Massoud Rajavi surfaced in Iraq, the country that was in war with Iran at that time. After he was expelled from France territory in June 1988, he was welcome by the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as the fifth column agent who would aid Iraqi Baath regime in spying and military operations. However, Maryam Rajavi is still in France running the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) with its full potentials as a destructive terrorist cult.
At that time, Massoud Rajavi was in the first stages of establishing his cult of personality. His expulsion from France was a year after his marriage with Maryam Qajar Azdanlou, the wife of Abrishamchi another high ranking member of the group. The marriage was marked as the start of the “Ideological Revolution” that required members to divorce their spouses and to dedicate their entire existence to the group’s cause and its leader Massoud Rajavi.
Up to the Ideological Revolution, the MKO was a political group with a violent back ground of fighting against the Iranian government but after the Ideological Revolution was declared and started its rule, the MKO became a destructive cult with a terrorist extremist substance. It almost took two decades to fall Saddam Hussein and the MKO go disarmed by the US military. The fall of the landlord and the disarmament of the group led a large number of MKO members –who couldn`t justify their stay in the group anymore—to leave the group.
Once the rank and file defected the group, secrets of the Cult of Rajavi were revealed in the testimonies that former members made in different courts and media in order to bring Massoud Rajavi to trial. But Massoud got disappeared. He had not been seen since Maryam was arrested by the French Police in June 2003.
Maryam has been the only leader of the MKO since the disappearance of Massoud. She has made efforts to maintain the cult-like structure of the group whether in Iraq or Albania. The same as any other destructive cult, leaving the MKO is forbidden. Members are fed up and disappointed due to the suppressing atmosphere of the cult that controls all aspects of their life, bars them from contacting their family and friends. They were tortured mentally and physically by the order of its cruel leader. They can hardly ever leave the group normally; they have to escape.
Therefore, the rank and file of the MKO are definitely suffering a more threatening oppressive situation these days than in 1988 that Massoud joined them in Iraq. Today, the MKO members are taken as hostages in a remote camp outside the Albanian capital. The new camp is called Ashraf 3 by the group leaders who wish to maintain Rajavi’s cult-like structure the same as it was once formed in Camp Ashraf, Iraq.
The Expulsion of Maryam Rajavi from France and her relocation in Albania seems to be a very vital solution for the threat of her destructive cult that endangers European citizens too. Eventually, the MKO’s camp in Albania should be supervised by the United Nations authorities in order to offer members of the group possibilities to choose for their future with their own free will.
Mazda Parsi