Maryam Rajavi is not a democratic opposition leader but she is the evil hand to run the dictatorship of her husband’s cult of personality
At the mass that took place at St. Paul’s Catholic Cathedral in Tirana for Christmas, besides many corrupt personalities, thieves and criminals who went on to pardon sins and appear on television as good men, there were also representatives of the former terrorist Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation (MEK).
Present at the Christmas Mass was the head of the Iranian Jihadis, Maryam Rajavi. Behind Maryam Rajavi, in the photo published by an Albanian newspaper, is her first husband Mehdi Abrishamchi, who because her second husband, Massoud Rajavi, is now dead, is apparently replacing the former.
On the left of Maryam Rajavi is the feared Communist spy, Djana Culi, who is notorious in Albania for sending the brothers Blloshmi and Genc Leke to the gallows, and who is now a fiery supporter of the MEK jihad against Iran. On the right of the hijab wearing Maryam is Elona Gjhebrea, former Deputy Minister of the Interior, who is also controversial for her acquaintance with the Habilaj clan drug gang.
Attendance by the former terrorists, former communist spies and friends of drug traffickers has been welcomed by Monsignor George Frendo. In a repetition of the biblical tragedy of Pontius Pilate and the hypocritical religious leaders who condemned Jesus Christ to the cross, Monsieur George Frendo was happy with the presence of former terrorists, spies, criminals, etc. who attended the Christmas Mass. Their presence turned the Mass into a biblical tragedy.
Knowing that Maryam Rajavi presents herself to members of her cult as the messenger of Imam Mahdi who will save Iran from Islam and the Imams, the Christmas Eve Mass in Tirana resembled messianic dust. Maryam the ‘saint’ was celebrating the day of the birth of the saint Jesus Christ in the presence of many sins and sinners.
If Christ was in the grave, the night would have been a freakshow of horror!
Hallelujah!
Gazeta Impakt, Tirana, Translated by Iran Interlink
Heavy rain continues to cause severe flooding all over the country in Iran. Tens perhaps hundreds of people have died in the last week, many more are injured. Thousands have had their home and their livelihood swept away. Authorities are working flat out to rescue and help people including the Red Crescent and the military. It is a national emergency and people are suffering.
As usual when Iran is in the news, we get the usual reaction from Iran haters. Like other events these floods are just an excuse to make Iran a political football to be kicked around western media. First the instant experts pop up. Some are recycled from other news items. They change from being experts in the exchange rate of the dollar, petrochemical, experts, nuclear experts, experts in human rights and now the same person is an expert in water management. Iranians who have not been in Iran for decades, if at all, suddenly pop up to give interviews and share their expert analysis of why unprecedented rain caused unprecedented flooding and with one breath blame failure to anticipate climate changes and in the other breath blame Iran’s government policies for the damage.
Some of them even think they are helping the people of Iran by standing on the side lines to criticise the government as if Iranians are somehow too childish to think for themselves.
The worst of all these fraudulent experts is Maryam Rajavi who has deluded herself that she is leading a mass revolt in Iran instead of deceiving and suppressing her elderly slaves in Albania. In the middle of a national emergency she has been telling Iranians to help each other!!! They must wish they’d thought of that.
For a while, what was most interesting was the mysterious absence of the MEK in that helping effort. For a group that claims to have huge support inside Iran and claims to be working to help the Iranian people against their own government, the MEK was completely absent. Maryam Rajavi is so obsessed with her own image that it was surprising she didn’t even order a photoshopped picture of MEK helping flood victims with her photo in the background to publish on her sites.
That was until Massoud Khodabandeh wrote about it in his Iran-Interlink site. Apparently Rajavi does read the site and does take instruction from Khodabandeh about how normal people respond to national emergencies.
