Membership in the MEK as a cult

Former MKO member: They armed me by my Mom’s fake will

Yaser Ezzati, a former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization was interviewed by Mehr News Agency. Below is an excerpt of the interview.

Yaser was considered as a member of the MKO militia because his parents were also old members of the group; Yaser grew up in the MKO camps in Iraq.

Yaser was sent to Canada under the pretext of the group’s so-called policy to save children.

Yaser was returned to the MKO in Germany where he attended fundraising gatherings.”In 1997 the MKO gave me a fake will allegedly of my mother who was killed in Mersad Operation [Eternal Light],” Yaser said.”It was written:”You must take gun and follow my path”. I was impressed.” Thus, he was sent to Iraq where the group was rebuilding its forces after the horrific failure of the Eternal Light.

…Yaser Ezzati was mobilized to Iranian border to launch cross border mortar attacks.

“After I attended four operations, I declared that I gave up because I had no idea of what and who we were attacking,” he said. “I was told that I was a child of the group and I shouldn’t have disgraced the group.”

Ultimately, the MKO officials accepted his defection on the condition that he went on a six-month solitary confinement and then he would be sent to Iran.

Yaser who was so scared of getting back to Iran – that was terribly demonized by the MKO – stayed in Camp Ashraf until he was fed up with the brainwashing meetings that he had to attend every week.”Weekly Cleansing” was a cult jargon in which members had to confess all their private thoughts and dreams.” I could no more tolerate the condition”. Therefore, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement. He was brought on trial and accused of being the agent of Iranian Intelligence Ministry!

“Again they brought in my Mother’s will; I had no way out.”

The former member of the MKO Cult states that his father is known to be a torturer in the MKO.”He even beat me several times after I declared defection.”!

. Whenever I missed my parents my father would receive me by beating and kicking me.”

He continued,”some children in the MKO went crazy. I remember a person who committed suicide.”

He notifies that the militias are kept in the organization by recruiting them and paying them. They are offered free trips to attend the group rallies.

“I have not forgotten my past yet because an important part of my life, my childhood, my adolescence were lost for the misguided goal of the MKO”, he uttered.

January 30, 2014 0 comments

Camp Liberty

MKO Members Fail to Escape Camp Liberty

A number of members of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCRI MKO Members Fail to Escape Camp Liberty and PMOI) failed in their attempt to run away from a hospital near the group’s transient settlement facility, Camp Liberty, near the Iraqi capital.

“Over 70 members of the grouplet sought to escape from the hospital where they were treated after going on a forced hunger strike, but they didn’t succeed,” a physician at one of Baghdad’s hospitals wrote in a letter to Iraq’s human rights ministry.

The Iraqi physician wrote in his letter that these people have told him that they were forced by the MKO ringleaders to go on hunger strike, and have given letters to the Iraqi medics to be submitted to human rights organizations in order inform the relevant authorities of vitally bad conditions.

Many of the MKO members have abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the group are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.

A recent Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.

The group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.

The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly-established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.

The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.

Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who eventually took the MKO off the US terror list.

The US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations in early September 2012, one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move. The decision made by Clinton enabled the group to have its assets under US jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with American entities, the State Department said in a statement at the time.

In September 2012, the last groups of the MKO terrorists left Camp Ashraf, their main training center in Iraq’s Diyala province. They have been transferred to Camp Liberty which lies Northeast of the Baghdad International Airport.

January 28, 2014 0 comments

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Rajavi’s absurd claim of equality !

Maryam Rajavi’s claim for promotion of equality in her cult is absurd and ludicrous.

Many argue that the hijab is oppressive to women and removing it would enhance women’s equality and freedom. They argue that veiling prevents and limits women’s activities in public. On the other hand, Muslim believers of hijab argue that It not only makes a woman feel confident and liberated, but encourages society not to see women as sex objects. They believe that Islam promotes sexual equality, and Hijab allows women to be an instrumental part of the society without being discriminated and looked down. Hijab can also prevent men from ogling look. What about Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization, the MKO as an Islamic Marxist group? What is her stance about hijab?

Actually, Maryam Rajavi’s idea about hijab is very controversial. She claims in her so-called “ten point plan for future of Iran” that women “will enjoy the right to freely choose their clothing”. However, evidences on what is really going on inside her group indicates that there is no freedom of clothing in the MKO camps.

Perhaps, Elizabeth Rubin the New York Times correspondent, was the first to reveal the cult-like atmosphere ruling the MKO camps including uniform clothing of members, in 2003 after she visited Camp Ashraf. Rubin titled the MKO as “The Cult of Rajavi”. “As you pass the checkpoints and dragons’-teeth tire crunchers into the tidy military town, you feel you’ve entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around; about 50 percent of the soldiers are male”, she recounts. “But everywhere I turned, I saw women dressed in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth along the avenues in white pickups or army-green trucks, staring ahead, slightly dazed, or walking purposefully, a slight march to their gaits as at a factory in Maoist China.”

