Articles

The day I realized MEK tortured my little daughter

Esmat Vatanparast called mother Esmat, defected the Mujahedin Khalq after she realized that the group agents tortured her small daughter. Mother Esmat was an active member of the MEK. She lost several members of her family for the group’s cause but once she found out that the group’s leaders are dishonest, she defected.
Jennifer, the youngest child of mother Esmat was a teenager when she was separated from her mother, kept in Camp Ashraf, Iraq where she was forced to obey the rules of the cult-like military system of the Mujahedin. “In the MEK’s school, my daughter faced a thousand issues,” Mother Esmat says in an interview with Siamak Naderi.

Esmat Vatanparast

The MEK’s school in Camp Ashraf was a place to train hundreds of children of Mujahed parents under the ideology of Massoud Rajavi before they were separated from their parents and smuggled to Europe. Jennifer and her peers were under the horrendous training of a couple, Soheila and Rashid. “Jennifer still sees nightmares of Soheila and Rashid,” mother Esmat says. “They cut her ponytail with her scarf on it… She was beaten several times just because she had told her commander that she did not want to be a Mujahed.”

“Soheila threw pepper in the face of Jennifer because she was not able to fabricate lies about seeing Imam Ali in his dreams,” mother Esmat testifies about what her daughter endured in the MEK’s religious extremist cult. “If the kids said that they had seen Imam Ali in their dreams, teachers would give them a necklace as a gift!”

Mother Esmat was not informed about what was happening to her child and other children of the MEK until she heard some of them opening up. “When I was in Sweden, I was still active supporting the MEK,” she recalls. “That day, I had invited seven children of MEK parents, friends of my daughter. I went out for shopping and when I got back, I overheard them talking about their horrific memoirs under the rule of the MEK.”

Mother Esmat was shocked to hear those heart-breaking stories of teenagers whose parents had dedicated their whole life to Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. “Oh my God! What beasts we served! I asked myself,” she recounts. “They oppressed our own children this way.”

That teen party made Mother Esmat determined to defect the MEK completely. She stopped serving the group. Today, she blames Massoud and Maryam Rajavi as the main accountable personalities for her family’s misery.

June 15, 2022 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Ali Ekrami’s prison break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Ali Ekrami former member of the Mujahedin Khalq recruited by a friend when he was a student of oil faculty in Abadan, south west of Iran. He left his hometown, his family and especially his sick mother behind to join the group in Iraq. After over 27 years of living under the rule of the Cult of Rajavi, Ali Ekrami decided to escape the group’s headquarters, Camp Ashraf, Iraq.

Following the collapse of the MEK’s main military and financial sponsor, Saddam Hussein, the group was disarmed by the US army. Ali Ekrami was already fed up with dishonesty, violence and suppression he was witnessing in the MEK. He was determined to escape the group but he was terrified because of the group’s disinformation about defectors and escapees of Camp Ashraf.

Ali Ekrami

Nevertheless, he made his mind that night after reviewing his entire experience as an MEK member. “I was on my guarding post that night in one of the guard towers on the eastern side of Camp Ashraf when I came to a conclusion of my past life and I tried to find a way to break through that situation,” Ekrami writes in his autobiography, published a few months ago.

As Ekrami reviews his own involvement with the MEK, he also evaluates the MEK’s history including its armed struggle against Iranians, the escape of Massoud Rajavi from Iran, the marriage of Massoud and Maryam in Paris and their taking shelter under Saddam Hussein, the enemy at war with Iran. “It was like a nightmare,” he writes. “I had reached the point of complete hatred and disgust. I thought I did not have anything to do with the MEK any more. I was more determined to leave the group as any time I was before.”

Thus, he looked for an opportunity to escape the Cult of Rajavi. As a trusted member of the MEK, he was offered a new position. He was appointed as the MEK’s deputy to negotiate with Iraqi university professors. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to escape Camp Ashraf,” he writes. “I expressed my agreement, signed a form and got out to pack my bag.”

The next day, Ali Ekrami was supposed to move to the university. He got on the jeep that a friend of his was driving to go there. “In the way, I looked closely to find an American Hummer to surrender myself to them,” he says. “Luckily, I saw one in the street 100 of Camp Ashraf. This was the chance I have been looking for since months ago. I told my friend, ‘Stop the car! I feel nauseous and dizzy’.”

His friend stopped the car immediately and gave Ekrami a bottle of water. He took the bottle, splashed some water on his face and rushed to the American car. He recounts, “I knocked the wind shield. The American soldier opened the door. I told him, ‘I need help. I do not want to stay in the MEK. Help! Help!’ The black soldier and his commander took me on their car and drove fast to their camp. My friend was shocked staring at me getting far from him and Ashraf.”

