Hot Topics

Latest reports from Albania

Help rescue refugees from the traps of MKO terrorists

The latest reports from Albania are that eleven new people have arrived there.

However, ex members who are living separately from the MEK in Tirana are saying that the UNHCR representative in Albania has told them they will not be given refugee status and will get no passport. Some commentators believe the UN has been pushed by the MEK to annoy members just as they pushed American army to annoy members who wanted to transfer from Camp Ashraf to the TIPF.

The ex members were told ‘if the Albanian government gives you something, good luck! Otherwise, tough!’

Interestingly this report also says that immediately after the UN visit, Esmail Mortezai from the MEK, who claims to be working under the protection of the Pentagon, approached them and told the ex members “Don’t worry. To Hell with the UN and the rest of them! Come back to us and we will take you to European countries as we always have done”.

The UNHCR representative had also told them that their accommodation was limited to four months and after that they will have to either pay for it or go.

Again the MEK immediately stepped in and said, “We will take care of it ourselves”. Other reports say that the police in Tirana and the MEK themselves have placed CCTV and guards around their accommodation. The ex members believe this is to put pressure on them to either go back to the MEK or run away by themselves to escape the country, which is very dangerous. Even so, several have declared they will chose the second option and have asked the others to speak out on their behalf if they are killed along the way.

On top of this, the Albanian government has told the ex members that, “Although people from the MEK are free to talk to you, and you have to talk to them because they are taking care of you, your families from Iran are not allowed to come to visit you”. Many organisations and other ex members in the west have written to Albania and the UN to ask “is the UNHCR working for Esmaili Mortezai, the MEK and Mossad, or is it supposed to help rescue refugees from the traps of terrorists?”

March 27, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Just what Tel Aviv ordered? Inside the”manufactured”Iran nuclear crisis

The representative of the Jewish minority in Iran’s parliament (Majlis) has recently given an extensive interview to the Iranian Fars News Agency and discussed his different viewpoints regarding the Israeli regime.

According to Siamak Mareh Sedq, Tel Aviv needs to create crisis in the Middle East in order to survive. “If Israel faces no threat it will be destroyed within one month. Israel needs (regional) crises in a bid to continue its existence,” he said.

This analysis is exactly what the audacious commentators, intellectuals and journalists in the West who dare to criticize the policies and practices of the Israeli regime without fear of losing their jobs or being vilified as “anti-Semites” agree on. This is something that even the Israelis know well and confess to. An anonymous Israeli official once privately told the president of the National Iranian American Council Trita Parsi, “You have to recognize that we Israelis need an existential threat. It is part of the way we view the world. If we can find more than one, that would be preferable, but we will settle for one.”

But what I want to touch upon today is not Israel’s illegitimate and unlawful military attacks on Jordan, Egypt and Syria in 1967 or the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, even though all of these events need investigation and contemplation as the crises which Israel has nimbly created in order to consolidate its position in the Middle East and secure its fragile survival by the use of military force.

What I want to allude to is the crisis which Israel manufactured around one decade ago to make sure that the international community will be busy dealing with the different aspects of the crisis until finding a solution, and in this period, it can work to build more settlements, kill or imprison more Palestinian leaders and fortify the castle of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East.

The crisis that Israel manufactured was the controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. This is the topic which the prominent American investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter skillfully discusses in his recently published book “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.”

"Israel has been pulling all the stops to foil the endeavors of Iran and the international community to settle their dispute."

Although Gareth Porter does not concur with me on all points I have mentioned, he generally shed a light on “how Israel and the George W. Bush administration successfully portrayed the various actions taken by Western nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as responses to a long history of Iranian covert work on militarization of its nuclear program.”

The breakthrough book which is the product of Gareth Porter’s six years of close investigation of Iran’s nuclear standoff and the developments of Iran’s foreign policy tries to show that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been used as a pretext by the United States in unison with Israel to put pressure on Iran and extinguish its technological and political progress.

Porter says that the IAEA used documents as the reference of its allegations and accusations against Iran that were provided to it either directly by Israel or through the terrorist cult Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO or MEK) which was just recently removed from the U.S. Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in an attempt to provide political shelter for the group which sees Tel Aviv as one of its main benefactors and sponsors.

The book provides reliable and confirmable evidence showing that Israel was one of the main culprits behind the complication of Iran’s nuclear dossier through forging false documents and evidence and presenting them to the IAEA.

Porter’s book published by the “Just World Books” is a must read and is praised by such figures as the renowned American director Oliver Stone, leading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, prominent Middle East expert Juan Cole and former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles W. Freeman.