Following the collapse of Iraqi dictatorship and the main financial supporter of the MKO in 2003, the US forces disarmed the MKO. Camp Ashraf was since then guarded by the American army. Having been disarmed and guarded by the MKO’s former enemy the US, members started doubting the group’s ideology. Moreover, the group’s leader Masssoud Rajavi was disappeared. The process of defection of members began.

Disassociated members of the MKO –hundreds of individuals—including female members disclosed shocking realities about the life inside MKO camps. They revealed cult-like and suppressive practices of the MKO authorities. The testimonies of women who had left the group exposed cases of forced divorce, forced celibacy, forced hysterectomy surgeries to make female members barren and particularly sexual abuse by Massoud Rajavi.

Among such abusive treatment against female members of the MKO, forced clothing might be very trivial but it certainly proves the invalidity of Maryam Rajavi’s claims about freedom of choosing clothes in future of Iran. Zahra Sadat Mirbaqeri is a defector of the group who was a member of the second layer of the group’s Elite Council. She was a candidate to marry Massoud Rajavi. She was given the famous necklace with the portrait of Massoud. Fortunately she managed to escape the Cult of Rajavi before she was raped by Massoud.

Mirbaqer challenges Maryam Rajavi’s promise to let Iranian women “enjoy the right to freely choose their clothing’’. She recites her firsthand account of living under regulations and obligations of Rajavi’s cult of personality:

“I was a member of this destructive cult for 23 years. I was not allowed to wear any clothes except the khaki uniform and the green head scarf. Forced hijab was ruled everywhere even in places that only belonged to female members…

“In the cult, women are not allowed to use any kind of hijab except green, khaki and red scarves. However, red and khaki scarves are allowed only for special occasions. You would be punished if you wore your red or khaki scarf in occasions other than the group’s propaganda ceremonies and marches.”

Zahra Sadat Mirbaqeri criticizes Maryam Rajavi’s propaganda for freedom of women quoting a renowned sentence that female rank and files of the MKO were always told:” Scarf is the official uniform of the organization.”

Mazda Parsi

January 14, 2014 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

Who killed ex MEK member Massoud Dalili?

