Mr. Edi Rama, Honorable Prime Minister of Albania
Hello: I would like to inform you that my brother Ali Sadeghi is currently kept hostage in your country, under the control and brainwashing of Maryam Rajavi, in the Manza village camp.
As a family and as a human being, we have the right to meet our brother.
We ask you to help us in this humanitarian act.
Sincerely,
Ali Sadeghi’s family from Zanjan Province, Iran
Family in the Mujahedin-e Khalq
The petition addressed to Albanian PM Edi Rama has gathered over ten thousand signatures.
In response, MEK have put all their Farsi efforts into swearing at Ebrahim Khodabandeh and the families.
In response, some commentators have pointed out that MEK are becoming so wobbly that they are ‘vaccinating’ the members by making them write against their own families.
In their writings the MEK claim those who began the petition are not really families of MEK members, they are agents of the Iranian regime, and their intention in coming to the camp is “to attack us with missiles”!
Some people have commented, ‘Perhaps Albania can check at the airport that they have not brought missiles! Anyway, if anyone doesn’t believe they are related, they can do DNA tests!’
Iran interlink Weekly Digest
Open letter of the CEO of Nejat Society to the Prime Minister of Albania
More than 800 signatures after a week of families’ petition
Mr. Edi Rama, Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania
I am writing on behalf of hundreds of suffering families of the members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, Rajavi cult) who have settled in your country. I would like to remind you that the families’ letters to the President’s Office have remained completely unanswered so far.
Ebrahim Khodabande- Nejat Society ceo
You are aware that the members of this organization are billeted in a camp in Manëz in Durrës County, western Albania. The camp is completely controlled by the organization’s leader – Albanian officials have no authority over it. The MEK organization is run as a destructive mind control cult which prevents its members from communicating with the outside world, especially with friends and relatives.
One week ago, a petition was created for the families, addressing the Albanian government, and by the time I write this letter to you, more than 800 of them have signed it. Link below:
http://chng.it/GCPbBfFPGr
The text of the petition, which calls on the Albanian government to provide conditions for families to communicate with their loved ones in the MEK camp in Albania, as well as the list of more than 800 signatories to the petition are attached.
Please answer why the Albanian authorities, in cooperation with the Rajavi cult, are preventing families from communicating with their loved ones? Why has the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered all its embassies not to issue visas to Iranians so that families would not be able to travel to your country?
The level of cooperation of the Albanian government – which aspires to join the European Union – with a terrorist cult, is shocking.
I look forward to hearing from you and, of course, I am sending this open letter to international, European and Albanian authorities, as well as to the human rights bodies and the media.
Many thanks, in anticipation, for your kind reply to this letter.
Ebrahim Khodabandeh
Nejat Society – CEO
As you are aware, on the initiative of the Nejat Society on behalf of the grieving and suffering families of the members affected by the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), a petition was posted on the prominent American site:
https://www.change.org/
The petition, which began five days ago, is addressed to the Albanian government, which has been asked to provide conditions for families to communicate with their loved ones in the MEK camp:
https://www.nejatngo.org/en/posts/10595
Families in all provinces of the country as well as abroad have been active in this regard and joined the campaign, which at the end of the fifth day registered more than 500 signatures on the petition.
The list of signatures was sent along with the text of the petition to various organs of the Albanian government and the United Nations, as well as to various European institutions.
Signatures continue to be collected via the following link:
Amir Vafa was born in France after his parents moved there from Iran to join Massoud Rajavi and his movement. They were then sent to the group’s Camp Ashraf in Iraq where thousands of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ the Cult of Rajavi) were sheltered by Saddam Hussein.
But Amir could not maintain family ties in Camp Ashraf, together with about 500 kids he was separated from his parents and sent to European countries. This action was taken”in the terms of the Second Ideological Revolution”as Antione Gessler writes in his book on the MEK,”Autopsy of an Ideological Drift”.”In the absence of family abroad, the children were sent to orphanages or special schools established by the Mojahedin in Germany and the Netherland”.
