When Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif took to the airwaves during his visit to the UN in New York, particularly for an interview with Fox News, a frisson of surprised anticipation swept the American political polity. How was it possible that Iran, the pariah nation, not only had the audacity to enter the lion’s den, but from there to lecture the lion on its dirty behavior!
Of course, this is a spat that Iran cannot easily win. What mattered most was that Zarif did not go for the throat of the lion but instead those who are pulling its chain. In short, he accused a “B team” of actively working to wage war on his country. And he singled out National Security Advisor John Bolton for supporting the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group that believes in fomenting violent regime change in Iran.
A goaded Bolton went on Fox News to reply. But instead of answering Zarif’s accusations, Bolton merely blamed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for taking the MEK off the U.S. terrorism list in 2012. This was fantastic hubris. Bolton himself supported the MEK all the time it was on the list, attending rallies and taking speakers’ fees worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Bolton’s accusations against Clinton do not hold water. He, along with then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, started the war with Iraq partly on the pretext that Saddam Hussein supported terrorist groups, including the MEK, as an instrument of his foreign policy. Bolton was also on board with Rumsfeld when the United States unilaterally granted Protected Persons status to the MEK even while it was recognized a terrorist entity—in direct violation of international law.
With the election of President Obama in 2009, newly appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was left to clear up the mess Bolton and the cabal of neoconservatives created in Iraq. One of those problems was continued U.S. support for the MEK (which the United States designated a terrorist entity in 1997). With the help of a new tough negotiator in the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, Clinton set about finding a peaceful resolution to the standoff between the sovereign Iraqi government and the unwanted and parasitic MEK.
Clinton searched for third countries to absorb the MEK. But the MEK, enjoying the backing of anti-Iran regime change pundits in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States (including Bolton), dug in its heels and refused to be disbanded. In the end, only the dependent NATO ally Albania agreed to take the group’s members. Clinton authorized $10 million for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to transfer the MEK to Albania. She paid another $10 million for the establishment of a de-radicalization institute in Tirana to first deal with the MEK as preparation for handling returning Islamic State families. Another $10 million languishes in the account of the U.S. embassy in Tirana, money to rehabilitate the MEK members into normal society that Bolton and his cabal blocked.
All this was written into an agreement between the governments of Iraq, the United States, and Albania along with the UNHCR and the MEK. At that time this author was working as a consultant to the Iraqi government on security issues, including the safe containment and deportation of the MEK. I was relieved when the Obama administration found a safe and above all a peaceful solution to the threat posed by the MEK to the security of Iraq. I was pleased to find in this agreement specific steps toward humanizing individual MEK members and restoring them to normal life and their families.
As someone familiar with the MEK, John Bolton must then and is certainly now fully cognizant of the beneficial elements of this agreement. Yet, almost as soon as President Trump was elected, the de-radicalization project was put on hold, allowing the MEK over the next year to regroup and reactivate its anti-Iran activities. With the support of Bolton, former Senator John McCain, Rudi Giuliani, and a whole cast of minor cheerleading warmongers, the MEK has constructed a purpose-built closed training camp in Albania in which the members are kept as modern slaves to serve the MEK’s propaganda and terrorist agenda.
For all her faults, Hillary Clinton did not take money from the MEK while it was listed as a terrorist entity. And taking the group off the U.S. terrorist list, though controversial at the time due to the MEK’s own well-funded pressure campaign, was not wrong, as it enabled the UNHCR to relocate the members to the safety of a third country. Her plan to correct the mistakes of the Bush administration was a vital step toward making the Middle East and the rest of the world, including the United States, a safer place. Meanwhile, John Bolton continued to take money to promote the MEK’s warmongering agenda against American interests.
Before 2016, Iran did not have a diplomatic presence in Albania. Its embassy there dealt primarily with economic and cultural relations. But in 2018, the Albanian government of Edi Rama expelled two newly arrived Iranian diplomats at the behest of the Trump administration. John Bolton boasted about the achievement. Due to overt US support for the MEK, Iran drew its front line not in the Middle East but on the edge of the EU.
