Babak Shajari was a refugee child in Canada. He had been separated from his parents and had been transferred from Iraq to Canada in 1991 under the order of Massoud Rajavi.
Babak’s father Shadollah Shajari was a dentist. He was called Behrang in the Mujahedin Khalq organization. He was a hardworking supporter of the MEK in the Society of Muslim Students in Greece where Babak and his mother Sakineh Sadeghi later joined him.
Although Babak’s mother had no political tendencies, she followed her husband to join the MEK in Iraq under the order of the group leader, Massoud Rajavi. They were settled in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. They participated in the MEK’s cross border operation against their own country men, called “Forough Javidan”.
Organisational Divorces within PMOI
The catastrophic failure of the MEK in that operation became the pretext for Massoud Rajavi to run his cult of personality. He claimed that the reason for the failure was that the rank and file were obsessed with women and family life. Thus, he ordered members to divorce their spouses in order to be focused on the so-called struggle. Babak’s parents divorced as almost all married members of the group did.
The next phase of the process to destroy family life, took place in 1991 during the Gulf war. Massoud Rajavi ordered to separate 900 children of MEK members from their parents smuggling them to western countries. Babak was sent to Canada where he was kept under the group’s supervision in the houses of the MEK sympathizers.
Babak was in Canada when his father started to protest against the group tactics. He wanted to leave the group with his ex-wife but the group leaders did not let them meet each other. However, Shadollah (Behrang) left the group alone.
“Rajavi wanted to ruin any chance for Babak’s father to immigrate to Canada using the refugee status of his son so he ordered his agents to bring Babak back to Iraq,” Mitra Yusefi, former member of the group writes.
Therefore, Babak was brought back to Iraq under the order of Massoud Rajavi in 1998. Babak was said that he would meet his mother and then he would get back to Canada but there was no return for that trip. He was under the cult-like control of the MEK until the group was relocated in Albania, in 2014.
Former member of the group from Semnan, Iran, recalls Babak in Camp Ashraf, “Babak had a peaceful and quiet personality. He was not into the group’s regulation and after sometime he did not want to stay in the group any more but the group commanders tried to use his mother as an emotional tool to convince him to stay. In contrast, Babak and his mother were never allowed to keep in touch freely, without the commanders’ supervision.”
Babak was in his thirties when he could manage to leave. As soon as he arrived in Albania, he left the group together with a group of other child victims of the group such as Amin Golmaryami and his brothers. Amin Golmaryami recently spoke out in the German Zeit Magazine and revealed the detailed story of living under the Cult of Rajavi which is very similar to that of Babak.