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.

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

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Former child soldier of the MEK – They killed my father

written by Nejat Society

Mohammad Reza Torabi (Ray Torabi) seeks the trial of the MEK leaders for the murder of his father under torture in the group’s prison. His father Ghorban Ali Torabi was killed in the MEK’s internal prisons in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, in 1994. As a member of the MEK, Mohammad Reza did not know about his father’s killing until he left the group, in 2017.

Mohammad Reza Torabi who is one of the former child soldiers of the MEK has recently began denouncing the MEK for violation of human rights, in the social media. He was also a victim of the MEK cult-like system. Unlike his father, he survived an 18-year-long membership in the group and could manage to leave it 4 years ago.
Mohammad Reza’s biological mother, Zahra Seraj, is still under the MEK’s brainwashing structure and denies him as her son because, as she says, “he is a traitor to the organization”. In his recent Facebook post, Mohammad Reza asks the MEK leaders to explain how his father was killed under the torture in the group’s prison.
“28 years after the death of my father, I just got to know about the whereabouts of his grave,” he writes.

“My Mujahed mother and aunts and those who killed my father did not tell me about it but I was told by witnesses of their crime. When I arrived in the MEK’s base in Iraq in 1999, I realized that my father had died 5 years earlier. I should state that I was just informed how and by who he was killed after 23 years when I left the MEK in 2017. My Mujahed mother and all those who call themselves unique revolutionaries lied to me for a long time.”

Mohammad Reza Torabi regrets all those years that he lived in close connection with the killers of his father. “I used to work with those who are responsible for the killing of my father in Camp Ashraf,” he writes. “I used to live with them, eat with the, kiss and hug them, look in their eyes while I did not know anything about what they did to my father.”

Mohammad Reza Torabi

Four years after his defection from the Cult of Rajavi, the son of Ghorbani Ali Torabi is now ready to receive any information on the murder of his father by the side of the witnesses. “I’d say that I am ready to talk to any individual receiving any document and testimony in order to find the truth about my father,” he writes.

It is worth to know that the internationally documented testimony about the murder of Ghorban Ali Torabi was first published by the Human Rights Watch, in April 2005. The report was titled “No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the Mojahedin Khalq Camps”. Even in the summary of the HRW’s report, the case of Torabi as a person who was killed by the MEK torturers was brought up:
Human Rights Watch interviewed five of these former MKO members who were held in Abu Ghraib prison. Their testimonies, together with testimonies collected from seven other former MKO members, paint a grim picture of how the organization treated its members, particularly those who held dissenting opinions or expressed an intent to leave the organization.

The former MKO members reported abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members. The MKO held political dissidents in its internal prisons during the 1990s and later turned over many of them to Iraqi authorities, who held them in Abu Ghraib. In one case, Mohammad Hussein Sobhani was held in solitary confinement for eight-and-a-half years inside the MKO camps, from September 1992 to January 2001.
The witnesses reported two cases of deaths under interrogation. Three dissident members—Abbas Sadeghinejad, Ali Ghashghavi, and Alireza Mir Asgari—witnessed the death of a fellow dissident, Parviz Ahmadi, inside their prison cell in Camp Ashraf. Abbas Sadeghinejad told Human Rights Watch that he also witnessed the death of another prisoner, Ghorbanali Torabi, after Torabi was returned from an interrogation session to a prison cell that he shared with Sadeghinejad.

GhorbanAli Torabi Qorban was tortured to death by the MEK

At the time, the No Exit report was expectably labeled by the MEK’s paid lobby a group known as Friends of a Free Iran (FOFI), comprising four Members of the European Parliament – Alejo Vidal Quadras, Paulo Casaca, Andre Brie, and Struan Stevenson, as “orchestrated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence”!
Thus, in February 24, 2006, HRW published a “statement on Responses to Human Rights Watch Report on Abuses by the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO)”, in which the testimonies about the killing of Torabi were once more confirmed:

Their responses, in the view of Human Rights Watch, confirm the credibility and reliability of their original testimonies in No Exit. The Human Rights Watch report contained allegations by witnesses that two MKO members, Ghorbanali Torabi and Parviz Ahmadi, died as a result of abuse suffered in MKO detention. The FOFI document challenged these testimonies.