Looking back, Ali Ekrami started shouting, “Damn Ashraf! Damn the Mujahedin_e Khalq! Down with Rajavi! Down with fraudulent Rajavi! You betrayed the hope and trust of a generation.”

June 13, 2022 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Annual Meeting of the Mujahedin-e Khalq: Rental Audiences

The propaganda meeting of the terrorist group of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO) known as the Kahkeshan meetings (meaning Galaxy), led by Maryam Rajavi, is held every year in June or July, with false statistics of the fake Iranian fans who support this group. Most Iranian political observers, meanwhile, say the MEK has the least support in Iran and has been widely hated for its use of violence and its close ties to Israeli intelligence. As it is clear from the Western media coverage of the previous conferences of the group, the terrorist group of MEK, in order to pretend that a large number of Iranians support them, try to attract a large number of needy foreign students and asylum seekers every year with different nationalities by widespread invitations, and even attracting homeless people with the promise of free travel to Europe and free meals and even paying money, encourage them to attend these conferences.

The images and information of these gatherings show that people with significant populations and non-Iranian citizenship participate in these conferences as supporters of the MEK who are unaware of the goals of these programs. Due to unemployment and poverty, these people are said to be hired by the MEK cult to make a living by participating in these gatherings, so displaced people, asylum seekers from African countries and the gypsies are brought to the gatherings to fill vacant seats. “Most of those present at the MEK’s rally in Berlin were brought to Berlin by a group of schools from Poland and the Czech Republic to fill the seats in the hall,” the Associated Press reported. According to the report, some of the participants in the gathering also told the Associated Press reporter that they had come to that place with the promise of traveling to Berlin and staying in a hotel. Also, the videos released from these gatherings show that non-Iranians have a significant population compared to Iranian participants (MEK members).

News agencies have previously released a video showing that the vast majority of participants are non-Iranians and, as separatists say, are supplicants collected from some African, Asian and some European countries, and came to the ceremony with the promise of “a few hot meals” and “some financial aid”.

Alina Alimkova is a Kyrgyz girl who attended a MEK conference in Paris

The French newspaper Le Monde published a report in which several participants in a conference of the MEK were interviewed. Alina Alimkova is a Kyrgyz girl who attended a MEK conference in Paris. This person also says that she does not know a single Persian word and does not know much about issues related to Iran, but she decides to travel to Paris with a good offer to attend a conference for a few days sightseeing in Paris. She says all the passengers on the eight buses from Prague to Paris with him are young, and most of them are students and all of them, she says, somehow hired via the internet. According to the Kyrgyz student, no one knew exactly what the purpose of the trip was.

Of course, the MEK acted a little more selectively and in the following years, and instead of the people of color who were found in the ceremonies every year, they turned to people with faces from East Asia, West Asian Arabs, and Afghans and Pakistanis to make more ordinary faces for the ceremonies.

The group of MEK is known for paying very high prices. Details released so far from the meeting indicate that each refugee will receive around € 30 to € 50 a day plus food, and that each person who can bring 20 to 30 people to the meeting will receive around € 1,500.

In the most optimistic case, if we consider half of the participants in these meetings to be people of Iranian nationality, according to the Guardian in connection with one of these meetings, the other half of them include a set of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans and Syrians were impatient to respond to the Facebook campaign that promised travel, food and accommodation in Paris for only 25 euros. Hundreds of Syrian refugees based in Germany also attended the meeting. Many of these people were napping under the trees during the ceremonies.

“We saw the deal on Facebook and agreed to go on holiday,” said a young Syrian mother with her two young children, sitting on the conference floor. I have never seen Paris and I do not know anything about the MEK.

In the last year of the meeting before the Covid-19 epidemic, with a fake scenario they accused an Iranian diplomat for bombing the meeting and despite the Corona epidemic, in previous years the meeting was held online, which due to the display of duplicate images on the screen It can be said that very few members of the MEK were present at these meetings. However, if this conference is online, you can see new duplicate images of members who have been forced to attend the event, or if the event is held in person due to coronavirus vaccines, perhaps we will see rented spectators and same repetitive speakers of previous years with the same stereotype themes again.

