Tortur and Harasment in Mujahedin Khalq

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Get to know an MEK torturer

Hamideh Shahrokhi Amiri is the 50th defendant in the court hearing the case of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). She has always been one of the group’s officials, a member of the group’s Elite Council. She has also worked as an interrogator-torturer.
Hamideh Shahrokhi, nicknamed Afsaneh, was one of the commanders of the MEK army in the Forough Javidan operation, the group’s cross border operation against its own country sponsored by Saddam Hussein.

His sister, Saeeda Shahrokhi, was also a member of the Cult of Rajavi, and she is considered one of the high-ranking officials of the group. In 1984, she married Massoud Kalani (anchor of the Mujahideen TV channel) in Paris. It was an organizational forced marriage. They were later forced to divorce under the order of Massoud Rajavi, as a ruling of the so-called Maryam ideological revolution.

Afsana was one of the officials who played an active and significant role in suppressing the members who wanted to defect the organization. She appointed her deputy, who was Zohra Akhyani in 1989 to 1990, to administer the meeting and suppress the dissidents.

Dariush Ghanavati is a former member of the MEK who encountered Hamideh Shahrokhi’s violence when he asked to leave the organization. He recounts: “Hamida Shahrokhi told me, do you want to go out? We do not send anyone abroad! I answered, what do I have to do with abroad? I want to return to Iran. He drew an arrow with a marker and said that one end of this arrow is a Mujahid and the other end is an Iranian revolutionary guard. Which one are you?! I said none. I want to go back to my family.”

“She started insulting and cursing and the rest of the crowd followed her,” Dariush continues. “They pressured me so much that I started crying. Then they took me to the southeast side of Camp Ashraf and imprisoned me in a Conex, called Bangal.”

Kambiz Bagherzadeh is another former member of the Cult of Rajavi who recalls Afsaneh as his torturer after he wrote a letter to Massoud Ragavi and asked him to let him leave the group in 1990. “They transferred me to a shanty-like room that we called Bengal, and I was there alone for about a month,” he writes in his memoirs. “I was only allowed to leave the place twice a day to use the restroom, and they kept a guard behind the Bengal door for me 24/7. The Bengal was actually a cell for solitary confinement.”
“Little by little, loneliness and mental pressure pressed me so much so that sometimes I actually thought of suicide!”, Kambiz recalls. “From the 20th day, they made me participate in meetings for those who wanted to leave the organization. Really nauseating meetings that were full of insulting, cursing, and spitting on the targeted person, and everyone was shouting and yelling so loud that no one could understand what others were saying. Everyone was shouting at the poor person! This was where Afsanah was the commander, all these crimes were committed under her orders and supervision.”

In 1993 and 1994, the MEK imprisoned about 700 members of the group under that accusation of being an agent of the Iranian intelligence. The imprisoned ones have been accused of such a charge because they had asked to leave the group or they had criticized the group’s ideology or leaders. According to the defector’s testimonies, Hamida Shahrokhi was one of the torturers in this story, who brutally harassed the disaffected forces as much as possible.

January 17, 2024 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Taleb Jalilian admitted torture because there was no other way to leave the MEK

Taleb Jalilian believed in the cause of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). He joined the group when he was young but after a while inside the group, he reached a state of mind that he was ready to be imprisoned and tortured as a procedure to leave the group.

Taleb Jalilian was a member of the MEK and a true believer of the group’s cause to fight the Iranian government. When the leader of the group Massoud Rajavi ordered the start of armed struggle against Islamic Republic, Taleb was seeking a way to receive military trainings, so he joined the Iranian army!

While being a soldier of the Iranian army, he tried to contact the group which was located in Iraq. It had been sheltered by Saddam Hussein who was at war with Iran at the time. After he was connected with the MEK, he was charged with the leaders to transfer the group’s forces through Iran-Iraq border.
Under the order of the leaders, he stopped his duty, and he left Iran for Iraq where he joined the MEK’s so-called National Liberation Army at Camp Ashraf. After a while things started to change.

“I still believed in the group’s cause,” he says in an interview with Mehr News Agency. “I was certain about it but gradually I began to hesitate, I began to have problems with the group, but I did not criticize the group at all. I just said that I could not keep on struggling.”

The cult-like atmosphere of the MEK and its oppressive ruling made Taleb Jalilian, and many other members of the group want to leave it but, this was a difficult path to take. Like many others, Taleb asked to leave the MEK but in response he was imprisoned in solitary confinement for a year, eventually interrogated and tortured by his own commanders.