Gessler whose book was published in 2005 in France, has stated the testimonies of several parents who left their children behind in the hands of the MEK. Nadere Afshari was one of those eye witnesses who has in her turn written her memoirs of orphaned children in the MEK in Persian.
“Rajavi considers the family as an integral cell in his organization,”Afshari says.”He therefore feels free to intervene in the marital relations of members against their own will.”
The testimonies quoted in the book are clearly parallel to those that are put in the Intercept’s recent article on the MEK titled”Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult“. Authors of this greatly investigated article interviewed some former members of the group whose families were fell apart after they joined the MEK.
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Batool Sultani, photographed in Paris in January 2020.
Photo: Matthew Cassell for The Intercept
Batoul Soltani a well-known female defector of the MEK is one on those interviewed by Murtaza Hussain of the Intercept.”She had joined the MEK in the 1980s, following her husband, who had become enamored with the group and its leader,”according to the Intercept.”She had rationalized the decision as a way to keep her family together. But the group’s cultish nature became clear when they began living at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Her relationship with her husband rapidly grew strained. They were both subject to what she described as”brainwashing”by the group’s senior cadres, who segregated them by rank and controlled their interactions with one another.”
The brainwashing process that coerced members to break off family ties, was concisely explained by Mitra Yusefi who was quoted by Antoine Gessler:
“When Rajavi after his divorce from BaniSadr’s daughter married his comrade’s wife, Maryam, we were shocked. My husband then took a strong position saying that you cannot take another’s wife. Two days later, though, they convinced us of the opposite. We were such fools…”
In 1991, MEK commanders took Sultani’s two young children, age 6 months and 5 years; the children were sent to live with MEK members in Holland and Sweden, according to Soltani’s testimonies stated for the Intercept.”It was a decision that she felt unable to oppose,”the Intercept clarifies the MEK nature.”In the insular world of the MEK, Massoud Rajavi had been effectively transformed into a subject of worship. Cadres were taught to both fear and love him, and they did. Many female members were expected to express this love physically.”
![Batoul Soltani and her child](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Batoul soltani and her child
“Maryam Rajavi came to us as female members of the group many times and asked us why we haven’t demanded to see our leader in his bedroom,”Sultani said.
“There was a strong pressure”on MEK women to initiate sexual relationships with Rajavi, she said,”to show your commitment to the leader and the group.”
“Uprooted, far from their country, and cut off from their culture, these children became wanderers without identity”, Gessler suggests.
Since leaving the group, Batul Soltani has tried to rebuild her relationships with her children, who are now in their early 20s, only to find them angry and uncomprehending about the decades she spent away from them, based on the Intercept’s report.
“I try to tell them we were like robots, it was brainwashing. Anything Massoud Rajavi told us to do we did; we didn’t feel like we had any choice,”she told the Intercept.”They ask me why I never called, even on their birthdays. It is hard for them to understand any of this.”
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Reza Sadeghi in Paris, France, on Jan. 11, 2020. Sadeghi was a member of the MEK for 26 years.
Photo: Matthew Cassell for The Intercept
Sadeghi is another defector of the MEK interviewed by the Intercept. Based on his testimony, he got only rare updates about his son Paul during the 10 years he spent in Ashraf.”Members were forbidden from discussing family or friends who were not MEK members. When he did ask about his son, they always told him that the boy was well, living in Toronto with Sadeghi’s ex-wife and receiving hundreds of dollars in support every month from the group.”
When Sadeghi was informed by a friend that his son was not in Canada at all and he had never left Iran and was being raised by Sadeghi’s parents there, Sadeghi decided to leave the group to find his son but he was faced with a deadly punishment by the group authorities.
