Women Rights in the Mujahedin Khalq

Women that humiliated in the MEK

Every year on the anniversary of the “International Women’s day, the MEK gathers a number of women unaware of the group’s history of terrorist activities; agenda: necessity of freedom for women in the Iranian society!!

It is ironical that the MEK, well aware of the situation in Iran, creates lies for the very audience (who buy these lies either due to unawareness or love of money) and claims that the Iranian women are deprived from freedom and are forced to follow compulsory Hijab regulations while claiming to be bringing freedom for them. One should ask himself about how the MEK leaders treat the women in their group while they create such lies.

Studying each and every female member of the group proves that all of them are required to wear uniform and cover their heads, with no exceptions. This indicates the fact that THE MEK tries to distort reality and hide it from outside. Although they claim that this kind of clothing has been selected by the women in group, could anyone believe that there’s not even a different idea or selection among hundreds of female members?! In addition, this kind of mandatory uniformity of clothing shows that we are dealing with a “Cult”, with exclusive ideas about women.

Regardless of the way women wear in the MEK, another issue that attracts attention is the fact that all female members of The MEK are single. According to some public reports, tHE MEK leader Massoud Rajavi ordered all members to divorce and banned marriage in the group since the 80s, so all members can only dedicate themselves to the cult leader and The MEK’s cause. All this information is verified in reports and memories of former members of the group and are publicly accessible.

This is not all of it. Revelations (on sterilization of women) made by former female members, including Batul Soltani, Zahra Mirbagheri and others, expose the fact that the world is dealing with a horrible, bizarre and weird group which is violating women’s basic rights.

It should be noted that these women are never allowed to have a contact with their families in Iran or even meet them. Efforts by tens of Iranian families, whether inside Iran or abroad, during past years to see their relatives in The MEK camps in Iraq, and now in Albania, have remained futile. Even when the UNHCR in Iraq was going to interview the members, group leaders insisted on the presence of their own representative in all interview sessions; which clearly shows their fear of any comments about the internal situation.

Now the question is whether or not such a group with extreme cult beliefs that suppresses the basic needs of its own female members, is qualified to speak about women’s rights and women’s day or hold conferences for them?! Do the female politicians, who attend the group’s rallies in France or Albania, know that they are deceived by an anti-women cult?

Are all other female members allowed to travel to everywhere in Europe like Maryam Rajavi? Are they allowed, like Maryam Rajavi, to enjoy the right of having husband and family?

March 31, 2022 0 comment

Massoud Rajavi

Massoud Rajavi beat and kicked Mehri to force her to stay in his cult

Mehri Musavi a female member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization was killed in 2003 after she asked to leave the group.

Born in 1961 Mehri Musavi was a student in her twenties studying in a university in the United States when she decided to join the MEK in Iraq. There, she worked for the group’s political unit as a translator and interpreter. Eventually, she was raised in the hierarchy of the cult of Rajavi and was nominated for membership in the group’s Elite Council which included only female members.

To remain a member of the Elite Council, Mehri had to stay in Iraq. She was not allowed to leave Iraqi territory according to the regulations of the Rajavi Cult. She had to promise that she would stay in the group for her whole life and Mehri could not admit such a harsh ruling. Thus, she asked for leaving the group.

Mehri Musavi’s grave

Mehri’s determination to leave the MEK was faced with a process of suppressive sessions. The main session was a trial for Mehri which was held by Massoud Rajavi, himself. Maryam Sanjabi, former member of the MEK, worked in the same unit as Mehri did. In her testimony about the killing of Mehri Musavi, she writes about the trial:
“Massoud Rajavi called on her to speak. Mehri repeated her request for leaving the group calmly and courageously. Instigated by Massoud Rajavi, the whole audience started shouting at her as if she had committed the most terrible crimes! Rajavi who was mad with her told her, ‘You can kill yourself swallowing your cyanide capsule!’…He explicitly told her that as a nominee of the Elite Council she was sentenced to death penalty because she wanted to leave.”

The meeting did not end by Rajavi’s ultimatum. Female commanders and peers of Mehri also tried their best to show off their obedience to Massoud by humiliating, insulting and threatening Mehri to death. Eventually, Mehri was asked if she had changed her mind. Her answer was “No”. “I never forget what happened then,” Maryam Sanjabi writes. “It was a new act of violence and cruelty played by Rajavi.”

