Camp Ashraf Torture Room [the photo is taken after Camp evacuation]
Islamic Society of Shiraz University held an exhibition on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in Fajr hall of the campus from November 4th until November 13th.
The exhibition included films, banners, posters and articles on the substance of the cult, its violent past and its current approach in today world as well as Q&A meetings with defectors of the cult and university professors.
The event was welcomed by students and scholars. Former members of the MKO were constantly present in the gallery hall to discus students’ questions.
The 19th International Exhibition of the Press and News Agencies took place at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Mosalla (Grand Prayers Ground) from October 28 to November 3, 2012.
The Nejat Society representatives introduced the Society’s objectives presenting photos, brochures and publications to the visitors. They emphasized that their main goal is to help families contact their beloved ones who are captured in cult-like camp Ashraf in Iraq.
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Another member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization fled the group last week.
Mr. Taqi Saleh, 47, was a high ranking member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization who left the MKO after 22 years and joined UN forces installed at camp Liberty, on Monday, Dec.3, 2012. 
Following the evacuation of camp Ashraf, the Cult leaders have to impose more severe mind control system and work time schedule over members in order to keep the members’ minds and bodies busy and eventually to prevent their defection. But, the more they enhance the pressure, the less the members are willing to stay in the cult.
It is worth to notify that Mr. Nasrollah Tokhm Afshan was also a long time member of the Cult of Rajavi who left the group, last week.
Inside this Issue:
- U.N. chief appeals for countries to take MKO members
- Intl. reporters visit Camp Ashraf for the first time
- Former US Official: I wish MEK Died out in 1980’s
- The next pro-MEK lobbying effort is about to begin
- Q&A: what is the MEK and why did the US call it a terrorist organisation?
- Iranian terrorist group now freedom fighters, in U.S. eyes
Download Pars Brief – Issue No.69
Download Pars Brief – Issue No.69
Dear UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,
The residents of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization’s headquarter in Iraq, Camp Ashraf moved to
a Temporary Transit Location, Camp Liberty near Baghdad airport, according to the Memorandum of Understanding signed by UN special representative, Ambassador Martin Kobler and the Iraqi Government. Previously too reluctant to move to TTL (Camp Liberty), having settled down in the new site, the MKO leaders are now seeking the recognition of Liberty as Refugee Camp by the UN.
Regarding the testimonies of recently defected members, the leaders of the MKO are making efforts to maintain the manipulative controlling system of their cult-like group in Camp Liberty. They even do not allow the residents to use the facilities allocated to them by the UNHCR. Members are not allowed to use telephones, televisions. They have no access to the world outside the Cult of Rajavi, yet.
Systematic psychological pressure is heavily used against the Cult members. Manipulation sessions are held much more severely, according to escapees from Camp Liberty.
Members of the group are not permitted to visit their families who have been waiting to meet their loved ones in a free atmosphere, for so long.
Today, the leaders of the MKO seek to turn Camp Liberty to a small-size Camp Ashraf, with the same regulations and the same cult-like structure. They have ramped up suppression against members in order to prevent the collapse of the group. Thus, their last resort for the time being is to push the UN to recognize Liberty as a Refugee Camp. This way, they can prolong their stay in Iraq and eventually the structure of their cult-like organization.
Mr. Secretary General,
One of the most crucial rights deprived from the MKO members is the freedom to choose for their fate; to choose where to live; to choose where to go. Definitely, you and your respectable colleagues stand for individuals’ basic human rights but the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi continue to violate the members’ rights day and night. They intend to turn the temporary transit camp to a permanent refugee camp and ultimately another container for their cult of personality.
Do not allow the cult leaders to keep on abusing our loved ones mentally and physically imprisoned in their cult trap. Appreciating the acts of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq in the evacuation of Camp Ashraf, we shall be pleased to see your prompt cooperation to aid the residents of TTL decide for their own future without the supervision of the MKO authorities.
Respectfully,
Nejat Society
The Mujahedin Khalq Organization was first placed in the list of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” after the list was created in 1997 because of its alliance with Saddam Hussein and the 
assassination campaign it launched against American civilians and military personnel working in Iran in the 1970s. Although designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the MKO’s lobbying campaign was highly active in US Congress and Administration. [1]
There have been numerous reports on American support for the MKO during the years it was considered a terrorist group. The peak of US sponsorship for the group was revealed by Seymour Hersh’s piece on New Yorker,” Our Men in Iran”. The report exposed that the MKO militants were trained by the US Joint Special Operation Command in Nevada. [2]
Practically the MKO’s designation as a terrorist organization, did not affect its functions in the international community so much. Nor it affected the group’s internal Cult-like relations.