“There was a judiciary system in the MEK,” he recounts. “The chief of the system was Nader Rafiee. The judge was Hassan Mohasel. Kak Adel, Nariman, Ebrahim Zakeri and Majid Alamian were guardians of the prison, interrogators and torturers.”
“They beat me to force me to get back to the group,” he says. “I was so terribly beaten by them that I could not hold my urine and stool for some time.”

Under the ruling of Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Rajavi, the torturers tied his hands and feet and blindfolded him. “I could hear Ahmad Kamyab who was beating me in nose,” he recalls. “He was an athlete. He was strong enough to beat me harshly.”

The MEK torturers told Taleb, “If you are determined to give up you have to sign a testimony to admit that you are a mercenary of the Iranian intelligence ministry, otherwise you will stay here until you rot.”

Taleb did not want to accept the deal. He had left his family, wife and his youth behind for the MEK’s cause. He had devoted his everything to the Rajavis, he could not admit the label: mercenary of the Iranian government.

He went on hunger strike until he was finally released. However, he was not allowed to leave the camp yet. Massoud Rajavi promised to deliver him and others like him to the Red Cross, but they were part of a deal with Saddam Hussein. They were delivered to Abu Ghraib prison and after a while they were exchanged with Iraq POWs who had been released by Iranian authorities.
Taleb was terrified. He was an officer of the Iranian army. He had escaped and joined an opponent military group. He was sure that he will be sentenced to death by an Iranian military court.
They were transferred from Iraqi border to Tehran while they did not trust their fellow countrymen. “I was waiting death penalty but after a month of imprisonment in Evin prison, they allowed us to visit our family and later we were freed,” he recounts.

Taleb began a new life in his hometown. He went to university, graduated and found a good job. He has a family and lives in Iran now.

December 9, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Traumatic experience of Masoumeh Chaheh in the MEK

Masoumeh Chaheh was only 23 years old when the MEK commanders left her alone in deserts of Iran-Iraq border where she was raped. The outcome of that trauma is that she has been kept in a psychiatric institution for 20 years now.

Masoumeh Chaheh and her brother Hamid Chaheh joined the MEK’s headquarters in Iraq in 2002. At the time, Masoumeh was 23 and Hamid was 20. A few months later, Masoumeh was the one who revolted against the cult-like regulations and suppressive system of the group. She asked to leave the group, but it was no simple.

Hamid Chaheh

Hamid left the MEK in 2014 after the group was relocated in Albania. Only after his defection from the Cult of Rajavi, he learned about his sister’s heart-breaking fate. Today, near a decade after his defection he has found the courage to speak out. In an Interview with former MEK member Siamak Naderi, he gave testimony about his own experience as a member of the Cult of Rajavi as well as his sister’s.

According to Hamid, the MEK commanders had promised him to send his sister back to Iran with the company of one of their trusted agents –who were actually smugglers. Eventually, Masoumeh reached her aunt’s house in Tehran with bloody hands and in a state of mental breakdown. She would repeatedly say that several men in black chased her and raped her. Their other sister recounted the traumatic story for Hamid years later.

Masoumeh living in a governmental welfare center for mental patients

Since then, Masoumeh has been living in a governmental welfare center for mental patients. Based on Hamid testimonies only after ten years of psychotherapy, Masoumeh could speak about her experience as a member of the MEK, at Camp Ashraf. Today, she can explain what had happened to her in front of the camera of one of her family members, which is shown in Siamak Naderi’s TV show. “It was very hard,” she says in her purple hospital pajamas. “All day, they forced us to run and to work hard.”

She is 44 years old now, but she looks much older. Almost her entire hair has turned white. She is not able to stay home with her family more than one week per a month because she is always at risk of getting uncontrollably nervous.

The brother of Masoumeh, Hamid has lately come to term with himself in order to speak out about his sister’s distressing experience in only a few months of involvement with the Cult of Massoud Rajavi. As an expert and researcher on the MEK, Siamak Naderi is the first person to interview these two heart-broken siblings.

September 10, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Testimony on annihilation of MEK members by their leaders

Mohammad Ashayer and Aziz Asadi were disappeared after they criticized the MEK leaders.
Ghafoor Fattahian, a former member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK, PMOI) testifies about the fate of two of his comrades. He witnessed suppression, torture and disappearance of Mohammad Ashayer and Aziz Asadi in the Cult of Rajavi. The group commanders then exploited the photos of their both victims as victims of the Islamic Republic!