Just as the MEK, despite their enmity with the United States and even the killing of a number of Americans, forgot their long-standing enmity with the United States after the fall of Saddam and turned to what was doubly beneficial to them (during a large meeting in the camp Ashraf in Iraq After the fall of Saddam, Rajavi announced that the owner of our house had changed and we had to adjust to the new owner and we had to go with the tide). The United States has shown again and again that it is not a trustworthy country. For the United States, every group, organization, country, and even political authority is supported only as long as it benefits the country and then will be replaced very quickly and all US obligations to that group or country will be severed. As we have seen in previous year, the United States, in a shocking move in fighting the Taliban, left Afghanistan very quickly after 20 years at a cost of $ 1 trillion, left this country and its defenseless people alone. The Afghan army, which was under the direct training of the US military and had all kinds of military equipment, could not even resist the Taliban, who had simple military equipment, for two weeks, and suffered defeat.

Although the group has paid large sums of money to remove the organization from the list of American terrorist organizations (FTO), as well as for the presence of political speakers from this country in the meetings of the MEK, but it will definitely be supported as long as it serves their interests.

“I wonder why the United States works with organizations like the Mojahedin, because they are local and they are ready to work for us, we used to call them a terrorist organization, and of course they are still a terrorist organization! However, they are our terrorists now! and we do not hesitate to send them to Iran for routine intelligence activities, to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, to triangle targets for air strikes, and perhaps to set up secret camps to control military locations in Iran, as well as a bit of sabotage” Ray McGovern, a former CIA operative, spoke about the MEK. Also, Karen Kwiatkowski, a former member of Ministry of Defense: “The MEK is ready to do things that we are ashamed of and try to keep quiet about. But we will use them for such tasks!”

The presence of various terrorist groups in Albania and the recent acceptance that Albania has given the green light to accept Afghan refugees from Afghanistan in this country, indicates the presence of new forces instead of the group of MEK, that due to the old age, the members of this terrorist group, have lost their military effectiveness, and this issue can explain the significant reduction in the presence of political officials at their previous annual gathering, and also the closure of the MEK’s virtual accounts for propaganda and provocative activities against Iran by Facebook, an American company under the auspices of the US government, it represents that the bases for the United States to cut ties with the MEK in the near future is getting ready.

On the other hand, the financial and arms support of the Saudi intelligence service to most of the anti-Iranian terrorists have led to a sharp divide between these opposition groups instead of converging. In fact, a closer look at the organizational levels and the way these groups operate reveals that their lives are tied to be the opposition to the Islamic Republic. These groups receive money from Saudi Arabia and countries opposed to Iran in order to speak against Iran and inwardly they have no interest in harming the Islamic Republic one day, because then they will have no financial support anymore and why a group want to stop receiving these financial aids. The MEK are in the same situation, they consider themselves superior to other opposition groups and introduce other groups as elements of the Iranian government, which certainly even a child does not imagine that if one day in an imagination or an American dream the United States conquers Iran, it is impossible to hand it over to the elderly of the Rajavi cult. In fact, this cult has only tools and propaganda use for the United States.

If we take a closer look at the MEK group, we will see that this cult is alive only with the millions of dollars it receives from the Saudi Arabia and the United States, and it does not like to return to the military world again and they just limit themselves to put up a poster on a deserted street in one of Iran’s sparsely populated cities, or by giving money, it causes 20 people in Iran to march in a secluded park and chant anti-government slogans which no one can hear them.

The MEK are now safe inside their troll farm in the camp Ashraf, Albania, where they spend US-Saudi dollars in isolation and hold an annual propaganda campaign to mention that they are still alive, and are jeering at their financial suppliers and spend the last hours of their lives in the peace of a country in Eastern Europe, while they are going toward the dustbin of history.

by Global Times

June 12, 2022 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

June 17th, landmark date exposing the Cult of Rajavi

June 17th, 2003 is a landmark date in the history of the Mujahedin-e Khalq that exposes it as a cult of personality rather than an opposition group. The arrest of the she-guru of the Cult of Rajavi by the French Police created heart-breaking but at the same time enlightening scenes by which the world was able to observe the true substance of the MEK.

Following the arrest of Maryam Rajavi, the group commanders coerced members to protest against the act of French government against their leader. The excessive part of the protests was played by a dozen of members of the group who set themselves on fire to demonstrate their devotion to their arrested leader. 21 people set themselves on fire between June 17th to June 21st. Eventually, two of them were killed.

Neda Hassani and Sedighe Mojaveri who brainwashed by the MEK leaders into immolating themselves

Neda Hassani, 27, and Sedigheh Mojaveri 44 were the two ones who committed self-immolation to pressure French Judiciary to release Maryam Rajavi and did not survive their violent act against themselves. Their names were added to the list of the MEK’s martyrs. A number of other MEK members such as Marzieh Babakhani, Hamid Orafa and Nader Sani survived but are still suffering the wounds of that organizational order. They are always glorified as role models for other members of the MEK, by the group leaders.