Sanjabi describes the scene:
“Very irritated and nervous, Rajavi asked Mehri to come up to the stage to talk to her in person. Immediately after Mehri went to the stage, he, Maryam Rajavi and a few of high-ranking commanders took Mehri to the corridor behind the stage. A few minutes later, there were terrible screams and cries. About an hour later, Mehri was brought back to the hall. She had been terribly beaten. Her whole body was bruised. Her hair was messy and pulled out.”

It is said that Maryam Rajavi had pulled Mehri out of under the Massoud Rajavi’s fist and kick. She had talked to Mehri trying to persuade her to retract her words, at least in front of the audience. Sanjabi recalls, “Having a lump in her throat Mehri finally addressed the audience, ‘I was wrong. I will stay.’ “
After the trial session, Mehri was no more employed in political unit. She was sent to kitchen. “This was a systematic punishment in the MEK,” Sanjabi says.

“Mehri Musavi was ultimately forced to swallow her cyanide capsule in May 2003,” Sanjabi writes. “It was after the invasion of the US forces to Iraq.” The MEK leaders told members that Mehri had killed herself to protest the entrance of the American forced to Camp Ashraf. “She asked for permission and we allowed her to kill herself so we name her a martyr”. This was read by a commander in a meeting for the Elite Council.

Nobody could believe such an argument for the death of a dissident member. Maryam Sanjabi worked in the personnel department of the organization, at the time. Some time later, she came across with a classified document. It was an order issued and signed by Massoud Rajavi. “Regarding the presence of the American forces at Camp Ashraf and regarding Mehri Musavi’s fluency in English and her problematic organizational conditions, Rajavi had stated that her being alive is troubling and she had to be eliminated,” Sanjabi writes. “This was a fact to prove Rajavi’s crimes and treasons against his own members.”

March 14, 2022 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Refused to have sex with the MEK leader – They killed her

Minoo Fathali was killed by the MEK leaders because she did not want to sleep with the leader of the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi), Massoud Rajavi.

Minoo was a member of the MEK since her teen years. She joined the group at Camp Ashraf and soon she was elevated in the group’s hierarchy and became a member of the MEK’s Elite Council. In 1993 when Massoud Rajavi ordered Maryam Rajavi to go from Iraq to Europe, Minoo was one of the female members to accompany Maryam.

Minoo Fathali

In Europe, Minoo’s duty was raising funds for the MEK through charity activities for the so-called orphans of Iran. She had to serv the MEK fourteen hours a day in order to raise funds from European citizens. In 1998 she was ordered to get back to the group’s headquarters in Iraq. As she was a member of the Elite Council, she was expected to attend the special meetings for nude dancing of female members of the council before the eyes Massoud Rajavi. The meetings were named “Salvation Dance” which was first revealed by a female defector of the MEK, Batul Soltani. “Weeping tears, Minoo left the hall of Salvation Dance,” Batul writes in her testimonies. “This was the start of her dissent against the Cult of Rajavi.”

Female commanders including Giti Givechi and Faeze Mohabatkar, tried to convince Minoo to get back to the hall. “Maryam Rajavi came to them too,” Batul writes. “She tried to coerce Minoo by saying ‘You should take of your clothes of infidelity and hypocrisy and dive into the pool to unite with Massoud.”

Batoul Soltani

Batul recalls that Minoo was always reluctant to join Salvation Dance meetings. Minoo told Maryam Rajavi that she hated to get naked and dance in front of Massoud but she was still under pressure by the cult authorities to take part in the meetings. She was accused of being the agent of the Iranian government. Her organizational ranking was dropped.

Batul and Minoo were friends. They used to open up for each other secretly but after Minoo started to speak out her dissent the commanders changed her unit of serving so Batul could not see her regularly until the day she saw her in Camp Bagherzadeh. “She looked very desperate and frustrated,” Batul writes. “She told me ‘They have given me a hard time. I don’t want to have sex with Massoud but they want to force me to do so’.” Batul had no way to help her except praying for her. Batul herself was a victim; she had been already forced to sleep with Massoud.

In 2001, Minoo escaped the group with the help of one of the male members of the group. “We were suddenly summoned to a special meeting,” Batul says. “Massoud was shouting at female commanders who were crying ‘traitor should be shot dead’.” The horrific meeting lasted until the next morning!