Fattahian left the MEK in 2011 after 19 years of membership. He lives in France now. Comparing Maryam Rajavi’s so-called “Ten Point Plan” for “Free Iran” with the reality inside the MEK, Fattahian proves that the group is undemocratic and hypocrite.

Ghafoor Fattahian, a former member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, living in france

He writes, “In the notorious Camp Ashraf, a lot of members would react Maryam Rajavi’s speeches about free Iran in her propaganda shows because they could see contradictions between what Rajavi said and what was going on inside her camps.”

He even recalls Massoud Rajavi’s reply to members who criticized Maryam: “Maryam and I have to say these words in order to shut the mouths of western politicians”.
Two of MEK members who began dissent at Camp Ashraf were Mohammad Ashayer and Aziz Asadi. Fattahian confirms that they were killed by the group leaders after they criticized them for the conflicts between their words and acts.

Actually, actions carry the stronger message. Fattahian recounts:
“These two people were in my unit. Mohammad Ashayer criticized Maryam’s words about free future Iran saying that the MEK itself was not engaged in democracy and freedom for its own members and acted undemocratically inside its base. He would ask how Maryam Rajavi could guarantee freedom of Iranians after the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.”
According to Fattahian, “Aziz Asadi criticized the MEK for lack of freedom of speech and expression”. He would also question the function of the MEK’s so-called National Liberation Army.
Both men were tried in a court under the command of two female commanders, Maryam Akbari and another woman who Fattahian does not remember her name. “The trial lasted for several hours,” Fattahian writes. “The two men were insulted, humiliated and accused of being the agents of the Iranian intelligence ministry during the trial.”

However, Ashayer and Asadi did not shrink from their opinion. Thus, Assadollah Mosana, the MEK’s notorious torturer entered the scene. Fattahian was an eyewitness of the scene:
“Assadollah Mosana along with some of other prison guards and torturers suddenly attacked them. They beat them to death and then they took them out of the hall, and we never saw them again.”
Fattahian tried to find a track of his disappeared comrades, but he could not find anything until two years later. “Kamran Fallahi and I were patrolling around Camp Ashraf,” he says. “We went to the camp’s cemetery and ran into a group of journalists. A large number of photos of casualties of the MEK’s terrorist operators and executed members of the group were hanging everywhere. Kamran and I were shocked to see the photos of Mohammad Ashayer and Aziz Asadi among them. Pari Bakhshai, the high commander of the camp was telling the journalists that they were victims of the Islamic Republic!”

Ghafoor Fattahian and Kamran Fallahi went to Pari Bakhshai and asked her, “When were they killed? They were in our unit” Bakhshai answered, “Good job to tell us about them. We will remove their pictures,” But, eventually Ghafoor and Kamran were kicked out of the cemetery.
This was not the end of the story. Ghafoor and Kamran were summoned immediately after they got back to their unit. “Never talk about what you saw today! It is a red line!” They were told.

May 28, 2023 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK: terrorists who jail dissidents

The Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist group, known as MEK, which was listed as a terrorist organization from 1997 to 2012 and has a criminal record of killing 17,000 people, is now presented as a purely political group and engaged in human rights advocacy from anti-Iranian satellite channels, such as Iran International. This cult has created horrific relationships and situations both at home and abroad. Violence perpetrated against its own members is an important issue which perhaps has not been sufficiently addressed.

Violence against members

The issue of torture and secret prisons is raised only by militants who have spent time in MEK camps. From another point of view, one of the consolidated practices of this sect is represented by the justifications that the leaders of the MEK express for some issues, in particular regarding the internal cleansing and the killing of dissident members. The imprisonments and tortures MEK leaders carried out against rebel members included long-term imprisonments (without any contact with the outside world), solitary confinement, torture, psychological and verbal abuse, forcibly extracted confessions, threats of death and torture which in many cases led people to death.

Prisons inside the MEK

Statements from isolated members indicate that the MEK used three types of imprisonment within its camps: the first type consists of small residential units known as Mehmansara (guesthouses). Those who tried to escape from the organization were locked up in these units, unable to leave their respective facilities to talk or meet anyone inside the camp. Karim Haqi, a high-level member of the terrorist group, who was in charge of the security of Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the sect, says: “In 1991, I was Rajavi’s security commander, they didn’t believe I wanted to leave, they put me, with my wife and six-month-old son, in a building called Eskan, a series of residential units. The organization had built a very high wall around these units and installed barbed wire inside (so that no one could get out of the fence); a watchtower and patrols. During this period, when our food rations were reduced, they beat us, insulted us and threatened to have us executed.” Another defecting cult member admitted that, in 1991, after submitting a request to leave the group, they were locked up in various rooms in the camp. “When we entered the camp of the organization, they took our passports and identification documents, and later, when we told them we wanted to leave, they refused to give them back to us. They locked us up in buildings called Eskans and other prisons.”

