Unable to see her son living in Mujahedin-e Khalq camp in Tirana, Albania called Camp Ashraf 3, the ailing, aged mother of Aliakbar Andalibi suffers a lot.
It is now for decades that Aliakbar is living at MEK camps and the cult leaders do not let him have any contact with his family.
Shahram Nasiri is allegedly a former member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) who has always been caught between being a loyal MEK’s former member who spies for the group and a defector who is a mercenary of the Iranian intelligence ministry!
Shahram was jailed in the prisons of Camp Ashraf, Iraq, in 1994, when the MEK leaders decided to punish one forth of the group members under the allegations of working for the Iranian Intelligence! The jailed members were interrogated, tortured and even killed by MEK torturers in the absence of true facts on their relationship with the Iranian government.
Shahram continued to stay in MEK until it was relocated in Albania. He allegedly left the group after the relocation in Albania. “I have twice noticed him filming me in the streets,” Siamak Naderi, a defector of MEK writes about Shahram asserting that he spies on former members in Albania, on behalf of MEK.
“Shahram Nasiri is one of the spies of MEK leaders in Tirana,” Mohammad Karami, another defector writes. “His mission is to gather information on what is going in the UNHCR’s office in charge of former members in order to sell to MEK.”
However, in December 2020, MEK websites published a letter allegedly signed by Shahram in which he had promised to be loyal to the MEK cause denouncing other defectors who give testimonies against the group. It seemed curious that he, as a former member, had to confirm his loyalty to the MEK leaders while a lot of former members live freely in the outside world.
The case of Shahram Nasiri became more complicated when, a few weeks ago, MEK published a statement signed by Hassan Nayebagha, as the representative of the inhabitants of Camp Ashraf three. The statement says that MEK has cut off financial aids to Shahram Nasiri because he did not fulfill his commitments to the group. According to the statement, Shahram is accused of socializing with other defectors of MEK —called as agents of the Islamic Republic by MEK!
It is worth to know that the alleged financial aid claimed by MEK, is actually the monthly payment that the UNHCR was supposed to donate each MEK member as a refugee after their relocation in Albania. Regrettably, the money is not paid to them individually but it is paid in sum to the group leaders so they can simply confiscate it.
last week, another propaganda show was launched by the Mujahedin Khalq (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in their headquarters called Camp Ashraf 3 in Albania. It is considered a propaganda show because it was organized under the cultic system that Massoud Rajavi has built around his own personality. The show was magnified by huge screens before the dazed faces of uniformed MEK members who automatically clapped their hands or raised their fists to chant slogans to adore their smiling guru, Maryam Rajavi.
Based on numerous records, MEK is considered a cult-like group. “The MEK’s cultic system means that decisions are imposed from the top down,” assert Masoud and Ann Khodabandeh, former members of the group. “This means that those decisions are only as intelligent as the leadership.” [1]
In July 2018, Saeed Kamali Dehghan of the Guardian published an article to discuss the support of US warmongers such as John Bolton for MEK, “the extreme Iranian opposition group who was the target of a foiled bombing attack in France and was once a sworn enemy of the United States”. Reviewing the history of MEK, Kamali Dehghan states, “Today, it functions as a fringe exiled group with characteristics of a cult that works for regime change in Iran, though it has little visible support inside the country. It portrays itself as a democratic political institution although its own internal structure is anything but.” [2]
In 2019 when some photos were leaked from inside Camp Ashraf 3 showing members sitting in front of monitors in the group’s troll farm, the Khodabandehs wrote, “What Rajavi doesn’t understand is that these photos show beyond any words that the MEK doesn’t share our values. The leader is selling unthinking, unquestioning, obedient slaves, people who won’t act or speak unless ordered to do so. And that would only be ordered if it were productive for the MEK, regardless of the needs or desires of the worker.” [3]
Leaked photos showing MEK members at work
“What these images portray are conditions of modern slavery,” they continued. “These are elderly people who are unable to escape this cult and are coerced into performing work for which they receive no recompense. They exist on cruelly basic accommodation and sustenance, whereby even asking for new underwear puts the petitioner under question about their loyalty to the leader and the cause. They cannot leave because in Albania they have nowhere to go, no identity documents or work permits, no money, and they do not speak the local language.” [4]
To Download the video file click here
In March 2020, Murtaza Hussein and Mathew Cole of the Intercept, also suggested, “the MEK is a highly secretive organization”. They had interviewed five defectors of the group to support their assertion. “Five of them agreed to speak on the record about their experiences, which were broadly consistent and often confirmed aspects of other former members’ accounts,” they wrote. “Secret Iranian intelligence documents obtained by The Intercept also confirm several of their claims, including information that is not publicly known. Their testimonies reveal a brutal organization that, for decades, has held thousands in a state of physical and psychological slavery as it degenerated from a popular political movement to a freakish cult of personality under the absolute control of one all-powerful leader.” [5]
Thus, the so-called celebration that was recently hold in Camp Ashraf and other similar ones, are actually a demonstration of the modern slavery that is practiced inside the Cult of Rajavi every day.
