Ann Singleton has a past unlike most people working for the Iranian Mujahedin in Iraq attempting for the overthrow the Iranian government. Today I’m talking to her about her experiences and the lessons that she learned. I will ask her about the feeling of working with a terrorist organization, fighting in the desert…
Ann Singleton has a past unlike most people working for the Iranian Mujahedin in Iraq attempting for the overthrow the Iranian government. Today I’m talking to her about her experiences and the lessons that she learned. I will ask her about the feeling of working with a terrorist organization, fighting in the desert and how did she get involved with them in the first place?
She probably is not somebody who in the first view is expected to have gone to a military base to receive military training that’s exactly what happened to Ann Singleton after being brainwashed by an extremist group and she joins me today. It’s really good to see you, Ann. I can’t believe how your life has changed so much that you left the life you liked and the road you were supposed to travel and now you have again a different life.
The individuals were completely unaware of what the cult did with him or her. At first you think they are very sincere and self scarifying people but actually they model a kind of special behavior to you which you get drawn into that kind of behavior that you start to mirror and take it on yourself.
She says: “I didn’t question anything. I was shown a film of a female suicide bomber blowing up an ayatollah in Iran. It was horrific and very shocking at first. “But they showed me the film so many times that I got less and less distressed. Eventually I didn’t bat an eyelid. Of course, I heard politicians and journalists describing the group as extreme but I dismissed it and assumed they didn’t understand.
Back in the early 1980s, Anne Singleton was a rebel with a romantic streak, entranced by the selflessness, as she saw it, of a group of Iranians who were trying to bring democracy and a secular government to their country. The People’s Mujahideen, as they were known, had helped to overthrow the Shah but had been rejected by Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers and were allowed to seek refuge in Irag by Saddam Hussein.
Today Miss Singleton recalls with horror how the group, which is based in Iraq and wants to overthrow Iran’s current regime, was able to convince her to give up her life in the UK and travel abroad with them as a brainwashed slave. Her indoctrination, conversion and submission to the MKO happened gradually over a period of ten years.
She views the Mujahedin now as a cult and says their methods of psychological manipulation are tried and tested and used by many other groups around the world, even similar to some tactics employed by salesmen to sell timeshares.
In l985 the mujahedin leader Massoud Rajavi took over and married a woman called Maryam whose role was to encourage women to break away from male control. As a feminist, this appealed to me. They had used bombers from the early 1980s. They said they wanted to break the atmosphere of terror by killing their oppressors, and it seemed noble.
“Mojahedin spent the money we had collected with difficulties for buying houses, or gave that money to other people as loan.
Mojahedin does everything from human trafficking to money laundering.
My husband, who was for years the bodyguard of Rajavi, has talked to me of physical torture and rape in the MKO.
I was not recruited by this organization by chance, since such terrorist groups are fully aware of recruiting methods.