Gareth Porter’s book inspired me to think about the crisis that has been manufactured in the most wicked way by Israel and its patrons and led to years of animosity and acrimony between Iran and the West, in particular the United States. The controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program soared when the IAEA Board of Governors, under the pressure by the United States, voted in 2006 to refer Iran’s nuclear file to the UN Security Council.

It was after then that the economic sanctions began being shot at Iran one after the other. The inhumane, illegal and unjustifiable sanctions created different hardships for ordinary Iranians, including the patients suffering from chronic disorders in need of foreign-imported medical equipments and pharmaceutical products.

The “manufactured crisis” not only embittered Iran’s trade with the United States and the European Union, but also imposed costs on the European firms that sustained significant damages as a result of cutting their business with Iran.

There are credible statistics showing that in such countries as Germany and France, thousands of people lost their jobs due to the direct or indirect consequences of the economic sanctions. The sanctions which were pioneered and cheered by Tel Aviv also caused serious irregularities in international banking systems and protocols and brought about disastrous outcomes for the global economy.

However, after almost one decade of dispute and quarrel, Iran and the six world powers have once again sat at the negotiation table, and the first outcome of their intense negotiations became evident in November 24, 2013 when they reached an interim agreement in Geneva known as the “Joint Plan of Action” by which Iran would limit certain portions of its nuclear activities and will receive relief from some of the important parts of the sanctions it has been enduring in the recent years. This is what dissipates and fritters away more than one decade of Israel’s efforts to hamper Iran’s relations with the world and embroil it in a stalemate over its nuclear program.

As the negotiations for a comprehensive and final agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) get started in Vienna, Israel finds itself in an awkward position that will be costing it a lot if the talks lead to substantive and successful results.

Israel has been pulling all the stops to foil the endeavors of Iran and the international community to settle their dispute, which is why the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Geneva accord a “historic mistake” and the “deal of a century” for Iran.

The fact that Iran’s nuclear file was passed to the Security Council by the IAEA, that the Security Council decided to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran in its eight resolutions regarding Iran’s nuclear program, and also the fact that the United States, in the past ten years, went through fire and water to make sure that Iran will remain under huge economic and political pressures indicate that Israel was pleased and somehow relieved as it could see that its efforts to manufacture a new crisis in the region were bearing fruits. No conscious mind would accept the claim that Israel didn’t play a central role in Iran’s nuclear standoff.

By Kourosh Ziabari , albawaba.com

March 27, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Current Iran “Crisis” Began With Overthrow of Democratically Elected Government in 1953

MARK KARLIN interviews GARETH PORTER

In Manufactured Crisis, investigative journalist Gareth Porter details the manipulation and fabrications that have accompanied the current Iranian nuclear situation. The main difference between this and the Iraq war conspiracy, the author says, was that the neoconservatives who were carrying it out never got the war on Iran they wanted.

Have we narrowly averted a war with Iran, and were the Neocons again behind the bellicose threats against Tehran? Investigative journalist Gareth Porter offers his perspective, as detailed in Manufactured Crisis in this interview with Truthout.

MARK KARLIN: You use the phrase Manufactured Crisis as the title of your book about the Iran nuclear scare. Were you thinking about Dick Cheney and George W. Bush’s manufactured crisis to justify the Iraq War as precedent?

GARETH PORTER: No, I wasn’t thinking of the direct parallel with the “manufactured crisis” that preceded and paved the way to the invasion and occupation of Iraq when I first came up with the title. But the more I have uncovered about the details of manipulation and fabrications that have accompanied the Iranian crisis, the clearer it has become that the parallel between the two “manufactured crises” is extremely close.

In fact, the book shows that the Bush administration was laying the groundwork for creating a false WMD case against Iran in much the same way that it did in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Readers will be shocked to find that the information that the Bush administration exploited politically most effectively in making the case for a covert nuclear weapons program in Iran came from a German intelligence agency source – a member of the same MEK terrorist organization – just as the source of the famous Iraqi “mobile bioweapons labs” story told by Colin Powell in a UN speech had been the source that the BND [German federal intelligence service] had code-named “Curveball.”

But the parallels between the two conspiracies are even stronger: In both cases the BND warned the US government not to rely on the information from its source, which had been passed on the CIA, because they had concluded it was not trustworthy. And equally startling, in both cases, the Bush administration officials pressured top CIA officials to use the information anyway, while keeping poor Colin Powell ignorant of the BND warning!

I show that the “manufactured crisis” over Iran’s nuclear program was part of a war conspiracy every bit as heinous as the Iraq war conspiracy. The main difference was that the neoconservatives who were carrying it out never got the war on Iran they wanted.