Marziyeh Babakhani

To stop those horrific scenes in European cities, the French Police freed Maryam Rajavi. Since that time, the incidents of June 2003, have been celebrated by the MEK as a victory. In its numerous annual events, the group’s propaganda machine overvalues its victory to liberate Maryam Rajavi from French jail. However, important lessons have been learned by sensible entities since June 17th, 2003.

The cult-like violent nature of the MEK

Suicide and its intimate partner violence are both major notions that characterize destructive cults. They both show an extreme tendency towards an ideology. For half a century, violence of the MEK has been changing from one form to another. It started with homicide of the American military advisors in Iran during the 1970s, it went on in the post-revolutionary years in Iran by detonating bombs in public places killing civilians, it continued in the anti-national war, by the side of Saddam Hussein and the cross border terrorist operation and it has been working against the group’s own rank and file, either to suppress dissent or to coerce the brainwashed members to set themselves ablaze.

Money Laundering for terrorist activities

On 16 June 2003 the French well-known anti-terrorist judge Jean Louis Bruguiere and his team, following a 14 hours interrogation that had started at 15.30 local time on 16 June 2003, issued a detention order accusing the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the umbrella group of the MEK, at the time blacklisted as a terrorist group by the US, the EU of “terrorist activities, association with a terrorist organization and financing terrorist operations”. Shortly after 6 am on 17 June 2003 more than 1200 police forces launched a large operation to raid 13 MKO-run offices in Val-d’Oise and Yvelines, two quarters of the Parisian suburb. The main target was the office of the MEK at Auvers-sur-Oise. The Police arrested 164 suspected Mujahedin authorities as well as Maryam Rajavi, the NCRI’s self-nominated president-elect.

on 17 June 2003 more than 1200 police forces launched a large operation to raid 13 MKO-run offices in Val-d’Oise and Yvelines, two quarters of the Parisian suburb

The French Government said it was trying to stop the group from expanding its operations in France. Nicolas Sarkozy, the then French Interior Minister, said that the order to crackdown on the MEK was decided following two years of investigations on the network. He said that MEK “recently wanted to make France its support base, notably after the intervention in Iraq. We cannot accept that”. The head of France’s domestic intelligence service, Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, said the group was “transforming its Val d’Oise base … into an international terrorist base”.

The Police discovered and confiscated more than a million US dollars in 100 banknotes, 100.000 Euros, sophisticated communication equipment and computers. The sources of French Interior Ministry later reported that more than 8 million dollars in cash had been found in various offices of the MEK as well in the houses of its high-ranking officials throughout France.

MEK leaders and its high-ranking members fled Iraq after US invasion

In March 2003, following the collapse of the MEK’s main financial and military sponsor Saddam Hussein called by the MEK as Landlord, the group’s leaders and a lot of high-ranking commanders had secretly fled Iraq and settled in France within a few months. Thus, the news of the arrest of Maryam Rajavi and her comrades was shocking for members of the group in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. They could not believe their ears that Maryam and other commanders had left them behind, under the bombs of coalition forces. Maryam had departed Iraq even before the collapse of the landlord. Seemingly, she was looking for a new landlord.

Massoud Rajavi has disappeared since the date

June 17th, 2003 is the beginning of the two-decade absence of Massoud Rajavi. He has been never seen in public since then. Inside the group, nobody is allowed to ask about his whereabouts and outside the group, the journalists and researchers’ questions on Massoud Rajavi’s location or his being dead or alive will not be answered. The disappearance of Massoud Rajavi has amplified the aura of holiness around him, for the manipulated minds residing inside his Cult of personality. However, for those hostages of the group who endeavor to release themselves from the mind control system of the Cult of Rajavi, Rajavi’s absence has increased criticism and questions on his rulings and strategy.

Mazda Parsi

June 8, 2022 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Mohammad Gamoosh was hanged in the MEK Camp Ashraf

Born in 1968, Mohammad Gamoosh was from Zanjan, Iran. He was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war serving in division 46 Orumieh. He was taken as a war prisoner in a joint operation launched by Iraqi and MEK forces against Iranians in Hajomran region. Mohammad Gamoosh had just finished his army service and had planned to get back home but the tide turned.

The MEK forces transferred Mohammad and other POWs to Debes prison near Kirkuk, Iraq. From the first moment Mohammad tried to convince the MEK agents that his army service had finished and his parents had awaited his return but he was totally ignored. Instead, Sadat Darbandi (called Kak Adel), the notorious MEK’s commander humiliated and threatened him. Mohammad did not stop complaining. He was known among POWs for his dissent against MEK commanders.