Pentagon must release the key to the UN investigation
One of the more curious aspects of the September 1 attack on Camp Ashraf was that the MEK filmed so much of what happened that day, not only the aftermath but also some film of balaclava clad assailants creeping into the camp to attack. Unless the MEK are routinely filming the perimeter of the camp it is almost as though they were forewarned and had the cameras ready. These pictures are in the public domain because within hours of the attack the MEK had contacted every western media outlet to present their version of what happened and attribute blame to the Iraqi government and call themselves victims. This is so typical of MEK behaviour that it warrants no further comment.
At that time, the MEK announced that 52 of its members had been killed. They published photographs of the victims along with their biographies and claimed that Iran had given the order to attack the camp and that Iraq had carried it out. Both governments denied any involvement and no evidence has been offered to contradict this. Weeks later Iraq announced that the death toll was 53, not 52 as previously claimed by the MEK. The revised figure was due to the fact that the 53rd victim had had his face so badly burned that it took a while to identify him as one of the MEK and not one of the attackers and to discover his true identity. Following this revelation the MEK published a documentary about the 53 in which a picture of Massoud Dalili was shown along with a sample of his handwriting in which he declares that he will never surrender to the enemy, the Iranian regime. In this documentary the MEK refer to them as martyrs.
Since every person who remained in Camp Ashraf after the main body of residents were transferred to Camp Liberty was registered with the office of the United Nations in Iraq, this raises the question why the MEK had not announced that 53 members had been killed immediately after the attack, especially since they had so carefully documented the whole scenario?
Then from yesterday, after the Iraqi authorities named the 53rd victim as Massoud Dalili, the MEK suddenly changed their tune and embarked on the line that Dalili was an Iranian agent and as a person who knew what is where inside Camp Ashraf, the IRI and Iraqis had used him to plan and launch the September 1st attack, and when they finished the job they have killed him there and then burned his face so he would not be recognised. (As a adjunct to this new position toward Dalili it is significant that the MEK propaganda machine is on overdrive to say that Massoud Rajavi has been too lenient with the ex members and that the MEK commanders are complaining he hasn’t allowed them to kill these traitors, and now this is the price they have had to pay. If we had killed ex members, they claim, we would not have all these casualties. In answer Rajavi has used the new version of how Dalili died to introduce a new explanation; that the regime is killing its own agents. In this way Rajavi is giving permission for his followers to kill ex members and blame Iran.)
At this point it is necessary to explain a little about Massoud Dalili’s background. Dalili escaped from the MEK more than a year ago. He took refuge with the Iraqi authorities who took him to Hotel Mohajer in Baghdad. He stayed there for some time and was registered by UN officials and interviewed by several agencies including various UNAMI officials and the ICRC. After some time Dalili said he didn’t want to stay in the same hotel as the other ex members and requested a change of place. The Iraqi authorities obliged and he was given a room in another hotel, Hotel Mansour. Some time later he went out and didn’t return. He was announced missing and the Iraqi authorities assumed he had returned to the MEK. However, during the period of time that he was missing Massoud Rajavi announced in an audio message to his followers that Dalili had run away from the MEK and was denounced as a traitor.
How Dalili ended up back in Camp Ashraf is open to question. Did he return willingly or was he abducted and taken by force? Certainly in every other case when a defector has willingly returned to the MEK, the group has made a big propaganda show of their victory. In the case of Dalili nothing was said of his return or his whereabouts after he disappeared from Hotel Mansour. This suggests that he had been abducted in Baghdad and imprisoned in Camp Ashraf clandestinely and that when the majority of MEK were transferred to Camp Liberty (aka camp Hurriya) Dalili was kept there with around one hundred others, but without the knowledge of the UN officials.
It is critical at this point to explain the significance of Massoud Dalili for the MEK. He had been one of the highest ranking members and was one of the personal security personnel for Massoud Rajavi. He had undergone training with Saddam’s Republican Guards and the MEK’s own specialist training. He not only had a lot of information about Rajavi but was one of only a small handful of people in the MEK who knew of the existence of Rajavi’s underground nuclear bunker which was his hideout. Certainly he was an individual who could have done a lot of damage to the MEK had he been allowed to leave Iraq.
This bunker and the probability that Rajavi was still hiding there explains why the MEK refused to fully evacuate Camp Ashraf when the majority were transferred to Camp Liberty. The MEK made the excuse that they were protecting and selling off their assets, and were assisted in this sham by announcing that a British company was willing to buy the stuff. But this never came about and local Iraqi officials in the Diyala province went through court procedures to have the land returned to the rightful owners. This in itself distracted from the MEK’s own position and provided a welcome battle to wills to justify their continued presence at the camp. The real reason was that Rajavi was still there right up to September 1st when he was forced to escape with seven of his loyal bodyguards through a tunnel leading to the outskirts of the camp.
What happened on that day is still not known. Who killed Dalili and then tried to destroy his identity is not known. Why did the MEK suddenly after the Iraqi authorities named him last week reverse their announcement that he was one of their martyrs and now claim that he entered the camp with the attackers and led them to the various places in the camp to capture and kill the MEK residents. In the fourth part of the MEK’s documentary series on the attacks Dalili’s mangled and disfigured body is shown for the first time with Iranian money strewn over it. The MEK say he was an Iranian agent and that when the attack was completed his handlers killed him there and then. But why then, since they had taken the film on September 1st had the MEK not said anything before now, and had in fact said he was one of their martyrs? If Dalili had been an agent surely he would have been much more valuable for the MEK’s enemies if he were alive, especially since he had so much sensitive information. Also why would they kill and maim him in the camp and not take him elsewhere to kill him clandestinely?
The investigation into this event is far from over. Indeed this new revelation only points to how important it is for the investigators to have access to the forty two survivors of the attack who are currently being held incommunicado by the MEK in Camp Liberty. Even residents of the camp have not had sight or word of them since their arrival on September 11.
It is impossible to discount their testimony. As a matter of urgency they must be brought forward and removed from the camp to a place of safety where each one can be cross examined to establish what they witnessed that day.
Unfortunately the Iraqi authorities who have been tasked by the UN to investigate this incident are obliged to rely on the UN to facilitate access to these forty two people. The UN in turn is beholden to the Pentagon in its treatment of the MEK. The Pentagon of course has a ten year history of supporting and protecting the MEK in Iraq, starting with then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s personal granting of Fourth Geneva Convention Protection which made a complete nonsense of the previously declared position that the US had invaded Iraq partly because Saddam Hussein harboured terrorist groups such as the MEK. Since then the Pentagon has blocked any attempt to dismantle the group or rescue its members. American soldiers refused to help those families who had tried to contact their loved ones inside Camp Ashraf and in cooperation with orders from MEK commanders turned them away. Those who escaped the MEK and were housed in the TIPF adjacent to Camp Ashraf informed the American soldiers of widespread abuses taking place behind closed doors. They said that the MEK commanders were armed with small arms and kept control through fear and threats. One ex member says that he saw Afsaneh Vatankhah, the bodyguard of Mojgan Parsai, openly wearing a holster with a colt and magazine clip. He believes that it is not unlikely that what happened in Camp Ashraf was the result of an internal fight. He reminds us that during the last two decades we have regularly heard about people getting shot in the camp and it being announced as a suicide or that people died under the American bombardment or that unintentional shootings had occurred, etc. None of this was investigated or stopped by the UN army in the six years they were in charge of the camp.
Currently the Pentagon does not allow the UN or the authorities of the sovereign state of Iraq to enter Camp Liberty and offer succour to the residents there. The Iraqi investigators as well as government officials widely acknowledge that their hands are tied by the UN and ultimately by the Americans who have deliberately foisted the MEK on them without giving them any chance to remove them or bring the criminal elements to justice.
Unless the UN discovers the courage and ability to stand up to the Americans over this issue, it is clear that more and more residents of Camp Liberty will be killed.