Thirty to forty patrol teams of the MEK, escorted by Iraqi forces were mobilized to find Minoo and the man. Finally, they arrested them in a park in Baghdad. Zohreh Shafai was the commander of the patrol teams. In the following meeting, she reported to Massoud Rajavi about the way they found Minoo. “You were authorized to shoot her. Why didn’t you shoot her?” Massoud asked Zohreh.

Maryam Sanjabi

Maryam Sanjabi another female defector of the Cult of Rajavi has testified about the fate of Minoo Fathali too. She states, “I remember Mahvash Sepehri [or Nasrin, a female commander of the group] in a meeting saying that Minoo should have been killed because she was one of the women of Massoud who tried to escape the group and could have revealed the secrets of the Elite Council.” Since then, Minoo was imprisoned in the jails of Camp Ashraf, called Bengal. “We did not see Minoo anymore, “Batoul says.

In 2003, the US forces invaded Iraq. The MEK announced that Minoo was killed by American bombs. “When the war was over, we were shocked to see Minoo’s grave in the cemetery of Camp Ashraf,” Batul writes.
About the MEK’s claim that Minoo was killed by the coalition forces, Maryam Sanjabi argues, “Camp Ashraf had not been bombarded before they announced the death of Minoo. Most of the places were evacuated at Camp Ashraf. No body was killed in the bombings. The dead body of Minoo was not seen by anybody. Basically, all members knew that the death penalty had been issued for Minoo by the cult’s leader.”

It is worth to note that nude dancing by female members of the Elite Council was a precondition to get married with Massoud Rajavi. The chosen members were made marry the cult leader all together. They were then called to sleep with him from time to time. Massoud Rajavi practiced polygamy while all members of his called had to divorce their spouses and to engage in a mandatory celibacy.

March 13, 2022 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

The stories of nine women under the rule of Massoud Rajavi – Part Two

Maryam Sanjabi who escaped the MEK’s notorious base, Camp Ashraf, in Iraq in 2011, recounts the stories of these women under the abusive ruling of the MEK authorities:

Nastaran Rastgarpour
She expressed her complaint against the MEK’s regulations and eventually she was faced with anger and violence. She was jailed in a corner of the camp. Nastaran was kept in a unit under the command of Giti Givechi. She was always supervised by two of the female devotees of Maryam and Massoud Rajavi. Although her family lived in Europe and she could simply move there to join them, she was not allowed to leave the group. Perhaps, she survived that horrible condition because she had secretly let her family know about her whereabouts so the group leaders did not dare to kill her.

Batul Alavi Taleghani
Batul had been deceived by the NEK recruiters together with her two sisters Azra and Maryam. Batul was so mindful that she soon realized the fraudulent trap of Rajavi. She was one of the first women who began distancing from the group’s ideology. She did not obey the cult-like regulations of the group. Due to her determination and resistance against the orders she was kept in a small room of the units. Whenever this brave woman was imposed too much pressure, she started shouting insults to Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
Batul Alavi Taleghani endured too much sufferings under the Cult of Rajavi that she finally fell sick and passed away. The leaders of the cult never let her out of that room. For more humiliation, they had made her sister, Maryam, to guard Batul. She needed specialized medical care but the group’s doctor, Javad Ahmadi just injected her strong sedative drugs . She was also given weird medications until she died.

Asefeh Jaafarzadeh
She was a young girl whose Mujahed parents had taken her to Iraq when she was a child. Asefeh was a smart girl. She soon started protesting. She wanted to leave Iraq and to have a free life. Under the order of the Rajavis, she was not allowed to leave.
However, Asefeh did not stop complaining. Eventually she was moved to a unit called “departure” but she was jailed there. She was kept for almost a decade.

The group leaders promised her to give her documents to her in order to take refuge in a third country but they never did. A woman, named Marzieh Ghaffari was her guardian.

Maryam Torabi
She was also a prisoner in the MEK cult. Mayam and her siblings Masoomeh and GhorbanAli Torabi joined the group in 1987. They naively thought that their dream to join a freedom fighting group had come true. Soon the Torabis were suspected as traitors by the commanders. They were jailed, interrogated and tortured by the group commanders in 1994. At the time about 500 members of the group were imprisoned under the accusation of being agents of the Iranian government. All of them were mentally and physically tortured and at least two people died.