Eventually, in a cold morning of the winter of 1987, his body was found hanged behind the prison building. A number of members of the Mujahedin Khalq saw Mohammad Gamoosh’s body hanged.

The MEK agents did not allow anyone to ask a question about Mohammad’s fate. A group of 20 to 30 MEK agents came to take his body, suppressing other prisoners violently. They put his body in a jeep, took him out of Debes prison and buried him immediately.

May 29, 2022 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Ray Torabi’s message on the occasion of his 40th birthday

Ray (Mohammad Reza) Torabi, former child soldier of the Mojahedin-e Khalq shared a post on his Facebook account on the occasion of his 40th birthday:

Mohammad Reza Torabi

“When I was 17, after 8 years of separation from my parents, I finally met my biological mother. Unfortunately, the condition of our meeting was that I had to leave Canada and go to Iraq to meet her, where she was a member of an Iranian opposition organization (turned out to be a religious cult). She told me that my father had passed away some years before as a result of a heart attack, which he suffered in his sleep. He was 39 at the time of his death.
I ended up staying in this organization for many years, and oh the stories…
But in all those years, I always believed that I, like my father, would one day die of a heart problem while in my bed. Although I was literally in the middle of war with so many life-threatening situations, nothing scared me quite like the idea of dying in my bed before even turning 40.
I wouldn’t be lying if I said that I thought about it hundreds of times over the years.
But the years went by and as is the rule of life, the truth surfaced and I realized that my biological mother had lied to me regarding the facts surrounding my father’s death and that he didn’t die of a heart attack and that he was murdered by the same organization he sacrificed his life for. That’s a story for another day.
But I turned 40 today. A year older than my father. And although life hasn’t been so kind to me, I’m grateful for every day of it. With all its ups and downs, sweet and bitter moments, pains and sufferings and the challenges that turned me into the resilient, humble, compassionate, forgiving, kind… Human that I am.”

Mohammad Reza Torabi in his youth

Mohammad Reza, nicknamed Ray, is a former child soldier of the MEK who left the group four years ago after 18 years of enduring the cult-like system of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. He did not know that his father was a victim of torture in that very organization until he left the group. Ray Torabi is one of the several former child soldiers of the MEK who are speaking out against the group’s brainwashing structure. In response to Ray’s questions about the death of his father, the MEK propaganda made his biological mother and his aunt write against him labeling him as agent of the Iranian government. However, Ray did not give up and continued speaking out about his experience of involvement with the Cult of Rajavi.

Amir Vafa Yaghmaee

His Facebook post on the occasion of his birthday was warmly welcomed by his audience. He was widely encouraged by former members of the MEK and his current friends to bravely share his stories. Amir Yaghmai, another former child soldier of Rajavi’s army addressed Ray by writing:
You are one of the most humble guys I’ve met. Our background could have turned us into strange personalities with the lack of social adaptation. Fortunately, most of us made it quite well and we became good souls.

Amir Nematollahi

Among the numerous comments on Ray’s post, the one from Amir Nematollahi, former operative agent of the MEK is also remarkable:
Life has thrown its fair share of obstacles in your way from a young age, before our paths even crossed, and I have only been able to witness the strength you carry for a short amount of time. But in those three years, you have managed to inspire more than any quote, self-help book, or words of wisdom could ever do, because you get out of bed every morning, face life and all of its challenges head on, while still managing to keep your head up, and live life to the fullest. I am truly grateful to know you and your life story inspired me in many ways stay strong and I assure you that your father would have been so proud of what you become and who you are…by the way happy birthday.

May 28, 2022 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Zahra Mirbagheri’s Prison Break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Zahra Mirbagheri, former member of the Mujahedin Khalq escaped the group’s headquarters in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, in 2013. She finally made it after three unsuccessful attempts. Although she was under an extensive control by her commanders and peers, she was determined to leave the MEK’s oppressive atmosphere. “Zahra! You must not get back to Rajavi’s hell!”, she told herself at the moment she started running away.

January 29th, 2013 was a landmark day in Zahra’s life. She was not only barred from the outside world by the barbed wire fences, but also, she was constantly surrounded by the MEK commanders and watched by one or two of her peers because she had previously tried to flee the group three times. “I was under severe mental and physical pressure because I resisted their lies, oppressions and brainwashing system,” she writes in her story. “I was banned from visiting my brother and sisters who were in the group too. A woman was supposed to watch me all the time and to report on what I was doing all day long.”

Zahra Mirbagheri showing the pendant that Rajavi gave to the women of the organization telling them that they were all connected to him and to no other man

Zahra was sick. Her ear was infected and she had pain in her neck and back. “After three failures in escaping and because of taking too much antibiotics I had become so weak,” she recounts. “I had a herniated cervical disk due to a blow to my neck but I was forbidden to have a doctor’s appointment.”

