{"id":6864,"date":"2017-03-18T09:48:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T09:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/2017\/03\/18\/sitting-down-with-the-mek\/"},"modified":"2021-01-21T19:23:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T15:53:07","slug":"sitting-down-with-the-mek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/posts\/6864","title":{"rendered":"Sitting Down with the MEK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Ware meets with high-level representatives of the MEK, a group that wants to overthrow the Iranian government.<br \/> <img alt=\"\"src=\"https:\/\/st.nejatngo.org\/Image\/Writer\/Michael_Ware.jpg\"style=\"width: 400px; height: 212px; margin: 10px; float: right;\"\/>Michael Ware, an Australian journalist from National Geographic, investigated the Mujahedin-e Khalq that he met during the Iraq War. He describes MEK as &ldquo;the living epitome of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.&rdquo;<br \/> He met them in Iraq back in 2005 when he was a war correspondent. After the American invasion of Iraq, he went to the Camp Ashraf, the MEK&rsquo;s headquarters, and shot a footage. There he interviewed some female members of the group and now after more than a decade he&rsquo;s &ldquo;chasing down the story of who and what the MEK is now. How many of the MEK are left? Where are they and who is supporting them today?&rdquo; He adds that he also wants to find the girls he met back in 2005 at Camp Ashraf.<br \/> He started his journey from Paris, &ldquo;chasing an Iranian spy ring across Western Europe.&rdquo; He has tried a lot to &ldquo;get in touch with someone, anyone inside the group who will talk&rdquo; to him. After 6 days, he could finally arrange a meeting with Shahin Ghobadi, an MEK spokesman, and found his way into the MEK headquarters. He sat with MEK&rsquo;s high-level representatives, Mohammad Mohaddesin, Shahin Ghobadi, Farzin Hashemi and Sarvenaz Chitsaz.<br \/> His main question from the MEK representatives was about the method they want to use to overthrow Iranian government. But they did not reveal too much and they&rsquo;ve gone &ldquo;a long way around to not answering my question.&rdquo;<br \/> He asked for a meeting with the girls he met at Camp Ashraf and they said they are in Germany.<br \/> &ldquo;A look I catch here or there lets me know they are still ready to fight for the revolution,&rdquo; he concluded.<br \/> Ware and his crew flew to Berlin, hoping to meet with the girls. Shahin Ghobadi joined them in Berlin and took them to a symbolic hunger strike, which was &ldquo;part of a broader MEK propaganda war to gain both new recruits and support for their cause.&rdquo;<br \/> He believed that Germany was a diversion and the girls were not there.<br \/> Although the MEK had warned them, if they went to Albania, they&rsquo;d be on their own, they set off for Albania, where some 3000 MEK members are settled.<br \/> They went to the MEK camp, outside Tirana. Surprisingly, Shahin Ghobadi followed them to Albania, &ldquo;to make sure things go smoothly here in Albania.&rdquo; There, he was only allowed to &ldquo;see what Shahin wanted&rdquo; him to see. &ldquo;He opened one door and shut another.&rdquo;<br \/> He finally met with two of the girls and sat with them, hearing their story.<br \/> In the end, Michael Ware said that certainly the MEK is &ldquo;still very much devoted to its cause&rdquo; and they will happily give their lives.<br \/> &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Ware, an Australian journalist from National Geographic, investigated the Mujahedin-e Khalq that he met during the Iraq War. He describes MEK as \u201cthe living epitome of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[6],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[102],"class_list":["post-6864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-duplicity-within-mujahedin-khalq-organization","tag-uncategorized","module-article","ctype-story","blog-irandidban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6864"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=6864"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=6864"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=6864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}