By Mazda Parsi
References:
[1] Khodabandeh, Ann & Massoud, Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” with Regime Change Involving MEK, The lobelog, August 22, 2019.
[2] Kamali Dehghan, Saeed, Who is the Iranian group targeted by bombers and beloved of Trump allies?, The Gurdian, July 2nd, 2018.
[3] Khodabandeh, Ann & Massoud, Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” with Regime Change Involving MEK, The lobelog, August 22, 2019.
[4] ibid
[5] Hussein, Murtaza & Cole, Mathew, Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult, The Intercept, March 22nd, 2020.
The Mujahedin Khalq Organization MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) is considered a cult-like group if not exactly a cult, based on various western sources. Most members of the group got involved with it together with their family members. When in the 1980’s Massoud Rajavi fled to Iraq to found his so-called National Liberation Army —Saddam’s Private Army— a large number of MEK members took their family to join him. The group was sheltered in Camp Ashraf where Mujahed children were supposed to leave under the strict organizational rules.
“In order to understand the problems children in cults may experience, it is important to analyze how their parents operate,” asserts Anne Edelstam, a sociologist who experienced living in a cult led by a woman guru, Maud Pison. “The parents who are members of a cult are themselves manipulated and mentally controlled by their leader or guru.”
Mental manipulation, as used in a destructive cult, and certainly used in the MEK, is the influence a person or a group of persons have on an individual, through systematic mind control in order to achieve a change in the person’s feelings, thoughts, intelligence, behavior and will. “It can be difficult to understand how a person’s mind and thoughts can change so much,” Edelstam adds. “We are usually not educated to believe that ALL of us can be so easily manipulated.”
When in 2003, Elizabeth Rubin of the New York Times Magazine visited Camp Ashraf, she was stunned to see young women who were acting as female workers of a factory in Maoist China. “Most of the girls I was meeting had grown up in Mujahedeen schools in Ashraf, where they lived separated from their parents,” Rubin writes about the life of children at Camp Ashraf. “Family visits were allowed on Thursday nights and Fridays. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, many of these girls were transported to Jordan and then smuggled to various countries — Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, England, the United States — where they were raised by guardians who were usually Mujahedeen supporters.”
The life of children in Camp Ashraf and then, after they were totally separated from their parents, in the MEK-led orphanages in Europe was precisely the same as what Ann Edelstam describes about Maud Pison. “A cult leader, through systematic mental manipulation, is able to put an individual in such a stressful situation that he cannot use his mind correctly anymore,” she writes. “This stress or psychosis makes the cult member, mentally unstable, psychotic, emotionally unstable, cognitively unstable.
Nadere Afshari, former member of MEK was an eye witnesses who had first-hand account of the orphaned children of MEK. “Rajavi considers the family as an integral cell in his organization,” Afshari says. “He therefore feels free to intervene in the marital relations of members against their own will.”
In the book “Forbidden Love” Nadereh described the horrible situation of the children who were kept in the Cult of Rajavi, in isolated gender-segregated units located far from their parents, under a very abusive control that made them undergo severe sufferings.
“The children growing up in cults don’t have any real parents,” Edelstam suggests. “They belong to the leader and to its ideology. They are modeled to become ideal robots. This is a phenomenon that we’ve seen in Nazi Germany with the creation of the Hitlerjugend, in the Red Army and among children soldiers in different parts of the world etc. It’s unfortunately a phenomenon that is used by most tyrants, and gurus are nothing but tyrants.”