After Khodabandeh pointed out MEK’s “lack of wit” Rajavi’s propaganda machine has woken up and started churning out breath-taking lies. Just what a nation in crisis needs. After first stupidly instructing flood victims to “resist” their rescuers (the Sepah or Pasdaran who by the way helped defeat Rajavi’s heroes Daesh on the ground, rescuing not only Iraq and Syria but the entire Iranian nation from this threat), Rajavi must have read Khodabandeh’s comments and realised that you can’t really expect people whose homes and livelihoods have been swept away in a flood to start a revolution. Not this time dear!
Now she has invented something called “Resistance Units” which have apparently sprung up like a virus inside Iran and spread overnight to every town and village – totally undetected by the formidable Intelligence Ministry and its network of spies that her followers are so petrified of all the time!
It is difficult to read Rajavi’s propaganda without laughing because it really is just nonsense. According to her, these MEK supporters are not only freely wandering around disaster areas handing out “aid” which they have magicked up out of nowhere, but they also have enough spare time to print and hand out leaflets instructing people to come to their own aid!
You couldn’t make this up… except Rajavi did just that.
BY Ali Alavi,
Massoud Rajavi was the sole leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, MKO, NCR) terrorist cult for two decades. He disappeared just before the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in March 2003. Since then no-one knows his whereabouts; his wife Maryam now leads the organization.
In the last sixteen years, a lot has been said and written about the reason for his disappearance and why he does not show his face even to his own followers. There were even rumours about his death that the MEK did not express any clear and firm reaction to, leading to even more speculation.
The undeniable fact is that the MEK has a dark history of terror, crimes and betrayals and therefore is hated by all Iranians, even those opposing the Islamic Republic. Massoud Rajavi, who had lost his popularity inside Iran, gambled his destiny and tied it up with that of Saddam Hussein who was a loser in the end.
After the fall of the Baghdad dictator – the cult’s sole state sponsor – the MEK tried to find an alternative for him, this time in the west. But the US and its regional allies were only happy to use the MEK without Massoud Rajavi. They wanted to bypass the cult leader and leave the cult’s unpopularity behind with him.
However, the MEK’s top officials knew that the cult would not remain intact without the charismatic leadership of Massoud Rajavi, and this left the organization in a deadly paradox. The new sponsors such as the Saudis wanted Massoud Rajavi out of the picture, yet the MEK could not survive without him.
Two years ago, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal announced the death of Massoud Rajavi. At the same time Maryam Rajavi keeps talking as though he is leading the organization even though there is no trace of him.
But the MEK under Maryam Rajavi’s leadership has not met any of her new sponsors’ needs and requirements. It is time, therefore, for a new face if the MEK is going to be of any value against the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are waiting for her disappearance after that of her husband.
Despite the huge propaganda the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) launched for the Warsaw Summit, the US-led conference was a failure. The MKO leaders who apparently are too optimistic about Trump’s anti Iran policy, made their utmost efforts to exploit the shambolic conference in Warsaw. Alex Ward of VOX accurately asserts that the meeting “was intended to isolate Iran has ended up isolating America instead — highlighting one of the central problems of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy”. [1]
Ward’s assertion was confirmed by several other journalists and experts. Ron Ben YIshai of the YNetNews writes,
“The Warsaw Summit was a mostly failed attempt by the United States to form a broad international coalition to support the Trump administration’s Middle East policies.” [2]
“U.S. officials have been trying to portray the Warsaw Conference as a success for their plans; the concrete results are far from that,” And Saeb Erekat of Haaretz states.