Masoud Bani Sadr, who was in charge of the group’s diplomatic representation in Europe and North America, writes that after a meeting with Massoud Rajavi and other senior members, the conclusion was reached that he himself had been judged to be a corrupt individual and therefore should become a Bengali . “After that, my supervisor asked me to become Bengali and think like one, which meant that I had to go to solitary confinement to reflect and write. This is a severe form of mental torture, so much so that some members of the organization preferred to kill themselves rather than become Bengalis.”
The third type of detention reported by former members includes imprisonment, physical torture and interrogation in secret prisons thrown into gang cells. These prisons are mainly used to persecute political dissidents. Most of the cult members were unaware of the existence of these prisons, people who have been incarcerated in these centers claim that they were unaware of their existence until their firsthand personal experience. One of the witnesses, Mohammad Hossein Sobhani, claims that he spent eight and a half years, from September 1992 to January 2001, in solitary confinement cells in MEK camps. Another witness, Javaheri Yar, stayed there for five years, from November 1995 to December 2000. Both people were senior members of the MEK and wanted to leave, but were told they would not be allowed to leave due to the great amount of information they were aware of. They were then imprisoned and finally handed over to the Iraqi authorities and transferred to Abu Ghraib prison.

A member of Rajavi’s cult, who managed to escape from the dreaded Camp Ashraf, later said: “Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the leaders of the group have changed their strategy and Camp Ashraf has become a prison where prisoners do not have the possibility of communicating with the outside of the camp”. According to him, from that time until today, MEK leaders have been training members of this group to carry out terrorist attacks, spending millions of dollars. According to the revealing statements of three members who fled from Ashraf camp, MEK leaders persecuted and tortured members of this group and did not allow them to leave the camp and join their families. According to them, many MEK members want to flee, but fear for their future. Reportedly, dozens of MEK members were killed on the orders of their leaders; the only fault of these people was to try to escape from the camp. According to another such witness, MEK leaders use all kinds of ways to brainwash and oppress the inmates of Ashraf, such as group meetings where each member had to account for his sexual tastes and other members had to insult him by ridiculing him. . Furthermore, these people stated that those in Ashraf camp are not allowed any contact with outside the camp, and if they try to escape, they will be killed by the guards or arrested and executed. All these cases are only a small part of the crimes of the MEK terrorist group, which, with obvious human rights violations, keeps its members in the camp as prisoners, and none of the human rights organizations make the slightest effort to save these people.

Nejat Society demonstration in front of the ICRC

In this regard, the “Nejat” association, formed by the families of the members imprisoned in the Ashraf camp or, better to say, in the prison of the MEK (terrorist cult of Rajavi) in Albania, organized a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tehran on May 8, and asked this humanitarian organization to make sure of the people caught in the MEK’s clutches. The purpose of this rally, which coincided with World Red Cross Day, was to draw the attention of international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, to the most blatant human rights violations of the trapped members in the MEK camp in Albania and to take immediate action to save these people. International Day of the Red Cross and Red Crescent is celebrated every year on 8 May. This day was chosen because it was the birthday of Henry Dunant, one of the promoters and founders of the Red Cross. Henry Dunant is considered the first Nobel Peace Prize winner.

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Report/PressTV/Presstv-Fa-RC-20230508.mp4

To download the video file click here

At the end of this demonstration, the crowd present signed a declaration, of which we report: “As indicated in the mission of the Red Cross, to prevent and alleviate suffering, sustain life and health and ensure respect for human beings, especially in emergency situations. We expect that the imprisoned members will soon be recognized as refugees thanks to the humanitarian diplomacy of the Red Cross and thus be saved from a sectarian life and difficult mental and physical conditions, avoiding tragedies such as individual and collective murders and suicides”. In this statement, which was delivered to the representative of the Red Cross in Iran, it is further emphasized that: “The MEK, by creating a prison camp without communication with the outside world, prevents the presence and communication of families and also of all international institutions, including the Red Cross with the prisoners; the parents of every inmate are deprived of contact and visits with their children, some of them for decades”.
By Alireza Niknam – come don chisciotte

Alireza Niknam, reporter and researcher in the field of terrorist groups, especially the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist group. He holds a degree in political science from the University of Tehran and writes articles for various international news agencies. In addition to journalism, he is a political commentator and consultant to the TerrorSpring Institute in the field of counterterrorism.