With regard to Ghorbanali Torabi’s death, the FOFI delegation interviewed two MKO members in Camp Ashraf who disputed these testimonies. These two MKO members, Zahra Seraj, Torabi’s wife, and Masoume Torabi, Torabi’s sister, told the FOFI delegation that he had died of a heart attack, and not as a result of beatings at the hands of MKO officials. Neither of them claimed to have been present when he died. According to a communication to Human Rights Watch from Lord Avebury, who said he had interviewed Masouma Torabi by telephone on June 13, 2005, “Masouma saw Ghorbanali a week before he died.”

Human Rights Watch again questioned Abbas Sadeghinejad, one of Human Right Watch’s original sources on these events, about Torabi’s death. Abbas Sadeghinejad confirmed his earlier testimony, based on his experience of sharing a prison cell with Torabi. He again told Human Rights Watch that late one night, after Torabi had been taken out of the cell for two days, two men carried Torabi back to the cell, threw him inside, and locked the cell again. Torabi, Sadeghinejad said, was not breathing and his face showed signs of severe beating. He said that other cellmates examined Torabi more closely and believed that he had suffered broken bones. Sadeghinejad acknowledged that Torabi may have died of a heart attack, but maintained that the MKO had severely beaten Torabi, apparently during interrogation.

Alireza Mir Asgari corroborated the fact of Torabi’s detention and ill-treatment at the hands of the MKO, based on his own direct experience. Mir Asgari told Human Rights Watch that the MKO also detained him at the time Torabi was detained. He said that he knew Torabi well as a child in Iran, and that Torabi had recruited him in Tehran at the age of seventeen to join the MKO ranks in Iraq. Mir Asgari told Human Rights Watch that during his detention in 1995, he encountered Torabi face-to-face during an interrogation session. He said that the interrogators questioned them both about Torabi’s motivation for recruiting Mir Asgari to the MKO camps in Iraq and accused them of working for the Iranian government. Mir Asgari said that when he met Torabi during this interrogation, Torabi’s body showed signs of beatings and physical abuse.

Mir Asgari told Human Rights Watch that when he raised the subject of Torabi’s death with MKO leader Massoud Rajavi, Rajavi alternately responded that Torabi had committed suicide and that Mir Asgari and other prisoners had themselves killed Torabi because they suspected him of being an informant. He said Rajavi at no point claimed that Torabi had died from a heart attack.”

Besides, there are numerous testimonies presented in Persian by other former members of the MEK about the death of Ghorban Ali Torabi under torture. Mohammad Razaghi, Siamak Naderi, Alireza and many others who do not want their names to be exposed, testified that Ghorban Ali was brought to the cell where twenty other MEK members were imprisoned. He had bean beaten to death. It was just two weeks to the Persian New Year, in the winter of 1994.

February 21, 2022 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

The threat of suicide by hostages of the MEK

written by Nejat Society

A combination of situations could lead someone to think of suicide. Some risk factors increase the possibility of suicide. Mental illness, such as depressions, social isolation, criminal problems, financial problems, impulsive or aggressive tendencies, job problems or loss, legal problems etc. may push people to commit suicide. Now, consider the Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a cult-like group in which members are deprived from their most basic human rights. The MEK provides its members with the combination of situations that can lead them to consider suicide as the last resort.

In the early days of December, 2021, the Albanian news media, Gazeta Impact reported of a suicide attempt by a young man named Shahpour Danafar in the MEK’s camp in Manez, in north of Tirana. The report called the case as “the Danafar family tragedy”. Shahpour whose real name is Nikfarjam is the son of Behrouz Danafar a longtime member of the MEK.

