Members of the MEK - Nejat Society

To a Brother in the MEK: I Cried When I Saw Your Photo

Nejat Society — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:30:05 +0000

Amir Hezbepour was serving his army service in 1987 when he was taken as hostage by the Mujahedin-e Khalq agents in Iran-Iraq border. He was a soldier of Iranian army who was kidnapped by the MEK and since then he has been isolated from the outside world including his family in Iran.

Amir has not contacted his family for 39 years except for two times: The first time was in Iraq, in 2004 when his father went to Camp Ashraf. He was just allowed to visit Amir for a few minutes under the supervision of MEK commanders. His later trips to Camp Ashraf were not successful. He was no more permitted to visit his beloved son.

During these years, Amir’s brother, Adel has been cooperating with Nejat Society in order to send messages to his beloved brother in the MEK and so he has been labeled as an agent of the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence ministry. This is the MEK’s tactic to demonize all families who want to contact their children taken as hostages in the group’s cult-like system.

The second contact was made by Amir! He was forced by the group leaders to write against his own family calling them “Monsters”. “My family are the Resistance Units who are fighting the regime in Iran,” he added.

However, Adel had learned from former members of the MEK that Amir and many other members of the group are manipulated and coerced to write such words against their families. Thus, he continued writing letters to send love to his beloved brother. This is a part of his last letter that has been published in Persian on Nejat website:

Yesterday I received a new photo of you. To be honest, I was very happy that I was able to see a picture of you once again, and I was also very sad that after all these years I only had to see your photo and why can’t I even hear your voice?

My good brother, when I saw your photo, I just cried in silence for a few minutes, and in those few minutes, all the past memories with you flashed before my eyes. I remembered the cries and moans of our parents, because of their distance and lack of news about you, and I felt sad for them, who passed away with a lot of regret and sighs.

Amir Hezbepour is now in the MEK’s headquarters called Ashraf 3, in Manez, Albania. Residents of Ashraf 3 are not allowed to leave the camp. They are not allowed to have any contact with the outside world either. Their families, in Iran and across the world, like the Hezbepours are deprived from their basic rights to contact their loved ones.

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Why was the status of Ashraf 3 residents not renewed?

Nejat Society — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 09:22:33 +0000

How the leaders of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) bypassed the UNHCR since their departure from Iraq
More than ten years have passed since the transfer of the first group of members of the MEK from Iraq to Albania. During this period, a large number of members of the organization have managed to free themselves from its physical and psychological bars and step into the free world. However, more than two thousand members of the organization still live inside a base called Ashraf 3, in northern Albania, near the small village of Manz. There could be various reasons for these people staying in an authoritarian organization with cult-like practices, the most important of which is their identity status.

Ray Torabi, a former member of the MEK, shared some facts about the identity status of residents of the MEK headquarters in Albania on his X social media account. He is a former child soldier of the MEK, and left the organization in 2017 after spending 18 years of his adolescence and youth in the group.

Torabi, who has so far made significant revelations about the violent and cult-like nature of the MEK, writes about the obstruction created by MEK leaders regarding the legal status of its members upon their arrival in Albania.

“The MEK bought many Albanian politicians with a lot of money,” Torabi says. “Also, the initial agreement, according to which all MEK members were transferred to Albania, made it very easy for the authorities to control, imprison, and pressure members.”

He went on to explain the initial agreement between the MEK and the US and Albanian governments to transfer members to Albania:

“That agreement made it very easy for the MEK to control its members because it gave the cult full responsibility for its members. Another important point is the legal status of MEK members in Albania. Members do not have a permanent legal status. A few years ago, the government issued an ID card with a temporary status to each member, but its expiration date has passed and MEK officials did not allow it to be renewed. Therefore, the members’ departure from the camp is not permitted because they do not have valid documents.”

complementing Ray Torabi’s explanations, we can mention the statements of Hamid Atabay, another former member of the MEK. Atabay, who spent 29 years of his life trapped in the MEK’s prisons, spoke about his experiences during his membership inside the group, in a recent interview. In part of his testimonies, he discussed the conditions of the MEK members when they left Iraq and were transferred to Albania.