However, Zahra had made her decision. “I had promised myself to fight the authorities and to escape the Cult of Rajavi. I was determined to survive to reveal Rajavi’s inhumane and evil dogma,” she writes. On January 28th, the group held a meeting in which medical commander of the camp was supposed to justify the participants. Zahra was shocked to see there so many of her comrades who were not sick. The next day, when they went to the Iraqi hospital, she realized that those ones had been ordered to watch the sick members to prevent their likely escape.
The night before going to the medical center, Zahra prepared her military uniform. The next morning, she was dressed up. She was ordered to go to the eating place. Zohreh Qaemi (the then commander of Ashraf) came to the hall to speak once more. Zahra tried to pretend that every thing was normal — after her last unsuccessful attempt to escape, Zohreh Qaemi had conveyed the message of Maryam Rajavi to her, “We have decided that you will die!”.

Zahra and few of other sick members were taken to Iraqi hospital by the western side of Camp Ashraf. She was constantly watched by two female guards who were members of the MEK’s Elite Council. Families of the group’s members were calling on their loved ones who were isolated in the camp from other side of the camp fences. Zahra was ordered to pull her scarf on her face while crossing in front of the families.
“When we arrived in the hospital, I began to look around to find a way out,” she recalls. “I noticed some of the high-ranking commanders of the security unit of the MEK and I found out that I would have difficulties but again I promised my self not to give up.”

In the waiting room, Zahra found a kitchen, she looked for windows. All windows had been screened. The exit door was also closed and blocked with a big table. Zahra looked around to find a new escape route. “As I was looking around, my commander shouted at me, ‘what are you doing?’,” she recounts. “She ordered me to sit down next to her. I was not feeling well but I was really motivated to escape. So, I kept cool and sat down.”
Finally, she was examined by ENT specialist in the consulting room. The interpreter was also a member of the MEK. “The MEK had arranged everything to control members,” Zahra writes. “Nobody was allowed to stay alone with the doctors.” The specialist prescribed antibiotics for her ears so they had to go to the drugstore to take the medicines. In the drugstore, Zahra was still accompanied by her commander.

The next chance was the orthopedic specialist who was supposed to examine Zahra’s neck. Zahra recounts her escape adventure:

“Together with a few women, I was standing in front of the door of the doctor’s room. Ther was a long corridor. We were standing in the middle of it. I noticed another door behind myself. I did not know to where it opens. I looked at the commanders and security guards of the group who were walking through the corridor watching us. I recalled Massoud Rajavi’s words in his last speech, ‘It is better for a hundred of you to be killed than for one to flee’. My heart was pounding. I looked at those brainwashed women around me. ‘Do you have a doctor’s appointment too?’ I asked one of the. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she replied. I smiled and said, ‘No matter, just asked’. Just then, the woman told the others, ‘Let’s go!’.

“It was a landmark moment. I made my decision immediately after the women turned their back to me. I opened the door behind me and rushed though a hall that was for male patients. I turned left and opened another door to a hall that looked to be an eating place. The hall was empty. There was a widow at the end of it. It was covered by a flyscreen. I took out the cutter I had put under my clothes and cut the screen. Fortunately, the window had no glass. I got up to get out of the window and I was lucky that there was a staircase under the window at the foot of the wall. I stepped out and quickly rushed to my left. I reached a metal wall. I squeezed through a 20-centimeter gap in the wall. Again, I began to run. An Iraq soldier was praying before my eyes. He walked to me as soon as he saw me and took me to the commander’s office.

“When I entered the room, their walkie talkie was making too much noise about the escape of a female Mujahed. I could not contain my happiness. On my God! My dream came true. I could manage to escape.”

May 25, 2022 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Soltani’s prison break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Batul Soltani, former member of the Elite Council of the Mujahedin-e Khalq escaped Camp Ashraf in 2007. She was a long-time member of the group who had been forced by Massoud Rajavi to divorce her husband and to leave her children. She was so brainwashed in the Cult of Rajavi that she was not able to refuse the order of Maryam Rajavi to sleep with Massoud Rajavi. However, once she realized that her commanders were dishonest, she left the group. The story of her escape from Camp Ashraf is really dramatic.

Batul Soltani and her child

Following the so-called ideological revolution that coerced members to divorce their spouses, and after the smuggling of their children out of Iraq, Batul and other rank and file of the group, were kept busy doing difficult physical tasks around their military camp. “I became the commander of a unit of tanks in 1993,” Batul recounts. “I was so busy running eleven tank, each tank three forces. I had no time thinking of myself. I could sleep one or two hours a day.”

