By the rise of defection from the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi), the group authorities make efforts to recruit new members. Old age and disability of the majority of members of the group, as well as their failure to recruit new members, leads leaders to ask help from human smugglers.
This has already happened in the MEK during the 1990s when human smugglers, linked with MEK recruiters, in the neighboring countries of Iran including Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, have been tasked to handing over Iranian young immigrants who sought job. They smuggled them to Camp Ashraf in exchange for a significant amount of money for each person.
These people whose number eventually mounted to a hundred, were not informed about where they were supposed to go. With the promise of “working and residing in Europe”, they were tricked by smugglers. While they thought that they were going to Europe from Iraq, they would end up in Ashraf Camp. In Camp Ashraf there was no exit door. The newly-recruited members were forced to stay in the MEK for many years, which lasted over twenty years, and in some cases, they are still kept as hostages in the group.
Now, the MEK is encountered with the crisis of losing members, in Europe. This leads the leaders of the group to seek help from human smugglers and select their targets among Iranians who face severe financial issues and legal residence permits in Europe. The group prefers to recruit young refuge seekers in order to use their abilities for the most needed skills in the MEK, such as working in the cyber space.
These people are attracted to the organization with false promises of work, residence, and the right to live and stay in European countries, but in the first stage, they have to sign a commitment for at least three years of work in the group. Ultimately, they have to undergo the cult-like system of the group that manipulates and radicalizes them under a daily basis. Threats, fears and intimidation of the MEK cult is haunting the refuge seekers in Europe.