January 1, 2014 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Mujahedin Khalq Cult in the Shadow War

An Interview with a former member of Mojahedin-e-Khalq, Massoud Banisadr

Masoud Banisadr was an active member of the controversial Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK, PMOI) for twenty years, serving as the organizations representative to the United Nations and to the United States during his tenure. The group is largely obscured from public discourse, or more recently veiled in headlines describing them as political dissidents or refugees. To those more familiar with the group the debate tends to focus primarily on their nature. For many MEK is a dangerous terrorist organization, yet for others they are freedom fighters and the only legitimate alternative to the Iranian Government. They’ve been subject to several pieces suggesting they work as assassins for the United States and Israel. Masoud has published a book called Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel about his experience in the organization, which he very candidly describes in detail as a cult, and one that has long lost its strength and vibrance. He now focuses much of his work on the research and understanding of cults, terrorism, and cult behavior within those structures.

Richard Potter: How long were you active in MEK?

Masoud Banisadr: I left MEK 1996. Before that I was the representative in the United States and the United Nations.

You were only in the political arm?

Yes.

You would have joined in 1976 when it was a more political guerilla movement?

Yes at the time I joined them I was a PhD student in UK in New Castle University. I was married and I had a little daughter. Of course I married young, so everything was very fast. We married in UK far from Iran, but the only source of news we had during the Iranian revolution was from MEK. So because of the past history and the number of martyrs the MEK had against the Shah we trusted them. The slogans they gave were about freedom and democracy and equal rights, women’s rights, minority rights. All destructive cults are like some lizards and can change colors very rapidly to their surroundings.

How did this change?

What happened in 1981 is that Massoud Rajavi (The head of MEK until 2003. Currently believed dead or in hiding) saw that he had attracted so many students and he thought he could repeat the Bolshevik revolution of Russia in Iran. So what he did was he suddenly on 20 June 1981 asked all members and supporters to come to the streets of Tehran and overthrow the new establishment. MEK says that 500,000 people came to the streets. They failed. They failed and they couldn’t do anything and from the next day they changed into a clandestine organization. Between the summer of 1981 the MEK went through many terrorist actions. They bombed the Islamic revolution party buildings. They killed the new President and Premier of Iran, and then they killed at Friday prayers in different cities through suicide operation, they killed different imams through suicide operations. They themselves claim that within one year that they killed almost 1400 people, high officials and supporters of the new establishment in Iran. At the same time they claimed 2000 of their members were killed in street clashes with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. In Iran what they were doing was what they called “heroic terrorism operations” later they thought the word terrorism had a bad connotation, especially in the west and they changed it to heroic actions. Most of their supporters in Iran were those who joined this group because of its peaceful nature. For the democratic liberal and pro social justice nature, so they were not ready to change into terrorist or even guerrillas. People are ready to vote for a party, but not to fight for that party.

You refer to MEK as a destructive cult, when do you believe they transformed from a political group or a guerilla group to a cult?

What happened was within Iran they were left losing 99% of their member. Only 2,000 to 3000 members left in Iran. Most of them were gone because of change of policy from peaceful demonstration to terrorist activities and street fighting. Even those who could become radicals were either killed in street clashes or by execution by the government. They lost the battle in Iran. Outside of Iran they were portraying themselves as the democratic alternative to the Iranian government. Two of the most important allies of theirs were ex Iranian President Banisadr and the Kurdish democratic party of Kurdish Iran. These two left the National Council of Resistance in 1984, suddenly this coalition of Rajavi and others turned into the pseudonym MEK. In 1983 they could get support from the labor party of UK and the socialist party of France, but after this they did not have it anymore. MEK was on the verge of disintegration, so he had to do something, which is why I think he did what was called the ideological revolution, which is when it became a destructive cult.

You’ve written about the organization forcing you to divorce your wife at this point, can you elaborate?

At this time they were telling me that my wife was what they called “revoluted”- meaning that she had accepted the ideological revolution and she was now a disciple of Mr. and Mrs. Rajavi and if I wanted to leave the group I had to leave my wife and my children as well. This was my main problem. It wasn’t just leaving the group it was leaving my children and the love of my life. I tried to rationalize it and I tried to stay in the group. Then there was some time later when they asked me to divorce my wife, again it was the same problem. Then I was in the United States and everything was wrong and slogans were wrong and meaningless, everything they said was meaningless.

How did you rationalize all of this?

There is an experiment where they put a live frog in a pot and they turn the heat up degree by degree. Outside the pot is cold, inside the pot is warm. The frog won’t jump out of the pot. It can but it won’t. It’s because the outside is cold. But when it’s realized that it is boiling and it is cooking the opportunity is gone because all of his muscles have been cooked. This is what happened to us. When the ideological revolution changed and we could see the pot was boiling, all of our muscles were cooked. All our self confidence or individuality that would help us jump out of the pot were gone.