MARK KARLIN: You describe three primary stages to the Iranian nuclear crisis diplomatic narrative. Can you briefly describe them?

GARETH PORTER: The first stage was triggered by the discovery of the Natanz enrichment facility in 2002 by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, a terrorist organization that was working hand in hand with Israel. The Bush administration, in coordination with Israel, used that event to launch an [International Atomic Energy Agency] investigation that was intended by the two allies to put Iran on trial for deceiving the IAEA for two decades in order to cover up a nuclear weapons program. That would in turn make it possible to haul Iran before the UN Security Council, giving the Bush administration a basis for a potential military option.

But the IAEA investigation fizzled out, but the Bush neoconservative-Israel alliance had a secret weapon – a set of documents that was said to have come straight from a Iranian nuclear weapons research project. In 2008, the IAEA, cooperating closely with the Bush administration, began pushing those documents as evidence for Iran’s nuclear weapons intentions, thus beginning the second phase of the crisis.

The third phase of the crisis began with an IAEA report in November 2011 that was based almost entirely on intelligence coming from Israel. It was the signal for the phase of punishing sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and Central Bank, which followed immediately.

MARK KARLIN: What is your perspective on the current “bridge” agreement with Iran between the United States and its allies on the development of its nuclear program?

GARETH PORTER: I’m not sure that it was really necessary to have such an agreement, which appears to have been primarily pushed by the US side. The time spent on negotiating it could have been spent on negotiating the long-term agreement that they are now finally tackling more than three months later. One of the problems I see with it is that it may have reinforced the tendency for Obama administration policymakers to feel that the sanctions had put them in the driver’s seat in the negotiations.

MARK KARLIN: Was regime change in Tehran a major goal of the Iranian nuclear scare?

GARETH PORTER: For the Bush administration’s neoconservative inner core it was absolutely the major goal. John Bolton and David Wurmser, both close to the Likudists, believed that regime change would require the use of US military force, which was the anticipated end result of the strategy they cooked up with Israel in 2003-04 to make the case that Iran was threatening to get nuclear weapons – the Iran equivalent of the Iraq war conspiracy that involved Wurmser as well.

MARK KARLIN: Within Israel, although Netanyahu was threatening a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, a significant number of former prominent Israeli politicians, the military and intelligence services were arguing that such an attack would be a mistake. What explains the unprecedented public disagreement with Netanyahu?

GARETH PORTER: The most important thing to understand about the Israeli threat of war on Iran, as I document in great detail in the book, is that it was always a political ruse which no Israeli government ever intended to actually carry out. It didn’t start with Netanyahu, but he and Defense Minister Ehud Barak refined it to an art form. The public disagreement with the idea of attacking Iran is a reflection of the fact that the Israeli military and intelligence establishment never supported an attack – although many believed that threatening to do so was necessary and effective. After 2011, however former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan broke publicly with the policy, because he believed that Netanyahu was irresponsible and had taken unnecessary risks of provoking Iran.

MARK KARLIN: How did you go about researching the book, given all the smoke screens thrown up around Iran’s nuclear programs. You provide very detailed footnotes to buttress your argument.

GARETH PORTER: It was a combination of two things that gave me sufficient evidence to make what I believe is an iron-clad case that the narrative about an Iranian nuclear weapons program was a fiction: First, I was able to establish clearly one falsehood in the narrative after another by identifying a series of contradictions between the official line and verifiable facts on the public record. In other words close analysis and the use of logic was crucial. Second, although most officials from the Bush and Obama administrations were not interested in cooperating with my investigation, some former intelligence officials and a key German source provided some key insights and facts that helped to give my account much more documentary basis.

MARK KARLIN: Can you summarize the “mystery of the laptop documents”?

GARETH PORTER: The “laptop documents” were the ones said to have come from the purloined laptop of a scientist in a purported Iranian secret nuclear weapons research project. But the Bush administration was always unwilling to answer questions about their origins. Fortunately I was able to penetrate that mystery thanks to a former high-ranking German official who told me on the record how the documents were given to German intelligence by a member of the Muhjadehin-e-Khalq, the terrorist organization that had worked for Saddam against the Iranian regime and then developed close ties with Israel’s Mossad. I show in the book that the documents could not have been authentic, contrary to the IAEA’s official line that they were “credible” and that they were fabricated by Mossad.

MARK KARLIN: What shadow does the US overthrow of the democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 – and its long-term military support of the Shah – cast over the US confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program?

