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MEK, a religious fanatic cult

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.

The MEK leaders force members to perform religious rituals

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.

Musa Jaberi, former member of the MEK

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.”

April 26, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

A DEMOCRACY IN ABSURDITY!

The MEK was founded as a democratic Islamic movement in September 1965.
The group settled in Iraq in 1986 and built Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border, after collaborating against their homeland with then-president Saddam Hussein.

Washington designated the group as a terrorist organization since in 1997 they killed 6 Americans in 1970.

In 1986 the movement moved its base of operations to Eastern Iraq, but the situation changed with the American invasion to Iraq. US forces attacked their targets but after a while reached a ceasefire and after disarmament, it was decided that they would be held at Camp Ashraf, a former Iraqi military base.

This resistance group was considered a terrorist organization by the US due to the killing of American personnel in Iran during the 70s. But with the withdrawal of Americans from Ashraf in 2011, the acts of violence between them and the Iraqi soldiers began.

CRYSTAL MEDIA 224 on the MEK

A DEMOCRACY IN ABSURDITY!

In 2013, the first group of 210 mujahedin took shelter in our country, while today we count over 3000 people who are sheltered in Manez, in Albania.

The decisions of the Berisha and Rama governments at that time regarding the acceptance of the mujahedin have never been made public, therefore the information about that is minimal and the conditions of their acceptance are not known.

In June 2015, some Iraqi media reported that the MEK was buying or had bought property in Albania to set up a camp like the one they once had in Iraq. According to them, such a camp can be transformed into a base for the training of various terrorist organizations.

But nowadays, from many accounts I have heard from former members of the Mujahideen, I have understood and heard the miserable conditions they live in this camp of Manze in Albania.

Apart from this, the most important thing is that this group believes that it is a democratic organization while falls into a paradoxical contradiction in the conditions that many fundamental rights are not implemented in this camp.

One of the main democratic principles is the right to speech, opinion and dignity. This has not been implemented in the group.

For the mujahedin organization, freedom of speech means that you write down all your opinions on a piece of paper and then all of them are examined by Massoud Rajavi, and a few of them are replies if any. Where is the freedom here?

We call ourselves free and with democratic principles if we could be able to state whatever we think and want.
Is it freedom that they have to get a visa to leave the manza camp to a few meters or kilometers outside the camp?

Is this called freedom?

But the thing that surprised me the most in the conferences and confessions of these former members of this organization, is that the right to have a family is not allowed!

A former member told me that he has his brother very close, only 35 km away, and he hasn’t met, talked or communicated with him in 7 years.

The most absurd find!

The most absurd thing I have heard is the statement that Massoud Rajavi and his wife say that the family is your enemy!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can a parent be an enemy when he mourns for 30 years for his child whom this organization has declared dead for some mothers, while they have seen them in this organization’s own cinema performing live.

That mother mourns and seeks her child, this organization forces its member to call his or her parent an enemy.

That mother does not ask for anything more than a phone call!

By Aldo Sulollari Journalist – Crystal Media 224 – translated by Nejat Society

April 25, 2023 0 comment

Maryam Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi needs blood no matter whose it is

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.”

April 18, 2023 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

Where are the Mujahedin al-Khalq Children?

Within Iran and among Iranians, the Mujahedin al-Khalq (MEK) is perhaps the only group less popular than the regime itself. The group’s argument that the Iranian regime’s opposition to them affirms their popularity is nonsense. By the MEK’s logic, Iranian regime opposition would affirm the popularity of both Saddam Hussein and the Islamic State.

There are five main reasons for MEK’s unpopularity:

First, there is history. The MEK was alongside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini an important force in the Islamic Revolution, an event most Iranians today see as a historic mistake.

Second, there is terrorism. Prior to the Islamic Revolution, the group targeted Americans, killing several military officers and businessmen. After the MEK lost out to Khomeini in a post-Revolutionary power-struggle, they turned their terrorism toward regime officials, often killing innocent bystanders in bombings.

Third, there is treason. In 1980, Iraq attacked not the Iranian regime, but the entirety of the country. Ordinary Iranians, the majority of whom were ambivalent if not hostile to Khamenei, fought for their country. Saddam Hussein’s war aims, after all, went beyond regime change to seizure and annexation of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzistan province. At the height of the crisis, the MEK made common cause with Saddam.

Fourth, there is ideology. Iranians want democracy. The MEK may speak about democracy, but its commitment is superficial. Rather, the group’s ideology centers upon a bizarre mixture of Marxism and Islamism. Many Iranians want Western-style freedoms; the MEK, in contrast, continues to sing anti-American anthems.

