Mahin Habibi attended the sit-in of families of Nejat Society in front of the office of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in Tehran.
She is the mother of Parvaneh Rabiee, a member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq. She has not met and even contacted her daughter for over forty years. The years of separation from her beloved daughter has left her with grieves and pains.
As a young girl, Parvaneh had immigrated to Germany where she was taken as a hostage by the MEK recruiters. Leaders of the MEK do not allow Parvaneh to contact her mother because they consider family as the enemy of their cult-like organization.
Listen to the heartbroken mother of Parvaneh.
Nejat Bloggers
Members of Nejat Society used the occasion of May 8th, the International Day of Red Cross to call on the world for the release of their loved ones. Families of hostages of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) are members of Nejat NGO who have been looking forward to visiting their loved ones in the group, for decades.
Since the establishment of Nejat Society, families have taken numerous actions to attract attention of the world to the humanitarian crisis that members of the Cult of Rajavi are faced with. When the group was in Iraq, families used to travel there to hold sit-ins in front of the gates of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty.
However, they were never allowed by the MEK leaders to visit their loved ones. Through loudspeakers they called the names of their children and asked them to leave the group. This was the slightest chance to show their love to their loved ones who are mentally and physically barred from the outside world by the Rajavis. And this action worked in many cases. Several members of the cult eventually left the group during the next years. Their process of defection from the Cult of Rajavi had started after they had heard their names cried by their suffering family members through loudspeakers.
Today, far from the Iranian border, members of the MEK are still isolated in the group’s headquarters called Ashraf 3, in Manez, a village in north of the Albanian capital, Tirana. Families are not granted visa to travel to Albania due to the group’s corrupted links in the Albanian government. Thus, they must use every opportunity to make the international human rights bodies hear their voice for help.
Yesterday’s sit-in by the heart-broken parents and grieving brothers and sisters of the MEK hostages in front of the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tehran was another step forward. They demanded the authorities to step in and aid them to contact and visit their beloved family members taken as hostages by the MEK leaders.
Nejat Society has a complement in Albania. ASILA, the Association for the support of Iranians Living in Albania is somehow a branch of Nejat in Albania. ASILA was established by some of the Albanian citizens and former members of the MEK who previously left the group in Albania. On May, 8th, 2023, they also gathered in front of the ICRC’s office in Tirana.
Carrying placards and pictures of their loved ones and their friends, members of Nejat and ASILA asked the authorities of the ICRC to take immediate action to stop violation of human rights against members of the MEK, hostages of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
Their demands include the followings:
They should be granted the right to contact and visit their loved ones in the MEK.
The right of MEK members to take asylum should be observed by the Albanian government.
The MEK leaders should be compelled to stop violating the human rights of their members.
Tomorrow, Monday, May 8th, on the occasion of the ICRC Day, considering the responsibility and role and position of this international organization, the families of Nejat Society in Tehran will hold a rally in front of the main headquarters of the ICRC.
The families hope to be able to convey their rightful and legal requests for follow-up to this institution and other international organizations as well as the media and the world public opinion.
Simultaneously with this program, which will start at 14:00 Iran time, the former members of the Rajavi terrorist cult, members of ASILA in Albania, will also hold a similar rally in solidarity with the families of Nejat Society in front of the ICRC headquarters in Tirana.
The news of the gathering and the text of the statement and request of the families will be announced as soon as possible after the program is implemented.
Mosayeb Rashidi was taken as a war prisoner in 1980. He was a young newly married soldier of the Iranian army. Iraqi Baath forces trapped him in Iran-Iraq border in the early months of the war. He was in Saddam Hussein’s notorious POW camps for 9 years.
Mosayeb’s wife was pregnant when he was taken as a POW. Their daughter was born a few weeks later and eventually she grew up in the absence of his father. The little girl turned into an adult, got married and had children.