MEK was originally aligned with some of the Kurdish groups but later on there was a great deal of fighting between MEK and Kurdish groups. What caused this change?

After the gulf war when Saddam lost the war the Kurds in the north and Shia in south thought they could revolt against Saddam Hussein and get rid of him. Unfortunately the US didn’t help and this is why they lost. Since Saddam’s army wasn’t in good shape after the war they asked MEK to attack some of the Kurdish guerillas in the north and MEK committed many atrocities. Of course then I was outside of Iraq and I couldn’t believe that we did this. After I left the group and I met other who left I realized it was true. What we were told was we were fighting Iranian revolutionary guards who had Kurdish guards, and this is what I was believed. When the accusation was brought up at the UN or anyone I would deny it vehemently, but when I left the group and met ex MEK from that war I realized this wasn’t an accusation, but a fact. They say they even killed women and children.

Saddam was probably one of the only allies in the Middle East MEK had at that time, no?

No. At this time Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were helping as well. As a matter of fact, Rajavi at one juncture traveled to Saudi Arabia and met the king. In MEK they showed us a video of him meeting the king. It was secret, the KSA and UAE support. Everyone knew about Saddam, but even within the group they didn’t speak about KSA or UAE. I saw the video when I reached the highest rank men could go in MEK. When MEK had their last battle, Forough Javidan, which means eternal light, the plan was that MEK, with the help of Saddam Hussein, would take part of Iran and announce the government order over it, calling it the democratic Islamic government of Iran- They’d go and capture western Iran and establish a government and immediately Saddam Hussein would recognize it and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates would support it, and there were others. They were hoping Kuwait would join and the United States could be pressured to acknowledge them and they could create a situation of pressure on Iran like North and South Vietnam, or Korea. This was their tactic.

This one of the bloodiest incidents during this period, no?

They failed. They lost a third of the members. As a matter of fact I was in that battle. I lost some of the muscles in my right soldier because I was shot. Of course, we were not trained, not for that battle. They said everyone had to attend, even representatives who weren’t in Iraq. So I had to go back to fight. I had no military training but I had to go. Rajavi wanted everyone to attend but himself and his wife.

I’m sorry to hear about this

It was very horrible. There were 15 students who were from the United States, they were supporters. They were brought to Iraq and in the same night they were moved to the battle field. Because of my political rank I was a commander even though I had no military background. I didn’t know anything about fighting. Only a few days before for the first time I saw a machine gun, and I only shot it once. So in the first battle I almost lost my life, I was shot and went unconscious and was take back to the hospital. Unfortunately I learned all 15 died because they didn’t have any training, and because it was done so quickly no one asked them their names and nothing was recorded. I didn’t even know their names. It was horrible

How did you eventually get out?

In 1996 Maryam Rajavi (Wife of Massoud Rajavi and current head of MEK) was speaking in London and they asked me to come and mobilize supporters, and talk to British politicians and arrange meetings for Mrs. Rajavi, including Margaret Thatcher. So in London after five or six years I met my daughter. Before that she was 13 and now she was 18. I was faced with a lady. Emotions and feelings are very important in destructive cults. They isolate you from your loved ones, so you don’t turn your emotions to your loved ones. In London I could see my daughter and my sister and my old friends. From early morning to midnight I had to see old friends, ex-supporters of MEK, and answering thousands of questions which internally I had no rational answer for any of them. So these things, my feelings between my friends and family helped me change. And also luck. I had an accident and back problems, and I was so active in London that I had to go to the hospital. My back gave out. Fortunately for me MEK was very busy then for Maryam Rajavi with different meetings, so they didn’t care about me. If it was another juncture they’d make sure someone was with me, because MEK never leaves a member without a chaperone, always at least two with each other they watch and look after each other. So in the hospital I was alone for the almost a month and I could see normal relationships of people with each other. There was a guy beside who had an accident and I was helping him to shave his beard, or to feed him and so on, and this revived my individuality and my humanity and self confidence. All gradually it came back. When it came that I left the hospital I left MEK. I didn’t reject them fully yet, but I realized I couldn’t be with them anymore.

There are many who believe MEK serves as proxy for the West and that they are allied, do you believe this?

I don’t think so. Another problem MEK has is that Americans and Europeans know MEK has no support. In the early eighties there was an illusion of support but it was realized there was no support. There are no demonstrations for MEK and no one comes to support them. Even in Iran anyone who hates the government, even the old supporters, if you ask them they’ll say MEK is worse than the Mullahs. Western governments know this. Would the US repeat the same mistake they made in Afghanistan by supporting MEK where in Afghanistan they supported the Taliban but now they fight them. All of this aside it isn’t said that they don’t use MEK, because they do. As long as there is a bad relation with the United States and Iran they will use MEK. The Israelis, they also use MEK very much. But it doesn’t mean that even the Israelis trust them.

There was an accusation that the US was training MEK in Nevada to be used as assassins. Do you believe this?