Now, with the Iranian foreign minister boldly speaking to the media inside the United States, Bolton has been reduced to deflecting rather than rebutting his accusations. Bolton’s master plan for a war against Iran has not only backfired but prompted Tehran to redraw its front line once again, this time in Washington, DC itself.
Massoud Khodabandeh is the director of Middle East Strategy Consultants and has worked long-term with the authorities in Iraq to bring about a peaceful solution to the impasse at Camp Liberty and help rescue other victims of the Mojahedin-e Khalq cult. Among other publications, he co-authored the book “The Life of Camp Ashraf: Victims of Many Masters” with his wife Anne Singleton. They also published an academic paper on the MEK’s use of the Internet.
by Massoud Khodabandeh, lobelog
Hot Topics
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif highlights again how the US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been feverishly trying to push Washington towards war with Iran.
Tweeting on Tuesday, Zarif wrote, “Today, the world’s catching on to Amb. John Bolton’s chronic warmongering.”
The top diplomat cited many evidenced revelations across the US media and elsewhere to exemplify his remarks.
The tweet incorporated a snapshot of a 2018 article in The New York Times that showed how Bolton had been promoting the notorious and deadly anti-Iran terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) as “viable opposition” and an alternative to the establishment in the Islamic Republic.
Zarif also attached another image captured from a profile published by The New Yorker on Monday that detailed Bolton’s idiosyncrasies, including by citing a former senior advisor to the US administration’s remarks that “John wants to bomb everyone.”
“But Iranians didn’t need to read a 10,000-word New Yorker profile to be convinced,” Zarif chided.
“We’ve seen him (Bolton) shill for a cult terror group,” he tweeted. The Iranian foreign minister was referring to evidence showing how Bolton had received a $40,000 “speaking fee” to address the MKO’s annual gathering in Paris.
“…and—along with his B-Team accomplices—target Iranians with Economic Terrorism,” he added.
Zarif was echoing remarks he had made to Fox News on Sunday, in which he identified the B-Team as Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The US has been pursuing a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran under US President Donald Trump, which has Bolton as its top security aide. The policy has seen Washington reinstating draconian economic sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic.
Washington has been enlisting the assistance of its regional allies in implementing the policy. Recently, it said that it would target every country potentially buying Iran’s oil as of May 2 with “secondary sanctions.”
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates immediately reported that they would be making up for potential shortages of the Iranian crude.
Once the relocation of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO, MEK, PMOI, the Cult of Rajavi) from Camp Liberty Iraq, to Tirana Albania, started in 2013, members of the group were supposed to be recognized as refugees and Albania was supposed to be their permanent home before their final relocation in third countries.
Six years passed and about a thousand members left the MKO to live a normal life in the free world but their departure from the group resulted in legal problems for them. It seems that they are recognized as “refugees” only if they are members of the Cult of Rajavi.
In June 2013 when the first group of the MKO members were resettled in Albaniab, the US State Department stated, “The permanent relocation of residents is essential to ensure the safety and security of residents.” However, today those residents who are no more followers of Maryam Rajavi are left homeless and money less because the UN’s Refugee and Migrant Service in Albania (RAMSA) closed its office in Tirana.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees allegedly relocated the MKO in Albania from Iraq on “humanitarian grounds.” “But, on their arrival they were not granted UN refugee status, nor have they been issued Albanian identity documents that would allow them to work or travel,” Ann and Massoud Khodabandeh wrote in Lobelog. “Lack of residency rights also means that they cannot register for a bank account. They have no identity papers whatsoever, except the flimsy piece of paper used to fly them through international airspace from Baghdad to Tirana.”
This means that the MKO defectors’ legal case is neither supervised by the UNHCR nor by the Albanian government. There is no perspective for them for moving to a third country and this is very pleasing for the MKO leaders. The UNHCR, the US and the Albanian government “humanitarian” aids are limited to the isolated barred members in the Cult of Rajavi.