She has not seen her father since her birth. In 1989, Mosayeb was recruited –in better words was taken as a hostage– by the agents of the Mujahedin-e Khalq who collaborated with Iraqi officers in POW camps.
Since then, Mosayeb’s family have not been able to contact or visit him. When the group was in Iraq, they traveled to Iraq and picketed across the gates of the MEK camps, asking for permission to visit their beloved Mosayeb but the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi did not allow them to visit him and did not let Mosayeb know that his family had come to visit him.
He is now in the MEK’s camp Ashraf 3 in Albania, and he is still isolated from the outside world, having no access to his family, his daughter and his little grandson.
Former member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) speaks of imprisonment of children in the group. He writes about kids who were in custody in the MEK’s prisons because their parents wanted to defect the group.
Samad Nazari was a former member of the MEK who defected the group more than three decades ago. He returned to Iran and then he became one of the founders of Nejat NGO. His auto biography titled “Footprint of the Evil” was focused on the years of his membership and imprisonment in the MEK and defection from the MEK. Nazari passed away in the Fall of 2014.
In 1991, at the time of the first Gulf war, Samad Nazari was jailed in solitary confinement in the MEK’s Debes prison (Askarizadeh camp) near Kirkuk, Iraq. He was punished for his decision to leave the Cult of Rajavi!
In two parts of his memoirs of custody inside the MEK, he notifies that women and children were also imprisoned in Debes prison.
He was jailed in his dark and dirty cell in Askarizadeh when the coalition forces bombarded the camp. “I heard the loud noise of 5 bombs that hit the area,” he writes in his book. “A thick suffocating dust entered my cell which was in the basement. I could hear the cries of women and children from the upper floors of the camp. I realized that there were other guests in that prison, those who were willing to leave the group.”
In other part of his horrific memoirs of solitary confinement and torture under Massoud Rajavi’s ruling, Nazari writes:
“In my new cell, there were words written in a child-like handwriting: Mom died, Dad is in jail.” Nazari was curious to know that whose child was in prison. Later, a friend who had been imprisoned in the same cell, told him about the poor child. “The handwriting belonged to the kids of a man called Farhang. He wanted to defect the group in the summer of 1991. Soraya Shahraki, a commander of the group beat Farhang and jailed him. His two kids who were primary students were taqken from school and delivered to him in the cell. Their mother had been killed in the MEK’s cross border operation against Iran, Forough Javidan.”
This was only one of the testimonies of MEK defectors about violation of human rights against children in the MEK. There are numerous cases of children rights abuse in the MEK. The followings are just some of them:
– Nadereh Afshari, former member of the MEK writes in her book of new-borns who had been separated from their parents and had been smuggled to Europe. They were maltreated by a female Mujahed, named Azam who worked in the group’s team house in Coln.
– Mother Esmat, former member testifies about her younger daughter, Jennifer, whose knee was injured because of the military trainings inside the MEK school. Jennifer’s ponytail hair was also cut by the teacher because she had not wear hijab.
– Amin Golmaryami and Amir Yaghmai, former child soldiers testified about sexual harassments they experienced inside the MEK camps.
– Hundreds of child soldiers endured heavy military trainings and even were coerced to launch terrorist operations.
– Many child soldiers were killed in the group’s operations. Maryam Qeitani was only 15 years old when she was killed in Forough Javidan. Having been grown up in the MEK’s bases Asieh Rakhshani was in her twenties when she was killed by Iraqi armed forces because Massoud Rajavi had ordered his unarmed members to clash with Iraqi army.
– Alan Mohammadi and Yaser Akbarinasab were two teenagers who could not stand the dictatorship of the Cult of Rajavi and committed suicide.
To the list, add hundreds of children who were orphaned by the MEK leaders, left in foster families across Europe and North America and were never able to find their parents again.
Nejat Society was established as a non-governmental organization two decades ago. As members of Nejat NGO, families of hostages of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) took numerous actions in order to release their loved ones from the cult-like terrorist group of Massoud Rajavi.
