characteristics.
“The MEK is a cult, with every implication that has,” she said. “The leadership is unelected, unaccountable and perpetrates abuses against its own members.”
The MEK was established in the 1960s by a group of radical students in violent opposition to the US-backed shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and took part in the 1979 revolution.
But it soon fell out with Iran’s new ruler, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the the country’s religious establishment and many members were jailed and executed. Most fled the country for Europe and the United States while thousands of others set up a base in northern Iraq at Camp Ashraf, which is in the process of being closed down.
Various estimates put the group’s membership at anywhere between 5,000 and 20,000.
For its part, the MEK describes itself as a secular, democratic organisation that wants to bring democracy to Iran and enjoys significant support in Europe and the United States.
Brian Binley, a member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, hailed the decision to remove the MEK from the EU blacklist and said descriptions of the group as a cult were “completely untrue”.
“I am delighted the battle has been won,” Mr Binley, a Conservative member of parliament, said of the EU ruling. “This is a perfectly legitimate group that opposes the medieval theocracy of Iran.
“I have found them to be good people, to be democrats who want a free and democratic Iran.”
Mrs Khodabandeh first learnt about the MEK in the early 1980s through an Iranian boyfriend while studying at Manchester University.
An idealist “who wanted to change the world”, she began attending the group’s campus meetings and gradually became more involved with its fund-raising and awareness activities.
Before long she was a fully fledged member, espousing the group’s militant opposition to the theocratic regime in Iran and calling for its overthrow.
But the MEK’s demands on her grew and through such techniques as peer pressure and “psychological manipulation”, Mrs Khodabandeh said, she came ever more under control of the group.
By the age of 30 she had lost touch with most of her friends and family, given up her job as a computer programmer and handed over her house, car and savings.
She left her home in Leeds, Yorkshire, to live with other members at a number of “safe houses” belonging to the MEK, first in London and then in Sweden, and was put to work in the “diplomacy section”, monitoring the news and writing press releases for the group.
“We were like children. We took all our orders from the leaders – we wouldn’t so much as leave the building without their permission,” she said.
Since 1985 the MEK has been led by the husband and wife team of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi – the latter a leading figure in the recent campaign to have the MEK removed from the EU’s terrorist list – both of whom, according to Mrs Khodobandeh, embody all the traits of “cult leadership”. Their authority within the group is unquestionable, she said, and Massoud Rajavi is proficient in mind-control techniques.
A number of rights groups support Mrs Khodobandeh’s claims.
“We have documented serious human rights abuses that the MKO was inflicting on its own members in their camp in Iraq,” said Tom Porteous, the London director of Human Rights Watch. “The organisation … has shown that criticism of leadership is certainly not tolerated.”
It was in 1993, at the height of her devotion to the MEK – “I was willing to die for them,” she said – that Mrs Khodabandeh began to have doubts about the group.
The Rajavis and other leading members had begun introducing bizarre rules, including the banning of marriage and compulsory divorces so that members could dedicate themselves fully to the cause.
She walked out on the MEK, though it took her another three years to finally cut her mental and emotional ties to the group and return to normal life.
In 1996 she met Massoud Khodabandeh, another member who had doubts about the organisation and who left at the same time. They married soon after and moved to Mrs Khodabandeh’s native Yorkshire, where they have lived since.
As a former member and current director of a support group for former MEK members, Mrs Khodabandeh is concerned about the inhabitants of Camp Ashraf in Iraq who will be evicted when the camp is closed in the coming months.
The group has been used by the EU over the years, she said, for a number of purposes, including as a propaganda tool against Iran and as a bargaining chip in nuclear negotiations.
And now that the MEK has been removed from the blacklist, there is no barrier to giving them refuge in Europe.
“EU countries have benefited from their existence for years. If you use them, take responsibility for them,” Mrs Khodabandeh said.
Telephone calls and e-mails to the MEK for comment went unanswered.
Jonathan Spollen, Assistant Foreign Editor – February 03. 2009
jspollen@thenational.ae
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090203/
FOREIGN/119570883&SearchID=73344134565366
Memoirs of Mrs.Batoul Soltani- Part 7
As I mentioned in “Part 6” there is a practice within MKO’s internal relations called “nil-nil” (a cult type jargon) wherein everyday the members are supposed to allegedly demoralize themselves because they say that anyone who demoralizes himself and releases his energies will reach higher degrees. So they order the members to criticize each other daily and then listen to the others criticizing them. This is called “nil-nil” “criticizing others and being criticized".
There is another internal phenomenon called “Current Operation” (another jargon). This has been practiced in MKO cult since 1994. At the beginning it was oral. I mean that the members moved forward and spoke; but later it became written. In this way the member had to write anything he or she wanted to say and then read it inside the group. Masud Rajavi made too much noise calling the current operation as “Spiritual Jihad” as and even “higher than martyrdom”. Therefore, the members must confess all the sins they commit and they should expect any reaction from their colleagues.
