group. She was the first person to speak of the “Summit Operation” which was a cult jargon through which a large number of female members of the group became infertile by Hysterectomy surgery.Nim Negah Website is publishing series of interviews with Ms. Ebrahimi. Nejat society translated excerpts of her memoirs of the sufferings of living in the MKO cult.
After I entered the MKO base in Iraq the first word I was told was a warning about my hair that was seen from under my scarf! During the first two days I was being interrogated by 15 people. I had to sign a paper; It was an approval document based on which I had admitted to be executed by the MKO in case I escape an operation! Let’s not mention that Mrs. Rajavi now claims to oppose death penalty! By the way they feared the day we wouldn’t agree to launch attack against our country fellowmen.
During the first year I spent in Ashraf, I came to know that everything was like a mirage; the life in Ashraf was a big lie so I began complaining and criticizing the group on various subjects.
I told them:”I think I am in a prison. What you publicize is so different from what you really are.” I was too young to know that this would be dangerous and I would risk my life by criticizing the MKO…
..However, I couldn’t believe that I would be imprisoned. I didn’t guess that my criticisms would make Rajavi mad at me. As the result of criticizing the Rajavis, I was being humiliated…They treated me in such a way that my friends tried to stay away from me…In brainwashing sessions, they told me to condemn myself, this way I would pave the way for others to offense me…
If we said that we hadn’t done anything wrong during the day, it would have been much worse; we would have been verbally abused more….
After a year in Ashraf, one day they called to me. I was told that Mossoumeh Pirhadi wanted to see me. When I was going to her office, I really felt bad.
Having arrived in her room, she started shouting at me and insulting me … I was taken to a bus. I asked: what’s up?”They said:”Shut up! Just get on!” I got on the bus. I was shocked and terrified. Two people were guarding me in the dark bus. I was crying!
… They pushed me into the prison. I was so scared that I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t believe that the MKO –with those slogans and propaganda – have prisons! All of the sudden I recalled the first day of my arrival in the MKO base when the group officials told me,”Iranian regime jail the children under the legal age!” What a surprise!
After a week of imprisonment, a woman named Forough Pakdel came to my cell and said:”Get out”. There was another room next to my cell for interrogation! Another woman named Mahnaz Bazzazi started interrogating me,” who are you? Why did you join the oragnziation? " (suppose that Iran needed someone to infiltrate the MKO. Does the Iranian Intelligence Ministry – with that experience and power- need to send a 14-year-old girl into a complicated group like the MKO?)
Therefore, it was sure that they wanted to intimidate me. They wanted to stop criticism in its first phases.
Interrogation sessions went on .. I wasn’t physically tortured but I was under a constant terrible mental torture. All day long I was stressed. They knew I feared interrogation sessions so they always pretended that someone was going to come interrogate me…
The interrogation session included only shouting and screaming at me that lasted an hour or two.
Actually, the MKO knew that I was innocent but they just wanted to hurt me. They wanted to teach me that I didn’t have the right to criticize … they threatened me that they would deliver me to Iraqi intelligence service who would in turn execute me. They used various ways to torture me; they brought my food late, I was deprived from having doctor or medicine. Because of too much stress and pressure of interrogation sessions I was sick but they didn’t care…
After they found out that I was badly mentally hurt, they brought me a TV that only showed the group’s propaganda channel ”Simay-e Azady”
… During the entire year in jail, I never went for recess.. When I asked for a recess time, Mahnz Bazzazi refused my request and found a new pretext to verbally abuse me again!
The painful horrible condition continued. The group interrogators didn’t tell me what was wrong with me. They just insulted me saying,” You stand against Rajavi, you are a mercenary” and so on.
… After exactly a year of imprisonment, I could feel that something had changed around me. No one was there, the main door was open. A few hours later I heard someone calling. It was Forough Pakdel who always used to shout at me and use foul mouthed language against me. But this time was different, she called ”Dear Nasrin! Where are you?” I was confused!