No I don’t believe this. What is the average age of MEK members now/ I think it is about eighty. What do you want to do with people this old? I don’t think so. Probably not even spying. The only use they might have for them may be in relation to some terrorist activities in Thailand and in Europe where they say Iran or Hezbollah are committing terrorist attacks against Israeli embassy or the personnel of the Israeli embassy. Probably they could use MEK to discredit the Iranian government or even Hezbollah because Politically I don’t believe they use these tactics at this point, it would be political suicide for them. There was a story in the United States that came to the media and vanished about someone who was going to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States. It’s possible they can create this news with MEK members to work against the Iranian government, but no real action.

Richard Potter, Mondoweiss

More Information on:

Link to Research Institute on Destructive Cults (RIDC)

About Richard Potter

Richard Potter is a 27 year old Social Worker and writer from Pittsburgh, PA. His work has been featured in Vice, Your Middle East, and Rohingya Blogger.

November 28, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

A way to victimize members

September 1th Camp Ashraf clashes resulted in the killing of 52 Ashraf residents and the allegedly missing of 7 other.

After the tragic events at Camp Ashraf all the eyes turned to MKO leaders to see what they do to save the remaining members. Everybody in concern of Liberty residents to whom the danger is now nearer and more tangible would expect the Cult leaders to try their utmost to accelerate the process of relocation.

However the Rajavi’s eyes were looking somewhere else, as he enjoys the smell of blood. He tried to benefit from the blood of the victims as much as possible.

After the incident the Organization’s propaganda system tried to distribute the films and photos related to the clashes to the international media demanding the protection of Liberty residents and the presence of blue helmet UN soldiers.

Maryam Rajavi also gave speeches in different occasions asking for help to safe their stay in Iraq rather than accelerating their relocation to third countries.

The leaders and high ranking members of the organization, all residing in safe places do not care about the safety and well being of the rank and file members being trapped in a temporary residence in Iraq .

The reality is that the leaders of the organization attempts is to keep members in Iraq rather than transferring them to other countries as no country accept to house terrorists in group and they have the bitter experience in Albania .

The reports suggest the defection of about 70 out of 159 members of the organization who have been transferred to Albania.

The leaders prefer to use or better to say misuse members’ lives in Iraq as much as they can, rather than letting them out of the organizational boundaries and indoctrinations where they can break with the cult and make free choices about their future.

After the death of 52 Camp Ashraf residents who stayed there under the pretext of protecting the organization’s property the leaders called it a victory for MKO. And this story will repeat again regardless of the lives it may cost, as it is now more than a month that Liberty residents have gone on hunger strike based on an organizational decree.

Using this strategy, Rajavi tries to convince the international world to help him stay in Iraq as a last resort to keep his cult and to prevent the rank and file from defecting.

By: A. Sepinoud

October 3, 2013 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

BBC interviews Arash Sametipour;MKO ex-member

I went to Camp Ashraf from America

Arash sametipour was living in the United States when he first heard of Camp Ashraf. He went there, he was trained and finally, one morning he entered Iran crossing Southern border. “The first thing to attract my attention in Ahwaz [ a city near border] were children who were playing soccer, chasing each other and speaking Persian. I noticed children’s playing in other cities too. I was really impressed … I thought when I was at their age I was experiencing war. Those days, most nights we were awaken by air raid siren and had to go to shelters. We had only two TV channels and a lot of passionate revolutionary slogans… basically I don’t think my generation can claim to have had a childhood.”

My interview with Arash Sametipour was on the phone. He lives in Netherlands so we were not able to look in to each other’s eyes. It was too difficult for me to ask questions without knowing enough about his mental conditions. I knew I had to call him a “terrorist” some time during the interview but I didn’t know that he who is now trying his best to “fight violence”, regarded such an attribute as “fair”.

“In the morning you crossed the Southern border to enter Iran; did you know that you were officially going on a mission that would turn you in to a terrorist?” I asked him. He replied,”

Arash was not willing to speak of details of the mission he had been trained for but he didn’t disagree my hypothesis when I said,”let me suppose that you were going to Iran to kill someone or technically to hit someone."

“On that day I was in the place I was supposed to be just like previous days. But that day was different from other days. I was terribly tired. My country-fellow men may not understand what I mean. It may be a little hard for them to accept that there was no motivation, there was only tiredness. I just wanted it to finish… I remember the exact words I told God:”Finish it. Please finish it.”

Arash says that an hour after saying the “prayer”, he is arrested by the Iranian Police. The cops fail to search his body completely so at the Police station, he manages to get the grenade he has with him and eventually releases the trigger.

“The moment I released the safety lock, I wondered what was going to happen. Was it the end? Would everything go dark? Or would I be born like a baby once again? Right away, my mother’s image emerged before my eyes.”

I asked him if he had talked to his mother about the path he had chosen, before joining the MKO.