Fifth, is the group’s behavior. It acts like a cult. Maryam Rajavi, the group’s paramount leader following the disappearance of her husband Massoud two decades ago, was herself victim of a forced divorce and re-marriage in 1985.

MKO Terrorist Group Hires Top US Lobbying Firm BGR

Indeed, while too many American politicians are willing to take money from the MEK and its front-groups, no matter how murky its origins, the group’s cult-like behavior should raise alarm bells in Washington, London, and Brussels.

The basis of any cult is to isolate its followers from competing narratives, arguments, and reality. First at Camp Ashraf in Iraq and then at its reincarnation in Albania, the MEK imposed strict isolation upon its members. Even in the United States and Canada, MEK members live in strict social isolation from the outside world. They read only ME-crafted publications and refuse to coordinate in any meaningful way with the broader Iranian diaspora.

After the US invasion ended Saddam’s rule, investigators interviewed camp residents. What they found astounded. The MEK would regularly separate children from their parents and force children into group homes. Brainwashed, the group would then recruit the children and impress them into its military operations. A German High Court found that, prior to the 2003 Iraq War, the MEK siphoned off social welfare benefits its group homes and foster parents claimed on behalf of MEK children. When MEK children approach adulthood, the MEK arranges marriages.

They can get away with it because social isolation extends to the young. In both Albania and the United States, it appears that no MEK members’ children attend public or private schools not run by the organization, nor can MEK members’ children even play with non-MEK neighbors. Essentially, there is little difference between an MEK child growing up at the group’s camp in Albania, and a North Korean child growing up in Kim Jong-un’s bubble.

In response to such reports, the MEK and its representatives often cast aspersions and allege grand plots. Previously, I followed footnotes in MEK rebuttals to find they were mostly fictional or irrelevant to the arguments at hand. Human Rights Watch did similarly.

High five-figure honoraria for a five-minute testament to Maryam Rajavi may seem harmless enough. Western officials may believe no harm can come of their endorsement, as Rajavi is irrelevant anyway to Iran today. The reality, however, is harm is great. Not only does such amplification of the MEK allow the Iranian regime to rally people around the nationalist flag, but it also throws obstacles in the way of the Iranian opposition’s evolution toward a common front.

Every American politician should realize that money is not free: It literally takes food out of the mouths of children.

By Michael Rubin – AEIdeas

April 17, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

How MKO indoctrinated refugees in Germany to be ‘child soldiers’ against Iran

Luisa Hommerich, a Berlin-based investigative journalist with the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, couldn’t hide her joy and thrill on February 10 as she triumphantly announced the end of a protracted legal battle against a terrorist cult.

Hamburg district court had a few days ago dismissed a lawsuit filed by the German branch of the dreaded West-backed terrorist group, Mujahedin -e-Khalq Organization (MKO), after a legal fight that lasted more than ten months.

The lawsuit, in particular, took umbrage to an investigative report published in Zeit Magazine on October 28, 2021, which laid bare how the anti-Iran terrorist cult, with overt and covert support from German authorities, trained refugee children from the city of Cologne as “soldiers” in a military camp in Iraq’s Diyala Governorate in the 1990s.

Hommerich, who painstakingly worked for months on the explosive story, took to Twitter to declare that the MKO had been “unsuccessful” in the legal battle, and hastened to add that the original article was removed from the paywall “to celebrate”.

Around 3,500 MKO members, many of them child soldiers, were living at the notorious Camp Ashraf, 40 miles north of Baghdad, when the Iran-Iraq War ended in 1988. (File Photo)

MKO, she explained in one of her tweets, was “once on terror lists (of Western governments)”, but “are today engaged in lobbying work and maintain contact with (Western) politicians”, pointing to the collusion between the terrorist cult and Western states.

Lawsuit ‘rejected’

In a press statement released on February 23, Zeit publishing group said the lawsuit filed by the MKO terrorist cult had been “rejected” by the Hamburg court, paving way for the re-distribution of the October 2021 report “in its original form”.

The default judgment in the case was issued on January 28 and delivered to the publishing group on February 7, which announced it through a press statement on February 9, which editors at the publishing group shared with the Press TV website.

The statement said the Albania-based terrorist cult and its local branch in Germany were “supported by some members of the Bundestag”, referring to the German federal parliament.

The lawsuit filed by the MKO, in particular, took exception to “eight passages” in the Zeit Magazin article and pressed for their removal. The magazine stood its ground, triggering a long-drawn-out legal battle that ended earlier this month.