According to Gazeta Impact, “The Danafar family tragedy occurred in late November when the Danafar family decided to leave the Rajavi Cult. The father of the family and his two sons, Navid Danafar and Shahpour Danafar, asked their Rajavi Cult superiors to allow them to leave the Manez camp and live in the city of Tirana like many other former members of the cult. The commanders of the camp on the direct order of Maryam Rajavi, the cult leader, refused to allow the family in question to leave the camp in Manez and settle in Tirana. One of the sons, Shahpour Danafar attempted suicide by cutting the veins of his wrist. Shahpour was hospitalized in QSUT Hospital (University Hospital Center “Mother Teresa”). Albanian state bodies are keeping a dirty silence over this case of attempted suicide.”

Banning member’s departure is the old tactic that the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi have always used to maintain their cult of personality. However, a large number of the group members –about fifty percent of the population– have left it during the two past decades.

Based on the report by RAND institute on the Mujahedin Khalq sponsored by the of the office of the US Secretary of Defense, “Rajavi instituted what he termed an “ideological revolution” in 1985, which, over time, imbued the MEK with many of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options.”
Thus, Massoud Rajavi created many of risk factors that increase the possibility of suicide for his own members –better said hostages. The case of Shahpour (Nikfarjam) is not the first one in the MEK. Some names are repeatedly referred to when former members want to testify about suicide in the MEK: Yaser Akbarinasab, Alan Mohammadi and Marjan Akbari.

Yaser Akbarinasab was 17 when he was taken from Europe to Iraq to join the MEK’s National Liberation Army (NLA) together with his 14-year-old brother, Musa. Yaser had almost no sympathy for the MEK and so he began to protest against the MEK’s cult-like attitudes. He wanted to leave the group but he was not allowed by the group leaders and so he was put under severe pressure by the commanders. Finally, on a summer day, after lunch time, Yasser’s friends in the cult saw smoke from behind the base number seven, at Camp Ashraf. Commanders did not let his friends see the body of Yasser. Yasser had set himself on fire.

Yaser Akbarinasab

Marjan Akbari (nicknamed Faezeh) was a child soldier too. She had been separated from her Mujahed parents in 1991 and then she had been brought back to join the NLA as a teenager in the late 90s. A few years later, Marjan asked to leave the group but she was not permitted. Just like Yaser, her request was faced with commanders’ anger. In 2004, Marjan stole the cyanide capsule of her commander and swallowing the capsule she committed suicide.

Alan was only 13 years old when she was brought from Germany to Camp Ashraf to receive military trainings as a soldier of the NLA. She requested to return to Europe, but she was faced with what is usual in the MEK. Mental and physical tortures that were imposed on Alan by the MEK authorities finally resulted in her mental breakdown. She was 15 years old when she committed suicide and put an end to her life. She shot herself when she was on her guarding post at Camp Ashraf.

Today, the MEK propaganda boasts with the names and pictures of Yasser, Marjan, Alan and many other of its victims as martyrs of the struggle against the Iranian government. However, the naked truth about what really goes on in the MEK is increasingly being exposed to the world. The more the MEK propaganda tries to silence the defectors, the less it can mange to cover the truth. As Gazeta Impact also puts, concerns over the fate of two thousand hostages in the MEK’s base in Albania should not be neglected by the Albanian authorities and the international human rights bodies.

Mazda Parsi

December 27, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Letter to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

written by Nejat Society

Honorable Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

Greetings and Regards
I am Samad Eskandari, the representative of the 42 plaintiffs in the case of the survivors of the Mojahedin terrorist sect led by Maryam Rajavi, who are currently based in Albania. We have complained of torture, imprisonment, prohibition of marriage, prohibition of family relations and other inhumane acts, and in the presence of former members, a public trial attended by local and foreign journalists in accordance with judicial protocols notified to the Mojahedin in Albania and France. They did not comment on the case, but the plaintiffs were threatened with assassination. We have condemned this inhuman sect in 39 pages of the final verdict. It should be noted that after the legal formalities and the 60-day legal deadline, the verdict was approved and the documents were handed over to the International Court of Justice.