“My mother was seriously against it. My family had immigrated to the United States in 1995. We all had Green Cards and soon we were qualified to receive American citizenship. I was a student and a pretty good future was waiting for me… The moment I released the trigger the image of my mother was so real to me that I forget to take the grenade near my chest – we were trained to keep the triggered grenade before our chest – but I was struck dumb by my Mum’s image , so I survived the explosion.”

Arash Sametipour was taken to hospital after he exploded the grenade in his hand. He lost a hand but doctors succeeded to keep his seriously wounded leg.

“Did the medical team of the hospital treat you with discrimination or hatred”?, I asked him.

“Well, it was and is natural. Iranian people have not forgiven the MKO yet but my medical team did their job well without any discrimination. After I was discharged from the hospital I was nearly sure that I would be sentenced to death but the then administration was reformist and the state was willing to show a moderate image. I heard that the MKO members were granted amnesty at that time. I was lucky that I was sentenced to life imprisonment. It was later reduced to 8 years and according to the law if you commit a crime for the first time you will be forgiven after you serve half of your conviction.”

“I Become a Teacher”. Arash sametipour has two important occupations now; he is awaiting the birth of his baby and meanwhile he is writing the book of his memoirs. He has his own weblog where he frequently writes of his memoirs and his daily routine.

I asked him who joined the MKO at the age of 21, “if 21 years later, your son come to you saying he has reasons to take gun and fight a government that he feels it should be reformed, what you tell him?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot. I guess if I am able to convey what I endured in the past, firstly to my child and secondly to the coming generation, they will be unlikely to repeat my experience.”

He says that if he were able to get back to the past, he would become a teacher rather than “an armed fighter against a government."

“I was not a person to change the history. I remember the words by Samad [the Iranian writer] ‘we thought everyone was in danger there but we went saw that only we were in danger!’ If I get back to Iran someday, I will become a teacher maybe I could pass my experience and the story of my life to the future generation in order to make them aware of this part of the history in which my generation and I lived our life.”

September 26, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Self-Annihilation, an Ideological Drift in MKO

MKO cultivates homicidal tendencies with an emphasis on suicidal ones

Showing a disposition towards violence is known to be the supporting one among many fundamental pillars of Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCR, NLA). In fact, violence and death is a working strategy, either killing others or committing self-annihilation. The group’s early booklets explicitly chart the worldview as a basic ideological mentality which is repeatedly referred to in group’s ideological instructions. The members are encouraged to either kill or be killed, and in contrast to the mainstream of similar opposition groups, MKO does not seem the least concerned for the safety of its members that frame the main upholders of its structure.

MKO cultivates homicidal tendencies with an emphasis on suicidal ones in a struggle to counter its adversaries and exclusively invest on the tactics that highly risk the lives of the insiders. Whenever MKO plots to make a stand against some adversary to advance with a heavy hand, the first priority is an aggressive militarism. However, it recoils to typical forms of self-destruction and self-slaughter when some bottleneck blocks its advance. The most common forms recorded are self-immolation and using members as human shields.

Being a product of Rajavi’s own mind-set, the use of unconventional terrorist and violent tactics are what Rajavi concludes his organization has the potentiality to carry out to achieve certain goals. Thus, the member of such organization can easily sacrifice his life when he receives the order. The recruited members are taught from the very beginning to make no distinction between killing others and being killed when they receive an order for an operation. Just in the same way that operators exploit the vulnerability of the victims, they themselves are being made victims.

Before the US invasion against Iraq and when threats were nearing the action, Rajavi was sensitive on two things; defending Ashraf against external threats including closing the camp and expulsion from Iraq and second, adopting an appropriate means to defend Ashraf and resist. He specifically reiterated that Ashraf had to be defended tooth and nail. But the premise developed into more objective form of defense when Saddam collapsed and the suggestion of human shield to protect Ashraf as the beating heart of the organization turned to be a serious option on Rajavi’s table.

In one of his messages to Mozhgan (Parsai), a ranking commanding member in Ashraf, Rajavi recapitulated that the members had to stay, die and bury in Ashraf but never succumb to the threats of being moved. It was a question of resisting or dying if the Iraqis ever decided to transfer members from Ashraf to another location. The human shield was one of the opted options; mass suicides could effectively frustrate any effort that aimed at dismantling the integrity of Ashraf. It included any other threat like forced entry of American or coalition forces to temporarily close or deactivate the camp. The first orders were using non-firing weapons; needless to say that the organization actually made no resistance against the American forces and succeeded to take the control and hegemony of the camp in its own hands. The question of suicide operations and human shield were all directed at safeguarding the entity of the organization and its hierarchical order; it was the red line that could not be crossed and all members had to preserve.

