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.
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 fami
ly’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.
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.
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.
For several years she was the Director of Finance and money laundering system of Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist group.
She also ran the so called Control Section of the group.
Safaei imposed her dictatorship on rank and file through torture and harassment.
The Control section of the MKO destructive cult have had required the commanders to constantly monitor members and prepare reports over the members’ all personal, mental and physical state.
In addition members are required to participate the daily, weekly and monthly mandatory brainwashing sessions in which they have to confess all their acts as well as all their private thoughts and dreams. The members are harshly punished even for their dreams.
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.
Hamideh Shahrokhi aliases Zahra Alipour.
She is a veteran member of Mujahedin-e Khalq group. She has been actively involved in suppression within the MKO Camps. Hamideh Shahrokhi is on the Iraqi wanted list for committing crimes against humanity in the country.
She operated as commander of military and support bases and participated at the MKO terrorist operations: Pearl and Eternal Light.
In the MKO’s Pearl Operation against Iraqi Kurds she operated as commander of the MKO’s forefront forces to attack the Kurdish towns issuing the order to kill civilians.
She is one of the main elements holding mandatory brainwashing sessions for the members.
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.
Samira Shams under the title of; “Chief of Staff Support”.
She participated in the 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 actively participated in suppressing the Mujahedin-e Khalq Cult hostages at Camps Ashraf and Liberty.
She is one of the main elements of the MKO Cult in suppressing dissatisfied members of the group and preventing them from leaving the Cult.
Meet The Weird, Super-Connected Group That’s Mucking Up U.S. Talks With Iraq
When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki begins a three day official visit to Washington today, he’ll face predictable questions about Iran, Syria, and Iraq’s own political instability and soaring violence. Top 
lawmakers, however, will press him on a very different issue: the recent killings of dozens of members of a former terrorist group that the Iraqi government had promised — and failed — to protect.
The Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK, is the most powerful lobby you’ve never heard of, and probably the most unusual. It has used a combination of political savvy and seemingly bottomless pools of money to persuade many prominent lawmakers and former officials from the Bush and Obama administrations that it has broad support within Iran and could help turn the country into a democracy. Along the way, it’s gone from being as seen as a group responsible for the deaths of at least six Americans to one that is a vital partner in the effort to overthrow Iran’s theocratic regime.
MEK supporters like New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, say they want to punish the Maliki government for an attack on an MEK compound called Camp Ashraf last month that left that killed at least 50 of its members. During an October 3rd hearing, Menendez told Wendy Sherman, the number three official at the State Department, that he would suspend U.S. weapons sales to Iraq until more was done to protect the MEK members at the base.
Vice President Biden discussed the MEK issue when he spoke with Maliki Wednesday morning, according to a senior administration official. The official said Baghdad wanted the MEK to leave Iraq, but said the U.S. government had no credible information that the Iraqi government was involved in the September attack on Camp Ashraf. Still, the official said that Washington worried that the group’s roughly 2,900 members would be in danger until they could be moved to new homes in other countries. The problem, he said, was that Albania and Germany were the only nations that have so far been willing to take in even small numbers of MEK followers.
Menendez aides say the senator, for his part, plans to specifically raise the Iraqi government’s treatment of the MEK members, along with his concern that Baghdad is allowing Iran to use its airspace to fly weapons and fighters to Syria, when he sits down with Maliki later Wednesday.
“It is unacceptable to lose one more life when American commanders gave these individuals a written guarantee toward their safety and it sends a message to others in the world that when we say that we are going to do that and we do not, that they should not trust us,” he said at the time. “I doubt very much that we are going to see any approval of any weapons sales to Iraq until we get this situation in a place in which people’s lives are saved.”
The MEK has also enlisted prominent retired officials to tout its cause in public speeches and private meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill. Its long list of supporters includes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Attorney General Mike Mukasey, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, retired Marine General Jim Jones, Obama’s first national security advisor, and retired Army General Hugh Shelton, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
MEK advocates like Rendell receive up to $30,000 per speech, which means many have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the group. Rendell, in an interview, said he genuinely believed in the group’s cause and wasn’t in it for the money. He said that he and MEK advocates like Jones and former FBI Director Louis Freeh have spent hundreds of hours personally lobbying the State Department and members of Congress on behalf of the group and had done so pro bono. Rendell said he bills $1,000 per hour as a lawyer, which meant that had foregone significant amounts of money to aid the group.
“The U.S. had promised to guarantee their safety and then just stood aside when they were massacred, gangster style,” he said in the interview. “It’s disgusting.”
Rendell helped draft a letter to Obama last week that demanded U.S. assistance for the MEK members still stuck at Camp Ashraf. In the letter, obtained by FP, MEK’s advocates said the killings at Camp Ashraf was a “premeditated mass murder planned at the highest level and executed by Iraqi forces and agents, using equipment and training provided by U.S. forces.”