The former member of the MEK, who was captured by the MEK as a prisoner of war during the Iran-Iraq War in his youth, recalls that in 2013, during the transfer to Albania, MEK officials presented a document to the ranks and, in an emergency, under pressure and trick, coerced them to sign it.

According to this document, each member of the MEK declares that he is fully satisfied with his membership in the group and is determined to remain in it and that he has no request for cooperation in obtaining asylum from international organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

This document was actually submitted by the MEK to HCR. Thus, many MEK members who decided to leave the group after it was relocated in European soil faced a major obstacle resulting from signing that document, according to which the commissioner would not provide them with any assistance in obtaining legal status.

Based on Hamid Atabay’s testimonies, whenever a member of the organization sought legal asylum in Albania, his signature on the aforementioned document was shown to him as a legal obstacle.

Therefore, the individuals who have so far managed to escape the mental and physical bars of the MEK –there are many of them – have been able to overcome countless mental, physical and legal obstacles. Escaping a military and authoritarian cult that has used all its might to preserve its forces is an extremely great and admirable achievement.

Mazda Parsi

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Who is Mahvash Sepehri?

Nejat Society — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 08:47:36 +0000

Mahvash Sepehri nicknamed Nasrin is one of the most high-ranking members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) positioned after Massoud and Maryam Rajavi in the hierarchy of the group. She was born in Sanandaj in 1956.

Sepehri was assigned as the forth head of the Elite Council in 1997. This way she got in the same rank as Maryam Rajavi was. The rank was called”the orbit of the ideological leader”.
Sepehri is notoriously known by the majority of MEK members and defectors. After Massoud and Maryam, she was the first person who was authorized to hold ideological sessions in the group. Ideological meetings are routine brainwashing sessions held in the MEK in which members undergo the most severe cult jargons including self-criticism, peer pressure and even verbal and physical abuse. Thus, she has had a key role to suppress dissident members and those who were willing to leave the group.

According to the testimonies of Maryam Sanjabi, former member of the group, in the early 2000s, Sepehri personally put about two hundred members of the group on trial. She sentenced them to imprisonment and torture and in several cases delivered them to the Iraqi notorious prison, Abu Quraib. The group leaders had labeled these members as “weak circles”!

“A building with a big hall was allocated to her to hold the trial sessions for dissident members”, Sanjabi writes.

“The sessions were exhausting and unbearable. The bitter memoirs of those days will not be wiped of the minds of those people. Mahvash Sepehri ordered her servants to beat and insult the tried person, spitting on him or her and throwing chairs on him or her. “

Mahvash Sepehri was the avant-garde of promoting the culture of violence and insult inside the MEK. She has also been a significant figure to coerce the women of the Elite Council of the group.

“Mahvash Sepehri officially declared in the meetings of the Elite Council that any woman who wanted to leave the establishment, would be slaughtered,” Sanjabi recalls. “Leaving the Elite Council was equal to death. That proper person had to swallow her cyanide capsule before leaving the group.”

Hamed Sarrafpour who defected the group after the collapse of Saddam Hussein and the disarmament of the group, recalls a conference at Camp Ashraf after the disappearance of Massoud Rajavi following the fall of his master Saddam. The MEK members in the conference were addressed by Massoud via phone call. He tried to introduce Sepehri as a role model for every Mujahed.

“Massoud described Mahvash Sepehri as a member who has totally denied her individuality,” Sarrafpour writes. “Then she was introduced by Maryam Rajavi as the head of the Elite Council! She seemed to be qualified for the position.”