Batul Soltani at the MEk’s Camp Ashraf

Batul was gradually elevated in the cult’s hierarchy. She was charged with the security unit and then she was smuggled to Britain to learn using computers and ultimately, she was selected to become a member of Rajavi’s Elite Council. As a member of Rajavi’s close female forces she was coerced to attend Salvation Dance and then to Massoud Rajavi’s bed. Batul Soltani was the first female defector of the MEK who revealed Rajavi’s polygamy cult.
“In 2006, as a member of the Elite Council, I had become the topic of the meetings; I was under the focus of the superior rank,” Batul writes. “I was constantly asked why I looked depressed. Even Massoud Rajavi contacted me several times to understand what was wrong with me but I could not tell them about my anxieties. I had missed my children and my husband. Besides, I had a lot of unanswered questions about the group. I felt like losing my whole life for nothing.”

Batool Sultani, photographed in Paris in January 2020.
Photo: Matthew Cassell for The Intercept

What took place on that special day made her determined to leave the MEK. She had been ordered to fix Mozhgan Parsai’s computer network. She entered the network and she discovered a letter. “I ran into a report about myself that Mozhgan Parsai had prepared to send to Maryam Rajavi. All at once, my whole world came crashing down around me. She had written that the Elite Council was in trouble, that I was distracted by thinking about my kids and that I was morally corrupted. I was astonished to read those words.”

The very day, she packed her bag and made her decision to escape the group. Unaccompanied trafficking was prohibited in Camp Ashraf.

“Even if you wanted to go planting in the garden, you had to be accompanied by a peer as your responsible. They said that these rules were for guaranteeing the security of the group but I swear to God that it was because they did not trust anyone inside the organization.”

Thus, Batul found a way to pretend that she was not alone in her jeep: “I put the pack bag on the driver’s side seat,” she recounts her heroic escape. “I put a helmet on that and I tied a scarf around the helmet. When I reached the checkpoint, I told the guard that my comrade was asleep so I could cross the check point.”
It was late at night. The female guard knew that Batul Soltani was one of the commanders of the group so she did not scrutinize anymore. She drove toward the fences around the camp. “I left the car somewhere around the garrison and I escaped that prison”, she writes.

She cut the barbed wires crawled from under them. The guards in the watchtower did not notice her. She walked to the American camp that was settled by the side of Camp Ashraf for escapees from the Cult of Rajavi. And, she found herself free. She told the American authorities that she would not get back to the Mujahedin-e Khalq anymore.

May 23, 2022 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Hamzeh Rahimi was tortured then disappeared in Rajavi’s prison

Hamzeh Rahimi a member of Mojahedin-e Khalq was killed under torture when he was imprisoned in the group’s Camp Ashraf. He was an officer of the Iranian army taken as a POW by Iraqi forces before he was recruited by the MEK. He was deceived to join the MEK by the group recruiters when he was in Iraqi POW’s camp under too much physical pressure.

Mirbagher Sedaqi, former member of the MEK was in the same unit as Hamzeh was in the MEK’s headquarters in Iraq, Camp Ashraf. He states that Hamzeh had been a pilot of F-5 aircrafts in the Iranian army. He recalls the patriotism of Hamzeh although he was in the side of the enemy of Iran.

“When Iraqi military advisors wanted to know about the tactics used by the Iranian army, Hamzeh refused to give information,” Sedaqi writes.

Thus, Hamzeh Rahimi became the target of his commanders. “Since then, Hamzeh was a problematic member,” Sedaghi asserts. “He got disappeared in a few months. His name could not be found either in the list defectors or martyrs of the group.”

MEK commanders setting enmity between two friends

Gholam Reza Shekari was a close friend of Hamzeh’s in the MEK. In 1994, both of them were jailed, interrogated and tortured in the group’s notorious prison called Eskan. Shekari recounts,

“After a week, they jailed me in the same cell that Hamzeh was. We wondered why so many people were jailed, beaten and interrogated every day. Some of them would be disappeared after some time.”

After a month, again GholamReza and Hamzeh were separated. “I was getting weaker and weaker under the daily mental and physical torture. I had nothing to say to the interrogators. So, they kept on beating me.” After a few days they told him that he would be confronted by someone. “I was sure that someone would be Hamzeh,” Gholamreza writes. “Hamzeh had been awfully tortured. His eyes were swollen and bruised. He told some words against me that I was sure were not his own words. He had been forced to say those nonsense.”
That was the last visit of the two friends. GholamReza was not even allowed to ask about the whereabouts of Hamzeh. “The MEK leaders pretended as if he had left the cult,” GholamReza testifies. “However, when Hamzeh’s family came to Camp Ashraf, the authorities of the group gave them the code of his grave in the cemetery of Karbala, Iraq.”