“His commander called a group of other MEK members to detain him”, recited the Intercept.”Suddenly, about a dozen of Sadeghi’s comrades were grabbing him, trying to push and lift him into the back seat of a nearby Toyota pickup. As he resisted, he felt one of his fingers snap. The MEK members shoved him into the back of the truck, pinning him to the floor with their bodies. The truck started driving.
“You’re dead,”one of Sadeghi’s captors told him.”We are going to put you in the ground, and no one will ever know what happened to you.”Forced disappearances and solitary confinement were not uncommon at Camp Ashraf, and Sadeghi was sure he would be executed.”
![Ghorban Ali Husseinnejad](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Ali Hosseinnejad, a former member of the MEK, on March 9, 2020, in the Paris suburb of Vincennes, France.
Photo: Pete Kiehart for The Intercept
GhorbanAli Hosseinnejad, Rajavi’s personal translator was also interviewed by the Intercept. The story of his scattered family is heartbreaking too.”In 1981, when the Iranian government declared the MEK a banned organization, Hosseinnejad and his family decided to flee Iran,”according to the Intercept.”Zeynab was 4 years old but Mona was a newborn, too young to be exiled. Ali, Tayebeh [his wife], and Zeynab fled to Europe, leaving Mona with Hosseinnejad’s mother in Iran.”
As a teenager Zeynab was trained as an MEK fighter in Camp Ashraf.”But the psychological stress and isolation in the camp began to wear on Hosseinnejad,”the report reads.”Despite living in the same compound, he was allowed to see Zeynab just once a year. He hadn’t seen Mona, his younger daughter, since the day he fled Iran.”
In spite of the few cases on family rights abuses that were covered in books, articles and reports, cases of collapsed families are as many as the number of MEK former and current members. Nadereh Afshari truly briefed the entire MEK’s dark history of banning family life in the title of her book on the MEK:”Forbidden Love”.
By Mazda Parsi
References
– Gessler, Antoine, Autopsy of an Ideological Drift, Depot Legal, December, 2004, Paris, France.
– Hussain, Murtaza, & Cole, Matthew, Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult, The Intercept, March 22, 2020.
Ms. Narges Beheshti wrote a letter and sent it to deferent UN and EU institutes and other international bodies alongside appropriate documents.
The text of the letter is as follows:
My name is Narges Beheshti. My brother Mostafa Beheshti is a member of the Mojahedin-E Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, NCR, NLA . . .) who is trapped in a remote isolated camp of the group in Albania.
MEK is a terrorist cult supported by the Albanian government. The cult brainwashes the members and forces them into terrorism and crimes.
My other brother Morteza Beheshti was also a member of the MEK living in the cult’s camp Ashraf in Iraq who was killed through a conflict.
Both brothers left Iran for more income and a better life, but were deceived into joining the group.
Morteza was married and had a son.
My mother passed away recently. After Morteza was killed, her only wish was to talk to Mostafa. Unfortunately, this never happened until she died.
The leaders of the MEK, just like other destructive cults, prevent the members to have access to the outside world, in particular to their friends and family.
What should I do if I want to contact my brother in Albania and learn about his situation? The Albanian government, in order to appease the MEK, does not let the families to travel to Albania. Even if the families be able to enter the country, they have no chance to see their loved ones and they would be harassed by the Police and authorities.
I firmly urge you to show me a way to persuade the MEK leaders as well as the Albanian authorities to let the members contact their relatives.
I am eagerly waiting for your response and thank you in advance for your efforts.
Narges Beheshti,
Tehran, Iran
Nejat Society has received several appeals from families of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization taken as hostages in the Camp Ashraf 3 in Abania.
Families of MKO members who are linked with Nejat Society, have never stopped engaging in the fate of their loved ones who are barred in the Cult of Rajavi. The news of the group’s headquarters Ashraf 3 in Abania has not been good in recent months. This has made several families write letters calling for the release of their beloveds.