Mahvash Sepehri could reach the unattainable position that was at the same level of the leadership just because she was perfectly radicalized by the leaders. Sanjabi believes that Sepehri was simply radicalized and turned into a zealous devotee of Massoud Rajavi because she had never been a knowledgeable person in politics or even in military issues. Her brain was shallow enough to receive any cult-like training by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. She easily turned into the torturer of the MEK. “A large number of former members of the MEK who survived the group’s jail in Iraq, remember her as their head torturer,” Sanjabi states.

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Who is Mehdi Abrishamchi?

Nejat Society — Sat, 12 May 2018 06:55:58 +0000

Mehdi Abrishamchi is a senior member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/MEK/ the PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi. He was born into a merchant family in Tehran, in 1947. He studied chemistry at the University of Tehran. He joined the MKO in 1969. He was imprisoned by the shah forces in 1972 for his involvement with the MKO that was an anti-shah and anti-imperialism movement at the time. He was in jail until the 1979 Iranian revolution.

After the Revolution, Abrishamchi became one of the senior members of the organization. Soon after, the MKO broke out with the Iranian government, he along the MKO and fled to Iraq finding a safe haven near the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was at war with the Iran.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Abrishamchi was a unit commander in the ‘National Liberation Army of Iran’, the military wing of the MKO –Saddam’s Private Army—fighting against Iranians. After the collapse of Saddam and the consequent disarmament of the NLA and the disappearance of Massoud Rajavi, Abrishamchi was evolved to be a top an official of the group’s political wing ‘National Council of Resistance’.

Abrishamchi was married to Maryam Qajar Azdanlou, the younger sister of a veteran member of the group until January 1985. In 1985 that the leader of the MKO Massoud Rajavi decided to marry Maryam. Thus Abrishamchi divorced Maryam in order to pave the way for Massoud and Maryam’s marriage that would be then called the ‘ideological revolution’. He congratulated Massoud and Maryam in the big celebration that the group held in Paris. Whatever the true reasons behind the marriage, the results were crystal clear. The marriage ended to more isolation of the rank and file. Shortly after, he married to Mousa Khiabani’s younger sister Azar who was only 17 years old at the time.

Mehdi Abrishamchi has been one of the top authorities of the MKO to run Massoud Rajavi’s rule over the rank and file. He believes that “Brother Massoud” is a prophet and a representative of God on the Earth.

After the 9/11 disaster in the US territory, Abrishamchi congratulated the group Massoud and Maryam in a gathering that was held in the group’s camp in Iraq in order to celebrate the catastrophic incident. “The collapse of the Twin Towers is a big sign of decomposition and annihilation of the USA,” he addressed the audience.

Abrishamchi is currently living in France acting as one of the key figures of the MKO’s propaganda against the Iranian nuclear program and is engaged in other disinformation campaigns against Iran. After the relocation of the MKO’s members from Iraq to Tirana, Albania, he was charged with a new responsibility.

Once the group had been resettled in a European country, the increasing rate of defection of the group made Maryam Rajavi to seek a solution to prevent more members from leaving the group. Make a proper decision to stop more departure from the group. Rajavi sent two top level to mend this problem. Fixers –Mehdi Abrishamchi and Zohreh Merikhi – to intervene to stop the rapid dissolution of the MKO.

Former members of the MKO recount horrible testimonies of how Abrishamchi treats the dissents in the group. He is a hated figure for ex-members of the group who call him a” torturer” and the “guardian of the Maryam Rajavi’s prison”.

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Who was Mousa Khiabani?

Nejat Society — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 09:53:38 +0000

Mousa Nasir Oghli Khiabani aliases Musa Khiabani was a veteran member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization and among the central committee of the organization in 1970s. After the revolution Musa was the second most important leader of the MKO after Massoud Rajavi.