Maryam was in solitary confinement for several months. She was under too much pressure. Her brother, GhorbanAli was killed under torture. Her brother’s murder was a trauma that drove Maryam mentally ill. The poor girl was kept under a humiliating situation in a unit in Camp Ashraf. The cult leaders even made her sister Masoomeh to verbally abuse her.
Maryam was under the most horrific mental pressure until the day I was in Camp Ashraf. The cult leader had no pity for her. They always discredited her before other women.

Saeedeh Keyhani
She was an educated girl who had graduated from a university in the United States. She had been transferred from the US to Iraq in the early 2000s. She could speak English well. She worked as translator for the MEK. However, the group leaders were vigilant about her. They knew that those members who had come from the US or Europe would soon want to get back there and if they left the group, they would never get back.
Shortly, Saeedeh stood up to protest against the MEK leaders. She did not let them coerce her but she had a distressing fate just like every other dissident inside the group. She was constantly under mental pressure. She was often insulted and humiliated in self-criticism meetings. She was always under severe control.

November 4, 2021 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

The stories of nine women under the rule of Massoud Rajavi – Part One

Former member of the group writes of nine women of hundreds who were oppressed under the cult-like structure of the group.
Maryam Sanjabi who escaped the MEK’s notorious base, Camp Ashraf, in Iraq in 2011, recalls the stories of these women under the abusive ruling of the MEK authorities. In her recent article she writes of a large number of female members of the group who were under severe suppression in the group although they were allegedly members of the MEK’s so-called Elite council.

“Among the nine hundred women who have been taken as hostages by the Cult of Rajavi, I know at least a hundred who have been dissidents to the group,” Maryam Sanjabi writes. “As I and other former members have revealed, Mehri Musavi, Minoo Fathali, Zahra Feizbakhsh and Nasrin Ahmadi were killed under the order of Massoud Rajavi and by Mahvash Sepehri, Faezeh Mohabatkar and some other criminal commanders of the MEK.”
She specifically recounts the distressing cases of nine women out of those who left the group after it was relocated in Albania. “The Stories of some of these women were more complicated,” she writes. The names of these women are:

Maryam Nezamolmolki
Mahmanzar Sadr Ashrafi
Tahmineh Haji Verdikhani
Marina Seraj
Nastaran Rastgarpour
Batul Alavi Taleghani
Asefeh Jaafarzadeh
Maryam Torabi
Saeedeh Keyhani

What did Maryam Sanjabi witness about these women under the Cult of Rajavi? Read her testimonies below the name of each woman.

Maryam Nezamolmolki

Her brother, Hassan Nezamolmolki is an intelligence agent and a torturer of the Cult of Rajavi and his ex-wife, Nasrin Parsian was killed in an accident in the 1990s. Her brother’s son, named Siavash was kept in the camp too. The leaders of the cult took Siavash Nezamolmolki to Iraq; the orphaned unexperienced son was forced by the leaders to get involved in a clash with Iraqi security forces and eventually he was killed.

Maryam Nezamolmolki hated the MEK leader because they had victimized her nephew. She had realized the crimes of the group leaders so she did not want to stay in that hellish system. She expressed her complaints publicly and the criminal Rajavi did not allow her to leave. Under Rajavi’s regulations, candidates and members of the Elite Council would be sentenced to death in case of defecting. Thus, Maryam Nezam was imprisoned and kept under mental and physical pressure in Camp Ashraf.

Mahmanzar Sadr Ashrafi
She had worked in the central section of the MEK including Maryam and Massoud Rajavi’s offices. As an insider who had witnessed the acts of immorality and violations committed by the Rajavis, Mahmanzar bravely stood up to the immoralities and expressed her dissent to the group. She did not want to stay and keep on working with the group but in that dark era of residing in Iraq, asking for leaving the group had no answer except imprisonment and isolation. For years, Mahmanzar was kept in jail by the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi.

Tahmineh Haji Verdikhani
She was pretty more courageous than the others. She was often kept in a cell in the most distanced dormitories of Camp Ashraf. From time to time, she started shouting and insulting the Rajavis. So, she was always guarded by two people. She was never allowed to be alone. Tahmineh was in a terrible situation. She was under severe mental pressure, violence and humiliation. As I remember, she was under that horrific condition until the last day of her stay in the MEK.