“Just as with other aspects of foreign policy under the Trump administration, its emissaries have exaggerated its results.” [3]
It seems that the dreams of the MKO leaders have shattered by the end of the Warsaw Summit even though they spent a lot of money to nurture their cause in the sidelines of the program. As usual the group rented speaker and participants in front of the conference hall. At the time, Gregg Carlstrom of the Economist wrote on his twitter account,
“The MEK is having a rally in Warsaw where as usual about a third of the crowd is random non-Iranians who’ve been bussed in from Slovakia and can’t read the signs they’re holding”. [4]
Former New York mayor, Giuliani spoke at the MKO’s show to suggest that “peace in the region would only come when Iran was ruled instead by his clients, the National Council of Resistance of Iran”. [5]
It is widely known that Giuliani’s motivation to support a formerly designated terrorist group which has the blood of Americans in its hand, is just financial. “If the MEK were holding an event on the South Pole, Rudy Giuliani would participate,”Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and former Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department, told Newsweek.
“He seems wholly addicted to the group’s honorarium checks, and he refuses to let it bother him that the MEK has American blood on its hands. He is the picture of a man without principle.”[6]
The scandals of the MKO reached their peak when Des Spiegel exposed more revelations about the true nature of the group a few days after the Poland Summit. In order to prepare the report, Luisa Hommerich interviewed a dozen of the MKO defectors in Albania. “Members of the Trump administration have been providing support to a political sect that aims to topple the Iranian regime in Tehran,” she writes.
“Around 2,000 of its members live in a camp in Albania. Former members say it is subjecting followers to torture and psychological terror.” [7]
The report exposes horrific violation of human rights inside the MKO and eventually the author is accused of being the agent of the IR intelligence by the MKO’s political arm, the so-called National Council of Resistance. The main question that should be answered by the MKO leaders is that given that all the evidences and testimonies on the human rights abuses by the MKO are misinformation forged by the Iranian government, what are the group’s achievements in the past forty years?
As soon as Saddam Hussein’s regime was collapsed in 2003, the MKO was disarmed by the US army. As a result it created a big gap in the then isolated structure of the group. A large number of Ashraf residents defected the group. The process of defection has been going on until now that the group is settling in Albania. This is happening despite the severe control and manipulation by the MKO to prevent defection.
Exploring the history of the MKO in the forty years of its existence after the 1979 revolution in Iran, you are not able to find a step forward to the group’s claimed cause which is the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. The only improvement that the group has made during the recent past decades can be seen in the number of its paid supporters. This is in an absolute contrast with the loss in the number of the group’s loyal fighters.
By Mazda Parsi
[1] Ward, Alex, The US held a global summit to isolate Iran. America isolated itself instead, VOX, February 15th, 2019.
[2] Yishai, Ron Ben, Warsaw Summit winners and losers, YNetNews, February 17th, 2019.
[3] Erekat, Saeb, The Arab World Just Trashed Trump’s Mideast ‘Peace’ Plan, Haaretz, February 18th, 2019.
[4] Mackey, Robert, As Giuliani Calls for Regime Change in Iran, Netanyahu Raises the Specter of “War”, The Intercept, February 14th, 2019.
[5] ibid
[6] Maza, Cristina, Trump Lawyer Rudy Giuliani Gives Rally Calling for Iran Regime Change Right Outside Warsaw Middle East Summit Featuring Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, NewsWeek, February 13th, 2019.
[7] Hommerich, Luisa, Prisoners of Their Own Rebellion.The Cult-Like Group Fighting Iran, Spiegel Online, February 18th, 2019.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has invited several of what are known as Iran’s ‘fake opposition’ to his Middle East summit in Warsaw on 13-14 February. (A thinly disguised Iran bashing fest!). But Rajavi is being kept at arms’ length, a barge pole’s length even. She has not been invited.
To be clear, Maryam Rajavi is notorious inside the MEK to be jealous and throw tyrannical temper tantrums. No doubt she reacted similarly to the photograph of Pompeo posing alongside the much younger controversial ‘activist’ Masih Alinejad circulating in social media.
Though, apparently, these days just about anybody except Rajavi can have their picture taken with Pompeo.