Mousa Khiabani

Ervand Abrahamian in his book “Radical Islam; the Iranian Mojahedin” pens:”

The revived Mojahedin was under the firm control of Masud Rajavi and his hand-picked entourage, most of whom had been in his commune in Qasr Prison. Musa Khiabani, Rajavi’s right-hand man, had been among the sixty-nine tried in 1972. Even then, despite his young age, he had been considered important enough to warrant a life sentence. The son of a humble and devout shopkeeper on the Tabriz bazaar, Khiabani frequently participated in the Moharram flagellation ceremonies. Graduating from the local high school, he won a state scholarship to study physics in Tehran University where he joined the Mojahedin and volunteered to go to Lebanon for guerilla training. En route, he and his colleagues were intercepted in Dubai; it was this that prompted the famous 1971 plane hijacking. One of the very last of the shah’s prisoners to be released, Khiabani wasted no time in returning to Tabriz to rebuild the Mojahedin. Until his death in February 1982, Khiabani and Rajavi acted as the organization’s main spokesmen, and consequently outsiders tended to view the two as equals; but insiders knew Rajavi to be pre-eminent.”

Mousa Khiabani

Musa Khiabani killed along with Ashraf Rabiei and 20 other members of the organization in an attack to their team house on February 8, 1982.

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Mojahedin Khalq fugitive Mohamad Shariti inadvertently filmed at Maryam Rajavi’s HQ

Nejat Society — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 10:20:48 +0000

This short film by Michael Ware of National Geographic was taken at the headquarters of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (MEK) in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. In the film we hear four leading members of the Mojahedin Khalq discuss their aims with Ware and how they believe these can be achieved. They state both the ‘public’ stance of the MEK – they believe in peaceful change. At the same time they state the ‘internal’ ideological belief of the MEK – that regime change demands ‘resistance’ (MEK code for armed struggle).

Also at the meeting, although not taking an active part, is a man called Mohamad Sharifi. In 1986, Sharifi was Secretary-Treasurer of a charity called the Iran Relief Fund, Inc. After an investigation into the charity, Sharifi and others were summoned to court on charges of funding terrorism. According to the state prosecution service, the charity claimed the money it raised would “alleviate human suffering” among Iranian refugees. In reality all the money went to fund the MEK’s military bases in Iraq. Prosecutors described the Iran Relief Fund as a “subsidiary of a violent pro-terrorist group” the MEK.

At the time Sharifi denied any involvement with the MEK, but left America before the case was brought to court and went to Iraq. He remains on the US’s wanted list. It may be of interest to American law enforcement agencies that Sharifi is now resident in France and living in the MEK headquarters.

Charities such as this are part of an international network of money laundering entities which have been used for decades by the MEK to pass off money paid by sponsors. Money paid into the charities and associations is used to fund the speakers fees and trips of supporters such as Rudi Giuliani, John Bolton, Newt Gingrich and many others.

Iranian Mojahedin member punished for stealing food cans in a Babrru market

Nejat Society — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 10:00:42 +0000

MEK member arrested in Tirana Albania. An Iranian citizen, one of the Mojahedin refugees hosted in Albania, ended up as a defendant in the Court of Tirana, reports Panorama.

He was tried for committing theft, an offense which he committed while living at the Mojahedin asylum seekers refuge in Babrru village.

The trial of 47-year-old Mohsen S. ended a few days ago. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 6 months in prison.

He was tried under ‘obligatory appearance’ as a security measure and will not end up in cells. The court suspended his prison sentence for 18 months during which he must not commit any further offence.

The Tirana Court decision clarified that the defendant, Mohsen S., was currently based at the asylum seekers centre located in the capital’s province of Babrru. On August 31, 2016, around 13:30, he was caught by the owner of a market stealing food goods in his shop.

The market in question is a short distance from the center where Mojahedin asylum seekers have been placed. According to the Court decision, the defendant Mohsen S. placed some food stuff into the bag he had with him and tried to leave without paying. His actions were observed by the owner of the supermarket.

The owner prevented the 47-year-old from leaving his shop. In the refugee’s bag he found three cans of fish, a bottle of a carbonated soft drink and a bottle of ketchup. The supermarket owner informed the police.