Mr. Karim Assad Ahmad khan; Honorable Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

As the legal representative of the 42 plaintiffs, I am the voice of the victims who were really deprived of a free life, me and even the people who are currently imprisoned in this group. We are so mentally, emotionally and even physically damaged that some of my friends are unable to perform even the simplest physical activity due to physical torture. And in a simple sentence, all the victims of Rajavi’s violence suffered irreparable damage.
We expect you to pursue Maryam Rajavi and other leaders of the Rajavi sect to maintain justice in the world.

Thanks for your attention,
Samad Eskandari, representative of the plaintiffs in the case against the Rajavi terrorist sect

From Iran, Zanjan

October 13, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Sobhani spent eight-and-a-half years in solitary confinement inside MEK camp

written by Nejat Society

Mohammad Hussein Sobhani spent eight-and-a-half years in solitary confinement inside the MKO’s main camp in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, from September 1992 to January 2001. He was subsequently held in Abu Ghraib prison and left Iraq in 2002.

Sobhani first came in contact with the MKO in 1977, a year before the anti-monarchy revolution. By 1979, he was working “professionally and full time” with the organization. When the headquarters of the armed wing of the organization relocated inside Iraq, he followed suit. By 1991, he had risen in the ranks of the organization and had become a member of the Central Committee. However, ever since the “ideological revolution,” when divorces were mandated, he became uncomfortable with the path pursued by the leadership. His differences with the leadership of Masoud and Maryam Rajavi and other members of the Central Committee reached a climax in 1992. Masoud Rajavi argued for remaining in Iraq regardless of the end of the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam Hussein’s defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991, he said. Rajavi still hoped that fighting between Iran and Iraq would resume, and based the organization’s strategy on such a development. Sobhani says he found the possibility of a new war highly unlikely given the dismal state of Iraq’s armed forces. Other members of the Central Committee saw his arguments as a challenge to the Rajavis’ leadership:

Mohammd Hussein Sobhani

As long as my criticisms were mild, I was left alone. But as soon as I persevered in my questioning, their behavior changed dramatically. In the beginning, I discussed my concerns personally with the leadership, Maryam and Masoud Rajavi. I also brought up my concerns with other members of the Central Committee. These discussions reached a dead-end. Once they became certain that I didn’t share their views, on August 28, 1992, they convened a meeting (neshast taiin taklif) to determine my faith and to decide if I was staying with the organization or not. The process began with intimidation, verbal abuse, and beatings. Of course, since I was a high ranking official, I was treated better than ordinary members. I was told that my criticisms and questions were just an excuse to quit the struggle. Their conclusion was that I was a quitter (borideh) and didn’t have the strength to continue the struggle any longer.

On August 31, 1992, Sobhani was moved to a prison and kept under solitary confinement for the next eight-and-a-half years.

After the first two months in prison, all of my beliefs in the organization fell apart. Up to that point I considered my differences with them as a matter of divergent political views; I wasn’t questioning the MKO’s underlying essence. I used to mark my prison walls each time I was subjected to severe beatings. There were many occasions of lesser beatings, but on eleven occasions I was beaten mercilessly using wooden sticks and thick leather elts.
Sobhani was handed over to Iraqi officials in January 2001. He spent one month in mukhabarat prison and then transferred to Abu Ghraib. He was held in Abu Ghraib until January 21, 2002, when he was repatriated to Iran in exchange for Iraqi POWs. In Iran, he was detained and interrogated by the Iranian government. After three days, he escaped from a low security detention center and fled Iran. He is currently living in Europe.

September 8, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Children; victims of MEK destructive cult

written by Nejat Society

In the history of religious and destructive cults, children have always been the first victims. Whereas, among militant political groups around the world, there are few cases whose stories are as tied to children as the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MeK).

In 1990 and 1991, the MeK separated about 700 children from their parents and sent them to European countries via the Jordanian border. Rajavi did this without the heartfelt consent of the children’s parents.