The closure of RAMSA is a gift to the MKO leaders who fear the increasing defection from the group which ends in the collapse of their cult.
Mazda Parsi
Iran’s intelligence forces have managed to discover a CIA’s espionage network in the country and in the region, said Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi on Friday.
“In a complicated process against the US Central Intelligence Agency, its espionage network was identified with 290 spies in different countries, including Iran,” he said, adding that the information was offered to friend countries which led to arrest of CIA agents.
He made the remarks before the start of Tehran’s Friday prayers while briefing the nation about achievements of Intelligence Ministry.
The forces have also given a similar blow to UK’s MI6, he highlighted, noting that details of both these operations will be announced soon.
Alavi went on to say that dozens of spies who had been working in the country’s sensitive sections have been identified and arrested.
In the past [Iranian calendar] year 1397 (March 2018-March 2019), intelligence forces have dismantled 114 Takfiri terrorist teams, 116 circles related to MKO, 44 anti-Revolution teams, and 380 drug smuggling bands, he added.
Furthermore, the ministry has neutralized 188 operations, he noted, adding that the last of which was carried out in the south of the country, leading to the arrest of 4 individuals and seizing 15,000 Ak47 bullets.
New patronage resulted in a strategic shift for the MEK
After the fall of Saddam Hussain and the disappearance of Massoud Rajavi, leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist cult, the group’s members were forcibly deported to Albania where the MEK regrouped under the now open support of the Israeli right wing and the regime change pundits of the USA. In Paris, Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud of Saudi Arabia presented himself at a public rally alongside of Maryam Rajavi, wife of the cult leader, to announce the death of Massoud Rajavi, to introduce himself as the new direct benefactor of Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) and to acknowledge Maryam Rajavi as the new head of the terrorist cult.
Under new management the MEK has undergone rapid change and the system of ‘Saddam – Massoud Rajavi’ has transformed into a system of ‘Turki – Maryam Rajavi’. The old system of ‘military-based direct terrorism’ changed rapidly to the new system of ‘intelligence based covert terrorism’. This, of course, was not surprising since Saddam and Massoud had always believed in a show of strength to push their agenda. They believed in achieving their political aims by murdering, threatening and terrorising their opponents. On the other hand, Prince Turki and Maryam favour intelligence-based covert operations to attack, discredit and weaken (and eliminate) their opponents.
Massoud would send terror groups to bomb targets in the streets of Tehran or participate in the massacre of Kurdish people in Iraq. Saddam used chemical weapons in an attempt to eradicate the inhabitants of vast parts of Iraq. Now Maryam hires paid showmen, uses rent-a-crowd to create the illusion of mass demonstrations in Western capitals, and cries wolf as victim while sending club wielders to silence human rights activists. And Prince Turki is, of course, the famous brain behind many setups against opponents of the house of Saud in the west although he is best known as the head of Saudi intelligence who resigned 10 days before 9/11 tragedy carried out by Saudis in New York, later paying lobbying companies to blame Iran for the atrocities.
Attempts to drive a wedge between Iran and EU
Many believe that the latest series of “convenient” incidents attributed to Iranian diplomats in Europe has been the brainchild of Prince Turki who used the MEK to hinder possible rapprochement between Iran and the EU, especially after the EU refused to fall in behind President Trump (Netanyahu and Mohammad Bin Salman) in jeopardising the nuclear deal, which they hoped would trigger another war in the Middle East to reverse their losses on the ground in Syria and Iraq.
However, that strategy has not yielded the best results and the EU remains at best ambivalent about being seen to take sides. So now the Turki-Maryam system has opened a new front, this time in Canada, which has also sometimes been perceived to be wavering in relation to Iran.