After his arrest, criminal proceedings on the charge of theft were brought against the Iranian. The defendant admitted to the theft. At the same time, he admitted that he had also stolen goods the day before in the same market but stressed he was unable to pay because he had not yet received any payment from the Mojahedin organization.

Before and during the trial the defendant admitted the offense and showed deep repentance, asking forgiveness from the Court with the promise that he will not commit such an act again. In justification of the suspension of sentence for the defendant, the court emphasized that he posed little social danger, had no previous convictions and the fact that the defendant is seeking asylum in Albania.

Opinion Website (translated by Iran-interlink)

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Veteran MEK member Mohammad Ali Jaberzadeh Ansari died in Paris

Nejat Society — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 13:02:07 +0000

Veteran MEK member Mohammad Ali Jaberzadeh Ansari (aka Ghasem) died in Paris last week. He was famous in the MEK for writing the speeches and communications of Massoud Rajavi, and was in charge of all the Mojahedin’s publications. While doing that he is also accused by many formers of acts of brutality, beatings and torture. Several writers responded to his death with their memories of what he had done to them while they were members of the MEK.

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Albania: Radicalized MEK member convicted for attempted rape of 11-year-old boy

Nejat Society — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 12:13:19 +0000

An Iranian man, Mousa Jaberifard, was sentenced to three years in prison by the Court of Tirana, Albania after being convicted for the offense of sexual harassment and attempted rape of a minor. He was arrested in March this year after the parents of an 11-year-old boy called the police.

Jaberifard arrived in Albania in 2014 as one of the Mojahedin Khalq members from Iraq. A local family became friends with him. The family’s 11-year-old son told police that after going to the market with Jaberifard to buy bread, they arrived back at his apartment where Jaberifard undressed and tried to have sex with him. After many attempts, the boy managed to escape and inform his family who immediately called the police.

Jaberifard is one of over 2500 radicalised Mojahedin Khalq members who have arrived in Albania since 2013. Iran-Interlink warned last week:

“For the local citizens, mystery surrounds their arrival and their lifestyle. Should these secretive and covert neighbours be treated with suspicion or kindness? At a local level, the first thing neighbouring families need to be aware of is that among all MEK members, sexual relations have been banned for over 25 years. This means there are no marriages or children or young people in the organisation. More troubling are the obligatory confessional meetings in which members are required to admit any sexual thoughts or feelings and be punished for them. With this emphasis on sexual matters, it is not known how such people may react when they come in contact with ordinary people and their children.”

Even though the group arrived in Albania under the auspices of the UNHCR, there is no programme to deradicalise members of the group. This means that even if they separate from the MEK, the members remain radicalised and can still pose a threat.

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Fugitive heads of the MKO Cult: Fahimeh Ma’huzi

Nejat Society — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 12:39:24 +0000

The Mujahedin-e Khalq ( MEK/MKO) criminal heads are running away from Camp Liberty, Iraq using false passports. These are the elements who have been involved in terrorizing, torturing and killing operations and are mostly wanted by Interpol.

They are mostly escaping to Albania and then to European countries.

Information and photographs of several of these fugitive elements has been exposed by former members of the MKO destructive cult.

Fahimeh Ma’huzi :

She operated as tank commander during the Mujahedin-e Khalq Pearl Operation in Iraqi Kurdistan in which Rajavi took orders from Iraqi dictator; Saddam Hussein to massacre Kurdish villagers. Maryam Rajavi famously ordered her forces to run over the victims with their tanks so as not to waste bullets unnecessarily. The MEK, acting as Saddam’s Private Army, were used to viciously quell the Kurdish uprisings (intifada Shabaniyeh) in the North.

She also functioned within the MKO Cult as one of the commanders of the Interior section ( Bakhah-e Dakheleh ). The “Interior Section” focus was inside Iran. That is this section was in charge of recruiting members, attracting money, spying and sabotage operation inside Iran. The MKO tricked many unaware people and deceptively transferred them to Iraq.

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