The couple guru of MEK, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, are two of the tyrants who in February 1991, separated over 800 children from 2-months-old to 18-year-old from their parents and smuggled them to Jordan with fake IDs. They were then sent to European countries including Germany, Netherlands and Sweden where they were made adopted by European families and Iranian families who were sympathizers of the MKO or were kept in crowded buildings as the orphanages run by MEK commanders.
About the life of children in the cults Ann Edelstam explains: “In several cults the children don’t get enough sleep either. They are awakened at night along with their parents to pray, read a mantra, clean or whatever excuses the leader might find to awaken them. Children who don’t get enough sleep don’t grow as well as others. They also become irritated and slow. They also get infections easier, which in some cases can even be deadly. In several cults, medicine and doctors are forbidden.”
To download the video file click here
The memoirs of Nadereh Afshari in two books written in Persian are full of examples of maltreatments and abuses committed by commanders of the Cult of Rajavi against children. She even writes of newly born infants of MEK mothers who were beaten by a commander called Azam.
“Everyday life in a cult implies hard work often even for small children; with lots of work, little sleep and food, there is no time left to play,” Edelstam continues. “The children must early on be indoctrinated and drilled so that their personalities cannot develop and so that they learn humility.”
Considering the history of totalitarian movement like the Cult of Rajavi, one realizes that the cult system hinders the child to develop into a fully responsible adult and citizen. The cult denies the child’s right to his identity, his personality, a structure, an intellect and a critical thinking. The child becomes robotized and cannot move without the cult as a prothesis.
A number of current members of MEK are those teenagers who were taken back to Camp Ashraf after a few years of living in the group’s units in Europe. They have always been under the manipulative system of the group. It is very difficult for a child who has grown up in this weird, close, manipulative cult-world to become a normal citizen again. What is considered right and wrong for most of us isn’t at all that obvious for a former cult-member. “It is very difficult for a child who has grown up in this weird, close, manipulative cult-world to become a normal citizen again,” Edelstam. “What is considered right and wrong for most of us isn’t at all that obvious for a former cult-member.”
By Mazda Parsi
In Support of the Complaint of 42 Former Members against the Leaders of the MEK
Samad Eskandari started this petition to INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE and
In a lawsuit filed inside Iran, 42 former members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi Cult) have demanded compensation from the organization’s leaders for their lost rights.
These people, who were enslaved and contained in the closed and remote Camp Ashraf in Iraq, isolated from the outside world, and subjected to the conditions of severe cultic abuse, found the opportunity to escape from the organization with the fall of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq and they returned to Iran.
Now, in the context of Iranian judicial law and international justice they are seeking compensation from the leaders of the MEK.
These former members of the Rajavi Cult raised their complaint in the Iranian judicial system in March 2019. Branch 55 of the Tehran International Legal and General Court officially registered their complaint, and on March 7 and 8, 2021, court hearings were held. The primary verdict of the Court was issued on March 16, 2021. The Iranian judiciary, in accordance with civil procedures, sent notices to the governments of France and Albania to notify the defendants, who are residents there, of the verdict.
Now, with the final verdict of the Iranian judiciary and the accompanying media coverage of the case at domestic and international levels, the number of plaintiffs has reached more than 200 – which is constantly increasing – who are seeking to file a complaint with international judicial bodies against the MEK leaders.
We, the signatories of this petition, call on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, as well as the governments of France and Albania, to work for the realization of the rights of the material, physical and spiritual victims of the MEK.
They are those who, through behaviors such as slavery, solitary confinement, torture and severe bodily harm, great suffering and irreparable psychological damage, sexual slavery, etc. are clear examples of Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court as victims of a crime against humanity.
We urge the International Criminal Court in The Hague to prosecute the MEK leaders who continue to practice cultic abuse and freely violate the most basic rights of their members on European soil, and to administer justice, while ordering compensation for some of the damage caused by years of modern slavery. And to further come to the rescue of the hundreds of other captives currently being held in the closed, remote and isolated camp of the Rajavi Cult in Albania.
“Resistance unit” is the title used by the propaganda of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) to show off about its popular bade inside Iran but under the cover of so-called resistance units they just try to connect with young users of social networks inside Iran to provoke them to commit acts of sabotage and violence.
The most important goal of this project, which has been ordered by the leaders of the group in Europe and has been carried out by the group’s agents in the cyberspace, was to demonstrate the power of the MEK inside Iran for Western supporters.