In a preliminary verdict on January 19, the Hamburg court found most passages “lawful” and “rejected the request for an injunction”, the Zeit statement noted, adding that the main protagonist of the story, Amin Golmaryami, an Iranian-German national, was indeed recruited as a “child soldier” by the terrorist cult.

The court battle kicked off in April 2022, almost six months after the article was first published. In a Twitter post on April 22, Hommerich said she had reported about Golmaryami being “smuggled into Iraq” by MKO sleuths and was ready to “defend the investigation” before the Hamburg district court.

Later that day, after appearing in the court, the Die Zeit journalist said Golmaryami and five other victims of the terrorist cult had turned up to “testify as witnesses” but “were not heard”.

“One of them demonstrated in front of the courthouse, and in front of about 30 MKO supporters brought by the other side,” she wrote, sharing pictures of a person holding a placard that read “I was a child soldier, I demand justice”.

Anti-MKO protesters at a court in Hamburg in April 2021. (Twitter)

Key protagonist

The report, originally published in Zeit Magazin on October 27, revolved around Golmaryami, who came to Germany as a refugee child in the early 1980s.

At the tender age of 15, he and many other young Iranian refugee children in Cologne were forcibly taken to Iraq to be trained as “child soldiers” against the Islamic Republic.

While other victims chose not to narrate their harrowing ordeal in the captivity of the MKO terrorist cult due to safety concerns, Golmaryami decided to break his silence.

“Blame the man himself with his wishes – and the family. You have to renounce all of that. Only through devotion to a leader can one become “pure”,” the Zeit Magazin report cited Golmaryami as saying, recalling how he and his compatriots were indoctrinated by the Maryam Rajavi-led extremist cult.

The investigation revealed that at least 40 children and young people, who had come to Cologne as refugees without their parents, were smuggled into Iraq in the mid-1990s.

Golmaryami, born in southwestern Iran’s Abadan city, was one of them who spent at least 12 years at Camp Ashraf, the notorious headquarters of the terrorist cult at the time.

The camp has since been closed and shifted to Albania on southeastern Europe’s Balkan peninsula, where among others, Golmaryami’s mother also lives.

She was “brainwashed”, her son exclaims, distraught and helpless.

Golmaryami was allowed to see his mother last time in the summer of 2019, in a restaurant in Tirana. When he offered to help her escape the camp, she became aggressive.

German magazine Die Zeit’s article about the former MKO child soldier, Amin Golmaryami, published in October 2021. (Die Zeit)

“Only traitors and agents of the Iranian regime say things like that,” she yelled at him, the report noted. “He no longer hopes to be able to save her.”

The report quoted Golmaryami as saying that he “internally resisted being brainwashed” by the MKO. “Only rarely did he express his true thoughts. That’s how he kept a clear head.”

“Most of the 40 minors who are believed to have been smuggled into Iraq from Cologne (by the MKO) have reportedly gotten out in the meantime. Many are said to be living in Cologne again,” the report stated.

“At least 10, however, are said to be with the People’s Mujahideen (MKO terrorist cult) somewhere in the world. Some are said to have died in attacks in Iraq.”

MKO’s German wing

In a follow-up article for Zeit Online in November 2021, reproduced by other news outlets, Hommerich said Golmaryami and others like him were “manipulated and detained” by MKO agents using “psychological techniques”, “mind control”, and “brainwashing”.

Based on months-long research, archive material and internal documents, Zeit Online revealed that the terror cult operates in Europe and the US under the label of the ‘National Council of Resistance Iran’, with German headquarters in a posh neighborhood of Berlin.

The group enjoys the support of the German Solidarity Committee for a Free Iran (DSFI), which has, among others, former Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth on its advisory board.

German lawmakers – including Thomas Erndl (Christian Social Union), Lukas Köhler (Free Democratic Party), and Bernhard Daldrup (Social Democratic Party) – have often participated in the events organized by the MKO and DSFI.

Norbert Lammert, who served as the 12th President of the German Bundestag (federal parliament) from 2005 to 2017, has also been seen attending events hosted by Rajavi.

Norbert Lammert, the former President of the German Bundestag, addressing an MKO rally in front of the German Parliament, in October 2020.

Zeit Online report, citing anonymous sources, revealed that senior German politicians like Süssmuth worked with the DSFI to take many of these young refugees after they left Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and most of them ended up in a villa in Berlin-Wilmersdorf after their arrival.

