Dr. Ghaffour Mousavi is a psychiatrist, now 68 years old. He joined the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in 1974. This shows that he was one of the early members of the group who joined it before the 1979 revolution. As a medicine, he served the group until 1982 and then he defected.
Dr. Mousavi was interviewed by two French authors of a book titled “Les Moujahidins du Peuple Iranien: Un Combat Douteux”, published in 2003. One of the authors of the book is a journalist and the other is a TV correspondent. In order to probe the reality behind the MEK, they interviewed dozens of witnesses including former members and victims of the group.
In the interview Dr. Mousavi analyzes how young people were easily seduced by the MEK. He describes what he observed in those years of membership in the group. “They have ideological training sessions,” he states. “They are permitted no time to think deeply or ask themselves any questions about the organization’s aims. They have no access to the normal news media. They have no right to read newspapers, magazines or books… They are limited to the movement’s own publications. Anyone who dares to break these rules is punished.”
As a professor of psychiatry who has published many scholar articles, Dr Mousavi believes that MEK commanders kill the critical capacities, individuality and identities of their members. This is how “they become completely submissive, obedient and manipulable at will”.
According to Dr. Mousavi, The MEK leaders use well known techniques to enforce discipline, including brainwashing. “The mojahedin’s trainers adopted the psychological control techniques once used by Pol Pot, the Cambodian dictator”, he asserts. “They study each Mojahed’s reactions, his psychological condition, facial expressions, turns of phrase, tone of voice when he confesses his dreams or anxieties.”
The process in which the isolated, humiliated and brainwashed Mojahed is prepared to carry the orders of the leaders, from terror attacks to self-immolations, is heartbreaking. The leaders destroy the moral sensibilities of members. “They continually quote Koranic Surahs and passages from Imam Ali’s book to rationalize their criticisms against members”, Dr. Mousavi explains. “Using the idea of Tawhid, unity and loyalty to the organization, they reinforce their psychological techniques. Defenseless, isolated and weakened, the Mojahedin ends up becoming unquestioningly obedient to their orders.”
Same history and analysis heave been so far described and told by numerous eyewitnesses. Members of MEK still suffer from loneliness, physical and emotional pains because they cannot find their way out of the group. The international community must be aware of the crimes that are still committed by leaders of the MEK so many years after the era of Pol Pot.
Mazda Parsi
Source: Charbonnier, Victor, Les Moujahidins du Peuple Iranien: Un Combat Douteux, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2003.