Traveling to Iraq for picketing in front of the gates of Camp Ashraf was one of the actions taken by the families. The following video shows mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who are crying the names of their loved ones over the walls of Camp Ashraf, Iraq, during the winter of 2010.
To download the video file click here
Some of the hostages whose names are called left the group through the next years, mostly after the group was relocated in Albania. They might have heard the heart-breaking cries of their loved ones through loudspeakers over the gates of Ashraf. The mental bars around their minds might have been broken on those very days.
Since its relocation in Albania, the MEK has been downsized due to the increasing defections but there are still a few thousand people who are mentally and physically barred by the Cult of Rajavi. Now, the group’s new headquarters, Ashraf 3, is far away from the Iranian border. For families, traveling to Albania is a big challenge because the Albanian government does not grant visa to the Iranians. The reason is not rational but understandable.
As wealthy bribe payers, the MEK agents in the Albanian government make efforts to prevent families to come to Albania which is a semi democratic country in the soil of democratic Europe.
As a matter of fact, families of the MEK’s hostages never give up. They take actions, they write letters to human rights bodies; they send public messages to their loved ones in Ashraf 3 because they hope that the mental bars will smash someday and their beloved children will be determined to leave the Maryam Rajavi’s cult.
Amin Asadan was a young guy from North of Iran who was kidnapped by the agents of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/ PMOI) . Amin is one of the hundreds young men who were taken as hostages by the MEK recruiters in Turkey.
Amin has not been allowed to contact and visit his family during the 24 years of membership (in better words, imprisonment) in Massoud Rajavi’s cult of personality. He has been deprived from access to the outside world in both headquarters of the group in Iraq and Albania.
Back in Iran, Amin Asadan’s family took actions in order to visit their beloved son but they did not succeed. “Amin was such a passionate young hardworking man seeking an ethical life,” Amin’s brother, Amir Asadan says. “In the early 2000s, he went to Turkey in order to find a better job. The whole family were happy with his decision, but we did not know that he would be a victim of Rajavi’s mafia. They had deceived him to join the MEK in Iraq under the promise of transferring him to Europe.”
This was the U-turn in Amin’s life. The start of a long-term separation from his family. “He has been taken as a hostage by Rajavi and he has not contacted us for 24 years,” his brother adds.
Amin’s mother sends a message to his beloved son in the hope that he will see it sometime:
Dear Amin. I miss you a lot. I am looking forward to your return. Yor father passed away and let me alone over a decade ago. My only hope is that you get back home before I die.
My beloved Amin. I need to have you more than any time. I insist you to call me, to return home so that I could hug you, kiss you and live by your side.
The Mujahedin-e Khalq is by every definition of the term a religious cult. The same as other religious cults, the MEK is committed to perform religious rituals. Rituals would include (but not necessarily be limited to) prayer, fasting, sacrifice, vowed offerings, processions and construction of monuments. Some degree of recurrence in place and repetition over time of ritual action is necessary for a cult to be enacted, to be practiced.
The MEK has all the criteria that other religious cults have. They have a unique group language, they require intense work schedules of members, their leaders will often deliver endless sermons, and they will restrict access to media. Members are directed not to ask questions, and professional help or healthcare and outside information are restricted.
Similar to other religious cults, for the MEK, religion acts as a kind of social “glue”. In times of rapid social change, existing rules, habits and beliefs no longer hold. This produces an environment ripe for exploitation – usually by a charismatic man –who is Massoud Rajavi– with all the answers to members’ problems.
This is the tragedy of cults and in particular the MEK that they exploit freedom of belief, freedom of association and freedom of religion – with often abusive and damaging outcomes. Musa Jaberi, former member of the MEK writes about the religious obligations he endured in the MEK, on his Facebook account. “The leaders of the Cult of Rajavi force you to say prayer”, he writes.
Jaberi explains how the group commanders coerced him to perform religious rituals. “I told them saying prayer is an individual issue, but they paid no attention to my words,” he recalls.