GARETH PORTER: The US relationship with the Shah, which was a central element of US Middle East policy for decades from 1953 until 1979, cast a long shadow on the policy of the Reagan administration toward Iran’s nuclear program. The Reagan administration was still looking for an opportunity to overthrow the Islamic regime and restore a cooperative government, and its support for Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s was the essential reason for trying to stifle the Iranian nuclear program in the early 1980s. I show that the misguided US policy led to Iran’s deciding to have its own uranium enrichment capability, contrary to its original plan.

MARK KARLIN: You single out Robert Gates, who has a best-selling memoir out now, as a key figure in laying the foundation for the Iran nuclear scare. Can you expand on his role?

GARETH PORTER: Gates had a twofold interest in keeping Iran as an adversary at a time when President Rafsanjani was trying to thaw the relationship in 1990-91. His career had almost been ruined by his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, which had gone off the rails when Rafsanjani had made the Reagan administration secret 1985 U.S. mission to Tehran public. But more important, he became CIA director in 1991 at a time when the agency desperately needed a substitute for the Soviet threat that had disappeared. I show in the book how he exploited the idea that WMD proliferation in general was the new equivalent of the Soviet threat and that Iran was the primary candidate to play the heavy on that issue.

MARK KARLIN: You appropriately single out the United States and Israel as perpetuating a war cry about Iran’s nuclear program, but haven’t other non-Persian and non-Shi’ite Arab states played a behind-the-scenes role in supporting the United States and Israel, particularly Saudi Arabia?

GARETH PORTER: It is certainly true that the Saudis and other Gulf Arab regimes were extremely suspicious of Iran’s nuclear program and wanted the United States to do something about it. But it’s a bit more complicated than The New York Times coverage led the public to believe. The WikiLeaks documents show that those regimes were extremely concerned about the Israeli threat to attack Iran during the Bush administration’s second term, which most Gulf security officials believed would have disastrous consequences, and they wanted the United States to prevent it.

Obtain this book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, from Truthout with a minimum contribution. Just click here. You will be enhancing your knowledge, supporting progressive authors and backing the vital journalism of Truthout.

Mark Karlin

Mark Karlin is the editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout. He served as editor and publisher of BuzzFlash for ten years before joining Truthout in 2010. BuzzFlash has won four Project Censored Awards. Karlin writes a commentary five days a week for BuzzFlash, as well as articles for Truthout. He also interviews authors and filmmakers whose works are featured in Truthout’s Progressive Picks of the Week.

Truthout

March 26, 2014 0 comment

Human Rights Abuse in the MEK

Please help us stop Human Rights abuse in Mojahedin

Open Letter to Ben Emmerson, QC.

Dear Mr. Ben Emmerson, QC

My name is Mehdi Nikbakht, I am one of the survivors and ex members of Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, PMOI, Rajavi cult). I have first hand experience of the cultish relationships inside the MEK.

Your long term activities as a Human Rights advocate and your responsibilities as the UN special rapporteur on human rights has brought me to write this letter to your good self appealing for help. Me and many of my friends have been the direct subject of human rights abuse inside this organisation (cult). We need help to achieve justice.

I take this opportunity to bring to your attention some brief explanations.

The Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) tries to portray a democratic, freedom loving, pro-human rights and pro-women’s rights face in the west. The reality, and what we have seen from the inside of this organisation is 180 degrees contrary to this claim. We have never seen anything but suppression and injustice. The leaders of MEK harshly crush any voice of criticism and they go to extreme extents to silence the voice of the survivors and ex members. They constantly spend money and energy to character assassinate and intimidate the vocal critics and survivors by calling them mercenaries, agents, traitors, etc. they try to dismiss their testimonies about the reality of the crimes they have suffered themselves and/or have seen at the hands of MEK leaders.

Inside the MEK cult no one has the right to have a spouse or family and even thinking about it is a severely punished crime. Members are regularly forced to write and announce their most intimate thoughts in front of large audiences and the audience is to shout and swear at the person.

Inside the MEK no one has the right to contact their families in any shape or form. Even mothers and fathers who come to Iraq from Iran with all the risks and hardships are not given permission (by MEK leaders) to meet their children. Some of these people have not seen their families for over 25 years.

Inside the MEK harsh forced labour, together with a regime of inquisition, has taken away the critical minds of the members. They can no longer think properly and normally. Their every day life is confined to a restricted, forced, mental and physical circle. They no longer decide for themselves about anything. It is the leaders who decide for them.

Leaving the organisation (cult) is forbidden and no one is free to choose. Being inside the cult is forcefully compulsory.

And there are hundreds more similar cases.