“We thought we were coming to Europe, to freedom,” one of them was quoted as saying in the report. “But in Berlin, the organization’s officials continued to monitor us mentally, emotionally, socially, and financially.”

Task cut out

They had their day’s task cut out: wake up at seven o’clock and started working, including collecting donations on the street. In the evenings, they would attend “ideological meetings” wherein they had to reveal their forbidden thoughts – including about their own family.

These helpless MKO cadres were also subject to “sleep deprivation” as political meetings sometimes continued throughout the night, from around 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“Destruction of social ties” was another diabolic technique used by the cult. They were not allowed to contact family, friends or even fellow cadres. The “mission” was what mattered.

They were also shielded from any outside information and barred from reading newspapers and magazines or listening to the radio or music. Internet available was heavily censored.

This manipulation and mind control, the report cited “dissidents” as saying, was designed to have “cheap workers” who would work for the terror cult’s goals – propaganda against Iran.

“Some would have looked for politicians or kept the German-language websites of the organization up to date. Others organized demonstrations,” the report stated.

Most of these people were also required to collect donations for the terror cult, by standing in pedestrian zones and showing doctored pictures of “victims of torture and starving children”.

This practice also extended to stealth ‘clubs’ that were run from the Berlin villa. Some of these ‘clubs’ are still functional, operating under the names of ‘Aid for Human Rights in Iran’, the ‘Association for People and Freedom’, or the ‘Association for Hope of the Future’.

Lobbying and donations

A former MKO member was cited as saying that all they require for lobbying is “one or two famous names,” shower them with attention and compliments and dole out gifts. In the next step, the person is asked to form an association that campaigns for the MKO.

“It’s a psychological trick: when you ask someone a favor after so much flattery, people think they owe you something and they can hardly say no,” the person asserted.

Donald Trump’s former security advisor, John Bolton, according to award-winning MSNBC journalist Richard Engel, received upwards of $180,000 for speaking at MEK events over the years.

NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 24: Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (2nd L) and Former U.N Ambassador John Bolton (L) stand in front of portraits of deceased members of the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), whose members say 52 were killed September 1 in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, during a rally against the Iranian regime’s new president Hassan Rouhani outside the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2013 in New York City. The MEK is opposed to the Rouhani regime. The pro-democracy rally also included Syrian pro-democracy supporters. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A report in The Guardian in July 2018 said Bolton’s ascent as Trump’s security advisor “reinvigorated the group”, and helped it “bury its murky past and portray itself as a democratic and popular alternative to the Islamic Republic”.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has also regularly featured in MEK rallies. Engel says Giuliani “doesn’t remember how much money they paid him over the years”, and believes the group’s past designation as a foreign terrorist organization was “a mistake”.

The terror organization has also been involved in party donations. The far-right group Vox, which is the third-largest bloc inside the Spanish parliament with 52 lawmakers, was created in 2013 with around €1 million funded by the MKO, as reported by El Pais newspaper in January 2020.

Two lawmakers for the far-right political group, Santiago Abascal and Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, received party salaries for eight months from MEK donations, around €65,000 in total.

This political lobbying has helped the group, which was on the US list of terrorist organizations until 2012, escape scrutiny for years, with even courts coming to its rescue on several occasions.

In March 2019, a German court ordered the weekly magazine Der Spiegel to delete passages from an article that accused the MKO of engaging in “torture” and “psycho terror”.

The court in its ruling said it would fine the German magazine 250,000 euros (about $282,000) if the passages about a MEK “psycho terror” camp in Albania weren’t removed.

Die Zeit’s significant legal victory against the terror group, however, could be the beginning of the end of its criminal activities in Germany and other European countries.

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

Syed Zafar Mehdi is a Tehran-based journalist, political commentator and author. He has reported for more than 13 years from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir and West Asia for leading publications worldwide.

April 15, 2023 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

MEK, no friend of democracy in Iran: Canadian academics

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.”

Female soldiers of the National Liberation Army of Iran stand in formation at a training camp east of Baghdad, Iraq. Women make up nearly half of the NLA, the armed wing of the MEK.
Photo: Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma via Getty Images

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.

April 13, 2023 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

To know the MEK’s paid lobbyist

Liam Fox, former Secretary of State for International Trade of Britain and a member of the Conservative Party, is one of the paid lobbyists of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (the MEK/ PMOI) who frequently advocates for the terrorist cult as an alternative for the Iranian government. Let’s take a look at his background.