May 21, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

How Ahmad Heidari was tortured to death by the MEK commanders

Former member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Samad Nazari recounts the story of Ahmad Heidari, a victim of the group who was tortured in its prisons.

Samad Nazari was a former member of the MEK who defected the group more than three decades ago. He returned to Iran where he later founded Nejat NGO. His autobiography titled “Footprint of the Evil” was focused on the years of his membership and imprisonment in the MEK and defection from the group. Nazari passed away in the Fall of 2014.

In 1991, at the time of the first Gulf war, Samad Nazari was jailed in solitary confinement in the MEK’s Debes prison (Askarizadeh camp) near Kirkuk, Iraq. He was punished for his decision to leave the Cult of Rajavi!

Samad Nazari

During his breath-taking process of defection, Samad witnessed imprisonment, torture and killing of many of his peers. In a part of his memoirs, he writes about a man named Ahmad Heidari. He was jailed together with 5 other members. He recalls that Ahmad Heidari was brought to the cell in the weekend:

“He was badly beaten, with wounded and bruised head. His clothes were torn and his mental condition was not normal. He was Ahmad Heidari who had been irritated by Rajavi’s ideological revolution and since then he had started dissent against Rajavi.”

In the meeting that he was told to divorce his wife, he was so shocked by Rajavi’s order that he cried insults against Massoud and Maryam Rajavi and Fahimeh Arvani.
Nazari writes, “Ahmad had committed a huge crime, so he was attacked by some of the commanders. He was beaten and jailed in solitary confinement. He went on a hunger strike. In that mental state, he constantly cursed Rajavi, Maryam and Fahimeh.”

After a week Ahmad was brought to the office of Majid Alamian –the notorious torturer of the MEK. “Ahmad was so disgusted by the commanders that again started shouting insults,” Samad Nazari writes. “Majid beat his fist on Ahmad’s head. Ahmad was shocked and eventually silenced. Majid went out and Ahmad walked through the corridors around the office. He soiled the building and the sleeping equipment there.”

The torturer, Majid Alamian, comes back at lunch time and throws Ahmad in solitary confinement again. Ahmad pooped and pied all over the cell. “Majid tied his feet and hands and beat him harshly,” Nazari recounts, “He kicked Ahmad’s chest so much that she lost consciousness and fell into a coma.”

This was the daily routine of Ahmad for a few days. Nazari writes, “When we opened his arms and legs, he was shaking for an hour and could not stand.”

Majid Almaian and other commanders presumed that Ahmad had no mental problem, so they put pressure on him to confess his sins (insults against the leaders of the cult). Samad Nazari does not know much about the fate of Ahmad. He was taken out of the camp a few days later and nobody could know about his whereabouts anymore.

May 20, 2023 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Farhad Javaher Yar speaks of torture and solitary confinement in the MEK

Farhad Javaheri Yar, former member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq wrote his autobiography in 2003 after he defected the group. His book titled “From Evin to Abu Ghraib” covers some extents of the MEK’s crimes against its own members who had once joined the group trustfully. His Autobiography indicates how shallow the MEK’s slogans for freedom and democracy are.

According to Javaheri’s account, the MEK is a one-way path; a blocked path with no exit door. The rank and file of the group must be robots or modern slaves who have no idea of their own. Once they enter the MEK, they have to leave all their believes, interests, plans and in general their whole life behind.

In the beginning of his book, Javaheri explains why he decided to leave the MEK and how his decision was reacted by the group leaders:

When in 1994, hundreds of the group members were tortured and, in some cases, killed by the group commanders, I declared my demand to leave the group.

The group’s strategy of armed struggle in the streets had been defeated so Massoud Rajavi and his partners had to explain about their failure. But, instead of giving a logical and precise answer to the rank and file, they took action to eliminate dissident members and as always, their pretext was that dissident members were agents of the Islamic Republic who had penetrated the MEK.

A large number of members were imprisoned and tortured to sign forced confessions admitting that they were agents of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry while they were professional members of the group whose lifetime of membership in the MEK was longer than the lifetime of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic.

