++ After the terrorist attack in Paris last week, many Farsi commentators have criticised France for not acting properly against terrorists. Writers joke about France sending an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf to help “fight terrorism” while the MEK has maintained its political headquarters just outside Paris for thirty years. Maryam Rajavi has abused the impunity offered by France to repeatedly voice her support for ISIS and other terrorist groups. After the murders at Charlie Hebdo, the MEK tried to jump on the bandwagon claiming its London representative Nourouzi was interviewed by Al Jazeera English – though nothing was broadcast by that station. The MEK website also shows pictures of MEK agents leafleting the unity protestors. Former MEK member Ghorban Ali Hossein Nejad writes that he saw the MEK were the only people who had their own banners and leaflets and as such were given a hostile reception by French citizens. Two other ex-members in France have warned French security services that they want it to be put on record that the MEK will certainly soon attempt a violent attack against former members. Other writers have published articles comparing Rajavi’s cult and Daesh with documents showing MEK support for Daesh. One article criticises Maryam Rajavi for supposedly condemning the attack, pointing out that “this has been done by your friends who you call the ‘revolutionary tribes’. Why are you condemning your friends?” Another article, welcomed by many, was by Fanous Association in Germany titled ‘France, Victim or Culpable?’ This describes French cooperation with various terrorist entities, and highlights the MEK as an example.
++ Two more people died – one man in Tirana died of old age (he was around 90 years old), and one woman in her late fifties died in Iraq from a heart attack. The MEK as usual tried to make a propaganda issue of it, but everyone else claims these deaths could have been prevented. The Iraqi authorities say that an ambulance is on permanent stand-by just outside Camp Liberty, but the MEK don’t allow residents out unless they are dead or on the point of death. The authorities say that everything the MEK need is available to them such as medical care, hotel rooms – more so than for ordinary Iraqis – and this provision is supervised and vouched for by the UN. People who knew Mirza Agha, the old man who died in Tirana, say that for the last ten years at least he was kept by force in the MEK camps where the MEK were pushing for him to die through overwork and poor diet and other stressors. Several commentators have said it is extremely rare that the MEK do not claim a dead person as a martyr – no matter how or why they died – and it is significant that in his case they did not. The MEK claimed that Mirza Agha had been forcefully working for Iran’s Intelligence service because of his daughter being in the MEK before he defected and joined the MEK in Iraq. He is described as having been a” refugee” with the MEK for twenty years. Experts in MEK behaviour point out that this is a deliberate and rare omission and shows there is some other information which means the MEK are afraid of calling him a martyr.
++ This week Hamed Sarafpour published a note against the articles by some of the internal critics of the MEK. He specifically mentions Esmail Vafa Yaghmai, who has been writing repetitively over the last few months to “prove” he is not “an agent of the regime”. Sarafpour’s comments were welcomed by many who had become sick of Yaghmai. Sarafpour and others say that Yaghmai is a clear example of somebody who doesn’t understand that you cannot be outside a cult and still support it. Yaghmai claims he has left but writes over and over that he is loyal to the MEK cause. He just doesn’t get it and is destroying himself and his own reputation.
++ Ghorban Ali Hossein Nejad, resident of France, has written to the Sheikh of Al Azhar University in Cairo – a Sunni source of high religious scholarship – and exposes the falsity of a letter sent there by the MEK’s Jalal Ganjei. Hossein Nejad says Ganjei poses as a mullah and religious scholar when he wants, but at other times is secular. Using documents and other evidence, Hossein Nejad exposes that “all the things they wrote for you were written by me as the head of the MEK’s Arabic translation department. Ganjei doesn’t know Arabic properly nor does he know Islam properly.”
In English:
++ Gareth Porter in Middle East Eye writes ‘Four ways the West got the Iran nuclear issue wrong’. These are: Denial of Iranian rights, followed by denial of the truth; The intelligence goes wrong; Ignoring the Fatwa against chemical weapons and Refusing to acknowledge the weaponisation evidence is tainted. Under this latter heading he says: “Contrary to the cover story that the documents were passed on to Western intelligence by a participant in a covert Iranian programme or by a German spy, a former senior German foreign office official has now revealed that the German intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, obtained them from a sometime source who was a member of the Iranian exile terrorist organisation Mujahedeen E-Khalq (MEK). The MEK was then serving Israel’s Mossad as a means of laundering alleged intelligence, so it is safe to assume that the documents came from Israel.”
++ Mazda Parsi writing for Nejat Bloggers dissects the MEK’s online presence saying its News websites are based on “sheer propaganda and stupidity”. The MEK’s journalism consists of propaganda or politically-based mind control and its anti-Iran stance uses archived photographs and fake pictures. Parsi points out that “On only one day, you may find a dozen of cases of protests and gatherings that have taken place in various cities of Iran, reported on the MKO websites and TV channel. Seemingly, the MKO’s propaganda runners do not care about realities and truth. They believe that their goal should justify any means. Demonizing the Islamic Republic is their main objective and preference regardless of validity and authenticity of the news.” This false news, he says, only fools the uninformed members and ill-informed supporters. If such protests existed as the MEK claim over thirty years, there would surely be a revolution in Iran. The problem then must be with the MEK’s news.
++ An article in Nejat Bloggers says ‘Maryam Rajavi’s claim for promotion of equality in her cult is absurd and ludicrous’. Quoting women ex-members of the MEK, the article talks about forced dress codes, in particular hijab. One says, “In the cult, women are not allowed to use any kind of hijab except green, khaki and red scarves. However, red and khaki scarves are allowed only for special occasions. You would be punished if you wore your red or khaki scarf in occasions other than the group’s propaganda ceremonies and marches.” In addition, “forced divorce, forced celibacy, forced hysterectomy surgeries to make female members barren and particularly sexual abuse by Massoud Rajavi” act as evidence that Maryam Rajavi’s claim to support women is absurd.
++ Anne Khodabandeh of Iran Interlink wrote a short article titled ‘Rajavi’s lobbyists demand Mojahedin Khalq terrorist cult in Iraq be re-armed rather than removed”. The article points to the irony that the MEK supporters who lobbied so hard and expensively to have them de-proscribed as a terrorist group now want them re-armed. Khodabandeh says that “small arms are wanted in order to impose greater control over these captives as they become more and more desperate to escape the tyranny of the cult”. The article concludes: “Instead of demanding the MEK be re-armed ready to utilize violence again – the raison d’etre of the terrorist cult – this gang should be demanding from Massoud and Maryam Rajavi that each resident of Camp Liberty be given the opportunity to make contact with their families in privacy and to freely leave the camp if they desire. Then we would see how quickly and efficiently these people can be resettled.”
++ Fars News reported in English that “Iranian Judiciary Chief Sadeq Amoli Larijani lashed out at the West’s double-standards in dealing with terrorism, saying the western countries’ support for the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization shows that their claims about fighting terrorism are all untruthful. “Now the MKO terrorist group with the worst criminal record is supported by the West, and the Arab financial and spiritual supporters of the ISIL are also West’s allies; then how can one believe that the West, specially the US, Britain, France and Germany, are fighting against terrorism,” Amoli Larijani said, addressing a number of high-ranking judiciary officials in Tehran.”
January 16, 2015