Rajavi’s actions indicate that she really doesn’t understand why this is. Her desperate efforts to stay visible – parading on stage in glamorous outfits before paid speakers and audience – expose her ego rather than her leadership. As de facto leader of the MEK, Rajavi has successfully carved out a niche for the mercenary MEK in the anti-Iran front – acting out the silent wishes of America, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who might proclaim an interest in regime change against Iran, but who cannot necessarily do the dirty deeds.
By continually insisting on her propaganda events she is overstepping her mandate: the MEK’s role is to get paid, do the work, then disappear.
Rajavi is not invited to Warsaw because, quite frankly, she and her organization stink. The smell of terrorism, murder, crime and corruption cling to the MEK in spite of all the group’s efforts to whitewash, re-write, lobby and otherwise hide their past and present. No other fake opposition is as dirty and untrustworthy as the MEK. No other fake opposition keeps its members as slaves and kills dissenters. No other fake opposition commits false flag ops to blame on Iran and destroy trust.
So, while western media is reluctant to delve deeper into what the MEK are actually capable of, the security services which advise those governments who turn a blind eye to this activity are fully aware of Maryam Rajavi’s weaknesses. The fact she is prepared to sell her homeland for dollars means she is just as easily capable of selling another country for Rials when the time comes!
Maryam Rajavi headed a ‘protest’ in Paris yesterday using paid participants to promote her regime change agenda against Iran. Rajavi is afraid of being overlooked by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Iran Action Group run from inside the State Department. Pompeo will hold a summit in Warsaw next week where it is predicted Iranian opposition groups will feature. Sadly for Rajavi, she has not been invited. Wonder why? Here’s a timely reminder of just who the Mojahedin-e Khalq are. In 2012, Owen Bennett-Jones from the BBC conducted an in-depth investigation into the group, including interviews with top MEK members, as well as critics and victims. This is his reporting.
The scenes from Paris showing protesters marching down the Champs-Elysees, the grandest avenue in the city, hurling projectiles at police and being tear-gassed in return, has recently been widespread in the main stream media. “The broken glass and empty tear gas canisters have been swept away and the graffiti scrubbed off the major monuments, among them the Arc de Triumph, after a weekend of violent protests in the capital by a grass-roots movement that calls itself the Yellow Vests,” reported the New York Times.
Casualties and damages have been massive. According to the NY Times, The cost of repairing just the Arc de Triomphe — apart from the graffiti, there was damage to artifacts kept inside — could reach one million euros (about $1.15 million), according to the Center for National Monuments. On Monday, merchants and government officials were still assessing the total property damage. [1]
More than 260 people were wounded nationwide, and at least three died outside Paris on the margins of the protests over the last three weekends. More than 400 people were arrested in Paris. [2]
Meanwhile in Iran, Labor protests continued in Ahwaz and Shush (Khuzestan province) as of Wednesday, November 28. Sugar cane workers demanding back pay reportedly staged an anti-government march in Shush; protesters also clashed with police in Ahwaz during related protests. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency is reporting that the country’s authorities have detained four workers protesting not having been paid their salaries for months in the southwestern province of Khuzestan. [3]
It seems almost natural that the propaganda media of the Mujahedin Khalq (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) do not give a shit to the France protests but they exaggerate the workers protests in Khuzestan, Iran, because the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi is sheltered in France and launches her anti-Iran campaign from France territory. However, she should be asked what about the protests inside her group’s camp in Durres, Albania.
The MKO, as a large populated entity –from 5000 members back in Iraq to over 2000 people in Albania—has always enjoyed a camp in which it has concentrated its forces. The group’s camp in Iraq was even called “Ashraf City”, as it was very well equipped with all facilities of a city such as hospital, factory, pool and park.
After the group’s relocation in Albania, despite the increasing process of defection from the group, the authorities of the MKO set off for building another city in Manez, Durres naming it “Ashraf 3”.
Here’s the question: In the entire history of the Mujahedin Khalq, has there ever been any public protest against the ruling system of the camps or everything was democratically managed by the group leaders?