According to his comrades, Fox hardly ever attends the parliament sessions and even if he is present, very few representatives are willing to sit by his side. Last month, the Guardian published a revealing report about Fox and his carrier as a parliament member including the lefty fees he is paid for lobbying.

the Guardian published a revealing report about Fox

The report reveals:

“Fox is separately paid £10,000 every six months as a retainer by WorldPR, a company based in Panama, despite working no hours for them to date. WorldPR’s clients have previously included the late Chilean dictator Augustus Augusto Pinochet, a team of lawyers working for the Libyan government to secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and the Kazakh and Azerbaijani governments.”

According to the information received by Nejat Society, WorldPR or World Public Relations is the very company used by the MEK to pay Liam Fox. The speaking fees were previously settled in the bank accounts of the group lobbies via the group’s front organizations in the United States but today WorldPR does all the works for Maryam Rajavi including the expenses of the group’s guests in Albania. The same firm is paid by Israeli and Saudi companies in tax haven countries such as Albania and Azerbaijan.

April 8, 2023 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

MEK, the greatest enemy of women and children

If one day Iranian women and children are to complain in a court about the atrocities and crimes that happened to them, surely the leaders of the MEK terrorist group will be present in the first row of all the accused. This is not a superficial and controversial claim. There is a wide range of women, girls and children of this land who fell victim to crimes committed by the MEK terrorist group.

Since the beginning of the 1960s, nearly 450 Iranian women and girls have been victims of terrorist groups, and the MEK has had the highest share. Seventy six victims were schoolgirls aged 11 to 18, and 77 were innocent young girls under 10. The MEK is responsible for the killing of about 400 kids of this nation. This magnitude of brutality of a terrorist group against innocent people and children is unbelievable. Even their usual response to their opponents and critics, both Iranian and non-Iranian, whom they constantly call “regime’s mercenaries” cannot justify the savagery.

Another group of MEK’s female victims are former or current members of the group. Since the mid-60s and Rajavi’s nefarious scheme, which he called “ideological revolution“, hundreds of children were separated from their families and transferred to Europe. Two hundred were sent to Germany who, according to the German police reports and observations of school teachers in cities such as Cologne, were exploited and sexually harassed by the supporters of the MEK, and did not act normally at school. Many others were also sent to streets to beg for donations as part of Rajavi’s fraudulent fund-raising project.

Now, in the MEK’s camp in Albania are female members who were separated from their husbands and kids, prohibited from marriage, education, and working, forced to wear uniforms and dozens of other who were rendered sterile, all providing compelling evidence about anti-family and misogynistic acts within the “stuck-in-the-past” cult of Rajavi.

To evade this atrocity, the MEK has no choice but to resort to deception, lying and distortion of history. However, Iranian themselves are history and this terrorist group will be held accountable one day.

April 6, 2023 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

This free trip to Albania was an offer all MPs should refuse

The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq was once an Islamic-Marxist revolutionary group in Iran and later an ally of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The U.S. and Canada listed it as a terrorist entity until 2012. Now, it is a cult-like organization.

And last year, seven Canadian MPs travelled to Albania to attend one of its events, paid for by a Canadian MEK organization, the Iran Democratic Association.

The MPs, from three different parties, collectively accepted $27,975 for travel to an event called the Free Iran World Summit 2022, according to the list of sponsored travel released last week. In a strange twist, the conference didn’t actually take place. The summit was cancelled at the last minute after guests arrived, because of security concerns, but meetings were organized for politicians at another location.

Still, something disturbing happened here. Canadian politicians accepted free trips the MEK offers to whitewash itself as a credible voice for democratic resistance to the Iranian regime. But the MEK is not that.

Political sect from Albania fights against Tehran

The MEK does go out of its way to court politicians, and trumpets their participation. Politicians who travel to their Free Iran summits are not helping to free Iran.

“We should be worried because the MEK is a cult,” said University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau, a Middle East specialist and former analyst with the Department of National Defence. “It is thuggish, it is not democratic at all, it is not an alternative to the current regime in Iran,” he said. “It has no legitimacy at all inside Iran.”

The sums these MPs accepted for a trip to Europe were not very large by the standards of MP junkets, which often pay for MPs to go to Israel or Taiwan. Several of the MPs claimed a very low $280 for five days accommodation.

But you have to wonder if MPs would have gone if the cost came from their budget, or pocket.

MPs aren’t allowed to accept other gifts. There is no reason they should be allowed to accept free travel.

The seven MPs who attended include Liberal MP Judy Sgro, Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, and five Conservatives: Michael Cooper, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Dan Muys, Lianne Rood and Melissa Lantsman, now one of the party’s deputy leaders.