The secondary goal of the project, which is still important to the leaders of the group, is to induce the potential supporters inside Iran in order to maintain current members inside the group’s camps in Europe – who have been asking to leave the group for the past decades.
However, experience and history have proven that the lack of a social base of Mujahedin Khalq in Iran has always been an obstacle to the success of the group in producing serious protests in Iran. One of the unsuccessful projects is the establishment of the very resistance units.
The fraudulent tactics to establish resistance units received a blow with a wave of revelations on the fraud of MEK, and with the infiltration in resistance units, a significant drop took place in the number of the so-called units.
Henceforth, nowadays, MEK is trying to create an opportunity to rebuild the plan with changes in recruitments, including the areas to recruit targets. MEK commanders have planned to target certain demographic settings that are more likely to succeed. Failed attempts to recruit members for resistance units have led MEK leaders to look for operatives in more specific clusters of the Iranian society.
Schools and work places are among the targeted clusters for MEK to create and launch protest movements. According to the group leaders, these environments create better opportunities to mobilize chaos. For example, in schools, the influence of peers and incomplete awareness about political issues helps MEK agents to deceive their targets with less difficulty. It seems that social activists, teachers and parents must be vigilant about the threat of the destructive cult of Rajavi in the social networks.
++ Over the last two weeks, MEK sites and Maryam Rajavi have been keen to declare a victory for Israel after its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza which were condemned as war crimes throughout the world. Rajavi ludicrously then claimed that if Iran had not been involved, the Israelis and Palestinians would have no problems and would be living together in peace and harmony. Essentially, she claimed that Iran was behind the conflict. Her conclusion, of course, is that President Biden should attack Iran and bring about regime change, with her in charge obviously. This will make everything between Israel and Palestine OK. Among the reactions to this was a piece by Mansour Nazari in France which goes into detail about the history of the MEK. Nazari concludes that from the time of Saddam, for forty years, on every occasion and in every place, the MEK have been totally on the side of the enemies of Iranians: ‘Following the shadow of the enemies of Iran’.
++ According to a decree issued by Massoud Rajavi, the National Liberation Army no longer exists, and all membership has been dissolved. A new army has been established and everyone will have to write and ask to be a member of the new NLA. First they’re out, then they’re in again! The irony is that this is done in a mass meeting with closed doors so everyone is forced to comply or suffer the consequences (punishment). Among many reactions, commentators point out that the last four times the NLA was dissolved and resurrected were in Iraq when they had arms and armaments. Every time this was done Rajavi felt the organisation was collapsing. Now in Albania there is no army and there is no need for an army. It is clear though that the MEK leaders are weak and desperate. This is about pushing the residents of the camp in closed conditions with no contact with the outside world, to sign a commitment not to leave.
++ In an attempt to influence the election in Iran, MEK are full on telling people not to vote, especially those outside Iran. MEK claims to have cameras outside polling stations and the tacit support of the CIA, and they will kill people who vote. They threaten that there will be bombs in polling stations in Iran so people should keep away. The MEK claims its ‘sleeper cells’ are now active and will kill people. The MEK wants to create an atmosphere of fear – terrorist tactics. The basic message is: don’t go to vote. In order to attempt to dissuade people from voting MEK also claim that it’s obvious Ebrahim Raisi will win so it’s not a genuine election anyway. On that issue, Ebrahim Khodabandeh wrote a note in which he explains that while with the MEK at the time Khatami won the presidency, he was invited to go on Sky News on behalf of the MEK. Khodabandeh says that “our line, on which I was briefed, was to say that Khatami would definitely lose the election, that the regime could not change and that a snake will never give birth to a dove… When I went to the studio, although all the other guests were saying the same thing, I was hardline about it. However, it turned out that Khatami won and I remember on a later occasion when I met the interviewer, he said ‘I was led to believe the same thing’. It shows you can’t be certain of the election at any time. Nobody can predict the outcome.”
In English:
++ According to a piece by Nejat Society, the MEK honed its propaganda capabilities during the 1970s and 1980s, boasting of its deadly activities in Iraq and Iran – the assassination of six Americans in Iran, bombings, sabotage, indiscriminate murder of over 12,000 Iranians, cross border operations and military operations against Iraqi Kurds and Shiites in Iraq. This irrefutable evidence in its own words turned out to be counterproductive after the MEK was exposed to media scrutiny when the terrorist organization was moved to Albania and the controversial lifestyle of the MEK members invited investigation. This led to several damning reports by various media, including Der Spiegel and the BBC. The MEK cannot escape its past nor the fact that it is sustained on the back of 2000 modern slaves.