During the war with Kuwait, Massoud Rajavi separated these children from their parents and sent them to European countries under the pretext of creating a safe environment for them.

MEK children

Why Rajavi separated children from families?

In the second ideological revolution, which included forced divorce, Massoud did not have much success in the lower echelons of the organization. The inferior members opposed this order, using their children as an excuse to reject separation from their emotional partners. Therefore, Massoud who saw children as a great threat to his so-called ideological revolution thought of removing them.

The winter of 1990 coincided with the First Persian Gulf War. While Saddam was severely weakened, Massoud Rajavi used the dangerous conditions of war to achieve his sinister goals.

In fact, he was trying to carry out his sinister plan to remove the children, the enemies of the ideological revolution, from the territory of Iraq in order to guarantee his intended revolution.

Therefore, in the first step, the schools, recreation centers, and other nests of the members’ children, who numbered more than 700, were closed under the pretext of war condition. Then, they were transported to the anti-missile barracks inside the camp in fear and panic, with minimal means of survival and psychologically vulnerable conditions.

After a few weeks, the children became accustomed to the new situation, and the organization’s trick to forcibly relocate the children failed, and the parents still refused to separate them.

This time, the organization’s officials took cruel action and transferred the innocent children to Baghdad, the center of the airstrikes. Numerous bombings and the endangerment of children’s lives made it easier for the organization’s officials to obtain parental consent. So many of parents were content to move their children wherever the organization deemed expedient.

The first refuge for children after leaving Iraq was Amman, the capital of Jordan. There, the children, who had been in love with each other for years, were sent in groups to various European countries especially Scandinavian countries, Australia, Canada and the United States. Of those, more than 200 children entered Germany illegally under the pretext of leaving the Persian Gulf war. Germany was the second-largest children’s destination after Jordan.

During the presence of children in Germany, the MeK received millions of marks annually from child support associations. Children were returned to Iraq at the age of 16 after receiving organizational and ideological training.

MEK Militia

Why did Rajavi return young children to Iraq?

After sending the kids to European countries, the organization did not allow any contact between the parents and their children. Rajavi pursued some goals for returning them, such as infusing new blood into the organization which was faced with a manpower crisis. On a deeper level, in Rajavi’s eyes, it was the last chance to return those children who had their parents killed in previous operations since all of them were transferred under pseudonyms and fake identities, and as soon as they reached the legal age, they refused to return or in case of a return, they could apply to leave because they had the original card and identity. Therefore, Rajavi was able to transfer many of the children who had been transferred abroad.

September 7, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Two years in Solitary confinement; MEK survivor

written by Nejat Society

Alireza Mir Asgari

Alireza Mir Asgari was a deputy director of one of the MKO’s military units in 1994 when he started to have concerns about the organization’s links with the Iraqi military. In January 1995, he was arrested and imprisoned. In June 1995, he was released after signing a contract promising to remain with the MKO’s forces. He was arrested again in 1998 and spent eight months in solitary confinement. In 2001, he arranged to escape, but his plan was discovered and he was imprisoned again until 2003, when he was turned over to Iraqi forces who then abandoned him along the Iran-Iraq border. He described his sudden arrest in 1995.

Alireza Mir Asgari

I was arrested without notice on January 29, 1995. I was told to go to a meeting with a team who were preparing for operations in Iran. These kinds of discussions were a regular part of my duties. I was taken to a room and told to wait. Hasan Mohasel, one of the MKO’s top intelligence officers, came into the room and put a note in front of me saying that I had been arrested because I was an agent of Iranian intelligence and had infiltrated the Liberation Army. I couldn’t believe what was happening; I thought it was a joke and started to laugh. But Hasan Mohasel cursed me and told me to stand against the wall. Suddenly two or three more people entered the room and began to blindfold me and to tie my hands behind my back. I was in total shock. They put me in a car and drove around for forty-five minutes inside the camp. I was taken to a building; I didn’t know where it was. Hasan Sadat Darbandi, also known as Adel, removed my blindfold and threw me into a cell with many other prisoners. I could not believe it; I thought there had been a coup inside the organization. Each day, a number of prisoners were taken for interrogation. They were beaten badly; after they were brought back, their heads and faces were tremendously swollen.