For example, the member who attends the “Current Operation”, reads his confessions saying “Today I saw something precious on my superior’s desk and I took it” or “when I saw my superior this morning I suddenly imagined that she really looks like a torturer” or “when today I was supposed to work from 8 to 12, I just worked until 9 and then I went to the dorm and relaxed.” While the member is reading the facts, the others in the group insult him or her with an abusive language using terms like lumpish, idiot, . . . and punishing him or her orally and put the blames on him or her like “how do you want to liberate Iran while you don’t do your duties just right”
The “Current Operation” includes a stage called “cleansing” (jargon) that for the women in the leadership council should be practiced every moment and for the rest of women it is daily and for the men it is weekly. In these meetings the members must confess their sexual problems or thoughts. For Leadership Council the instruction was that if a female sees a male recalling her fiancé, she would have to confess her thoughts instantly and do the so-called “nil-nil” practice.
For ordinary female members this has to be practiced at the end of each day. For male members, the cleansing meeting is done every week on Fridays. They didn’t want to open up the relations between male and female members so the weekly meetings of men were held only by men (all meetings are generally held by women). As I noted in the previous session, there are some male members who are considered as the pins (jargon) of the organization and their responsibility is to control the members of each section. Their duties include holding the weekly meetings for the men and dealing with the problems between the male members and their female superiors. So the brother who was the pin of the organization in that section holds the meetings.
The women’s meetings are held by a member of Leadership Council and the meetings for a Leadership Council’s member are held by high-ranking members of the Council. If a member of the Leadership Council has a contradiction in mind, she has to declare it and do the so-called “nil-nil” practice. Then if it is found out through the reports, that person will be encountered and taken under more control. In fact, they have a goal. For example, the member thinks “I wish I could do something” or he thinks “How that woman looks like my ex-fiancé”. These are the moments, the moments wherein the member thinks about the outside world. But if she liked a boy (a teenager) and in a moment she liked to kiss him, she has to confess it immediately, this is a functional fact and as soon as the report of this confession is on hand, the situation of the both sides changes. A lot of efforts, in the MKO, are spent for cases such as who you have relations with and who you like.
One of the levers of the organizational control in MKO is the joint movements of female members which I mentioned in the first part of my memoirs. They said:”we order you to move jointly for your own sake. But everybody knows that this claim is baseless. Everybody knows that it’s because everyone should watch the others don’t escape. They even force the most high-ranking officials to move jointly . They said that there shouldn’t be any exclusions, because exceptions in the regulations would discredit them.
Thus everyone have to obey the regulations and execute them in order to control the lower ranks.
Translated by Nejat Society
many years, the roughly 3,500 members of the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) living quietly in Iraq drew little attention. But now the
relatively obscure group is at the center of an increasingly contentious argument among leaders in Baghdad, Tehran and Washington, where decisions the new White House makes about the rebels will probably set the tone for U.S. relations with Iran in the near term.
The simmering issue of the MEK’s fate flashed into the open earlier this month when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki unexpectedly declared that the group would no longer be allowed to remain in Iraq. Shortly after that, Maliki’s national security adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, said the MEK’s camp roughly 40 miles north of Baghdad would be disbanded within two months, declaring during an appearance in Tehran that Iraq would not play host to threats toward its neighbor.
The issue grew more complicated on Jan. 26, when the European Union removed the MEK from its list of terrorist organizations, a roster that includes organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The E.U. move, which came after a long lobbying campaign by the MEK’s supporters in Europe, sparked an outcry in Tehran. About 300 people were gathered around noon on Wednesday in front of the British Embassy in Tehran to protest the E.U. decision. Some in the crowd threw stones at the embassy, while others held up shoes on sticks in a show of deep disrespect in the Middle East.
"What people side with the enemy and kill their own people in a war?" said demonstrator Sina Zamanian, 17, referring to the MEK’s alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, which led them to settle in Iraq. "They are the worst kind of opportunistic terrorists and should be forever marked as such."
Nevertheless, some in Baghdad are calling for the group to be allowed to remain in Iraq, or at least to not be turned over to Iran, for political reasons. "We have to deal with this issue very delicately," says Ayad Jamal al-Deen, an Iraqi parliamentarian aligned with Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "I’m not here to defend this organization. I have no interest in them. But I am looking out for the Iraqi national interest." Al-Deen and other Iraqi political figures see the group essentially as a bargaining chip with Iran, one of the few Iraq holds against its powerful neighbor. They argue that simply shuttering the MEK camp as Iran demands squanders what precious little leverage Iraq has against Iran. Al-Deen adds, "In my opinion, Iraq has only this card, MEK, to pressure Iran."
At the moment, however, the MEK’s ability to remain in Iraq depends on the will of the Americans. The Bush White House continued to use the military to protect the MEK at Camp Ashraf despite its current status as a terrorist organization on the U.S. list and periodic complaints by the emerging Iraqi government and Tehran, which says the group is still involved in subversive activity inside Iran. Outwardly, U.S. officials have said disbanding the camp would be in contravention of international humanitarian law because the group’s members are likely to face persecution in Iran or Iraq. But many Iraqis and Iranians suspect that the U.S. keeps the camp open for intelligence purposes, since the MEK’s spy network played a key role in uncovering Iran’s secret uranium-enrichment program in 2002.