On occasion, MKO has issued statements warning the outbreak of human tragedy in the case of any attack against the camp. The statements conveyed a different meaning for the insiders; they implied that the real human tragedy happens when members began to display their self-annihilation potentialities for defending Ashraf. The transfer of the control of Camp Ashraf to Iraqi forces since 2008 and the Iraqi government’s determination to make a decisive decision about the residents of Ashraf enraged the group’s leaders and soon MKO propaganda machine initiated an intensive campaign against the Iraqi government. MKO’s first reaction was arranging a series of suicidal operations. On July 29, 2009 there was a report of deadly clashes between hundreds of Iraqi police forces and the members of MKO residing in Camp Ashraf that left 11 members dead and scores injured from the both side. While the reasons for the clash was said to be unclear at first, few knew that it was a pre-organized self-destruction plan by a number of Rajavi’s devotees to provoke Iraqi forces to trigger the clash that was well videotaped and broadcasted by the organization itself. The clash, however, was not the last but the beginning.

At least through the past three years and since the implementation of decision by the Iraqi government to relocate members from Camp Ashraf, MKO has proved to be determined to preserve the insiders as human shields to construct a secure bulwark against a national and global decisiveness. And through a few clashes, leaving many casualties from the both sides, with the Iraqi forces who had the responsibility of controlling Camp Ashraf, MKO proved it really means what it says. The recent clash that broke out on September 1, is known to be the most tragic one and a real demonstration of a terrorist cult’s potentiality of causing a human tragedy. 52 out of the 100 remaining members of MKO have been killed in Camp Ashraf.

The bloodshed is condemned but the responsibility is mainly on MKO’s leaders. The provoked clashes never stop unless practical measures are adopted to rescue members from the instilled cult mentality of self-sacrifice and dying for the cause of organization. Nearing the end of its life in Iraq, what MKO needs at the present to fuel its propaganda machine for a full move is sacrifice and multitude of martyrs. Where else can MKO leaders find a better slaughter house than Camp Ashraf or Liberty to make as high as about 3000 martyrs? To condemn this and that and to put all responsibility on the Iraqi authorities, grappling with the intensified wave of internal terrorism, provide no solution. The only way to stop similar human tragedies is a global decisiveness to help MKO members to survive and recover from the cult’s mentality.

By Sattar Orangi, September 11, 2013

http://www.officialwire.com/news/self-annihilation-an-ideological-drift-in-mko/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=self-annihilation-an-ideological-drift-in-mko

September 12, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Prepare for more mystery deaths of MEK members

Since yesterday the MEK propaganda machine and its related resources have been on overdrive to claim that Prepare for more mystery deaths of MEK members the seven people who the MEK claim are missing from Camp Ashraf are in the custody of the Iraqis. Before this they had been on overdrive to claim that the 1st September attack on Camp Ashraf had been carried out by the government of Iraq. Both allegations have been repeatedly dismissed as completely unfounded by Iraq, but this has not silenced the MEK’s propaganda machine.

There is strong evidence that the aim of the attack on Camp Ashraf was to capture or kill Massoud Rajavi on the understanding he has been in hiding there. If that is the case, then the seven missing people, who have been identified as Rajavi’s close inner circle, have been part of a pre-planned manoeuvre to rescue him in the event of such an attack. The other members have been there to resist any incursion to allow Rajavi and his protectors time to run away.

Apparently inside the MEK there is currently an internal indoctrination message which compares the dead in this situation to the circumstances when Prophet Mohammad moved from Mecca to Medina and used Imam Ali who slept in his place as a decoy so that when they came to kill him they found Ali there instead. If this scenario is right then after Rajavi has saved his own skin from Ashraf, the last thing he wants is to be in the presence these seven known people. But he can’t let them go either because of the information they carry. The untenable MEK claim that these seven missing people were in Baghdad and have now been transferred by helicopter by the Prime Minister’s office to the south of Iraq indicates that there is some kind of plan behind it – governments do not work like this. The strongest possibility is that these seven people will be eliminated and the government of Iraq will be blamed. This is a typical MEK ploy to disguise the mysterious deaths of unwanted people, something they have done frequently.

In this case it is entirely possible that following this build up, these seven are discovered dead in the next few days, perhaps handcuffed and executed as the others were.

Certainly, for a man who basically can’t stop talking, the silence from Rajavi since the attack on Camp Ashraf makes it all the more likely that he is on the run and heading for a safe residence out of the country.

September 12, 2013 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Source: Mojahedin Khalq Comrades Killed Fellows at Camp

An Iraqi source revealed that a large number of victims in a recent attack on the camp of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) were killed by their own colleagues, namely members of the terrorist group.

A well-informed Iraqi source, which spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Tasnim on Wednesday that the released video of recent clashes in the MKO’s training camp reveal that “most of the dead were actually killed by their own fellows at the camp.”

The terrorist group said that dozens of its members died in a raid on September 1 and blamed the Iraqi security forces for the deaths. Iraqi officials, however, strongly denied the allegations, and said that a preliminary investigation suggested they died as a result of infighting among camp residents.

“In the released video of the recent clashes in Camp Ashraf, footages of the victims of the group showed that most of them had been killed execution style,” the source added.

“Given its track record in liquidating certain members, MKO took advantage of the incident for more bloodshed and killed its members for propaganda purposes and to play the victim,” the source said. Mojahedin Khalq Comrades Killed Fellows at Camp