The answer is NO. No public protest has been reported from inside the MKO camps but this does not mean that the group’s camps have been ruled democratically and everyone inside the group has been satisfied.
Evidences from inside the MKO indicates that dissent is immediately suppressed by the authorities of the MKO. Numerous documented testimonies of former members of the MKO reveal the very undemocratic and even inhumane attitude of the group leaders against any question, let alone conflicting ideas.
According to the Human Rights Watch report “NO EXIT”, human rights abuses carried out by MKO leaders against dissident members ranged from prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death. [4]
The testimonies of the former MKO members indicate that the organization used three types of detention facilities inside its camps in Iraq. The interviewees described one type as small residential units, referred to as guesthouses (mihmansara), inside the camps. The MKO members who requested to leave the organization were held in these units during much of the time they were kept incommunicado. They were not allowed to leave the premises of their unit, to meet or talk with anyone else in the camp, or to contact their relatives and friends in the outside world. [5]
Human Rights Watch interviewed at least seven former members of the group to develop its report in 2005. A few years later, the RAND Corporation published another investigated report on what is going inside the MKO. RAND is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous.
According to the RAND report, Physical Abuse, Imprisonment, and Lack of Exit Options were the tools of the MKO leaders to keep members inside the cult-like structure of the group and eventually to suppress dissent and departure. “Former MeK members claim that punishment was frequently meted out for such offenses as expressing or fomenting disagreement with the political/military strategy,” the report reads. Asking to leave the group is an unforgivable sin. “Recent accounts recall that punishment for disagreeing with MeK policies ranged from forced written confessions of disloyalty to incarceration in special facilities at Camp Ashraf. Former members report torture and long periods of solitary confinement as punishment for disloyalty.” [6]
Although, the above-mentioned reports are the most significant and official ones on the human rights abuses in the MKO, there are a lot more testimonies of those who have recently left the group’s camps in Albania. Most defectors of the group publish their firsthand account of enduring human right violations in the MKO just because they expressed their willingness to leave the group or in some cases because they dared to express their opposition to the group’s attitudes.
Gholamreza Shokri spent 27 years of his life in the MKO. He was only 20 years old and willing to find a good job in Europe when he was recruited by the MKO in Iraq. The MKO agents promised to help him get the European visa only if he stayed in their camp for a few months. As soon as he entered the organization, they confiscated his ID documents and never gave him back.” whenever I asked for my ID, they would say that they had no idea where it was.” [7]
Thus, Shokri had no way out of the MKO camp but he frequently used to ask the leaders when he could leave the cult. This question was considered a sin by the leaders. Departure from the MKO was forbidden and showing your willingness for leaving the group would be faced with suppression, imprisonment and torture. So he was imprisoned in solitary confinement. [8]
Shokri said that they had closed their eyes and took him to a clandestine jail. “They insulted me calling me spy of the Mullah’s regime,” he recounts. “They beat me in my legs so badly that I could not walk; they were bleeding. They tied my hands with hand coughs for a week. After a week my hands had no sense; I put the fire of a cigarette on them but I didn’t feel it burn. Then they forced me to stand up for one more week. Each time that I fell down out of fatigue, they would beat me so hard that I had to stand up again.” [9]
Besides Shokri, the testimonies of a large number of defectors of the MKO are available on the Net. All have one thing in common: You have no right to protest in the MKO.
While people of all societies have the chance to express their demands, dissatisfactions and even their anger, more or less, members of the MKO are not even able to express their freewill to choose for their future. They are deprived from the most basic human rights.
Maryam Rajavi’s so-called support for the Iranian workers contradicts what is really going on in her destructive cult of personality.
Mazda Parsi
References:
[1]J Rubin, Alissa, France’s Yellow Vest Protests: The Movement That Has Put Paris on Edge, The New York Times, December 3rd, 2018.
[2] ibid
[3] The Associated Press, Report: Iran arrests 4 workers protesting unpaid salaries, November18, 2018.