Maliki appears intent on pressing the issue anew with the Obama Administration, which will have to decide soon whether to keep offering U.S. protection to the group or to yield to Iraqi demands to close Camp Ashraf. If the White House allows the Iraqi government to close the camp, the Iranian leadership is likely to see the move as a sign that the new Administration is eager to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran. A continuation of the status quo, however, could chill Obama’s early outreach efforts.
At Camp Ashraf, MEK members simply wait for word on what may happen to them as discussions continue in Baghdad, Tehran and Washington. Shahriar Kia, a spokesman for the group, says a closure of the camp would be a disaster for those living in what amounts to a protective quarantine for roughly the past seven years. "Closing down Camp Ashraf and the displacement of its residents, who are protected by the Geneva Conventions, against their will is a war crime," says Kia. "This will cause a humanitarian catastrophe."
— With reporting by Tariq Anmar in Baghdad
By Mark Kukis / Baghdad
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1875917,00.html
A former member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO), who abandoned the outlawed group in protest at its terrorist operations, said the
European Union should take responsibility of supporting the MKO in its terrorist acts.
Masoud Khodabandeh said deproscribing the MKO by the EU is a politically-motivated move which leads to support for the terrorism spread by the MKO.
He told the Islamic republic news agency that Europeans should take the responsibility of future measures by MKO terrorists who are going to be allowed to enter Europian countries.
"You [the Europeans] cannot defend terrorists [by deproscribing the MKO] and at the same time claim you are countering terrorism," he said.
Khodabandeh, who is now the spokesman of a non-governmental organisation dedicated to help members abandoning the MKO, said European leaders have adopted a double-standard policy towards the issue of terrorism.
"The MKO case proves that the European Union behaves in a discriminatory manner," he said, adding that Europeans are well-aware that MKO members have conducted many terrorist operations in the past three decades.
He said the MKO bears "no significance" in international developments as "it has now expired".
Khodabandeh added that MKO members, if released from the Ashraf Camp in Iraq and admitted to European countries, would spread insecurity and terrorism across Europe.
He said the terrorist nature of the MKO has never changed as its members are wearing uniforms and taking military drills in the Ashraf Camp.
He added that Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation has not only slaughtered many Iranians but also "has been directly engaged in killing Iraqi Shiites and Kurds and suppressing even its own members".
Out of around 3,000 MKO members, he suggested, some 2,000 are in critical health conditions "and are willing to leave the Ashraf Camp."
Khodabandeh said if Europeans do really want to extend their help to these people trapped by the MKO, they should welcome them to Europe–a move he said his organisation will favour.
The family members of victims of MKO terrorist attacks have cautioned the EU against becoming the organization’s “partner in crime”.
“As victims of MKO terrorism, we advise the European Union not to turn into the group’s collaborator in their atrocities against the Iranian nation,” reads a statement from the family members.
The victims had gathered in front of the British embassy in Tehran in protest at a recent decision to remove the group known as the ‘Rajavi cult’ from a list of banned terrorist groups in the EU.
“When Masoud Rajavi and his group launched their terrorist attacks in Iran in 1981, European counties not only did not condemn their atrocities but also gave them refuge in their countries,” adds the statement.
The Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), which identifies itself as a Marxist-Islamist guerilla army, was founded in Iran in the 1960s but was exiled some twenty years later for carrying out numerous acts of terrorism inside the country.
The terrorist group is especially notorious for the help it extended to former dictator Saddam Hussein during the war Iraq imposed on Iran (1980-1988).
The group masterminded a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, one of which was the 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, in which more than 72 Iranian officials were killed, including then Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.
“The Rajavi cult has conducted its campaign of terror in Iran with the support of the European governments and from their safe havens inside the European capitals,” the families said.
In recent months, high-ranking MKO members have been lobbying governments around the world to acknowledge the dissidents as those of a legitimate opposition group.
During the revolution in Iran, the group criticized Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for releasing the American diplomats, arguing that they should have been executed instead.
The United States and Canada have refused to drop the MKO from their lists of terrorist organizations.
The group has also been engaged in cult-like activities such as psychological coercion techniques and physical abuse.
The group has also resorted to ‘forced sterilization’ as a strategy to prevent members from leaving the group.
A State Department Spokesman says the US administration will not change the terrorist status of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).
“We’ve already done a review and it was determined that there would not be a revocation of that status for the Mujahedin-e Khalq, so nothing has changed from our standpoint,” Robert Wood said at a briefing on Monday, when asked if Washington would follow the action taken by the European Union.
The EU removed the MKO from its list of terrorist organizations on Monday. The move outraged the Iranian Foreign Ministry, which in a statement, called the decision incomprehensible.
Wood added that there had not been ‘any change at this point’ in the status of the MKO, suggesting that the new administration was unlikely to alter its stance on the outlawed group.
The US announced on Jan. 12 that labeling the MKO as a terrorist group was an appropriate act and that the group had to remain on the blacklist.
The MKO, blacklisted as a terrorist organization by many international entities and countries including the US, is responsible for numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.
The group also attempted an unsuccessful invasion of Iran in the last days of the Iraq-Iran war in 1988.The MKO was involved in the massacre of Iraqis under former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.