Siamak is one of the ex-members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) who were interviewed by Victor Charbonnier in the book on the group, in 2004. The book is titled “The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A struggle for what?”
Siamak who refused to give his full name to the author due to his fear from the group’s agents, was 20 when he joined the MEK in 1979. But, why did he join the group?
“I joined the organization because it was fighting for the freedom of the Iranian people and for women’s liberation,” He answered the author. “That at least is what its leaders said and wrote in the publications I devoured in my revolutionary zeal. It took me quite some time to discover that, in reality, things were very different.”
Siamak speaks of gradual change in the attitudes of Massoud Rajavi as the survived one of the early leaders of MEK. “Bit by bit, Rajavi succeeded in imposing his own leadership, his authoritarian method and his dictatorship,” he says.
When he arrived in the MEK camps in Iraq in the middle of the 1980s, the group commanders started giving him trainings on how to use a variety of weapons. The trainings were necessary for the cross-border attacks against Siamak’s own country. “During the Iran Iraq war, we carried out attacks on targets inside Iranian territory,” he recounts. “Hundreds of Mojahedin were killed or wounded during these operations. Some used them as a chance to run away.”
However, after the war ended, keeping members in the camps became difficult for the leaders of MEK. “Many members of MEK began to get tired of the living conditions in the camps,” Siamak says. “…Most members have only one goal: escape. But those who openly express their desire to go home to Iran, were executed, starved and put in solitary confinement.”
Siamak himself was subject to imprisonment in MEK because he “dared to criticize certain of the organization’s dogmas: the banning of marriage, which contradicts the Islamic beliefs and the link with Iraq”.
“Mojahedin are forced to submit daily written or oral reports in which they confess their doubts or denounce those of their comrades,” Siamak says about the cult-like manipulative techniques of MEK leaders to control members. “Spying on others is a common practice in the group. A feeling of suspicion is everywhere.”
Alan Mohammadi
Based on his testimony, the suppressive atmosphere ruling MEK drove several members to commit suicide. “There have been several cases of suicide including that of an 18-year-old girl”, he asserts. “In 1999, she came to Camp Ashraf to visit her parents. Prevented from going home, she killed herself. Rajavi claimed in a meeting that her death was an accident.”
According to the testimonies of other defectors of MEK, the murdered girl is probably “Alan Mohammadi”.