Marina Seraj
Her story is similar to other female dissidents inside the MEK. She was imprisoned in a place in Camp Ashraf. She was not allowed to leave the place. She was constantly being injected with powerful sedative drugs. The criminal female commanders of the cult such as Faezeh Mohabatkar irritated the wretched woman so much that her eyebrows and hair turned white although she was too young. Marina looked like an old woman as the result of too much mental pressure. She had turned into a dissociable abnormal woman. Zahra Mirbagheri (another former member of the MEK) has also written her testimonies about Marina.

To be continued
Translated by Nejat Society

November 3, 2021 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

An untold tale of women living inside MeK cult

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organizational (MeK or MKO) is an Iranian opposition group that have been openly confronting the so-called Islamic regime in the country through diplomacy and armed operations.
The group was formed long before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 as an anti-imperialist militia but soon after the revolution found itself at odds with Ayatollah Khomeini and his concepts of Islamic rule. The group first tried to turn the tide by taking up arms and conducting “public executions” of people whose faith laid with the Islamic regime.

During the Iran-Iraq War the group sided with the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain and even sent a battalion to take over Iran’s western provinces after the countries had agreed to a United Nations-brokered ceasefire. The Iranians were alert, however, and the battle ended with a disastrous outcome for the MeK.

The hostilities didn’t end there, however, as the group spent the following years cementing it’s position as an alternative to Iran’s Islamic rule. However, the group’s record has never allowed it to get much popularity among Iranians.
In fact, latest surveys within the Iranian society indicate a strong despise for the MeK, one that even surpasses the public disregard for the Islamic rulers.

This lack of popularity always presents itself as a hurdle for the group’s attempts to mend its image, a challenge that is crucial for the MeK to overcome if it ever wants to gain international recognition as a credible alternative.

The lack of popularity took a turn for the worse in the past decade, when Iraq’s newly-appointed politicians, under heavy influence from Iran, expelled the MeK from the country.

MEK women writing confessions

The group currently stays inside a camp in Albania while it’s leaders reside in lavish houses in France, enjoying direct financial and political support from the United States as well as several of its European allies.
The move to the new house, however, has brought attention to the scarcely-discussed issue of women’s rights inside the organization, which many observers and former members have described as having a cult-like” environment.

At the helm, the group is led by Massoud Radjavi and his wife Maryam. Over the past years Massoud has been avoiding public appearances for unknown reasons, leaving the task for Maryam to fulfill.
Maryam Radjavi has made several high-profile appearances in the mainstream media, smiling and shaking hands with heavyweight politicians such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as well as American and European lawmakers.
She has even managed to convince former U.S. envoy to the United Nation John Bolton to attend the MeK’s annual events in the French capital of Paris.

Maryam mostly appears in public events wearing full Islamic hijab as well as what appears to be the official uniform of the group’s elite commanders.
However, Maryam is pretty much the only female MeK member to have appeared on the media in the recent times.
It is not yet known how many women are currently serving in the organization.

Iranian media claim that the group has been holding the female members who joined its ranks around the revolution against their will, often subjecting them to forced marriages that suited their missions.

These unsubstantiated reports also suggest that some members were forced to have children and then give them to other couples or outsiders who would then train them to become new members of the group in the future.

Iranian sources even claim that at some point each female member of the group were prepared by Maryam to become Massoud’s wives, who reportedly refers to himself as their father and “elder.”
While many of these reports are to be taken with a grain of salt, there are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed.
The group’s cult-like atmosphere, combined with awkward Islamic laws that govern how men and women who are not husband and wife should live together, means that women’s rights are more often than not violated.

There is absolutely no reports on the average age of the female members and their access to medical services.
The issue of access to personal hygiene products in an environment that women might be forced to have intimate relations with more than one partner is also of prime concern.
The group’s leaders need to clarify whether its female members have access to proper consultation and psychology services in order to cope with the high pressure of membership in the group.

There have also been unofficial reports that due to the growing age of its members and the lack of motivation among Iranian youth to join, the MeK has turned to Afghanistan as an alternative source for new female recruitments.

The MeK’s silence on such issues has stirred concern among rights activists about the treatment of its female members. It has also allowed Iranian media to further harm the group’s image by publishing reports that in turn question the organization’s legitimacy as a viable option to replace the Islamic regime.

