The 24th session of the trial court of 104 Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) members and the group as a legal entity was held in Tehran. The recent session was held at the 11th branch of the criminal court of Tehran province on Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024. The court was presided by Judge Dehqani.
Reassuring the witnesses and informants who show up, the Judge announced that all members based in Albania and other members of the group who wish to testify in this court can contact consulates and international institutions linked with the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the protection of Iranian Judiciary.
According to the judge, international organizations must ensure the safety of witnesses, that is, any person from Albania or its affiliated members who approach them, in accordance with the UN Charter and the laws approved after 1993.
The lawyer of the plaintiffs, Mollai presented certain facts and documents on the MEK’s terrorist operations against civilians. He said, “In addition to carrying out terrorist operations against the officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the group has murdered ordinary citizens, women and children as one of its main goals and in order to create fear and terror among the people.”
The lawyer referred to the torture and assassination of civilians such as workers, shoemakers, teachers and ordinary passers-by just because the group simply considered as to be religious. He spoke of Abbas Effat Ravesh, a shoe maker who was killed by the MEK agents only due to his appearance. He looked like to be a supporter of the Iranian government.
On August 8, 2018 at 10:00 PM, upon the order of the organization’s leader to kidnap Abbas Effat Ravesh, who was a shoemaker, the organization’s special operation team went to his. Since he was not present, they went to his workplace in Shemiran, Tehran. Disguised in the uniforms of Iranian Revolutionary guards, they took him. When they put him in a car, they tied his hands and eyes and took him to a team house where they subjected him to the most severe torture in order to get the information they wanted. When they did not achieve the desired result, after much torture, they killed him by injecting cyanide. They tied his hands and feet, put him in the trunk of a car, and took him to a predetermined location where they buried his body. They even did not know his name. The MEK agents just called him “shoe maker” in their confessions.
The lawyer cited from the confessions of two arrested MEK members who collaborated in the killing of Abbas and three members of revolutionary guards. Mehran Asdaghi was one of them. He was the military commander of the MEK terror teams in Tehran.
The lawyer read Mehran Asdaghi’s confessions: “Around evening, Mostafa Madan Pisheh shot Mohsen Mirjalili in the bathroom due to his shaking and we were forced to evacuate the house, so we decided to eliminate the guards and the shoemaker. We tied them to chairs, blindfolded them and stunned them with the same lead rods and then injected cyanide into their bodies, after which they started to snort. While they were still alive, we tied their bodies with ropes so that they could fit inside the trunk of the car.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyer told the court: “The MKO arrested the shoemaker simply because he had a religious face and they did not recognize him and only knew that he was a shoemaker.”
He continued, “When the shoemaker entered the house, he was tortured, and with the extensive torture that was inflicted on him, it became clear on the first day that he was unaware of everything and that what MEK commanders were saying was not true. Despite shoemaker’s begging that he did not know what you wanted from him, they continued torturing him because the people above had ordered it.”
The video of Mehran Asdaghi’s confessions at the time of his arrest was then shown in court.
Confessions of Khosrow Zandi, the person in charge of burying the body of the deceased, and the officials who gave the order was also presented in the court.
The lawyer stated that the type of action taken by the MEK in killing the Effat-Ravesh and several others such as Taleb Taheri, Mohsen Mirjalili, and Shahrokh Tahmasbi, which the organization has named “engineering operation”, is different from the criminal title of murder. This action has the following characteristics: 1- Killing people in the category of engineering operations by applying the most severe tortures such as burning with an iron and boiling water, peeling and severe beatings, and finally killing them with cyanide injections while they had signs of life. 2- These actions were not motivated by personal motives and were completely organized and systematic. 3- Attempting to kill people and using people trained in torture and murder. 4- Creating terror and intimidation with the most severe torture and assassination.
The Lawyer asked the court to investigate the role of each of the defendants in the killing of Effat Ravesh, considering their organizational position in the structure of MEK.
Then a former member of the MEK, who stayed unnamed took the stand as a witness. He introduced himself as saying:
“I live in Germany and was a member of the MEK from 1981 to 1991. I had a political motivation for joining the organization, and in 1981 I joined this organization with a political goal, and I worked with this group inside Iran until 1991. Many of my close friends had also joined this organization.
During this time, we suffered a lot and were forced to do forced labor, almost like slavery. Massoud Rajavi trampled on all our political, social, and family issues. He crossed every red line and then provided evidence and proof, saying that I was a new prophet. He first placed Maryam as the ideological leader and then in the position of president, but he always saw himself as an untouchable person.”
About the cult-like nature of the MEK the eye-witness explained that there is only one ideological leader who can be the president. “Of course, later, when I went to Iraq, I was faced with these trends of ideological revolution, organization, forced labor, and austerity,” he said. “I saw that these had nothing to do with Iranian society or politics, they were all my inventions. Every day he would put his forces in a tight spot and besieged so that they would do nothing but obey, praise, and submit. Every day he would elevate himself one level higher and higher.”
He was a victim of the MEK’s violence too. He said: “I remember in 1981, a woman named Fereshteh Yeganeh, who was a high-ranking official, challenged me and asked me why did you come here? I replied that I came to fight, and that one word caused me to be thrown in prison the next day. We had different prisons. If I had said, for example, that I came for brother [Massoud], I might have been forgiven.”
In fact, he was imprisoned once more in 1988 in Iraqi Kurdistan. “A prisoner who had no choice in public and could not defend himself,” he recalls. “No one could eat with him, mention his name, or look at him.”
Asked by the judge about his organizational position, he answered, “I worked mostly in the intelligence department and I did not have a position. In this department, there were various tasks such as wiretapping and overhearing telephone calls. It was the work of the press and publications, and evacuation, and it was mostly related to wiretapping.”
“There is fear on your face. Have you been threatened?”, the witness was asked by the lawyer
The witness said: “Yes, I have been threatened. I have said a lot about the organization. I was once a guest at the European Parliament in Belgium. Maryam Rajavi was there that day. Maryam Rajavi’s bodyguards attacked me and beat me, saying that this person was a terrorist and that the Islamic Republic of Iran had sent him. I hired a lawyer about this matter and filed a complaint, stating that my family was being held hostage by the organization.”
The judge asked: Are your wife and children still hostage?
The witness said: “Yes. They separated my wife and I without informing us and without a religious order. Germany did not investigate this complaint and the court was not held. We and our families are always under threat. They call anyone who opposed them a mercenary…I went to Germany and legally freed my child, but my wife is still in the MEK’s prison.”
According to the witness who showed up in the 24th session of the MEK’s trial, In 1985, in order to justify that so-called “ideological revolution” and his disastrous marriage with Maryam Qajar, Massoud Rajavi sent a group of forces to Iran to carry out assassinations.
The witness said: “The terror teams were trained in the MEK’s camp and entered Iran through Kurdistan or other routes.”
The judge asked: “Was the torture of people part of this training?”
This defected member of the organization stated: “I spoke to many people who had been tortured. In 1997, the organization imprisoned more than 500 of its members. Mr. Reza Gooran wrote a book about his torture in Norway. I read in this book that a number of members died under torture. According to the author of this book, Parviz Ahmadi and several others were killed under torture. The names of the torturers are also given in this book. Their reason for torturing the members was that these people might later become critics of the organization. They would keep these people in custody or persecute them.”
The next session of the court will be held on Tuesday, December 10th.