In September2012, the US State Department decided to remove the MKO from the FTO list. The delisting was announced while the State Department emphasized that it “doesn’t overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism including its involvement in the killing of US citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on US soil in 1992.” The statement read, “The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members". [3]
Actually, the DOS’s concerns about human rights violations committed by the leaders of the cult-like MKO have never prevented the group from its lobbying efforts in the US Congress whether it is listed or delisted. Furthermore, the group’s terrorist designation had no impact on its cult-like practices and its violent behavior against dissident members inside the group.
Once the MKO is delisted, its neo-con supporters will simply more freely support the group although the removal from the list will have no substantial impact on the group’s external functions.
The other crucial change for the MKO was its removal from Camp Ashraf its three-decade home — granted by Saddam Hussein– in Iraq. Following the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq and the Government of Iraq,[4]the MKO was supposed to evacuate Camp Ashraf by the end of 2012.The evacuation process was almost completely accomplished. The Camp residents were transferred to Camp Liberty, a former US base near Baghdad airport.
The removal from Camp Ashraf was an influential phase in the four-decade life of the organization. It significantly affected the group’s internal relations.
Temporary Transit Location (TTL/ Liberty) is guarded by Iraqi Police which has installed several stations in the base. The MKO’s base is no more an isolated, fenced and barbed piece of land in the desert. It is located in the neighborhood of Baghdad where a Shiite government, with friendly relationship with Islamic Republic is ruling.
The camp is also monitored by the UN representatives. Now, the leaders of the MKO have to work harder to maintain the integration of the cult. They have increased cult-like pressure and organizational control over members to prohibit the collapse of their establishment. Members, who have recently fled the TTL, described the severe mind control schedule imposed there right now. Majid Mohammadi is a former MKO member who left Liberty in May 2012. He believes that moving to the new camp has raised the members’ spirits. Therefore, ”the cult leaders had to increase their control over members so that they can maintain the cult relations and structures”, he said in an interview.”They seriously fear members talking to each other”. Moving to TTL has narrowed the leaders’ influence over the forces although they have extended their mind control meetings up to "12 hours a day". [4]
On the other hand, far from the Iranian border, the MKO operatives have almost lost the capacity to launch terrorist acts or to dispatch teams across Iran-Iraq border.
Following the removal of terrorist label from MKO members and also the removal of Ashraf bars from their bodies and minds, they are more likely to find a way out of the Cult of Rajavi on the grand of provided legal opportunities. They can seek asylum in third countries or return to Iran by the aid of UNHCR and the GOI. The eventual collapse of the cult is not so far. The impact of the MKO delisting on the group’s external functions is not really as much as the impact of Ashraf evacuation on the group’s internal functions.
By Mazda Parsi
References:
[1]Sahimi, Mohammad, Don’t Remove the MEK From the Terrorist List, Antiwar.com, July 6th 2011
[2]Hersh, Seymour, Our Men in Iran, the NewYorker, April 6th, 2012
[3]US Department of State, Delisting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, Office of the Spokesperson, September 28, 2012
[4] https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/4898
Zanan Iran Association (Iran’s Women) – established by a number of former female-members of the destructive Cult of Rajavi – held a meeting in November 2012.
Zahra Sadat Mir-Baqeri, one of the defected leaders of the MKO, said that she has some information about the sexual abuse of female members by the main ringleader of the terrorist group, Massoud Rajavi.
“Rajavi abused women in the Camp Ashraf sexually and there is a list of 100 young girls and women who had gone under surgical operations to be raped by Rajavi,”she said.
Mir-Baqeri said that the surgical operations were carried out to take out the victims’ wombs so that they would not be pregnant after being raped by Rajavi. This is while they were falsely told that they needed surgical operations for being infected with anemia or kidney problems.
Islamic Society of Shiraz University held an exhibition on the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) in Fajr hall of the campus from November 4th until November 13th.
The exhibition included films, banners, posters and articles on the substance of the cult, its violent past and its current approach in today world as well as Q&A meetings with defectors of the cult and university professors.
The event was welcomed by students and scholars. Former members of the MKO were constantly present in the gallery hall to discus students’ questions. Visitors were eager to know who the mujahedin Khalq were, how the members were fist recruited by the group and what motivated them to leave the group. Trying to reveal cult-like nature of the cult and its threat against the international community, they described how they were victims of a full-scale manipulative system under the order of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
Ebrahim Khodabandeh was one of the cult defectors who was received at Shiraz University to enlighten the minds of students who rarely had any idea of the MKO. He described cult-like techniques Rajavi uses to manipulate his members in order to achieve power in Iran.
As experts believe that the threat of cults is a crucial issue in the world today, the objective of the organizers of the exhibition was to illuminate the minds of their audience about the danger posed to the victims of Rajavi’s destructive cult and the risk of involvement of any ordinary person with mind-control cults including the MKO.
