Former member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) speaks of imprisonment of children in the group. He writes about kids who were in custody in the MEK’s prisons because their parents wanted to defect the group.
Samad Nazari was a former member of the MEK who defected the group more than three decades ago. He returned to Iran and then he became one of the founders of Nejat NGO. His auto biography titled “Footprint of the Evil” was focused on the years of his membership and imprisonment in the MEK and defection from the MEK. Nazari passed away in the Fall of 2014.
In 1991, at the time of the first Gulf war, Samad Nazari was jailed in solitary confinement in the MEK’s Debes prison (Askarizadeh camp) near Kirkuk, Iraq. He was punished for his decision to leave the Cult of Rajavi!
Samad Nazari
In two parts of his memoirs of custody inside the MEK, he notifies that women and children were also imprisoned in Debes prison.
He was jailed in his dark and dirty cell in Askarizadeh when the coalition forces bombarded the camp. “I heard the loud noise of 5 bombs that hit the area,” he writes in his book. “A thick suffocating dust entered my cell which was in the basement. I could hear the cries of women and children from the upper floors of the camp. I realized that there were other guests in that prison, those who were willing to leave the group.”
In other part of his horrific memoirs of solitary confinement and torture under Massoud Rajavi’s ruling, Nazari writes:
“In my new cell, there were words written in a child-like handwriting: Mom died, Dad is in jail.” Nazari was curious to know that whose child was in prison. Later, a friend who had been imprisoned in the same cell, told him about the poor child. “The handwriting belonged to the kids of a man called Farhang. He wanted to defect the group in the summer of 1991. Soraya Shahraki, a commander of the group beat Farhang and jailed him. His two kids who were primary students were taqken from school and delivered to him in the cell. Their mother had been killed in the MEK’s cross border operation against Iran, Forough Javidan.”
This was only one of the testimonies of MEK defectors about violation of human rights against children in the MEK. There are numerous cases of children rights abuse in the MEK. The followings are just some of them:
– Nadereh Afshari, former member of the MEK writes in her book of new-borns who had been separated from their parents and had been smuggled to Europe. They were maltreated by a female Mujahed, named Azam who worked in the group’s team house in Coln.
– Mother Esmat, former member testifies about her younger daughter, Jennifer, whose knee was injured because of the military trainings inside the MEK school. Jennifer’s ponytail hair was also cut by the teacher because she had not wear hijab.
– Amin Golmaryami and Amir Yaghmai, former child soldiers testified about sexual harassments they experienced inside the MEK camps.
– Hundreds of child soldiers endured heavy military trainings and even were coerced to launch terrorist operations.
– Many child soldiers were killed in the group’s operations. Maryam Qeitani was only 15 years old when she was killed in Forough Javidan. Having been grown up in the MEK’s bases Asieh Rakhshani was in her twenties when she was killed by Iraqi armed forces because Massoud Rajavi had ordered his unarmed members to clash with Iraqi army.
– Alan Mohammadi and Yaser Akbarinasab were two teenagers who could not stand the dictatorship of the Cult of Rajavi and committed suicide.
To the list, add hundreds of children who were orphaned by the MEK leaders, left in foster families across Europe and North America and were never able to find their parents again.