The girl is held hostage by Mojahedin Khalq

One day after the allegations by Iranian Mojahed resident in Albania, Somayeh Mohammadi, against her father, the father has reacted. Mostafa Mohammadi has sent a letter to Minister Fatmir Xhafaj asking for help to free the girl.

One day after the media in Tirana distributed an email from the Mojahed resident Somayeh Mohammadi, addressed to Minister Xhafaj, accusing her father, Mostafa Mohammadi, of coming to Albania to carry out acts against the Iranian group, her father has reacted. A copy of a letter that the father of the girl, Mostafa Mohammadi, has sent to Interior Minister Fatmir Xhafaj was delivered to shqiptarja.com’s newsdesk.

Somaye Mohamamdi, hostage of the MEK since she was 17

Mostafa says he is a Canadian citizen and that the MEK organization in Tirana is holding his 38-year-old daughter hostage. The father says the charges are not made by his daughter but by MEK. Mostafa lists some of the facts he says shows that the letter that was released yesterday in the media was not written by their daughter.

In the letter, Somayeh said her father, Mostafa, is an agent of the Iranian Interior Ministry, and has used her to make money.

The girl’s father’s letter:

Letter to the Minister of Interior of Albania, Fatmir Xhafaj for the freedom of Somayeh Mohammedi

Dear Minister,

We, the parents of Somayeh Mohammadi, a Canadian citizen, are very angry and insulted by the treatment that is being given to our daughter by the media, by the competent Albanian bodies as well as the MEK organization in Albania which holds our daughter hostage. The letter they sent you on July 8, 2018 is a criminal and slanderous letter.

We came to Albania, enjoying our privileges as Canadian citizens, with the sole purpose of meeting our daughter who has been held hostage by the MEK organization since 1997. We have no political agenda or policy, we just want to meet our daughter.

But this request is not facilitated by the MEK organization that has held our daughter hostage since when she was 17 years old, who was a minor when she was taken from Canada by cheating and telling us she would go to Iraq for only 2 weeks – they showed us and the two-way ticket. We did not give any written permission nor did we write to appoint any proxy guardian. But at that time we believed that MEK was a democratic organization. After our daughter did not return, this organization deceived us with various reasons why. We were forced to seek help from the Canadian authorities and, thanks to their intervention, were able to save our son, Mohammad Mohammadi, who was a Canadian citizen and who now lives with us happily on Richmond Hill near Toronto.

We emigrated to Canada as political refugees in 1994. We left Iran and headed for Turkey and later to Canada. All the family were together. We were all resident in Canada and were granted Canadian passports under Canadian asylum law, except for our daughter Somayeh, who after gaining her residency was held hostage by the organization as a minor in 1997.

Our attempts to rescue our girl from this organization did not stop, just as the aggressive allegations of this organization against us, the various physical assaults – in Paris in 2015 and 2016 – have been documented, and we will not give up our intent to rescue our daughter from this extremist and violent group because we are parents. Because it is legitimate that you want to have your daughter at home. It is good to see that she is free, married, enjoying her life in freedom and democracy, and not under the pressure of anyone.

From various others who have managed to leave this organization, we have learned that they were subjected to pressures, threats to kill their families, threats to internally imprison and physically torture them as MEK did with other members under the same conditions when they wanted to leave this extremist organization. We have learned that the MEK’s camp is guarded by armed security companies and anyone who leaves without permission and escapes, the group leaders say they will be targeted by the guards. For these reasons, our daughter does not have the opportunity to leave this camp in Albania and does not enjoy the freedoms that a free person enjoys.

Minister Xhafaj, and other interested parties,

We do not believe that the letter that is addressed to you is our daughter’s letter for several reasons:

1. The letter is dated July 8, 2018. We arrived on July 5, 2018 in Tirana, so how did our daughter learn that we were here when we had not met anyone yet.
2. Our daughter says she had wanted to leave while she was a minor when she had gone and we have evidence of how this organization enticed her to return. That is why, when we met with her in Iraq 2003 she told us, rescue me from here but be careful they don’t kill me. Why did she write a letter to the US marines asking us to rescue her?
3. She says she wrote a book accusing us of being Iranian agents, even the Albanian media say we are getting our (her parents’) visas from Iran. How does our daughter have access to these kinds of documents that are official and personal? Or is it the organization that wrote the letter and only their cooperation with different regimes and intelligence agencies could provide them with these data. However, it is not factual to accuse us of anything politically since we do not carry out any political activity related to Iran otherwise we would have lost the right to asylum in Canada or we would have been prosecuted by the Canadian authorities.
4. If it is true that our daughter says she will remain in this organization by her own free will, how can we believe this, when there is no psychologist in the world to confirm such free will as normal or normal mental development for a person over 20 years without meeting with her family. What did MEK make out of our daughter? How has it managed to eradicate the feelings of love and care for her family? The accusations in Somayeh’s letter resemble the accusations of Enver Hoxha’s regime in Albania against the class enemies who were accused of being agents and whose children were forced to curse and renounce their parents.
5. I can provide photos before and after her membership in MEK, that show that Somayeh had a strong relationship with me as her father and with the other family members. So we cannot accept and believe that these are the true thoughts of our daughter. Our girl who is kept in isolation, fearful of Iranian bogeymen, blatantly violent with the ideas of radicalism and violent extremism, is the victim of a very dangerous sect.
6. We believe and have witnesses from the ex-Mojahedin who have left the extremist organization and live in Tirana, that our daughter lives in conditions of torture and inhuman treatment by the MEK jihadists. Therefore we request that you guarantee by law, constitution and international conventions; freedom of movement for our daughter; prohibition of torture and ill-treatment of a human being by a foreign organization within Albanian territory, as this is a legal obligation of your Ministry, as well as relieving you of the allegations of support for inhumane acts that this organization carries out within Albanian territory, in violation of all international human rights conventions signed by your state.

Mr. Minister, we ask for your help and ask this:

What is the reason we cannot meet with our daughter? Is this not deprivation of freedom of movement? Why do the Albanian authorities not prevent the violation of human rights by a foreign organization within Albanian territory? Why are we, as Canadian parents, treated as criminals and this organization is favoured by meeting at the directorate level in your ministry while we are deprived of this right? How can the pledge hold more than 2 parents? How can you tolerate a jihadist organization accusing two elderly parents of being agents, Western citizens who want to meet their own relative?

We have not carried out any political activity within your country and there are no grounds for slander against us in the hope we get frustrated and afraid so that we will leave your country without meeting our daughter.

Please allow us to meet our daughter outside the territory of these jihadist kidnappers! Allow us to exercise our legitimate right of parental responsibility guaranteed by any national and international law.

Honorably Yours,

Shqiptarja, Translated by Iran Interlink