The brainwashing sessions were started to convince Jaberi to perform the rituals. “I was forced to attend brainwashing sessions twice a week,” he said. “Not only one commander, but several commanders were supposed to manipulate me, each of them from an aspect.”
Finally, Jaberi began saying prayer but only when commanders could watch him. However, criticism started again. They would say, “We see your changes, and this is good progress but why don’t you say your prayer with your peers?” (Congregational Prayer)
Again, he resisted but he failed. He joined the congregational prayer every night because he did not want to undergo those hectic manipulation sessions once more. “Rajavi’s cult of personality does not care about your personal Individual desires.” Jaberi writes. “They impose their religion which is not a religion. It is a dictatorship.”
Following the arrest of an ex-member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq while entering Iran, Massoud Khodabandeh former personal security guard of the MEK leader notified the usual technique used by the group leaders to victimize dissident members.
On April 8th, the Iranian news outlet, IRNA reported that an Iranian security source had announced that an MEK member had been arrested while trying to enter Iran from Albania on April 4. This man whose name is Ehsan Bidi has defected the MEK seven years ago but he has under too much pressure by the side of the group because he was a harsh critic of Maryam and Massoud Rajavi.
Massoud Khodabandeh who is now a long-standing critic of the MEK leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, refers to their background of pushing dissident members towards Iran-Iraq border in order to eliminate them. He twitted:
“I remember days Maryam Rajavi would use Saddam’s protection to force members cross the border only to be arrested & executed? Now she is doing it from #Albania.
She need blood no matter whose it is.
Hope Iranians would not give her the satisfaction.”
Paid hefty fees by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, lobbyists of the group have been actively working to advocate its cause as “a democratic alternative” to the Islamic Republic. The cult-like MEK with a long background of violence and terror is supported by a number of politicians in the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Canada.
For Canada, the MEK has been particularly close to figures in the Conservative Party, including former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others in his cabinet. This coalition has helped position Canada and others like Israel and Saudi Arabia in their proxy wars against the Iranian government.
According to the Hill Times, Academics and analysts say Canadian politicians backing democracy in Iran should stop attending events organized by a controversial group that Canada once listed as a terrorist organization that is neither “legitimate nor democratic.”
The Associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs told the Hill Times that the MEK are “no friend of democracy in Iran and Canadian politicians should avoid attending MeK events.”
Thomas Juneau also twitted: “Cluelessness: NOT the case for Harper; I know for a fact he knows the MeK is a thuggish, corrupt, undemocratic cult with no support in Iran.”
This is not a new warning by Canadian academics. In August 2019, Stephanie Carvin who worked as a national security analyst with the government of Canada at the time the MEK was a listed terrorist entity, told Canada’s National Observer that the fact that current and former Canadian politicians attend MEK events is deeply problematic.
Politicians attending MEK events “help create the illusion of legitimacy,” said Carvin, who is an assistant professor of international relations at Carleton University. “It also creates the perception of influence.”
The MEK’s lack of public support inside Iran and its terrorist, cult-like background has so far been covered and investigated by many journalists, scholars and think tanks. The Amercian RAND Institute, for example described the MEK in 2009 as holding “many of the typical characteristics of a cult.” Such characteristics, it wrote, include “authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options.”
The recent investigative reports published by The Intercept, British broadcaster Channel 4 and Al Jazeera English have depicted MEK “troll farms” where members create thousands of inauthentic accounts on a daily basis and promote hashtags and tweets, targeting anyone that favours diplomacy with Iran. Human Rights Watch has reported that MEK leaders force people to issue false confessions.
In 2006, the National Post published an extensive report about a Canadian family that got wrapped up in the group. And in 2003, Neda Hassani, a 26-year-old Carleton University student, became a martyr for the MEK when she set herself on fire in front of the French embassy in London to protest the arrest of its leader by police in France.