Three Mothers from Arak, Markazi Province sent a statement calling for Maryam Rajavi to release their loved ones. “When you were in Iraq we suffered a lot to travel to Camp Ashraf in hope of hugging our children but in response you offended us labeling us as mercenaries”, they addressed Maryam Rajavi.
Mahin Habibi mother of Parvaneh Rabiee, Sedighegh Najafi mother of mohammad Jaafar Najafi, Montaha Zahraiee mother of Mostafa Qaedi, continued: “You call us mercenary while you are cooperating with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States against Iran. You call us mercenary while you sold intelligence on Iranian soldiers to Saddam Hussein during Iran–Iraq war.”
Zahra Gholizadeh from Gilan Province published an open letter to her imprisoned brother Ali on the occasion of his birthday. The ending of her painful letter reads:
“My lovely brother! It is Aban (October). Happy birthday and best wishes. Hope that the separation and grief will come to an end soon. I love you so much dear Ali.”
Another family member from Sistan Baluchestan Province appeals the international community to pursue the case of his brother. Mohammad Amin Parsa is Aref’s brother. Aref is taken as a hostage by the MEK leaders in Ashraf 3, Albania. Mohammad Amin is concerned over the fate of his brother regarding the recent suspicious deaths in the camp. “We are worried and afraid that something bad has happened to my brother,” he writes.
The family of Ya’ghub Naroiee Moqadam, His mother and his two brothers also call for pursuing the conditions of their beloved because they are concerned over doubtful deaths of MKO members during the past year. “We got informed that a number of the group members were killed suspiciously last year. This has made us worried so we demand you to take action over the case of our brother,” they write in a letter to Nejat Society Central office.
As the voice of suffering families of MEK members, Nejat Society has published all the letters and tries its best to pave the way for the release of members from the bars of Rajavi’s cult of personality.
In this documentary Mr.Bashiri narrates the story of his life and how he lost his wife…
My name is Alireza Bashiri. I was born in Ahwaz. I am 52. I live in Sweden with my daughter and her son.
After marriage, I told my wife that I’d like to go abroad and live in another country
My wife was just 17 and myself around 22 or 23. I didn’t have that much experience. We decided to go to Europe from Turkey. We went from Turkey to Germany. We sought asylum.
We spent around 2 years in a refugee camp.
The MKO members were very active there …
Nejat Society members who went to Atabay home on the occasion of Nowruz were warmly welcomed by the family.
Atabay family are among active families of Nejat Society, Gilan branch.
The ailing, aged mother of the family whose son is captivated by the cult of Rajavis for long years asked about her dear Hamid Mohammad whereabouts. She asked why the cult leaders doesn’t allow her dear son to contact his family?!
Atabay family has several times petitioned to the international human rights bodies to help them visit their beloved son.
Nejat Society declares the establishment of “Mothers, Forgotten Victims” on February 26, 2019.
Commemorating the Iranian Women’s Day, Nejat Society central office declares the establishment of an association to support mothers of the victims of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI). The mothers whose children have been imprisoned behind the bars of the cult-like MKO group, are deprived from their basic right which is a free visit with their loved ones.
Nejat Society aims to be the voice of the mothers whose rights are ignored by the international community.
Further information on the activities of “Mothers, Forgotten Victims” association will be published eventually.
Nejat Society
Mr. Kohnesari visited Nejat Society office of Gilan Branch. He says:” My dear bro, Valireza was a POW of Iran-Iraq war when he was deceived by the MKO recruiters. Now he lives in MKO Camp at Manez,Albania. He has been deprived from a free life and having contact with his family for more than three decades by the MKO Cult leaders. “
Kohnesari family are active members of Nejat Society. They do their utmost efforts to liberate Valireza from the claws of the Cult. They several times went to Camp Ashraf asking the MKO leaders to let them visit their beloved brother. They are now serious to travel to Albania and make Valireza free.
“I have news that my brother is among the dissident members of the MKO at Manez,Albania” Mr. Kohnesari says.