Addressing a symposium of like-minded guests in the European Parliament on May 25, Maryam Rajavi, second-in-command of the Mojahedin-e Khalq cult, issued a stark threat to humanitarian agencies and the Government of Iraq.
 |
| What Rajavi is really threatening is that the MEK leaders will massacre their own people if any external agency should attempt to interfere with the MEK’s totalitarian control over the camp’s residents. |
"Any forced displacement in Iraq would be a prelude to a massacre of the inhabitants of Ashraf. And I warn the international community and the United States, they would be responsible for the consequences," said Maryam Rajavi.
Rajavi’s threat carefully omits to identify who will perform this massacre. By referring to the clashes of April 8, when MEK Special Forces violently resisted a pre-agreed mission by the Iraqi army to legally reclaim land from the north of the camp, she deliberately implies that the Iraqi army would “massacre” the residents.
This is certainly not the case however. What Rajavi is really threatening is that the MEK leaders will massacre their own people if any external agency should attempt to interfere with the MEK’s totalitarian control over the camp’s residents.
Her real message is that the residents of Camp Ashraf are being held as hostages and the MEK leaders will kill them if anyone tries to rescue them.
It must be understood that the threat is real. The MEK leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi have a history of shedding the blood of ordinary MEK members for political gain. In 2003 two MEK members died in Paris and London after setting themselves on fire to satisfy the needs of the cult. MEK leader Massoud Rajavi has already threatened a Jonestown-like mass suicide to ward off any attempt to close Camp Ashraf.
Rajavi’s threat comes only days after the cult’s Western backers sent out a flurry of contradictory messages about the future of the camp’s residents. Clearly, MEK supporter Struan Stevenson was not party to the MEK’s latest tactic when he suggested the group could simply be moved to Europe. It is only the cult leaders who can order these killings.