MEK renewing its attacks on Iranian Canadians
In Canada, the main focal point for Iranians is the Iranian Canadian Congress (ICC). The MEK has been trying to push its agents into this organisation for years. They have had some success with the backing and finance of the Israeli lobby in getting their agents into the ICC, but recently these agents with their extremist agendas have been voted out by the Iranian Canadians who are increasingly worried about their future as Canadians with an Iranian background. They see what is happening in neighbouring USA and they don’t want to be degraded to second-rate citizens just because Israel or Saudi rulers have grievances against Iran. Indeed, the Iran Canadian Congress has been successful, not only helping Iranian Canadians in recent years, but has now moved to higher levels in social and political circles, influencing the policies which concern them in Canada. In recent weeks they have achieved big victories for their membership including but not confined to:
1- Helping secure governmental funding in response to the flood in Iran
2- Petitioning the government to investigate and bring to justice Mahmood Reza Khavari and Maryam Sheikholeslami Aleagha, the two Iranian Canadian fugitives wanted by Interpol who, while serving at highest ranks of Iranian government, misused their position to steal hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds before running away to Canada. (Taking refuge behind their Canadian passports and thereby discrediting Iranian Canadians). The petition has quickly reached over 17,000 and is increasing.
Saudi Arabia MEK Maryam Rajavi terrorism in CanadaKhavari spotted at a Canadian casino
Activities aimed at silencing these Iranian Canadians indicates that the above achievements have rattled the house of Saud and their paid MEK agents. It looks like the failure to drive a wedge between the Iranians and Europeans who insist on saving the nuclear deal against the will of Trump has angered Netanyahu and Mohammad Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
The fingerprints of MEK activity are already being revealed. Infamous Persian speaking regime change proponents from the USA are invited to Toronto for propaganda meetings to promote their agenda. But this will only work if the voice of ordinary Iranian Canadians is silenced. This is why threats to the Iranian Canadian Congress alongside the IC Journal (an online Iranian Canadian magazine) have begun in earnest. Lawyer after lawyer threatens to take the individuals and organisations to court on a variety of charges. At the same time, agent after agent contacts these individuals (mostly volunteers who are students, working mothers, etc …) threatening to ruin their lives and livelihoods if they do not give up their work (such as justly asking for humanitarian aid to be sent to flood victims in Iran).
Hallmark MEK money laundry techniques
Two die-hard supporters of regime change, Shahram Tabe Mohammadi and Mehrdokht Hadi, who groups like MEK support – and who, by the way, failed repeatedly to infiltrate the ICC with the aim of derailing it from within – have apparently now been tasked to confront and silence the ICC so as to open the way for the Saudi backed lobbies engaged in stopping any dependable dialogue between Iran and Canada.
The authors of this agenda are more obvious when we observe hallmark MEK money laundry techniques being used to funnel money from the sponsors to the team of lawyers they have hired for threatening the volunteer workers and media.
At a time that the ICC volunteers are desperately working hard to raise money for the Canadian Red Cross to help the flood victims in Iran, Shahram Tabe Mohammadi shamelessly announced that he is collecting money to pay for six different lawyers he has proudly hired threatening to sue the Iranian Canadian Council (ICC) and the Iranian Canadian Journal (ICJ) for defamation. These kinds of announcement bear the hallmark of MEK money laundry; pretending to get money from ordinary people but in fact getting paid by their benefactors. The latest example of this was the funneling about a million dollars to a far-right anti-EU Spanish party (VOX) through Alejo Vidal-Quadra through a network of individuals and accounts across the globe.
Shahram Tabe Mohammadi names some of the people he is threatening with legal action as Mr Mohsen Khakiki, Mr Mehran Farazmand (IC journal), Mr Bijan Ahmandi, Mr Mehdi Samadian, Mr Parsa Beheshti (a high school student), Ms Elham Eslami, Mr Ehshan Hamidi, and Mr Pooria Zarasoed. Mohammadi also announced that he has hired a team of lawyers including but not limited to Anoosh Salahshoor, Phillip J. L. Trotter and Adam Wawrzkiewicz, (all from Lewis & Associates Immigration Lawyers) and has then asked for money (online through social media) to pay for these lawyers!
