Whoops! What a big gaffe in the US report!

 
Letter to the editor
Mail on Sunday
 
Mr. Geordie Greig.
 
An unpublished report produced by the US Library of Congress for the Department of Defense (the Pentagon), has been continuously quoted by the Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult in their media since it was conveniently ‘leaked’ to the internet in January. The so-called ‘Pentagon report’ mentioned my name along with that of my brother and my sister-in-law, but because what was written was so obviously made-up to fulfill the agenda of the MEK themselves, I chose to ignore it.
 
Then in an article dated February 16, 2013, the British newspaper Mail-on-Sunday also referred to this report and again this has been widely used by the cult in its media. Amused by the dramatic tabloid headline "British housewife accused by the US of spying for Iran ‘to save her brother-in-law’s life’", I had a closer look to find out why this article had been published six weeks after the report was first leaked.
 
The US report claims that in 2002: "She (i.e. my sister in law Anne Singleton) agreed to cooperate with MOIS (Iran’s ministry of intelligence) to save her brother-in-law’s life – he (i.e. me, Ebrahim Khodabandeh) was still a member of MEK at the time."
 
In 2002 I was living in one of the MEK’s bases in London. This means that my life was in danger inside the MEK in the UK!
 
In my opinion the Mail-on-Sunday article was published specifically to cover up this gaffe. It even points to this in the title.
 
At the start of the article it says: "Anne Singleton, 53, is alleged to have been blackmailed into training with the Iranian secret service during a visit to Tehran in 2002. The Pentagon-commissioned report claims that Mrs Singleton and her Iranian husband, Massoud Khodabandeh, 56, agreed to work for the regime in return for saving the life of his jailed brother." [bold added]
 
Not only is this untrue, it is yet another gaffe. The original report did not say that I was in jail at that time and the author of the article either did not bother to read the actual report, or was probably as confused as everyone else who read it as to what it was actually trying to say.
 
The fact is that I was arrested in Syria and taken to prison in Iran in June 2003.
 
In the year 2002 I was still a member of the MEK living in their collective base in London. My brother and my sister-in-law who had both left the MEK had established the iran-interlink.org website and were active in exposing the violation of human rights inside Rajavi’s cult which had been going on for many years.
 
I can tell from my 23 years’ experience and as one of the key personnel in the MEK’s Foreign Affairs Department in Europe that the gaffes made in the report and in the article both originated from the MEK.
 
Ebrahim Khodabandeh
February 20, 2013