“We urge you to allow all of the Camp Liberty residents to be evacuated immediately from Iraq, using United States forces, and brought to safety in a United States Government supported facility,” the letter read. Until that happened, the group argued, the Obama administration should “suspend any aid or sale of arms to Iraq.”
For the moment, that’s not a step the White House is prepared to take. Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said the administration was “deeply concerned” about the safety of the MEK members at Camp Ashraf and consistently pressed the the Iraqi government to do as much as possible to protect them. Still, she said that delaying weapons sales to Iraq could do more harm than good.
“U.S. security assistance, and foreign military sales in particular, are tools that we use for building and shaping Iraq’s defense capabilities and integrating Iraqi security forces with our security forces and regional partners,” Meehan said. “Withholding security assistance may well serve to decrease our influence in Baghdad, our ability to seed relationships, and provide leverage for strategic competitors who will fill the vacuum and could conceivably damage our long-term interests.”
Administration officials said the president would discuss a range of regional and security issues with Maliki when the Iraqi leader visits the White House Friday but declined to say whether the president planned to specifically raise the MEK issue.
Either way, the MEK’s prominent role in the U.S.-Iraqi relationship represents a remarkable turnaround for a group that was once held responsible for a string of bombings and assassinations inside Iran that killed at least six Americans, including the deputy chief of the U.S. military mission to Iran and a senior Texaco executive. It was also linked to the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. In 1997, the State Department designated the group a “foreign terrorist organization,” a move that imposed strict financial sanctions against the MEK. The MEK’s current leadership has long denied any involvement in the killings or the seizure of the embassy.
The group’s relationship with Washington improved dramatically after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The MEK group gave up its weapons and formed a warm relationship with senior American commanders, who gave the group formal promises of protection. Last month, however, masked gunmen with military-quality weapons swept into an MEK compound outside Baghdad, killed roughly 50 of its members and abducted seven others. Grisly videos released by the MEK showed the corpses of men who were shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs. The group’s supporters here at home immediately accused Maliki’s government of orchestrating the attack, something Baghdad denies, and called for it to be sanctioned in response.
The MEK’s power in Washington surprises many experts on the group, who describe it as a cult that exerts tremendous power over the daily lives of its followers.
Jeremiah Goulka, a former RAND researcher who has made repeated visits to Camp Ashraf, said MEK leaders physical cut their members off from the outside world, limit their access to outside newspapers or TV stations, and enforce gender segregation and celibacy. He said the MEK required its followers to attend regular sessions where they were forced to admit whether they had sexual thoughts. Those that admitted to them were publicly humiliated, while those that denied having them were derided as liars and criticized anyway.
“That’s the definition of how a cult works,” he said.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the group had little support back home because ordinary Iranians were nationalists troubled by both the MEK’s vaguely socialist ideology and its past relationship with Saddam Hussein, which funded the group’s operations for decades. Many outside experts believe the MEK is still drawing from the pools of money it received from the former Iraqi leader.
“What keeps them in the news are their deep pockets,” Sadjadpour said. “Once those deep pockets run out they’re basically going to be rendered irrelevant.”
By Yochi Dreazen
In my last post, I noted that Hassan Daioleslam — the man at the center of the ongoing NIAC controversy — has been “said by multiple sources to be affiliated with the Mujahedin-e Khalq 
(MEK, or MKO) — a terrorist group (classified as such by the State Department) with close ties to the Saddam Hussein regime.” Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin is skeptical, accusing me of participating in a “Leftist smear-fest”. While I find her general tone rather overwrought, I do think that her request to provide more details to back up the claim is reasonable, so I’ve compiled a few statements (including two by former MEK members) concerning Daioleslam’s role in the group. I believe these statements show that suspicions about Daioleslam’s MEK ties are well-founded.
Massoud Khodabandeh, former MEK member who is now a leading expert on and critic of the group: “I can say without doubt that Hassan Daioleslam is a member of what I call for accuracy ‘the Rajavi cult’ [referring to MEK leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi]. In this respect he is obedient to the Rajavi leadership and would not act in a way inconsistent with their requirements and certainly not without their knowledge or consent (if not to say actual order). The term ‘membership’ describes his relationship to the Rajavis. The MKO, just like Al Qaida, does not have ‘membership cards’. But I doubt very much the MKO would deny that he is a member, just as they never have denied that Alireza Jafarzadeh is a member. Daioleslam’s writing is on the MKO websites. They do not publish just anyone’s writing. Only those obeying organisational constraints.”
Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, former high-ranking MEK member who the group held in solitary confinement for over eight years and then turned over to Saddam Hussein’s security forces for his dissent from offical MEK policies: “Hassan Daioleslam, who is also considered as a member of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (Rajavi Cult) had been under harsh criticism for a long time by the cult leader Massoud Rajavi because he would not leave the USA and join the cult under the rule of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
But now, in the new circumstances in which the remnants of the Rajavi cult after the fall of Saddam Hussein find themselves in western countries, Hassan’s social position and his ability to speak English has grabbed the attention of Rajavi. He seems to be next in line to be consumed [for the group’s interests].” (Taken from a 2007 article by Sobhani; read the whole thing for a fuller description of the Daioleslam family’s deep involvement with the MEK. Daioleslam’s brother Hossein and sister Fatemeh are both leading MEK members.)