It was a trick used by Massoud Rajavi to cope with his problems at the time. The internal elimination process was a classified secret of the group. No one dared to talk about it.

I got to know about it by one of my friends who had been tortured. Eventually I asked to leave the group. There were a lot of other members of the group who had declared their defection. The group leaders launched an organizational suppressive and intimidating project to stop us from defection. A large number of those who wanted to leave gave up and stayed in the group but I had made my mind. The authorities knew that I had realized about the prisons and tortures so they tried to convince me to stay but they did not succeed. I insisted.

Thus, they decided to destroy me. The other night, all of the rank and file were supposed to be in a meeting where Maryam Rajavi was going to give them a bunch of watches as gifts. “Someone called Mahmoud Mahdavieh wants to talk to you about an important issue,” I was told. “You should stay and wait for him.”

I was aware of the tactics used by the MEK to eliminate dissident members. Therefor, I broke through the barbed wires around Ashraf and the Iraqi military stations and reached the road to Baghdad. I was got near Baghdad but the forces of the Iraqi Security Service had taken control of the road with the help of high-ranking members of the MEK. I had to cross the marshes around the city to reach the road to Tikrit.

Unfortunately, the driver of the car that I got on was a security agent. He knew that the MEK and the Iraqi Security Service were looking for an Iranian man who had escaped Camp Ashraf.
He immediately delivered me to the security forces who consequently arrested me, put handcuffs on me and blindfolded me. They jailed me in a dark cell.

In response to their interrogations, I told them that I wanted to leave Iraq and asked them to submit me to the Red Cross or at least to call my family. I gave them their phone number but the Iraq officers replied that this could be possible only under the order of the higher authorities.

The higher authorities in their turn ordered to deliver me back to Camp Ashraf, to the torturers of the MEK, Nader Rafieenezhad, Farhad Olfat and Mahmoud Mahdavieh. I was under torture from 5 to 20 hours a day.

I was in solitary confinement for 5 years. During those years, I saw Massoud Rajavi 3 times. In the meeting room, in addition to me and Massoud Rajavi, Mahmoud Mahdavieh and Mahboobeh Jamshidi were there.

Rajavi had a lot of unfulfilled promises. He signed an agreement with me and asked me to write a letter to my family. I wrote the letter but immediately after he received my letter, he handed me back to his torturers.

I was jailed in Ashraf prison until I was delivered to Iraqi forces who imprisoned me in Abu Ghraib. After a year they handed me to Iranian Intelligence agents.

February 6, 2023 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Parviz Ahmadi tortured to death in the MEK prison, Eyewitness

Abbas Sadeghinejad who escaped the Camp Ashraf on June 20, 2002, was one of the first defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization to testify about the murder of group members under torture and violence by the leaders. He witnessed the death of Parviz Ahmadi and Ghorban Ali Torabi during the weeks he was jailed in the prison of Camp Ashraf, Iraq.

Leaders of the MEK are accused of committing violence against their members. According to the rulings of the group, the rank and file have to obey the absolute power of the leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. Disobedience to leaders, criticizing their approaches and expressing your willingness to leave the Cult of Rajavi qualifies you for this label: “spy of Iranian regime” and therefore you deserve the most horrific punishments.

https://dlb.nejatngo.org/Media/Interview/Sadeghinejad-Ahmadi-1.mp4

To download the video file click here

During the 1994 to 1995, hundreds of members who had been deceived by MEK recruiters or simply did not agree with the group’s ideology any more, expressed their dissent. The Cult of Rajavi reacted with a process of suppression called “security clearance”.

A large number of defectors of the MEK have so far testified about what they endured in the MEK’s prisons in Camp Ashraf during security clearances. They also gave testimonies on what they witnessed in the interrogation rooms, prison cells and solitary confinements. In March 2005, Human Rights Watch published a report on the MEK titled “No Exit, Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps”. The report was based on various interviews with former members of the group.

Human Rights Watch interviewed four witnesses who were detained during the security clearances of 1994-1995 because “they were suspected by the MKO of harboring dissident views”. Based on the HRW’s report, page 16 and 17, “Ali Ghasghavi, Alireza Mir Asgari, Ali Akbari, and Abbas Sadeghinejad were severely tortured, subjected to harsh interrogation techniques and forced to sign false confessions stating their links to Iranian intelligence agents.”