The targets of this legal attack have since reported receiving anonymous phone calls threatening that they will be forced to pay the full fees of all these lawyers plus compensation if they don’t back off and stop their activities.
If failure in Europe is replicated in Canada, what next?
Up to this point, this type of activity is perhaps not so new for those familiar with the modus operandi of the Saudi Secret services and the MEK in the west. What is worrying is what would be the next step if they fail to achieve their goal of silencing the Iranian Canadians and their media. The MEK has been on overdrive in recent years in Europe; their new tasks planned by Turki and carried out by MEK agents trained by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Although this activity failed to disrupt or derail relations between the EU and Iran to the extent the Saudis had hoped, still, people were killed. For example, Mohammad Reza Kolahi in the Netherlands and Malek Sharaee in Albania. Both these deaths should be investigated with Maryam Rajavi the prime suspect as someone with the means, motive and opportunity to assassinate.
If these threats don’t work on the Iranian Canadians (which they most certainly won’t), then an escalation to the next steps by the Saudi backed MEK in Canada must be prevented. This rests on the shoulders of the Canadian government. Whatever the push and pull that goes on, we don’t want another murder or attempted murder in Toronto.
By: Massoud Khodabandeh (Middle East Strategy Consultants), Iranian.com
According to the media in the Netherlands, two Amsterdam criminals have been jailed for the 2015 murder of an Iranian, Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, who lived in the Netherlands hiding behind the false name of Ali Motamed.
In July 2018 I wrote an article for the Balkans Post titled ‘MEK rebrands by assassinating unwanted members’ in which I brought up the case of Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi as one of many examples in which the Mojahedin Khalq have got rid of an affiliated disaffected operative to
1- Cleanse themselves of their terrorist history by eliminating the operatives;
2- Get rid of someone who has gone rogue and may potentially damage the MEK legally and socially if he decided to talk;
3- Make an excuse to attach yet another murder in the west to Iran.
In that article I wrote:
“In 2015, in the Netherlands, Mohamad Reza Kolahi was killed by a criminal gang on the order of MEK. Investigators confirmed that Kolahi was responsible for the 1981 bombing of the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party in Tehran in which 72 high-ranking politicians and party members were killed.”
In January 2019 I wrote a short blog (in Persian) titled ‘Why is no one asking Maryam Rajavi about the fate of Kolahi?’, in which I begged the question, why have the investigators (and the relevant CIA connected Persian speaking media outlets in Prague and Washington) gone well out of their way to attach the murder to Iranian diplomats in Amsterdam and have repeatedly announced that the Iranian embassy in Amsterdam “is not giving a clear answer” as to the reasons behind this murder (as if they could or should). But why does not a single person want to investigate or even ask questions of Maryam Rajavi and her fugitive husband Massoud who was the leader of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation at the time Mohammad Reza Kolahi carried out his terrorist act in 1981. Kolahi planted the bomb in the HQ of a political party (rivals of the MEK at that time) in the middle of Tehran which killed ten people.
I begged the question, is this because Maryam Rajavi had not told the Netherlands intelligence service of Kolahi’s whereabouts? Or did she tell them (presumably through her CIA contacts) but the Netherlands intelligence service did give him enough protection? Or is it that the Netherlands security service are too afraid of the CIA and Mossad to even question Maryam Rajavi? Or it is simply convenient for them to play the game and accuse Iran in the series of Iran bashing scenarios (presumably planned by Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud and carried out by MEK) that signal the change of direction for the MEK from Saddam-Massoud-military to Turki-Maryam-intelligence.
I knew Kolahi personally. I received him in Kurdistan when he ran away from Iran. (I had transferred a 10 KW radio transmitter and other American made transceivers from Munich to MEK bases just outside Sardasht city and was there to undertake the assembly and commissioning). He worked with me for the next two years (he was an undergraduate Electronics Engineering student) and was then moved to maintenance work at Rajavi’s Camp Ashraf (Saddam’s private army) near Baghdad.