++ Several outlets reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken banned Albania’s former PM Sali Berisha from entering the US on the grounds of corruption. Iran-Interlink reminded us that Berisha was instrumental in having the MEK removed from the US terrorism list, and that Albania’s political system benefitted financially from hosting the MEK there. Berisha was an enthusiastic advocate for MEK. And notoriously corrupt.
++ Massoud Khodabandeh wrote after news emerged that Albania’s Council of Ministers have approved legislation to streamline documentation for all foreigners in Albania, whatever their reason – holiday homes, work, asylum, etc. The initial White Card will convey the same rights as citizens except the right to vote. Former MEK members have already applied and been registered to receive the documentation. This will allow them to work, buy property and run businesses. Khodabandeh wrote that this documentation is applicable to all MEK members. To this end, Maryam Rajavi has tried to hide this information and force the members to commit to abrogate their individual rights in favour of obedience to the terms of MEK membership. This is impossible under Article 30 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
++ Italian and Albanian media reported that two old Iranian men who were caught smuggling 3 vials of Astrazenica vaccine from Germany via Italy to Albania. Under the title ‘MEK Crime Organisation’ Iran-Interlink revealed that the men are long-term MEK members living in Germany, and the 18-dose vaccine was probably destined for Maryam Rajavi. She prefers to remain separated in Tirana from the ordinary members, who are dying from COVID-19 in the closed camp in Manez. The Iran-Interlink piece covered the history of criminal activities of the MEK which are now the main activities of the cult.
++ Several outlets revisited historical MEK crimes and abuses, including abuse of women, assassinations, murders and more. Nejat Society drew attention to a current scandalous abuse of human rights as the family of 78-year-old Rahim Kiuhan seeks help from the international community to rescue him. Kiuhan has tried over many years to be able to contact his family. MEK has cruelly prevented this. As a result of the continuous mental and physical pressures imposed on him over this issue, he is now reportedly very ill in the MEK camp in Manez. Unfortunately, Kiuhan is one of many MEK members and their families suffering inhuman abuse at the hands of Maryam Rajavi and her acolytes, on whom the responsible officials and authorities have turned their backs.
++ Tehran Times reported on a speech by Iran’s Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. In his address to the nation, Khamenei said that Iran is ‘stronger than ever’. He touched on American predictions that the IRI would not see its 40th anniversary; “I do not remember so many predictions of decay and collapse to have been made about any other system.” This was interpreted as referring to former US national security advisor John Bolton’s version of this prediction when he addressed a gathering of MEK members in a propaganda rally in 2017. [MEK leader Maryam Rajavi has since been expelled from the EU and is now isolated in Albania.]
Jun 04, 2021
The MEK is struggling to hold on to its own members, who have begun to defect in Tirana,Albania. Hundreds of members have walked out – complaining about the organisation’s rigid rules enforcing celibacy, and control over contact with family.
Widely regarded as a cult, the MEK was once designated as a terrorist organization by the US and UK, but its opposition to the Iranian government.
The headquarters of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) is called Camp Ashraf 3. The thought-provoking point about the newly-built camp is that it is very similar to the group’s headquarters in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, which was located in Diyala Province, about 120 kilometers west of the Iranian border and 60 kilometers north of Baghdad. As the group’s new base in the heart of Europe, in north of Tirana, Camp Ashraf 3 is still under construction.
However, the headquarters of the MEK in Albania is much smaller than the notorious Camp Ashraf in Iraq, which covered an area of about 50 km from the Diyala deserts in Iraqi territory. But Camp Ashraf 3 is built precisely by copying the buildings and monuments of Camp Ashraf.
The organization’s instructions to build the new camp parallel to Camp Ashraf must be based on two reasons. Firstly, it connotes the same atmosphere to members of the group and may be able to stop the impressions of failure and frustration from expulsion from Iraq. Secondly, it may create this mental orientation for disappointed and dissident members –whose number is increasingly on the rise—- that nothing has changed and they should remain at service of the group and its cause. Actually, according to the leaders, members should not expect any change!