She had become so friendly! I was doubtful like the first day they jailed me.. They kissed me! They told me” Get back to the base (Ashraf). Something had gone wrong and you should understand that we are here to struggle and the struggle has ups and downs so organization doesn’t owe you anything”…
By the way, I resisted against them.”Once I trusted the organization, I left my life and family because I thought you were right but I understand that you lie. So let me leave Ashraf. I won’t get back to the camp,” I told them. They tried to convince me to stay in the cult but when they saw I was serious about my decision they said:” Ok, you must stay two more years in the prison so that your information is outdated. According to the regulations of the organization, you will be submitted to Iraqis who will jail you in Abu Qoraib for ten years then Saddam Hussein will exchange you will Iraqi POWs in Iran”
This was the most painful thing I could hear. In fact, I had no way except staying in Ashraf. I was coerced to admit to stay with the MKO. Then I was told to sign some documents that were like confessions…
By the way, I got back to the base but it was not me, Nasrin, it was like a body with no sole. I couldn’t speak or criticize anymore. I just listened to others and kept silent. This was what Rajavi wanted. They told me that I was not allowed to speak about my imprisonment I had to say that I was in Baghdad!
.. a woman who was also a victim of Rajavi’s cult, told me: ”Nasrin … try to be rational otherwise you will be put out of their way. The prison was a small warning. The second time you will be put to death… “
Sometime later, when I saw Rajavi in a meeting, I calmly asked him why I was jailed but he pretended not to understand me and asked Shahrzad Sadr:”What is Nasrin talking about?” I told Rajavi,” The MKO is over in my mind”.
I remember Maryam Rajavi’s arrest in Paris in 2003. After she was jailed by French judiciary because of money laundry activities and conducting terrorist acts, she said:”I expected to be jailed by the Iranian Regime not by a freedom loving country like France.” I should tell Mrs. Rajavi:” Mrs. Rajavi, Me and other people like me expected to be in the prisons of the Islamic Republic not in the prisons of the Rajavis who claim and chant that much of slogans!”
Rajavists.
cults.
suffering families whose loved ones remain confined by the MKO are concerned, the fall of Saddam Hussein did not improve their situation and did not lead to their safety. On the contrary it ended in greater threat and suffering. The families are shocked by the passivism of international organizations, in particular the UN in the face of this situation.
occupying forces, is still a problem for the Iraqis.
dependent on the blood of its devoted members, calling them martyrs. The terrorist cult of Mojahedin Khalq (aka. MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCR, NLA) is just one among a handful. And what is the necessity of such ever-growing dependence? The reason is simple; MKO needs flow of fresh blood to sustain its structure; it needs more and more martyrs to keep the whole enterprise going; it is a necessary means for the accomplishment of its causes, survival, and keeping its impressive propaganda machine going. As a vindication of its rightness in its struggle path, the group has always boasted about the counts of its members killed, injured and disabled as well as imprisoned members who are believed to substantiate its hegemonic legitimacy over all other opposition groups antagonizing the Iranian regime.
under the tag of ideology, MKO inaugurated the ideological revolution to introduce a charismatic authoritarian leader to exert control over every aspect of his adherents’ life and to establishing a totalitarian pyramidal structure where the chosen devoted commanders would act as the leader’s deputies in his absence. But the leader needed certain facilities to implement the newly devised mind control. The most important prerequisite was of course a remote place isolated from the outside world to disconnect the contact of their followers from the outside world, particularly from their families and friends and even from their past. To phrase it in technical terms, MKO was desperately in need of a cultic milieu, the most central in creating the thought reform environment as depicted by Robert Jay Lifton:
truth” for the well-being of their followers. In this way, they apply various bizarre practices to blind the followers from observing the reality of maltreatments against them. In the cult, they are constantly kept under a sever mind control manipulative system that they cannot see their leaders abusive acts.
fuels global rage against Iranian regime but praises the group and its leaders as pro-democratic unity devoted to peaceful campaign against all cruelties and violations of human rights! MKO is not the first in history clinging to such a paradox but following the footsteps of countless bullies who were determined to shift the focus of public attention and rage away from their own devious intention and plans to a hateful image of a “single adversary”.