The Torabis are from a village near Gaz port in Golestan province in North of Iran. Nadeali Torabi, the oldest brother is a farmer, living in their home town looking forward to see the two sisters left of his entire family. Their parents, both died before they could be able to visit their beloved children and grandchildren.
QorbanAli one of the Torabis was influenced by the communist ideas taking over the 1970s in Iran so he joined the Mujahedin Khalq Organization. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, his two sisters Masoomeh and Maryam and his bother Mohamad Reza joined the MEK too. Eventually the Torabi’s home became a center for ani-government activities in the armed struggle that Massoud Rajavi launched against the newly stablished Iranian government during the 1980s.
The fate of two generations of the Torabis was impacted by their involvement with the MEK. The followings are brief records of what happened to these guys:
Mohammad Reza Torabi 1 (Nadeali’s brother)
QorbanAli Torabi (Nadeali’s brother)
Zahra Seraj (QorbanAli’s wife)
Mohammad Reza Torabi 2 (Son of Qorban and Zahra)
Masoomeh Torabi (Nadeali’s sister)
Maryam Torabi (Nadeali’s sister)
Mohammad Reza Torabi 1
The clashes between the MEK forces and the Iranian government turned into violence after Massoud Rajavi ordered the bloody armed struggle against the Islamic Republic, in June 1981. The MEK launched numerous acts of violence against the Iranian civilians and authorities. Consequently, a large number of MEK members were arrested, imprisoned or sentenced to death. MohammadReza was executed in Evin Prison.
GhorbanAli Torabi Qorban was tortured to death by the MEK
QorbanAli Torabi
As a mujahed partisan, he was arrested by the Iranian security guards when he was crossing the Turkish border with his family. He was imprisoned for six years. In March, 1989 Qorban left Iran to join the MEK in Iraq together with his wife, son, his two sisters, his sister’s husband. They first moved to Pakistan and then they were smuggled to Iraq.
Two years later, Massoud Rajavi’s so-called ideological revolution required members of the group to divorce their spouses. Family life became forbidden at Camp Ashraf. His son, Mohammad Reza was separated from him and transferred to the West together with eight hundred other children of the MEK members. Qorban protested the new cult-like regulations of the group. This was the start of an oppressive process against him.
In the winter of 1994, the MEK leaders imprisoned a large number of their own members including Qorban, accusing them of working for the Iranian government. Qorban was tortured to death. Twenty-one of his peers in the cell witnessed his death after his awfully injured body was brought to the cell by the MEK torturers. Former members, Alireza Mirasgari and Mohammad Razaghi were two of those witnesses who later testified about the death of Qorban due to tortures in the MEK’s prison.
Zahra Seraj
After Rajavi’s so-called ideological revolution, Zahra was coerced to divorce her husband, Qorban. She submitted her son to the MEK’s smugglers to take him to Canada. In response, she was granted higher ranks in the hierarchy of the Cult of Rajavi.
When in 2004, Nadeali traveled to Iraq to see his brothers and sisters, he ran into Zahra in the hall that all families of MEK members were waiting to visit their loved ones. Nadeali asked Zahra about his brother Qorban’s fate. “For a few seconds she stared at me and then she started shouting insults at me,” Nadeali recounts. “She was severely brainwashed.”
Zahra Seraj is still in the MEK’s camp in, Albania. According to former members, Zahra was a kind, hardworking and responsible person who was brainwashed by the Cult of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
Mohammad Reza Torabi
Mohammad Reza Torabi 2
He was named MohammadReza after the name of his martyred uncle. He was only one year old when he was in Iranian prison with his mother. In 1989 his parents took him to Camp Ashraf, Iraq. He was there until he was nine years old. In 1991, he was smuggled to Europe and then to Canada to live in the MEK bases or with foster parents. He was then brought back to Iraq to join the MEK’s National Liberation Army (NLA) when he was 16.
Four years ago, He could manage to leave the MEK after 18 years. He has recently begun to reveal facts on his life experience as child soldier in the MEK. “It was a terrible life there,” he says about his childhood in the Cult of Rajavi. “I was in Ashraf until I was eight or nine. In Camp Ashraf or in the MEK’s bases in the West, I was sexually abused by the MEK sympathizers and members. I was then given to a family that was very bad. I was constantly beaten by them. I was mentally abused.”
Masoomeh Torabi
Masoomeh was pregnant when she crossed the Iranian border to Pakistan together with her family. She gave birth to her daughter, Anahita, in Pakistan. Then they joined the MEK in Camp Ashraf, Iraq.
She admitted Rajavi’s order to divorce her husband, Hamid. A year later, the MEK smugglers took her two-year-old daughter to Canada.
However, when his brother Nadeali went to camp Ashraf to visit the, she hugged him and cried. Asked about the death of Qorban, Masoomeh told Nadeali that he had died of a heart attack!
Masoomeh is still taken as a hostage in the MEK cult-like group. Former members say that when Masoomeh finally called her daughter Anahita after 20 years, she did not know her at all. No information was found about the current situation of Hamid and Anahita Emami, the husband and daughter of Masoomeh.
Maryam Banoo Torabi
The youngest sibling has spent the most part of her life in the MEK. In 1994, she was also accused of being an agent of the Iranian intelligence. She was interrogated and imprisoned. She was under too much pressure by the commanders. The death of her brother, Qorban was also a trauma that led her to psychotic disorders.
In that only one meeting with Nadeali in 2004, Maryam told him that she wanted to leave the group but she was scared. “My little sister, Maryam was crying saying that she did not want to stay there but she was forced to stay,” Nadeali says. “I asked her to come with me but she said that if the MEK agents realized that she wanted to escape, they would kill her.”
Maryam is still in the MEK’s camp in Albania, just the same as other radicalized female members of the group.