After a couple of days, it was my turn to be taken for interrogation. They asked me why I had joined the MKO. I told them I came here to fight Khomeini’s government, but they said that wasn’t true. During the first couple of days of interrogation, they beat me mercilessly. It was very depressing; I really wanted to commit suicide. I was only seventeen years old when I left Iran and came to Iraq to join the MKO. I had spent my entire adult life in their camps.

Eventually, I gave up and agreed to sign the forced confessions stating that I had ties to Iranian intelligence. I was taken to a meeting with Masoud Rajavi, who told me that if I stayed for another two years, they would release me and send me to Spain.

Mir Asgari was released in June 1995. He spent the next two years waiting for the organization to release and transfer him to Spain. However, he was told that because of his wealth of information, he could not be released. His protests led to his imprisonment again:

On March 25, 1998, I was taken to a prison where my old case from 1995 was reopened. They said that based on my own confession, I was an Iranian agent and could not be trusted. I spent eight months in solitary confinement. During this period, I was told that my sister in Iran had been arrested and executed. Later I found this to be untrue.60

After recanting his request to leave Iraq, Mir Asgari was released. Since the organization was not going to allow him to leave, he started to design an escape plan. His plan to escape was discovered, and he was arrested again. He was kept in solitary confinement for nearly two years, from 2001 to 2003. A few months prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in February 2003, Mir Asgari was turned over to the Iraqi forces who took him to the Iran-Iraq border along the Arvandrood River [Shatt al-Arab] and released him there. He is living in Europe.

September 7, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

MEK ex-member: I was imprisoned for forty-five days

written by Nejat Society

Ali Ghashghavi joined the MKO as a fighter in Iraq in 1989. He was arrested in February 1995 during the “security clearance” phase and was imprisoned for four months in Camp Ashraf. He told Human Rights Watch of his experience during this period.

One night in January 1995, I was called over by my superior and told that a member of the Central Committee wanted me in her office. I was excited to be meeting such a high level official at such an unlikely hour. I assumed there was much importance attached to this meeting. We got into a military vehicle; it was around midnight. They took me to a place inside Camp Ashraf called Iskan. It is at the far corner of the camp where a series of apartment buildings were used to house families [before they were forcibly broken up]. It was a rather isolated spot – barren desert and frighteningly secluded.

Ali Ghashghavi

There were a few people inside, five or six. I was taken to an empty room and told to wait. A few minutes later, another member, Hussein Nizam, was brought in. Hussein Nazim had spent many years inside the Islamic Republic’s prisons, so he knew something else was happening. I was somewhat naive and didn’t have much of a clue.

Suddenly the door opened and a group of people attacked us mercilessly, blindfolded us, tied our hands behind our backs, and put us inside a car. We were driven around for half an hour. We stopped inside an area that was approximately at the center of the camp. I didn’t know this was a prison until I was taken there. The prison was on Avenue 400 of Camp Ashraf near the water tanker. Until then, I had assumed that explosives or sensitive documents were guarded inside.

Our clothes were taken from us and we put on prison garb. We were led to a large cell holding nearly twenty-five prisoners. The prison cell was on the ground floor of the building; there was a small window near the ceiling for air circulation. A small toilet and shower were built at one end of the cell.

There was a period when prisoners were taken on a daily basis for interrogations and beatings. One method was to kick the prisoner’s legs and knees repeatedly with military boots with metal covers on the front. Another method was to put a thick rope around the prisoner’s neck and drag him on the ground. Sometimes prisoners returned to the cell with extremely swollen necks – their head and neck as big as a pillow.