A member of Mujahedin-e Khalgh walks in a street at the Ashraf-3 camp. Photo:Gent shkullaku/AFP
According to members who managed to escape from the MEK’s camp in Albania, the buildings of the camp are apparently interior and exterior like what it was in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. The names of the streets, the number of the rooms and the way they use the rooms and buildings, exactly the same way they were used in Camp Ashraf, Iraq.
The shut down of Camp Ashraf and the eventual expulsion of the MEK from Iraq is considered to be the most disappointing blow in the history of the Cult of Rajavi, following the long years of promising to overthrow the government in Tehran. The closure of Camp Ashraf marks the failure of the Rajavis to meet their promises and more importantly annihilation of lives of thousands of their members.
Since the relocation of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in Albania, demands for leaving the group have been increasingly on the rise. Although the leaders of the group have always been faced with such a problem, with the more open space in Europe that restricted the mind control system of the MEK in Albania, a large number of members of the group have managed to leave the group. However, many of them refrain from publicly expressing their desire to leave the group because of their fear of the consequences— severe punishments by the group commanders.
The MEK leaders also have techniques to dissuade the forces who want to leave. One of the commonly used methods that is now being run in Camp Ashraf 3 is the quarantine. Quarantine is actually for people who have been openly asking for defection, and after hours and days of interrogations and peer pressure have insisted on their demand. The leaders keep the dissident member in the so-called quarantine for a period of time in which the person is allegedly away from the group’s information and after that period of time his or her previous information would be expired.
Nonetheless, the fact is that the quarantine to burn the person’s information about the group, is a dishonest justification; the quarantine is actually a solitary confinement in which the member is kept under mental and physical torture. This is the leader’s last chance to coerce the person in order to maintain him or her in the Cult of Rajavi. All members, even those who work in the lowest levels of the group’s hierarchy, are forced to undergo a quarantine period, according to defectors of the group. Hilariously, even if the member has no reliable information and has been cooking or grooming all the time, he or she must still go through the quarantine before defection.
Pressure to coerce again
The first and most important intention of the group’s leaders to set up the so-called quarantine is to push the person into an environment similar to that of solitary confinement. There is no specific time for the end of the quarantine days. Mental and psychological pressures during the quarantine period, are the factors that often lead to the withdrawal of many troops. A person in a quarantine environment is questioned and interrogated on various occasions under different pretexts.
The member who, due to psychological stress and disappointment in leaving the group normally, admits to be quarantined. The person must undergo more severe obligations in the quarantine than the past, so he or she no longer desires to leave the group. In fact, when the member gets out of the quarantine accepts that his or her survival or death will be at the disposal of the organization! The person signs a commitment letter at the end of the solitary. Signing of such commitments, of course, implies how horrible the quarantine atmosphere is that the person has been convinced to stay!
In such a situation, another secondary consequence of defection is also eliminated; firstly, the person is not any more at the height of dissatisfaction among other members, which makes it harder for others to follow his path; second, he has not been imprisoned to compromise the organization. After the so-called quarantine, if the applicant for defection returns to the cult with the signed documents, others in the group will be shown “the regret of a wrong decision”.
An opportunity to get rid of a disturbing element
The physical elimination option is still on the table, in the MEK. Regarding the revelations defectors have made about the MEK’s notorious violent system, this option is still left with the group leaders dealing with the individual who want to defect. However, this option is not simply practicable like the time the group was located in Iraq. They are not able to kill dissident members because the UNHCR has enrolled almost all members of the group after its relocation in Albania and it will force the group authorities to respond about the fate of the rank and file.
In the quarantine environment, mental and psychological pressures and lack of knowledge about the ending time of the quarantine, sometimes make it difficult for people who are not willing to return to the group themselves. So, they might commit suicide. This option is an ideal ending for the heads of group when it comes to defection requests. Besides, they are free to set scenes for the death of some of the high-risk members of the group in the quarantine.
Control the defection rate
One of the coolest mechanisms of the organization to build quarantine is to control the exit rate. In fact, the MEK, by setting the timetable for departure, are trying to show that there is a high degree of cooperation and understanding with the applicants of defection
In sum, the quarantine is the last station of the MEK members, who are not willing to return in any way and under no pressure. They stay strong. They do not commit suicide or they cannot simply be physically killed by the group commanders. Also, this is the last station for the heads of the MEK and Maryam Rajavi, who are endeavoring to coerce hundreds of dissatisfied and dissident members.