Using oil of food to soothe the wounds left by torture

The third defector who has witnessed the heartbreaking fate of Hamzeh in Rajavi’s prison is Ardeshir Darvishi. “I was jailed there together with Hamzeh Rahimi and Hassan Yazdi,” he recounts in his memoirs of Ashraf prison. “We were shocked. We did not know why we were imprisoned. Assadollah Mosana, Mokhtar, Sayedsadat and Mohammad Mohaddsin, the interrogators, had no answer. They beat us for three nights. The fourth night, they told us to confess that we were the spies of the regime!”
Writing about his own distressing experience of being tortured by MEK commanders, Ardeshir speaks about Hamzeh too. “Hamzeh Rahimi had been tortured too,” Ardeshir writes.

“They had used a cable to beat him on the back and feet. His body had been so swollen that he could not sleep on his back. We applied the oil of our meals on his wounds to soothe his pain.”

After three months of detention under severe mental and physical torture, the suspected rank and file of the MEK were forgiven by Massoud Rajavi and took back to their units in Camp Ashraf –although they were still isolated from the outside world. But Hamzeh was not seen any more. He was disappeared in Eskan prison. “Later we found out that Hamzeh Rahimi had been killed under torture,” Ardeshir states.

Another former comrade of Hamzeh is Ali Moradi. They were both from military personnel of the Iranian army before they joined the MEK. In 1992, in a visit of an American military advisor to camp Ashraf, as former officers of the Iranian army, Ali and Hamzeh told him about the capacities of the Iranian army. The result was troublesome for both of them.

They were summoned to Mahvash Sepehri’s office. She criticized them for what they told the American advisor. “She questioned us why we had spoken to the American guest in person; why we had talked of the Iranian army.” Ali recalls. “’Why did you defend the Iranian army’, she asked us.” Ali and Hamzeh were shocked by Sepehri’s questions. “Since then, Hamzeh started hating the group, he opposed all of their orders and agendas,” Ali continues. “So, he was always under pressure by the commanders. He was humiliated by them. Eventually in 1994, he was imprisoned, tortured and killed in Ashraf prison. No trace was left of him.”

Hamzeh Rahimi was not the only victim of MEK’s violence against its own members. Parviz Ahmadi and GhorbanAli Torabi were also killed in that very year in the notorious prison of the MEK.

May 21, 2022 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Darvishi’s prison break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Ardeshir Darvishi joined the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) when he was 32 years old. He crossed the Iranian border to reach the MEK’s headquarters in Iraqi territory, Camp Ashraf. He was a sympathizer of the group since his teen years but residing in the group’s base changed his mind about it.

“When I entered Camp Ashraf, I felt like arriving in my dream promised land but after a year and a half I got to know the MEK deeply; I found out that I was wrong,” he says.
After half and a year, he began questioning the group’s attitudes against the rank and file. He wanted to leave the group but he was not allowed to. Instead, he was labeled as being agent of the Iranian government by the group commanders.

Ardeshir Darvishi

In 1994, he was jailed, interrogated and tortured violently in the group’s prison in Camp Ashraf. About 300 of other MEK members were also in Eskan prison, accused of working for the Iranian Intelligence because they had just criticized the group’s ruling system.
Ardeshir’s punishment period was done after a few weeks but again he was not permitted to leave the cult-like system of the MEK. He had to stay in the group for 10 more years.
In 2004, he was serving the group as a loader driver when he decided to escape Camp Ashraf. The group had been disarmed by the US army a year earlier so he was sure that he would not be shot dead by his commanders if he was noticed while escaping.

One day, he drove the loader toward the embankment around Camp Ashraf and opened his way out. He went to camp TIPF that the US army had founded to settle defectors and escapees from Camp Ashraf.
“I surrendered to the Americans who were located near Ashraf,” Ardeshir says. “Zhila Deiheem [an MEK commander] came to the American camp to convince me to get back to Camp Ashraf. Another commander named Hedayat came to warn me that I would be executed if I returned to Iran but I did not care. I returned home by the aid of the Red Cross.”

Ardeshir Deihimi got back to his family in his home town in Lorestan, Iran. He rebuilt his life; found a job, married and had children. However, he still regrets the 13 years he lost in the MEK. Last year he filed a petition against the leaders of the MEK in an Iranian court. His petition was eventually submitted to the International Court of the Hague.

May 17, 2022 0 comment

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