None of them returned messages left on Friday, or in the case of Mr. Cooper, on Sunday, except for Ms. Lantsman’s office, which e-mailed a comment: “She has been an advocate of a free Iran and believes only the people of Iran will choose its own future. She has also met with other groups fighting for the cause of a free Iran.”

Perhaps politicians don’t know that the MEK is not a credible advocate for a democratic Iran. Some in the U.S. seem to embrace its vocal opposition to the Iranian regime, and figure the enemy of their enemy is their friend. And some U.S. politicians are believed to have accepted large speaking fees.

“The only way I can explain why there are American politicians who support the [MEK] is ‘Follow the money,’” said Ervand Abrahamian, professor of Middle East history and politics at the City University of New York, and author of a 1992 book about the MEK, Radical Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin.

In the 1970s, he said, they were Islamic Marxists known simply as the Mujahedeen who fought for the overthrow of the Shah. Later, the mullah-led Islamic regime cracked down on the MEK, which assassinated a number of Iranian regime leaders. In the 1980s, the MEK moved to Iraq, and fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war. That earned them hate inside Iran, Mr. Abrahamian said.

“Even people who hate the Islamic Republic hate the Mujahedeen even more,” he said.

After Saddam Hussein fell, the new Iraqi government wanted them out, and the U.S. delisted the group as a terrorist organization before it was relocated to Albania.

Along the way, Mr. Abrahamian said, the MEK gave up ideology and became a cult-like organization, centred around leader Massoud Rajavi and now his presumed widow, Maryam Rajavi – although her husband is believed to have been dead for roughly 20 years but that has never been confirmed.

In 2009, the RAND Corporation, in a report commissioned by a U.S. government research institute, reported the MEK used cult-like practices “such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labour, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options.”

The MEK, in short, is not the hope for a new Iran. Western politicians who associate with it will at best alarm real Iranian reformers. Its events don’t advance the cause of a Free Iran. And Canadian politicians shouldn’t jet off to them – even if the trip is free.

Campbell Clark, The globe and mail

April 4, 2023 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK’s return to terror acts

Recent videos of the so-called rebel units of the Mujahedin-e Khalq show that the group is clearly resorting to armed struggle. As an armed rebel group, with a long history of terrorist activities and eventually a long list of civilian victims, the MEK has never left its capacity of committing acts of terrorism.

The so-called members of the MEK’s rebel units are demonstrated in bizarre videos chanting slogans against the Iranian leaders and the son of the late shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi! However, what is worth to care about is the message given by the gun in the hand of some of the group’s agents in the videos. The guns may even be toy guns as the agents seem illiterate naïve people who have been paid to play their parts in the videos, but it connotes the aspirations of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi for launching violence and terror in the streets of Iranian cities.

The MEK so called rebel units with gun shows that the MEK leaders are to launch violence and terror in the streets of Iranian cities

Are the MEK leaders after terrorizing the Iranian people at streets, as before?

This was quite predictable about the MEK. Today, over a decade after the MEK was removed from the list of foreign terrorist organizations of the US State Department, the group’s supporters still are not granted security clearance to own sensitive positions in the US government. Michael Rubin has clarified it in his article on AEIdeas titled “Why Can’t Mujahedin-e-Khalq Supporters get Security Clearances?”

Rubin concludes that the MEK has far less support than it claims and/or there are other impediments to its members’ entry into federal service. Also, the group’s financial practices and its opaque financial resources appear to undermine the ability of associates to get security clearances.

Rubin continues to warn American authorities about the threat of the MEK. In his most recent article, he reminds them of the FBI document published in 2004. Rubin quotes a part of the document:
“Los Angeles investigation has determined that the MEK is currently actively involved in planning and executing acts of terrorism. The planning takes place at MEK bases in Iraq and at the Auver Sur Oise location in Paris, France. Los Angeles has consensually recorded numerous telephone calls in which MEK leaders at this French location discuss specific acts of terrorism to include bombings. Joint investigation with the French DST and the German Cologne Police Department has revealed similar findings from French and German wire taps.”

Planning terror acts, carrying and using weapons, launching handmade explosives, setting fire in public places are violent acts committed by the MEK. These terror acts are undeniable because the group’s propaganda websites boast of them on daily bases. Human rights activists, the international community, US and Albanian governments should take the responsibility for preventing Maryam Rajavi from spreading terror and intimidation.

Mazda Parsi

April 3, 2023 0 comment

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