I experienced the pain of leg-beatings firsthand. During one of my interrogation sessions, the interrogator told me that if I don’t give them guarantees that I will stay with the leaders forever, he would kill me right there and then. I asked him “what worthier guarantee there could be than my coming here to join your ranks and fight against Khomeini?” He replied that now that the ideological revolution had been instituted and life was harder, people like me couldn’t bear it and wanted to leave. He said, “I can see it in your eyes that you are dying to quit the organization.”

He went to the next room while he told me how he was going to beat me up badly. He changed his shoes and put on a pair of these military boots. He came back, and two hefty guards held me. He began kicking my legs repeatedly. My legs are still unbalanced from these beatings. Interrogations sometimes lasted for up to thirty or thirty-six hours non-stop.

Ghashghavi was released in May 1995, after a meeting with Masoud Rajavi who told him, “The judicial branch of the National Liberation Army has acquitted you.” After this experience Ghashghavi, explored ways to escape Camp Ashraf. On March 20, 1998, he was imprisoned for forty-five days and then turned over to Iraqi intelligence agents. He spent another forty-five days inside the mukhabarat prison in central Baghdad before being transferred to Abu Ghraib. He was repatriated to Iran on January 21, 2002. In Iran, he was interrogated and brought before a court that sentenced him to nine years in prison. After sixteen months of imprisonment, he was given a forty-eight hour release to visit his family. He used this opportunity to escape and leave Iran. In August 2003, he fled Iran and is currently living in Europe.

Human Rights Watch

September 5, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Five years in solitary confinements of MEK camps

written by Nejat Society

Farhad Javaheri-Yar is a former fighter with the MKO in Iraq. He served in various capacities in intelligence and security operations. In 1995, he became aware of dissident members being imprisoned inside the MKO camps in Iraq. He wrote a letter to his superiors requesting to be released from his duties and expressed his desire to leave the organization. His superiors tried repeatedly to intimidate him into staying. After his refusal, he was incarcerated in various prisons inside the MKO camps in Iraq from November 1995 to December 2000. He was subsequently turned over to the Iraqi officials and held in Abu Ghraib prison until January 2002, when he was repatriated to Iran.

Javaheri-Yar joined the MKO in August 1982 in Tehran and became active in their underground armed resistance. He was arrested in October 1984 by the Iranian authorities and spent the following four years inside Evin, Ghazal Hisar, and Gohardasht prisons in Iran. Upon his release, he contacted MKO operatives in Europe and was smuggled to Karachi and from there to Iraq. He entered Iraq in 1989 and became an active member of the MKO’s armed wing.

Camp Ashraf

Javaheri-Yar became disillusioned with the MKO in 1995 after learning from a number of other MKO cadres that they had been recently imprisoned by the organization:

In July 1995, I returned to Camp Ashraf from a reconnaissance mission. During the preceding months, I had noticed a number of my friends had “disappeared.” I was told that they were inside Iran to carry out missions. I met two of them, Akbar Akbari and Ali Taleghani, who told me that they were imprisoned inside Camp Ashraf during this period and were forced to sign false confessions indicating their ties to Iranian intelligence agents and [promising] that they would never leave the MKO.

I could not believe that the Mojahedin would engage in acts of torture and forced confessions similar to what the Iranian government used. I wrote a number of reports for my superior. In these letters I expressed my disapproval of the mistreatment of members and submitted my resignation. My request was repeatedly ignored.

Javaheri-Yar persevered with his request to leave the MKO, but was told that the organization could not relieve him of his duties because of his extensive knowledge of MKO’s activities. Once Javaheri-Yar realized he would not be free to leave, he escaped from Camp Ashraf on November 28, 1995 and attempted to reach the Jordanian border. On November 30, 1995, he was arrested by Iraqi security forces near the city of Tikrit. He pleaded with the Iraqi forces not to return him to the MKO camp, but his pleas were ignored and he was handed over to the MKO forces in Camp Ashraf. During the next five years he was held in solitary confinement in various locations inside the MKO camps, from November 1995 to December 2000.

