Female torturers of the MEK cult

In January 2021, Damien McGuinness of BBC published an investigated report on “Nazi Ravesbruck camp”, where “female SS guards enjoyed home comforts at a camp where they tortured thousands of inmates”.

Presenting testimonies of victims of these women, the author of the article suggests, “Sometimes the women are portrayed as exploited victims. At other times as sadistic monsters.” He points out a very crucial fact about female tortures who are dedicated to the cause of an ideology, “The truth is more horrifying. They were not extraordinary monsters, but rather ordinary women, who ended up doing monstrous things.”

What the BBC correspondent concludes is true in other ideological, extremist movements. In September, 2017, Jane Lavender of the Mirror reported on “horrifying confessions of female ISIS torturers” who revealed they enjoyed hurting women – especially in front of dads and husbands. The woman was a member of an all-female jihadist gang and told how she relished torturing her female victims in front of their distraught families. “The terrifying reality of life as a female ISIS torturer has been laid bare as a deserter reveals she “enjoyed” hurting other woman”, write jane Lavender.

This was not the only report on female tortures in the ISIS. Other news outlets such as Aljazeera and Daily Mail published accounts on female jihadists who killed and tortured people in Syria, as a new horrific phenomenon in the history of human rights abuse. However, the international community must come to know that female torturers could have been found in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) since the group’s leader, Massoud Rajavi, settled the hegemony of women in his cult of personality, during the 1980’s.
The news media have not been able to cover firsthand accounts on female torturers in the MEK because the group severely controls arrivals and departures of its camps. Nonetheless, the testimonies of defectors of the group, who expose dreadful facts on maltreatments and tortures committed by MEK commanders, mostly female, against their own members, are simply accessible.

Maryam Sanjabi, escaped the Cult of Rajavi in 2009. She eventually wrote a book about her experience of living inside the MEK. She writes of female commanders who interrogate and torture dissident members inside the cult-like system of the MEK.

“Mahvash Sepehri was one of the major commanders to suppress every voice of dissent in the group,” Maryam writes. “About two hundred members were tried by Mahvash Sepehri. They were eventually jailed in solitary confinement, mentally and physically tortured.” Maryam Sanjabi believes that Mahvash Sepehri is the responsible for killing a girl named Nasrin Ahmadi under torture.

Mohammad Reza Mobin, former member of MEK wrote a series of articles on female torturers in the Cult of Rajavi. He revealed horrific facts on how members of the group were interrogated and tortured by female commanders. In particular, he explained about a woman named Forough Pakdel.

“Forough Pakdel was one the main commanders who tortured me,” he writes. “Along with Fazel, she interrogated me. They almost tried to kill me during the six months of solitary confinement.” MohammadReza endured the most sever tortures, as he says, only because he had criticized the leaders’ discriminatory attitude toward members.

Nasri Ebrahimi, a female ex-member of the MEK joined the group when she was only 14. It took her only two years to be a victim of torture by female commanders. “The interrogators were usually, Fahimeh Arvani, Forough Pakdel, Mahnaz Bazzazi, Mehri Haji Nezhad, Batul Rajai and Hajar Tahmasbi,” Nasrin says.
“They wanted me to confess that I was the agent of the Iranian regime and I did not want to confess such a false allegation.”, Nasrin says. “During the entire time of the interrogation sessions Mahnaz Bazzazi and Forough Pakdel were shouting at me, calling me names.”
About the human rights violations committed by female commanders of MEK, the testimonies of former members are countless. Women in the MEK commit crimes, due to the same reasons that other women in Nazi and ISIS establishments committed them.

In a radical system, moral boundaries can be simply transformed or removed. The leader who rules the system –that can be Hitler, Abubakr Baghdadi or Massoud Rajavi—allows violence. In these totalitarian systems, members are charged with strict tasks in the hierarchy. The tasks should be done without any excuse. As a result, any criminal task is normalized in the hierarchy. Victims of the violence are considered as not being human kinds.
Female commanders of the MEK are brainwashed in such a radical totalitarian system that can turn ordinary women to torturers.

Mazda Parsi