I knew then that he was not a member of MEK or even remotely connected to their ideology when he came to me, and I knew later in Iraq that he could never accept the cultish teachings of Rajavi thereafter (the Ideological Revolution, divorces …), and would remain an outcast with nowhere to go. And this is what happened. Whether he was fooled by MEK to carry out this terrorist act, or whether he was pushed directly by other intelligence agencies which pulled MEK wires in Tehran at that time is a mystery to me. But what is clear is that although he was not a person close to MEK, the task of taking him out of Iran and saving him (and at the same time confining him) was the job assigned to the MEK.
It is inconceivable that Kolahi, with the information that he had, and the danger he could pose to the MEK and their variety of masters if brought in front of a camera, would go to the Netherlands, get married, get a job and start a new life without the help and the blessing of the MEK (Maryam Rajavi). It is also inconceivable that the MEK (or their masters) would have not have a 24/7 control of every aspect of his life (including every telephone conversation) and simply let him go unmonitored.
I am not an investigator but even I can see that all the elements of “means, motive and opportunity” are pointing directly at the Mojahedin Khalq and Maryam Rajavi in person for his murder. What I can’t see is what is it that prevents European judiciary and law enforcement agencies from even approaching the idea of considering Maryam Rajavi as a material witness never mind, God forbid, a suspect.
Massoud Khodabandeh, Middle East Strategy Consultants
Following the continuous floods in Iran that started in March claiming 70 lives, destroying infrastructures and displacing thousands of people across Iran, the opportunists such as the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) have made efforts to fish in troubled waters.
The MKO’s propaganda media is flooded with the news of floods in Iran particularly claims of the authorities’ mismanagement to manage the disastrous rain showers and moreover the suppressive attitude of governmental forces against victims of the flood!
Actually the very question is that who cares for the MKO news websites? Definitely not the Iranian nation. The fact was once more repeated by the American prominent journalist a few weeks ago. Michael Rubin has always been a criticizer to the American support for the MKO although he is a significant critic of the Islamic Republic government. In his recent article he asserts that the decisions of the Trump administration “to defy long-held conventional wisdom on U.S. foreign policy” may not be so harmful but “when it comes to the Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group, any cooperation and coordination—let alone support—from the United States would be disastrous.”
The main reason that he states for his argument is that there is “only one item that united Iranians inside Iran: absolute hatred of the Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK).”
Rubin truly suggests, “What really broke any remaining popular support for the MEK among ordinary Iranians, however, was their embrace of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq War”. As he accurately states, for most Iranians, the MEK-Saddam relationship is unforgivable.
He frankly puts: “The Mojahedin e-Khalq are a bad bet”
In his opinion, the MKO is a bad bet because the US should not trust a group that is hated among its own country fellowmen and eventually has turned into a political prostitute. “Unable to win any support from Iranians inside Iran, the MEK has turned to the gullible and greedy: they are political chameleons. When in Iran, they were a combination between Islamists and social justice warriors,” Rubin writes.
“In Iraq, they were secularists, basically Baathists without the Arab identity. And while in France, they are Ademocrats. In reality, their behavior resembles a cult, right down to dictating where members live, whom they should marry and divorce, and the rent-a-mobs who populate their rallies.”
Thus, the MKO’s propaganda on the recent flood in Iran has no Iranian audience but it surely has certain listeners among paid Western politicians like Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton. Stephanie Baker of Bloomberg website titles her recent article asking “where Rudy Giuliani’s money comes from”. She suggests that Giuliani has “made millions of dollars while acting as Trump’s unpaid consigliere” including the MKO as one of the main sources of Giuliani’s deep pockets.
“Giuliani told me he’s worked with the MEK since 2008,” Stephanie Baker writes.