According to the reports, Abbas Sadeghinejad, Ali Ghashghavi, and Alireza Mir Asgari witnessed the death of Parviz Ahmadi in February 1995 inside an internal MKO prison in Iraq. The three shared a prison cell during the security clearance arrests in February 1995. Parviz Ahmadi was a dissident member who was held in the same cell.
Abbas Sadeghinezhad, who was also present in the cell, was interviewed by HRW by telephone, on February 14, 2005. He recalled the final moments of Parviz Ahmadi’s life: “The prison door opened, and a prisoner was thrown into the cell. He fell on his face. At first, we didn’t recognize him. He was beaten up severely. We turned him around; it was Parviz Ahmadi taken for interrogations just a few hours before. Ahmadi was a unit commander. His bones were broken all over, his legs were inflamed; he was falling into a coma. We tried to help him but after only ten minutes he died as I was holding his head on my lap. The prison guard opened the door and pulled Ahmadi’s lifeless body out.”

Sadeghinejad also shared his testimony in a documentary made by another ex-member, Milad Aryaiee, in 2007. He recounts the moments of Parviz Ahmadi’s passing away in the MEK’s prison after he was brought to the cell with a bruised swollen body.

Abbas Sadeghinejad told Human Rights Watch that he had earlier witnessed the death of another prisoner, Ghorbanali Torabi, after Torabi was returned from an interrogation session to a prison cell.

October 10, 2022 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Cult Withdrawal Syndrome, 20 years after leaving the MEK

According to cult experts, former members of cults show a distinctive psychological syndrome which is attributable to psychologically deleterious practices in cults. This is called cult withdrawal syndrome. Based on testimonies of former members of the Mujahedin Khalq, most of them suffer from such a syndrome. Arash recently spoke out about his nightmares twenty years after defection from the Cult of Rajavi, the MEK.
Carol Giambalvo is an exit counselor who worked with Cult Awareness Network and chaired on the Cult Awareness Network’s national board of directors. In an article on post-cult problems, she argues that former members are vulnerable to psychological problems unless they get appropriate aids. She categorizes ex-members of cults in three group: Those who had interventions, those who left on their own, or walkaways, those who were expelled, or castaways.

Giambalvo emphasizes that walkaways and castaways need the most help in understanding their recovery process. “Former members who were cast out of a cult are especially vulnerable; often they feel inadequate, guilty, and angry,” she writes. “Most cults respond to any criticism of the cult itself by turning the criticism around on the individual member. Whenever something is wrong, it’s not the leadership or the organization, it’s the individual. Thus, when someone is told to leave a cult, that person carries a double load of guilt and shame. Sometimes walkaways also carry a sense of inadequacy.”

Jaber Taee Semiromi and siamak Naderi

In his interview with Siamak Nader, another ex-member of the MEK, Arash speaks of the psychological torture he endured in the MEK’s solitary confinement, Interrogation sessions and brainwashing meetings during his six years of membership. He recalls that after each of these suppressive attitudes by his commanders he would ask them if they were satisfied with him, if they were convinced that he was a trustworthy member. However, oppressions made him leave the cult immediately after the US invasion to Iraq and the disarmament of the MEK by the US military. Today, near 20 years after leaving the Cult of Rajavi he says, “whenever I see a table and a few chairs around it I recall the brainwashing meetings.”

Meetings in the Cult of Rajavi are titled with different phrases like, Current Operation, Weekly Cleansing, Pot, Beit etc. They are examples of coercive manipulation and brainwashing system that defines characteristics of a cult.
According to Giambalvo the most helpful tool for recovering ex-cult members is learning what mind control is and how it was used by their specific cult. “Understanding that there are residual effects from a mind control environment and that these effects are often transitory in nature helps diffuse the anxiety,” she asserts. “Walkaways and castaways, feel relieved when they learn that, given the situation, what they are experiencing is normal and that the effects will not last forever.” This is what we notice in the testimonies of Arash and other defectors of Rajavi’s cult of personality. He admits that he was brainwashed by the Cult of Rajavi and he was not allowed to live by his own free will.

the MEK members in an confession session

The cult exit counselor suggests another effective tool for deprogramming former members of the cults: supportive groups. “When former members live in an area where there is an active support group meeting, it is often helpful for them to participate,” she writes. “Support group meetings provide a safe place for ex-members to discuss concerns with others who are dealing with similar issues. In this environment, no one will look at them like they have two heads.”

