++ Massoud Rajavi’s threat to kill former MEK members and any other critics in Europe has attracted many responses in Farsi from people who warn that both Europe and America must take this seriously as they believe that, one way or another, something bad will happen. Even internal critics of the MEK have been complaining that these threats are getting worse by the day.
++ Now that the MEK have been asking for the Americans to give them their weapons back in Iraq, Farsi commentators have found more ammunition with which to ridicule the group. The MEK have had to label even internal critics as ‘agents of the Iranian regime’ to try to answer the mockery. The MEK claims “the regime is shivering with fear at the flash of light of the MEK’s guns”. These critics report that Rajavi claims Camp Liberty to be “the centre of struggle and war”. They say these are ridiculous claims; the MEK are beating the war drum with nothing in their hands. But more in depth analyses reveal greater concerns. Families and experts alike have written to the UN pointing out that when Rajavi talks like this it means he is preparing a catastrophe for his followers. They anticipate that Rajavi intends to recruit some murderous gang to kill the residents of Camp Liberty. This scenario is not new, and Rajavi has acted in this way in the past. The families of residents are now seriously worried that their loved ones will be killed rather than be allowed out of the camp.
++ In Albania the MEK have opened up a plethora of websites using various pseudonyms. The main focus of the sites is to praise the MEK and denounce the ex-members who have just arrived in Albania from Camp Liberty as liars. But the central problem is exposed by the MEK themselves as they complain they pay $500 per month to these people to keep quiet – the UN only pays $250 per month – but in spite of this people are getting the money and still exposing everything about the situation through anonymous posts on Facebook and blogs (reporting who is coming and going from the MEK side, and who the main contacts are, etc). The MEK’s dilemma is that it cannot control this information leakage even through bribery.
++ Along with asking to be re-armed, the MEK have this week published an article claiming that because Iran is working toward rapprochement with the Americans, this proves they are not anti-Imperialist! As usual this has engendered many ironic responses. Such as Saber in Nejat, who creates the comparison between them and Iran by pointing out that ‘having a win win relation between two counties is not a problem, but being the mercenary of another country against your own is seriously a big problem’.
In English:
++ Mazda Parsi writing in Nejat Bloggers says the MEK is trying to recreate cult conditions in Albania to keep newly transferred people under their hegemony. To this end they have sent one of Rajavi’s most loyal cult lieutenants, Faezeh Mohabatkar to link the main cult in Iraq with those resettled in Albania. By choosing Mohabatkar, who is known to ex-members as a torturer, the MEK is sending the message: You cannot simply leave the cult. But Mohabatkar has been tasked with imposing cult conditions in Tirana where the group members are no longer isolated as they are behind the bars of Ashraf or Liberty. As an expert in MEK cult affairs, Parsi questions whether she can succeed in imposing the MEK’s cult practices in a European city and retain all of the relocated members inside the cult. Evidence of the previously resettled members shows, he argues, that once members are cut off from the intense control of cult relations they are able to defect more easily.
++ An article by Dr. Ismail Salami published by Global Research deals with the continued attempts of Mossad and the MEK to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The article reports that over two years Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has thwarted several such attempts. The MEK’s involvement is exposed by a NBC News report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem which “cites two anonymous senior US officials with two interesting claims: 1) that it was MEK which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and 2) the terrorist group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service.” So the report testifies to the veracity of what Iranian officials have asserted about the involvement of MEK and Israel in murdering nuclear scientists on the Iranian soil.” In the context of recent death threats by Rajavi against critics, the author writes, “Interestingly, a few weeks ago, I received a threatening email from Ali Safavi, the notorious MKO spokesman (through a western publisher of mine) in which he had pontificated about the virtues of the MKO terrorists and the so-called ‘vices’ of the Islamic Republic, accusing me of serving as a mouthpiece for the Islamic Republic. I strongly believe that revealing the murky realities of a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of 17000 innocent Iranians is only my ethical obligation. Besides, Ali Safavi and the likes of him should come to their senses and realize that their efforts to whitewash their crimes will eventually prove pointless and that there is no way at all for them to lend a cloak of legitimacy to their unnamable crimes against the Iranian nation.”
The article concludes that ISIL and the MEK are ‘cut from the same cloth’ and that “Mossad is dispatching assassins into Iran to liquidate Iranian scientists is only meant to strike fear and beyond that, to secretly make up for what the ISIL and MKO terrorists feel emasculated to do in Iran.”
++ Anne Khodabandeh of Iran Interlink has written a brief Open Letter addressed to President Hollande. The gist of the letter is that France has protected the terrorist MEK for thirty years in a de facto terrorist enclave to which even the French security services have no access. Now that Rajavi has threatened to kill his critics – with names and photographs of his targets – then the French President is responsible for anything that happens. Khodabandeh writes: “You are the President of France, not ISIS or Al Qaida. You, therefore, are responsible for the security of your citizens. I also hold you responsible for my life because you are currently hosting a terrorist group which threatens to kill me simply because I speak out against its continued crimes. In a democracy we don’t beg terrorists not to kill us. Instead we expect our elected leaders to ensure that such crimes are prevented.”