By Phil Simmons, Human Lives Human Rights
Chief Editor

October 19, 2021 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Tahereh was a prisoner of the MEK Cult

Tahereh Nouri was only twenty years old and the mother of a nine-months old baby when she was taken as a hostage by the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi).
“As a young girl, I had married a greedy man who ruined my life,” Tahereh writes in the memoirs she has published on her experience of involvement with the MEK. “My husband was jailed in Arak, Iran, where he got to know a man named Mehdi.”

Mehdi was actually an MEK recruiter who succeeded to deceive Tahereh and her husband to join the MEK. “He promised to take us to Iraq to work in the MEK camps with good payments for two months and he claimed that eventually we would be sent to Europe to build a new life.”
As Mehdi asks them, Tahereh and her husband take their passports and travel to Turkey where they are welcome by MEK agents. “We were settled in a safe house of the MEK for about a week,” she recalls. “They showed us films of the life of families in Camp Ashraf.”

Tahereh Nouri

The group agents take them to Iraq. They are housed in base of the MEK in Baghdad called Tabatabayee. “We were received warmly with good food and residence,” Tahereh says. “Again, we were shown videos of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi’s speeches. After several hour, they put a document before me and told me to sign it. They told me to divorce my husband in order to comply with the rule of Massoud Rajavi.”

Fahimeh Arvani is the female commander to coerce Tahereh to leave her family life; to divorce her husband and to give her little daughter to the group. “I was shocked to hear that,” Tahereh utters. “I said that we were supposed to move to Europe via Iraq but Fahimeh started shouting at me that there would be no exit for a Mujahed. She told me ‘There is only war here’.”

Tahereh was not allowed to see her husband any more. Her daughter was not with her. She was only allowed to visit her twice a week. The group commanders had scheduled a daily work plan for her, she received military trainings, she worked and she attended daily self-criticism sessions and brainwashing meetings.
“The daily routines were exhausting,” she says. “I was looking for a way to release myself. Everyone who arrives in the Cult of Rajavi is stuck in a space that there is no way out of it. The Cult of Rajavi is very dangerous. When I looked at those women in the cult, they looked really desperate. They seemed to have a lot to say but they did not have the courage to say.”

Tahereh was surprised to see that even brothers and sisters were not allowed to meet each other in the MEK’s camp. “I asked Fahimeh Arvani why sisters cannot talk to their biological brothers,” she recalls. “She replied sexual instincts are equal for every one!”

Tahereh observed various examples of discriminations and brutality in the MEK. “I remember the day that I had to work in the kitchen of the camp. The rank and file had to eat food with a very bad quality but I saw some pots with special foods cooked for female commanders who were members of the group’s so-called Elite Council. Unlike other, they did not come to the eating place. Their meals were taken to their rooms.”

It took Tahereh a few years to get determined to leave the group. She endured long hours of criticism sessions in which commanders and peers tried to convince her to stay. “When I officially asked them to let me leave the group, they immediately hold meetings for me,” she says. “I was determined to leave. Fahimeh Arvani was mad at me. She threatened me to death. ‘I will bury you alive’, she said.”

Ultimately, Tahereh could manage to liberate her daughter and herself from the bars of the MEK. “Years after leaving the MEK, I am living a free life in Iran but I feel pity for the women who are still imprisoned in the cult of Rajavi.”

Taherh Nouri tries to keep in touch with Nejat Society. In her last text message to female members of the MEK she writes, “As I experienced it, I know that the cult-like pressure on female members is very high in the MEK. Maryam Rajavi claims of women’s right but no woman is free in the MEK. We had no right to open up for the cult leaders. We had no right to think about our children or our family. No one can ask for a phone call with her family.”

She adds, “We just worked as slaves. We had to chant ‘Maryam! Maryam!’. The cult of Rajavi is retarded it will not change. I released myself and chose a free life. You can do it too. Do not let the cult leaders demolish you behind the bars of their cult!”

October 6, 2021 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Women Burned Alive to Save MEK leader

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, a.k.a. MKO and PMOI) has a dreadful record of using women and girls as a tool to achieve its purposes. As a concrete example, the killing of two female members of the group in 2003 in Paris can be noted.