Mehdi Noorbaksh, professor of international affairs at Harrisburg University: “I know Daioleslam very closely and personally. He is not a journalist but a perfume merchant. He was a former member of MKO who was critical of the organization for many years. He was living in Europe for several years until he moved to the United States in Phoenix, Arizona. He was re-bought by MKO one more time and he is now active in selling and defending the positions of this terrorist organization. Those who know him know well that his commitment to MKO is opportunistic.”
Other knowledgeable parties have also spoken privately to me about Daioleslam’s MEK ties; anyone with further information they would like to share publicly should feel free to contact me.
For more background on the MKO, see the State Department’s description of the group on its terrorism page. Human Rights Watch also released a report in 2005 detailing the group’s record of subjecting dissident members to torture and solitary confinement.
Founded as a militant group with an ideology combining aspects of Islam and Marxism, the group is frequently described today as “cult-like,” built around a personality cult centered on leader Maryam Rajavi. The State Department notes that members are “required to undertake a vow of ‘eternal divorce’ and participate in weekly ‘ideological cleansings,’” and that “children are reportedly separated from parents at a young age.” After Rajavi was arrested in France in 2003 on suspicions of plotting terrorism, MKO members throughout Europe protested by setting themselves on fire; two of them died.
The group’s hatred of the Islamic Republic led it to ally with Saddam Hussein, and it fought on the Iraqi side of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Following the Gulf War, “the group reportedly assisted in the Iraqi Republican Guard’s bloody crackdown on Iraqi Shia and Kurds who rose up against Saddam Hussein’s regime; press reports cite MEK leader Maryam Rajavi encouraging MEK members to ‘take the Kurds under your tanks,’” according to the State Department. The group’s alliance with Saddam made it widely despised among the Iranian community at large, as it remains to this day.
However, its militant anti-Iranian stance has made it a favorite of hawks in Washington. Several of them — most notably Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) — participated in a 2005 Washington conference in support of the group. The same year also saw the founding of the pro-MEK Iran Policy Committee, headed by Raymond Tanter of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). The MEK’s neoconservative supporters continue to push for it to be taken off the State Department terror list, which it has been on since 1997. One of the many ironies about the MEK is that, for all the groundless allegations that hawks made about Saddam Hussein’s connections to terrorist groups during the runup to the Iraq war, the terrorist group with perhaps the closest links to Saddam was one that the hawks themselves supported.
So it seems that the neoconservatives who have gotten in bed with Daioleslam may have some explaining to do. If he is indeed an MEK operative, as the evidence strongly suggests, then he is, to say the least, a rather unlikely standard-bearer for the cause of democracy and human rights in Iran.
By Daniel Luban – Cross-posted on The Faster Times
An official in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraq is looking for a country to accept 
36 detained members of an Iranian opposition group.
The announcement was the first clear signal from the government on its plans for the men, who were arrested in a raid on their camp in northern Iraq in July and have been ordered released by Iraq’s chief prosecutor. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The official said the detainees would not be sent to Iran, where they would likely face arrest, but Iraq is seeking to send them to a third country. The official gave no other details or specific timetable.
The men were moved to Baghdad last week from Diyala Province, northeast of the capital. They are members of a resistance group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, which claims many of the men are severely weakened from a hunger strike to protest their detention.
Iraqi judicial authorities did not pursue charges against the men after their detention.
The group operated for years in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but nearly 3,500 members have been confined to a camp since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The U.S. military turned over responsibility for Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis on Jan. 1.
In Baghdad, former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and seven other members of Saddam Hussein’s regime went on trial on charges of planning the slaying of a prominent Iraqi opposition figure in Beirut in 1994 …
By SAMEER N. YACOUB
Iranian security forces have arrested an MKO ringleader and disbanded his cell in the northern city of Qazvin, a provincial judiciary official announced on Monday.
“An individual, affiliated with an anti-revolutionary party and active in anti-Islamic Republic propaganda, was arrested,”Seyfollah Maleki, Interrogator of Qazvin’s public and revolutionary court, told reporters.
Identifying the inmate as”A.J”, Maleki announced that the detainee who is a physician had arranged meetings to propagate against the Islamic Republic for the benefit of the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO).
The detainee has also been charged with procuring and distributing statements to encourage and provoke people into illegal gatherings and rallies.
Insulting Iran’s leadership as well as the countries authorities and high-ranking clerics are among other charges filed against the 38-year old arrestee.
Maleki also announced that the security forces have arrested 20 individuals in connection with the case, adding that all the inmates have admitted to their crimes.
