LONDON- A one-day conference exploring two important issues \u2013 extremist political cults such as Larouche\u2019s and how to combat them, including a discussion of possible legal remedies; and an update on the institutional barriers faced by the Jeremiah Duggan campaign.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Dr Masoud Banisadr, PhD The son of a prominent Iranian family, he entered radical political activity in 1978 while pursuing his postgraduate studies in Engineering-Mathematics. Then, he was 24 happily married with a one-year-old daughter. The group he affiliated with, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), played a prominent part in the mass demonstrations and paramilitary activity that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. After Mek\u2019s failed uprising in 1981, it changed into a clandestine terrorist group and Rajavi, MeK\u2019s leader, and many high-ranking members, escaped to France. Soon MeK underwent a radical transition into a cult and by the late 1980s, MeK members were compelled to divorce their spouses, give up their children and live celibate for the rest of their life. In 1986, Banisadr became the representative of the group to UN agencies and human rights organizations, and later their representative in the US, acting as a sort of unofficial ambassador of MeK. He escaped MeK in June 1996 and later wrote a memoir of his experiences entitled Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (2004) and has written many articles about cults and their mind manipulation, including his 2014 book, Destructive and…..<\/p>\n