During the first two months, I was kept inside a pre-fabricated trailer room called a bangal. I was told that I could not leave the camp but could resume life inside the camp if I chose to do menial labor, such as making bread or sweeping streets. I refused their offer, and their response was harsh. I was moved to a prison cell in Avenue 400 of Camp Ashraf. The cell’s dimensions were three by two-and-a-half meters [nine feet by eight feet]. It was connected to a narrow hallway – one meter [three feet] wide and three-and-a-half meters [ten feet] long – that led to a small toilet and sink.

In February 1996, I made very loud verbal protests from inside my cell. To punish me, they confined me inside a bathroom for three consecutive weeks. I was miserable. There was no room to stretch or lie down. The tiled floor was wet and cold. It was a terrifying experience.

The MKO’s leadership, including Masoud Rajavi, promised Javaheri-Yar that he would be released “soon,” but each time they broke their promise. Javaheri-Yar was imprisoned in solitary confinement inside Camp Ashraf, as well as Camp Parsian, until December 2000, when he was turned over to the Iraqi intelligence forces (mukhabarat). He spent one month in a mukhabarat prison before being transferred to Abu Ghraib prison. He was repatriated to Iran on January 21, 2002. He left Iran and is living in Europe.

August 31, 2021 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Female ex-member of MEK: our memoir of the cult is not fictional

written by Nejat Society

“Cults are terrifying. But they’re even worse for women”, Alexandra Stein states.
Alexandra Stein, Ph.D. is an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Her latest book, “Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems” was published in 2017.

What Stein reveals about women in cults has been seen in the testimonies of all female ex-members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). Over twenty years ago, Zahra Moini and Homeira Mohammadnezhad could manage to leave the MEK after they found it intolerable to stay in the cult-like structure of the group.

Homeira and Zahra have been denouncing the group during the years of living their free life in Germany although they were always labeled as agents of the Iranian Intelligence by the MEK propaganda. In a recent interview with Mardom TV, they talk about the group’s undemocratic practices against its own members particularly women and its current situation in the political and social scene of Iran.

Zahra Moeini and Homeira Mohamamdnejad

“History should not be repeated in favor of villains,” Homeira says. “We give testimonies of our experiences in MEK to inform the world about the threat of a group that claims of huge changes in Iran but it does not observe the least human rights inside its own structure.”

“It is not easy for me to review the grieves I endured in MEK but I want more people to know about the disgusting relationships in the cult of Rajavi,” Zahra says.
“After I left the group, I used to see nightmares for so long,” Homeira adds. “When I began to speak out about my sufferings in the group, I felt much better. Our accounts of living in the MEK is not a fictional story. We speak based on facts.”

Homeira and Zahra state that members inside the MEK are deprived from the most basic human rights. “Members in the MEK are prisoners who even do not have the right to contact their families,” Zahra says.
“What has been the achievements of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi for the Iranian people and their own members?” Homeira criticizes the totalitarian leaders of the group. “Massoud Rajavi never takes responsibility for the suffers he created for his own members.”

About Maryam Rajavi’s partnership in the consolidation Massoud’s dictatorship over the cult, Zahra says, “When I was in the group, Maryam told us that the food we ate and the clothes we wore, all had belonged to Massoud! We were considered as a bunch of homeless wrecked people that Massoud had saved us.”
“The MEK’s goal is not the overthrow of the Iranian regime any more,” Zarha believes. “The MEK is stuck in a cul-de-sac but it does not let its members leave.”

“In case of the recent incidents in Afghanistan, the MEK has not taken any position so far,” Homeira says. “Massoud Rajavi’s tactic is based on squeeze. He is always ready to squeeze in the scene through chaos, war and divisions. This is what he exactly did in Iraq and then after the fall of Saddam Hussein he worked as proxy force for Iranian enemies. He might be ready to negotiate with Taliban against Iran.”

“Given that he changes the regime, Rajavi will change Iran into North Korea,” Zahra says.

August 23, 2021 0 comment

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