On June 17, 2003, French counter-intelligence forces stormed the MEK’s headquarters in Paris, seizing over $8 million in cash and detaining 159 people, including Maryam Rajavi, the group’s ringleader.

Neda Hassani and Sedighe Mojaveri who brainwashed by the MEK leaders into immolating themselves

Following the arrest, a number of brainwashed members of the group were forced to set themselves on fire in public. MEK members mobilized throughout Europe in order to hold demonstrations and then the victims carry out a series of forced self-immolations. The self-immolations had been staged publicly by 16 members of the group one after the other in Paris, Rome, Berne, London, Ottawa, Athens, and Nicosia.

Among the victims of the forced self-immolations, the names of three women stand out: Seddiqeh Mojaveri, 40, Neda Hassani, 26, and Marzieh Babakhani. The first two lost their lives and Babakhani was severely burned.

The poor women were used as a tool to pressure the French public opinion and legal system to free Maryam Rajavi. They may have been told that there was no cause to worry and the firemen would intervene to extinguish the fire soon after they set themselves ablaze. But they were duped and burned to death before the TV cameras to influence the court’s ruling. MEK leaders got their wish and the court, concerned that the immolations might be repeated, ordered Maryam Rajavi’s release on bail.

photo: The raid of the MEK’s Paris compound in 2003, which prompted acts of self-immolation by some of its members.

Following the awkward incident and the media reaction to it, the French officials highlighted various aspects and dimensions of the cult-like activities of the MEK. French Government spokesperson, Jean-Francois Cope, considered these self-immolations as “obviously, extremely dramatic”. He added, “Alas! It also tells us a great deal about the mindset of their leadership”.

The self-immolations were so unexpected for the French officials that they barred all the MEK gatherings “until further orders” and police banned the sale, transport and use of all inflammable products in certain parts of central Paris.

These are the women who are to be burned in the cult of MEK to save the life of the group’s leader and be used for further political leverage and to show their absolute loyalty to public opinion.

October 4, 2021 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The Pink Personnel Carriers

Terrorist groups are known to repeatedly violate human rights, especially women’s rights. Such groups, under the pretext of struggle for freedom and equality of men and women, violate women’s rights the most. Among them, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organizaion (aka MeK) has a long history in this regard. Various forms of abusing women and not granting them the most basic human rights, such as the right to marriage and motherhood have all turned them into emotionless individuals with no trace of femininity.

Ladies who are typically symbols of love and affection, become violent and tyrannical elements in this terrorist group so much so that they volunteer to commit suicide missions using explosive belts.

For instance, Gohar Adabavaz, who was ostracized by her family and became a member of the MeK and volunteered to commit suicide operations. Eventually on December 11, 1981, dressed as a normal citizen, she approached Ayatollah Dastgheib, the Friday Prayer Leader of Shiraz, and assassinated him after detonating her explosive belt.

Female soldiers of the National Liberation Army of Iran stand in formation at a training camp east of Baghdad, Iraq. Women make up nearly half of the NLA, the armed wing of the MEK.
Photo: Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma via Getty Images

Ladan Badiani, Fahimeh Sadeghi and Vitana Jovini are other members of the MeK terrorist group who have caused the death of many people through their suicide operations within the past few decades.

On the other hand, the MeK expects its female members to perform as military force like men. In its so-called Liberation Army, women were engaged in all kinds of military activities ranging from operating tanks and personnel carriers to rocket launchers. In Operation the Eternal Light and the invasion of Iran by the MEK, the corpses left on the Iranian soil indicated that a large number of soldiers were female members of the group. Two years after the fall of Saddam in 2005, National Geographic correspondent Michael Ware visited Camp Ashraf. In the camp, he encountered a number of young ladies who, according to his report, looked utterly exhausted and were deprived of the most basic rights of a woman. Ware asked one of the girls in her early 20s about what she was doing before the invasion of Iraq and disarmament of the MeK, and she replied: “personnel carrier driver”. What came as a complete surprise to him was the fact that other ladies in the camp were engaged in such activities as well. All over the world, a driver’s license is issued at the age of 18 for individuals and a few years later they may apply for a license for heavy vehicles. But in the MeK, a 20-year-old girl becomes the operator of a military vehicle.

This and many other examples indicate that, contrary to MeK leaders’ claims of being defenders of women’s rights, women in this group are simply means for satisfying the leader’s lust for power.