[4] No Exit
[5] ibid
[6] RAND
[7] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/8960
[8] ibid
[9] ibid
Since the relocation of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in Albania, the co-leader Maryam Rajavi has traveled from Paris to Tirana several times. She usually travels to Tirana for especial occasions such as New Year’s celebration or to receive the paid American supporters of the group who are invited to the base. One instance was Senator John McCain who visited Maryam Rajavi in the group’s base in Tirana in April 2017.
According to the insiders of the MKO, Maryam Rajavi is once more in Tirana but it seems that this time the trip has a different reason. She is residing at International Hotel, Tirana where she holds meetings with commanders and senior members of the group.
What has driven her to the group’s base in Albania and stay there for a long period of time? She might have found it vital to reorganize her group in the absence of her disappeared husband Massoud Rajavi.
The major reason might be the increasing number of defection from the group. During the past week, at least three ex-members of the group officially announced their disassociation from the MKO and declared their readiness to denounce its abusive and violent nature. Azim MishMast, GholamAli Mirzaiee and Musa Damrudi are the most recently defected ones. All of the three were among the longstanding members of the group who left it after at least three decades.
These are just a few examples of those who officially declared their defection. Definitely, the number of defectors are far more than what is broadcasted in the media. Once the MKO was resettled in Albania, the situation became safer for defectors compared with Iraq where most members were terrified by the leaders for what they called the influence of the Iranian regime—however, hundreds of members of the MKO left the group in Iraq, especially after the disarmament of the group by the US military in 2003.
After the relocation in Albania, a large number left the group secretly and in silence. Zeinab Hosseinnejad whose father Ghorbanali had left the group a few years earlier, could manage to leave the MKO and move to Greece. Her defection was not covered in the media until last week that her sister Mona and her father travelled to Greece to visit her. The tragic videos of the reunion of the Hosseinnejads after so many years of separation was widely viewed in the social media.
Today, Maryam Rajavi’s primary struggle is the preservation of members inside the cult-like structure of the group. As she tries to convince members to stay in the organization, her so-called struggle for freedom and democracy makes no sense.
In fact, while she uses the group’s propaganda tribunes to boast of her riot units (or the so-called resistance units) in Iran, she actually is fighting the resistance units that has been established by the suppressed members inside her group.
An insider from the group has revealed that long-time manipulative meetings are organized in the group’s headquarters in Manez Durres in North of Tirana. The MKO’s secretary General Zahra Merikhi runs the sessions in which she accuses members for not being enough dedicated to the cult jargon “Cleansing on the Scene”.
Cleansing on the Scene includes self-disclosure of sexual thoughts. Members have to disclose all their sexual thoughts and desires before their peers and peers, in their turn, are tasked with verbally abusing them. This is a process of cleansing to win the struggle against Iranian regime, according to the leaders of the MKO.
The prominent paid supporter of the MKO John Bolton promised the overthrow of the Islamic Republic before 2019, in a paid speech at the group’s rally in July 2017. Now, there are only two months left to the promised moment. The group leaders have to endeavor a big challenge to keep the members in order to prevent the collapse of their establishment, let alone the overthrow of the Iranian Government.
Mazda Parsi
She is staying at the Tirana’s International Hotel and has meetings with top and senior officials; Meetings with European authorities have also been arranged.
The recent presence of Maryam Rajavi in Tirana, in addition to foreign visits, seems to have no ceremonial reasons and it focuses more on the internal issue of the organization and organizes the status of its members.
Also, another reason that eliminates the integrity of the organization is Bolton’s promise to overthrow the Iranian regime before the fortieth anniversary of the revolution.
Because of the failure to realize this, the collapse of the system in the eyes of the members of the organization at Camp Ashraf 3 is a very far-reaching dream and this has caused internal organizational challenges, and the organization is trying to justify this issue.