During the interview with Arash, Siamak Naderi recalls a midnight of four years ago when Arash called him from his home and opened up about his nightmares. A large number of former MEK members have their own support groups across the world. That of former child soldiers of the group appeared in Club House last year. A large number of former child soldiers shared their heartbreaking experiences of membership in the MEK revealing horrific facts on child rights abuses in the MEK.

The Association for the Support of Iranians Living in Albania (ASILA) is perhaps the most organized and effective support group to aid defectors of the Cult of Rajavi in Albania get deradicalized. ASILA has been founded by several former members of the group together with a few Albanian human rights activists. It has managed to build a supportive atmosphere in which people feel like being in a family.

By Mazda Parsi

September 28, 2022 0 comment

The Ideology of the MEK

Maryam Rajavi and Nexhmije Hoxha: The black widows of the Balkans

Maryam Rajavi and Nexhmije Hoxha are both widows of two dictators whose dark past has been known to the world.

Most dictators have several characteristics in common. They often resort to force or fraud to gain despotic political power, which they maintain through the use of intimidation, terror, and the suppression of dissidents. Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI) shares the prominent characteristics of most dictators around the world. He was disappeared in 2003 when the coalition forces invaded Iraq. Since then, Maryam Rajavi has been the public leader of the group.

In 2015, the MEK was completely relocated in Albania, one of the best-known examples of Balkan countries “experiencing” authoritarianism. The end of World War II and the bloody conflicts marked the beginning of a series of industrialization and economic self-sufficiency efforts by the leader of the Albanian Labor Party, Enver Hoxha. However, Hoxha’s adherence to a model of governance similar to that of Stalinism showed authoritarian and violent actions against dissidents. His policy throughout his life led him to be described as a “communist dictator” and as the “Stalin of the Balkans”.

Massoud Rajavi took his ideology from Stalinist Russia too. He founded his cult of personality on the basis of an ideology which is a mixture of Islam and Marxism. He claimed to seek a classless society in his organization and eventually in future Iran. He did not succeed to overthrow the Iranian government in spite of launching the most violent terror acts against the Iranian civilians, authorities and nuclear scientists during three decades.

Massoud together with his wife Maryam Rajavi developed their despotic rule on their own rank and file. Under the Rajavi’s cult of personality members are subjected to mandatory divorce, forced labor without payment, self-criticism meetings and other cult-like suppressive practices. In the Cult of Rajavi, dissident members have been jailed in solitary confinement, tortured or even killed. This is what the Albanian nation experienced during the rule of Enver Hoxha. Hoxha and Rajavi’s method of conducting politics had ideological bases similar to those of Stalinism, aiming more and more at personalistic aspirations.

Nexhmije Hoxha & Maryam Rajavi

The 40-year period of Hoxha’s rule was characterized by confiscation of property, many years of imprisonment or forced labor in camps, the imposition of the death penalty and the banning of all religious activities. Hoxha’s wife Nexhmije, who was an active member of the Communist Party took on various key positions in Albania. She was a supporter of her husband’s political actions and she directly mixed with a series of murders and persecutions of thousands of people, mostly prominent women of the post-war period.

Hoxha remained the dictator of Albania until his death in 1985. His widow, Nexhmije Hoxha, the “Black Lady” or the “Devil Woman”, as she has been described, lived for 35 extra years after the death of her husband, in an area just outside Tirana. She passed away in February, 2020, at the age of 99. It is important to note that, in none of her interviews did she express remorse for the regime’s past and their crimes.

Maryam Rajavi can be considered a widow because her husband Massoud Rajavi has disappeared since 2003. Addressing Maryam Rajavi, in his paid speech in an MEK-run event in 2015, Turki Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former chief of Intelligence also spoke of Massoud Rajavi as “your late husband”.

Today, three decades after the fall of the Hoxha’s dictatorship, Maryam Rajavi plays the part of the “black widow of the Balkans” in the Albanian territory. Although Nexhmije served five years in prison before she lived in isolation in her apartment in the suburb of Tirana, Maryam Rajavi lives in her headquarters in a village in North of Tirana, Manez, meeting her paid invitees. She boasts of her future plan for Iran, chanting slogans for a few thousands of her cult members who wave the MEK flags before her. She glorifies her disappeared husband for the crimes he committed against the Iranian nation and his own rank and file.

Maryam Rajavi is over 70 years old now. She will die someday and definitely, she will never remorse for the atrocities she committed together with her husband. An inherent lack of empathy, guilt or remorse allows the most malignant people to commit unspeakable atrocities and never feel regret.

Mazda Parsi

August 15, 2022 0 comment

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