Yesterday the media published a letter to Interior Minister Fatmir Xhafaj, signed by a 38-year-old woman named Somayeh Mohammadi. The letter states that Mohammadi is a member of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) and that she remains voluntarily in the Mojahedin camp in the district of Durres. This letter says Mohammadi’s father is an Iranian agent and has come to Albania for specific missions and not to meet her.
But the parents of Somayeh Mohammadi, tell a different version. In an interview for TPZ.AL , they say their daughter has been kidnapped by this organization and they are in Durres to return her to Canada. According to Somayeh’s parents, the letter published in the media to the Interior Minister was not written by their daughter but by MEK.
Mostafa Mohammedi and Mahboubeh Hamza
Canadian citizens, parents of Somayeh Mohammedi
Q – Mr Mostafa and Mrs Mahboubeh, the MEK has distributed a letter to the media and accused you of being Iranian agents. Who are you and where are you from?
We’re Mostafa Mohammadi and Mahboubeh Hamze. We are the parents of Somayeh Mohammadi. We have lived in Canada since 1994. Our daughter was kidnapped by the Iranian Mojahedin terrorist organization in 1997. She was abducted together with our son Mohammad Mohammedi. Somayeh was at that time a child and went to the Etobicoke Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Canada.
Our children were kidnapped by the MEK because their activists invited them to Iraq for a two-week visit. But our children did not return. MEK kept Somayeh and our son Mohmmad hostage.
Since that year we have been undertaking a great media and legal struggle to extricate our kids held hostage by the terrorists. Fortunately, in 1999, we managed to save our son from MEK in Iraq and brought him to Canada.
Our son, Mohammad is now working as a manager for a gas company in Toronto. He is married and has a happy life.
But unfortunately, we have not yet managed to save our daughter from the extremist MEK organization.
I work in construction in Toronto, while I, Mahboubeh, am a care nurse for the elderly in Toronto. We are honest people who want to have our daughter, who was abducted when she was 17 years old, back home. The Mojahedin have destroyed their lives, left them without schooling, without marriage, without family, and have radicalized them and turned them into jihadists.
Q – In the Albanian media, MEK has issued a letter on behalf of Somayeh Mohammadi – who identifies herself as a member of the Iranian opposition sheltering in Albania – addressed the Interior Minister of Albania Fatmir Xhafaj. She accuses her father of being an Iranian intelligence officer who has come to Albania to attack the Mojahedin. Why these charges? Can you please explain to us how long you have been in Albania and what is the reason for your visit here?
That letter was not written by our daughter. Our daughter is MEK’s hostage. She has no freedom of religion and thought. She is a prisoner in the Manze jihadist camp. And the letter she sent to Minister Xhafaj was written by the extremist group’s leaders. Our daughter is held with psychological terror. The group’s leaders, who are masters of deception and indoctrination, frighten her and the other members. They say Iran is going to kill you, Iran has brought agents, if you’re out of the camp you are dead, and so on. They say that the only solution is to stay with us in the camp and join jihad against Iran.
As you can see we are old and older. We are not terrorists like the Mojahedin, nor Iranian intelligence agents. We live in Toronto, Canada and not in Tehran. We want to take our daughter to Toronto, and not to Tehran.
We are in Albania for 19 days. We are here to ask for help from the Albanian authorities to let us meet with our daughter who is held hostage by the Iranian jihadist group. We do not want to take our daughter to Canada against her will. We just want to talk to her alone. Let us show that we live in a beautiful and democratic country and ask her in private – away from the threats and brainwashing of MEK jihadists – if she wants to come with us to Canada to live in freedom and in democracy, or to stay in Manze camp, isolated by barbed wire and held as a hostage to be a terrorist in Iran.
The Mojahedin are vicious people. They lie. They not only robbed us of our daughter but now have no shame and accuse us of being agents of Iran. They are people who have a lot of blood on their hands. They are terrorists and killers.
Q -Your daughter stated that she had voluntarily left her family 20 years ago to take part in the cause for Iran’s freedom? What is the truth?
Our daughter is hostage to MEK as was her brother. If you look on the internet you will see that MEK has taken many children as child soldiers. Just as if ISIS gets a little child, indoctrinates it and then turns it into a suicide bomber.
We do not want our daughter to be a suicide bomber for Maryam Rajavi, the MEK leader, and to go and kill people in Iran.
MEK is not an Iranian opposition group. They are terrorists. They are not democratic, and the people of Iran accuse the MEK of being terrorists, murderers and traitors who have served Saddam Hussein and have killed over 17,000 Iranian citizens. If MEK were a democratic organization, they would allow their members to feely meet with their families. Our daughter does not know the world outside because she has been imprisoned for 20 years.
If our daughter wants to be part of the Iranian opposition, she can do this in peaceful ways. Let’s go to Canada and do that right there. But MEK does not let her go free.
But we do not want to deal with MEK. They are fearsome killers. We just want our daughter to be released from the prison camp in Manze and to meet with her in private. To kiss her, to cry with her, and to invite her to come with us to Canada. If she wants to be part of the Iranian opposition, she can do it freely from Canada and not from the jihadist prison camp.
Q –The girl also accuses you of some concrete attacks on MEK’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq?
Firstly, this is not our daughter, but the terrorist leader of the group. Second, what do you think? Would Canada and America leave me alone if we were to attack MEK? Or if I were an Iranian agent? MEK are the most diverse killer, suicidal, and terrorist organization America uses against Iran. We do not want to deal with the MEK nor the policy of Iran or America.
We want peace! As a minimum, we want our kidnapped daughter to meet with us. We want to take her to Canada to live, in a democracy, and not to deal with violent extremism and radicalism.
Q-What are your relations with the current government in Iran?
No relationship. We are Canadian citizens. We are political asylum-seekers in Canada and we got this asylum by fleeing from Iran . We will take our daughter to Canada, not to Iran. To Toronto, not to Tehran!
Q – Have you been contacted by the Albanian authorities about the reasons of your visit to Albania?
Yes, the police have stopped us two times. The first time at the airport and the second time when we came to the hotel and they accompanied us to Police Station 1 in Tirana. They asked us why we are in Albania.
MEK has gone crazy because of our presence here. And for this reason they are terrorizing the Albanian government with letters, complaints, and lies etc. about why they do not want us to meet with our daughter. They know that if we take somebody to Canada, there will be a few hundred men and women who are held hostage by MEK in Albania who will say that we also want to be free. Let’s abandon jihad! Up until now in Albania 400 people have left MEK. This has horrified Maryam Rajavi, so they have brought the Mojahedin to Manze and locked them up in the camp.
Albania is a free country. European. The Mojahedin members want to abandon jihad and embrace democracy and freedom. That is why MEK does not want us to meet our daughter.
But we, inshallah, will meet our daughter and we will go back to our place of freedom in Canada.
We hope and pray that MEK will not kill us because we want to meet our daughter. We hope and pray that the Albanian authorities will protect us and will help us to meet our daughter away from the terrorist presence.
TPZ, Tirana, Albania, Translated by Iran Interlink