“At the time, the U.S. Department of State designated the group a foreign terrorist organization, describing it as “cultlike” and saying members were forced to take a vow of “eternal divorce” and participate in weekly “ideological cleansings.” When the State Department revoked the designation in 2012, it nevertheless expressed serious concerns about the organization, “particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its members.”
However, as Rubin states, the biggest problem is treating the MEK as anything more than a pariah because Iranians hate the group for its history, previous actions, and past allegiances.
According to Dr. Emile Nakhleh former senior intelligence service officer and director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency,
“The MEK, , is a terrorist cult that has received funding from all sorts of dubious sources and is often used as a tool by outside groups, states, and organizations, including intelligence services of regional and international state actors, to further an anti-Iran agenda.”
By Mazda Parsi
- What do Iranians think of the MEK?
- IT’S A MISTAKE TO TREAT THE MEK AS A NORMAL OPPOSITION GROUP
- Female Defectors Of The MKO (MEK) In EU Parliament. March 8th
- INTERNATIONAL LIBERTY ASSOCIATION, MEK’S SO-CALLED CHARITY BREACHES RULES OF THE UK CHARITY COMMISSION
- THE MOJAHEDIN-E KHALQ AREN’T AMERICA’S FRIENDS. EVEN IRANIANS WHO HATE THE REGIME DON’T WANT MEK
- THE SPECIAL MOMENT TO SAY NO TO THE CULT OF RAJAVI (MEK, NCRI, …)
- Mothers, the Forgotten Victims
One of the MEK formers in Germany called me to say that he had heard some news about the members of the cult in Albania.
He said firstly that the cult has taken the decision to remove all those who have separated from the cult in Albania from the country. This is because the cult wants to empty the ‘border’ (or no man’s land) between MEK members and those people who take a salary from the sect and say that they still support the organization. This is because when these separated people come face to face with MEK members in the streets of Tirana street, they create a kind of bad influence on them. This influence makes some of the members who are under pressure in the cult decide to get out.
The cult wants to empty Tirana of every person who it calls so-called mercenaries who are critical of the cult (basically anyone who has left).
I confirmed to this friend in Germany that we in Tirana have also heard that there is currently a register of 35 people who admit that all their costs are paid by the cult, but who do not make this public because the cult doesn’t want it to became public knowledge that it would be willing to transfer these people (because it’s illegal people trafficking by a smuggler). It would also encourage more people to leave if they think the MEK will pay to smuggle them to Europe.
The cost for a smuggler to transfer one person is between 3 and 4 thousand euros or more. So, the cult made indirect contact with a smuggler and told him ‘we have a lot of people to move so reduce the price to 2.5 thousand euros each’. A group of these people have now arrived.
Behrooz Ghorbani, an Iranian priest in Norway, is behind this project and is one of the cult’s mercenaries (in the MEK’s pay). I should mention that I previously spoke to this priest from the International Church in Tirana before I found out who he really is. Ghorbani is trying to raise money to smuggle people out of Albania. He contacted my friend in Germany to ask him for 2,500 euros. But my friend found out this was a deception and Ghorbani was working for the cult because the cost of this project for each person from the beginning to the end is 5000 euros. This includes the cost a trafficker to Greece and secret residence in Greece for a while. Even though this is for around 50 people and costs around 250,000 euros, the cult is willing to pay for it. My friend in Germany also warned me ‘be careful, after this project is done, they will make trouble for you who remain in Albania’.
Hassan Heyrani, Tirana, Albania
Nejat Society members who went to Atabay home on the occasion of Nowruz were warmly welcomed by the family.
Atabay family are among active families of Nejat Society, Gilan branch.
The ailing, aged mother of the family whose son is captivated by the cult of Rajavis for long years asked about her dear Hamid Mohammad whereabouts. She asked why the cult leaders doesn’t allow her dear son to contact his family?!
Atabay family has several times petitioned to the international human rights bodies to help them visit their beloved son.