Mohammad Reza Torabi, a former child soldier of the Mujahedin- Khalq (MEK) in Space dated October 18th, 2024, on Platform X, spoke about the mechanisms of leaving the MEK during his stay in Iraq and Albania from the past to the present. At the beginning of his speech, he said a key sentence in this regard that is worth noting: “The reality is that it is possible to leave the MEK, but it is very, very difficult.”
Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era
Torabi starts from 2001, when after holding meetings for all organizational levels, it became almost impossible to leave Camp Ashraf. According to Torabi, in these meetings, Massoud Rajavi publicly announced that we will not send anyone abroad from now on.
This former child soldier of the MEK describes the 2001 meetings as “very violent” and “anti-human” and “literally brutal”. According to Torabi, the word “Brutal” is the best adjective to describe the meetings. According to Masoud Rajavi’s new instructions, if a person wanted to leave the organization, he should first confess to the camera that he would not fight any more, and secondly, he should announce his resignation in a meeting before the crowd, so he would be subjected to the most brutal attacks. Curses, insults, spitting and even beatings from the brutalized comrades, and if he did not regret leaving the organization during these stressful and oppressive stages and resisted all the attacks, he would have to stay in a section called the exit for 2 years, until his alleged information would be burned and eventually he would be left at the border of Iran and Iraq.
According to Mohammad Reza Torabi, “leaving the MEK is the strictest red line” and if a person announced his intention to leave, all tasks would be shut down in order to convince the person to stay.
Due to such difficult conditions, some members of the group tried to escape from Ashraf camp. Ashraf was a large piece of land surrounded by barbed wire, guard towers and iron gates, in the bareness of the Iraqi deserts, which increases the probability of failure of escape plans. Mohammad Reza Torabi says that people who were caught while fleeing were punished with imprisonment and torture for at least six months.
Iraq after the American invasion
In 2003, after the American invasion of Iraq and the subsequent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the disarmament of the MEK, the American forces took over the protection of Camp Ashraf. According to Torabi’s testimony, the American forces conducted short interviews with each and every member of the camp in the tents they had built around Ashraf, but the intensity of the brainwashing was so excessive that most of the members did not share their willingness to leave, with the Americans. Torabi says that people believed that they were the forces of imperialism and did not tell anything to them for fear of saying the wrong thing.
According to Torabi, since the MEK was under American supervision at that time, they could no longer torture people. At that time, people who wanted to leave the establishment could go to the American temporary settlement camp known as TIPF and stay there for a few years until the conditions for transfer to Iran or a third country were provided for them.
But inside the organization, as Mohammad Reza remembers, the leaders used to tell scary stories about TIPF to people in order to reduce the desire to leave their cult.
The first months in Albania
According to Mohammad Reza, Masoud Rajavi was determined to stay in Iraq, even before 2010, the United Nations proposed a plan based on which all members of the MEK would be transferred to Poland, but Rajavi’s strategy was to stay in Iraq.
Torabi even remembers that Abrishamchi spoke in the meetings about the possibility of Kurdish uprising and Barzani’s arming, followed by the arming of the MEK
But in 2016, under the pressure of the Iraqi government and the support of the United States, the MEK were completely transferred from Iraq to Albania, while Rajavi preferred that people stay in Iraq and more forces were killed in the attacks on Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty.
Torabi talks about the atmosphere created after entering Albania: in a short time after entering Albania, when the organizational structure of the group had lost its cohesion, several hundred people were able to leave. Mohammad Reza explains why he did not leave the Cult of Rajavi in those days: “For someone like me, who was brainwashed by Masoud Rajavi, life outside the Mujahideen Khalq was unimaginable.”
Today in Albania
One year after moving to Albania, the leaders of the MEK rented the current location of the group in the village of Manez in the north of Tirana and started the construction of their new stronghold called Ashraf 3. Once again, under the pretext of security issues, they built a fence and gate around their camp, and this time they added CCTV cameras to the protection layer of their camp.
Nevertheless, according to Torabi, the conditions of the members today are not as difficult as the conditions prevailing in Iraq, but people are either so old that they no longer have the motivation to leave and see themselves too old to build an independent life outside the group, or in terms of personality and spirit not everyone has the capacity to endure two years of isolation and repression before being fired, in the exit department of the organization.
Mohammad Reza Torabi says: Imagine living in a place where if you ask to leave, everyone will consider you as a traitor! According to them, the worst sin is to leave the MEK. In this situation, anyone who leaves this cult is really bravely making the most difficult decision of his life.
Mazda Parsi