September 20, 2021 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Female torturers of the MEK cult

In January 2021, Damien McGuinness of BBC published an investigated report on “Nazi Ravesbruck camp”, where “female SS guards enjoyed home comforts at a camp where they tortured thousands of inmates”.

Presenting testimonies of victims of these women, the author of the article suggests, “Sometimes the women are portrayed as exploited victims. At other times as sadistic monsters.” He points out a very crucial fact about female tortures who are dedicated to the cause of an ideology, “The truth is more horrifying. They were not extraordinary monsters, but rather ordinary women, who ended up doing monstrous things.”

Nazi Ravesbruck camp

What the BBC correspondent concludes is true in other ideological, extremist movements. In September, 2017, Jane Lavender of the Mirror reported on “horrifying confessions of female ISIS torturers” who revealed they enjoyed hurting women – especially in front of dads and husbands. The woman was a member of an all-female jihadist gang and told how she relished torturing her female victims in front of their distraught families. “The terrifying reality of life as a female ISIS torturer has been laid bare as a deserter reveals she “enjoyed” hurting other woman”, write jane Lavender.

female tortures in the ISIS

This was not the only report on female tortures in the ISIS. Other news outlets such as Aljazeera and Daily Mail published accounts on female jihadists who killed and tortured people in Syria, as a new horrific phenomenon in the history of human rights abuse. However, the international community must come to know that female torturers could have been found in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) since the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, settled the hegemony of women in his cult of personality, during the 1980’s.
The news media have not been able to cover firsthand accounts on female torturers in the MEK because the group severely controls arrivals and departures of its camps. Nonetheless, the testimonies of defectors of the group, who expose dreadful facts on maltreatments and tortures committed by MEK commanders, mostly female, against their own members, are simply accessible.

Maryam Sanjabi

Maryam Sanjabi, escaped the Cult of Rajavi in 2009. She eventually wrote a book about her experience of living inside the MEK. She writes of female commanders who interrogate and torture dissident members inside the cult-like system of the MEK.

Mahvash Sepehri

“Mahvash Sepehri was one of the major commanders to suppress every voice of dissent in the group,” Maryam writes. “About two hundred members were tried by Mahvash Sepehri. They were eventually jailed in solitary confinement, mentally and physically tortured.” Maryam Sanjabi believes that Mahvash Sepehri is the responsible for killing a girl named Nasrin Ahmadi under torture.

Mohammadreza Mobin

Mohammad Reza Mobin, former member of MEK wrote a series of articles on female torturers in the Cult of Rajavi. He revealed horrific facts on how members of the group were interrogated and tortured by female commanders. In particular, he explained about a woman named Forough Pakdel.

“Forough Pakdel was one the main commanders who tortured me,” he writes. “Along with Fazel, she interrogated me. They almost tried to kill me during the six months of solitary confinement.” MohammadReza endured the most sever tortures, as he says, only because he had criticized the leaders’ discriminatory attitude toward members.

Nasri Ebrahimi, a female ex-member of the MEK joined the group when she was only 14. It took her only two years to be a victim of torture by female commanders. “The interrogators were usually, Fahimeh Arvani, Forough Pakdel, Mahnaz Bazzazi, Mehri Haji Nezhad, Batul Rajai and Hajar Tahmasbi,” Nasrin says.
“They wanted me to confess that I was the agent of the Iranian regime and I did not want to confess such a false allegation.”, Nasrin says. “During the entire time of the interrogation sessions Mahnaz Bazzazi and Forough Pakdel were shouting at me, calling me names.”
About the human rights violations committed by female commanders of MEK, the testimonies of former members are countless. Women in the MEK commit crimes, due to the same reasons that other women in Nazi and ISIS establishments committed them.

In a radical system, moral boundaries can be simply transformed or removed. The leader who rules the system –that can be Hitler, Abubakr Baghdadi or Massoud Rajavi—allows violence. In these totalitarian systems, members are charged with strict tasks in the hierarchy. The tasks should be done without any excuse. As a result, any criminal task is normalized in the hierarchy. Victims of the violence are considered as not being human kinds.
Female commanders of the MEK are brainwashed in such a radical totalitarian system that can turn ordinary women to torturers.

Mazda Parsi

September 9, 2021 0 comment

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