Dear Mr. Ben Emmerson. You know more than anyone that each and every one of these cases specially in this day and age is in direct contradiction with the recognised freedoms of individual and is an abuse of their human rights. The same human rights you have been so passionate about and have, and are, working so hard for. The Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) have been keeping thousands of people trapped in their camps for decades. Before the fall of Saddam Hussein, they were able to imprison and torture people inside their camp for crimes as simple as asking to leave the organisation and return to normal societies. After the fall of Saddam, the MEK leaders insisted on not leaving Iraq to the point of deliberately sending some members to their deaths, which had no effect and still the Iraqi Government is adamant that they should leave. They have now been moved to Camp Liberty which has been attacked a few times by terrorist groups and in this camp some of the members have again been sacrificed for the unlawful demands of the cult leaders. The MEK leaders do not want the trapped people to be moved to third countries and deliberately resist any attempt to facilitate such a transfer. They see this as an end to their cultish organisation and more than that, are afraid of the people reaching European countries where they can start exposing the real nature of the organisation and what has happened to them. They are afraid of the truth coming out.

Dear Mr. Ben Emmerson,

What I have explained here is no more than a very brief example of what is happening. Our claims are certainly backed by a huge amount of documents and evidence, as well as the testimony of many of my friends who have managed to get themselves to European countries. Me and my friends are ready to meet in person and explain in detail and clarify any question in this regards.

I urge you to investigate the abuses of human rights, women’s rights, individuals’ freedom, etc. inside the MEK, and as I mentioned we are ready to provide the documents and evidence at any time and any place you wish. We need your expertise and we need your help to bring a condemnation against these practices and certainly to stop the continuation of it against the trapped hostages inside the MEK.

Yours Sincerely,

Mehdi Nikbakht

Switzerland,Setaregan association

March 25, 2014 0 comment

Iran

Iran says ready to pardon hundreds of exiled dissidents

TEHRAN: Iran is ready to pardon hundreds of members of an exiled Iranian opposition group based at a former military camp near Baghdad, Iran’s ambassador to Iraq told the Mehr news agency on

Iraqi and Iranians protest in the northeastern Iraqi city of Baquba, the capital of the province of Diyala, on November 18, 2011, calling on the government to have the residents of the Ashraf camp deported and the camp closed.

Wednesday.

"After conducting investigations, 423 members (of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran – PMOI) who do not have any legal problems can return to Iran," Hassan Danaeifar was quoted as saying.

The number represents about 14 percent of the estimated 3,000 members of the PMOI who are living in exile at Camp Liberty, near Baghdad airport.

"Iran is ready to pardon those members who did not kill anyone or do not have complaints against them," he said, without elaborating.

Danaeifar added that a bid by "a considerable number of this group who wish to come back to Iran was blocked by their leaders".

The leftwing PMOI was founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran.

After the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the shah it took up arms against Iran’s clerical rulers and Tehran holds it responsible for murdering thousands of Iranian civilians and officials.

The group set up camp in Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s war with Iran in the 1980s, but was disarmed after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 toppled Saddam.

Today’s Shiite-majority and Iran-friendly government in Baghdad is eager to see it move elsewhere.

In 2012, the United State removed the group from its terror blacklist. The move was strongly condemned by Iran.

Scores of PMOI members have been killed in more than a dozen attacks on their camps since US troops withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011.

Mehr meanwhile also quoted Danaeifar as saying that Iranian Justice Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi will travel to Iraq later this month to sign several memoranda of understanding, including the extradition of criminals.

March 25, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Kerry Gets Pressed To Grant Asylum To Former Terrorist Group Mojahedin Khalq

WASHINGTON — In what has become an all-too-familiar sight on Capitol Hill, at least a half-dozen members of the exiled Iranian group Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, arrived at Thursday’s hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all dressed in their trademark yellow shirts.

For most of the past 15 years, the group had been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. But in September 2012, as the U.S. prepared to pull troops out of Iraq, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revoked the terrorist designation, part of a diplomatic effort to persuade MEK leadership to begin moving their 3,000-plus members out of Iraq. Ever since the American pullout, the MEK has found itself under threat from Iraqis who vividly recall its decade-long alliance with Saddam Hussein.

MEK members attended Thursday’s hearing to advance a bold proposition: that the thousands of their adherents still living in Iraq should be granted asylum and moved to the United States.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) emerged Thursday as the most vocal proponent of this plan, which was also championed at the hearing by Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). Rohrabacher aimed his questions at the only witness testifying that day, Secretary of State John Kerry.

“I’ve introduced legislation, H.R. 3707, which would grant asylum to these people in Camp Ashraf, who are obviously in danger,” Rohrabacher said. “Is the administration supporting this concept?”

Kerry sidestepped the question in his typically diplomatic way. “There’s one solution to the problem [of the MEK], and that is that we need to relocate those folks,” he said.

“Can’t we relocate them here? Why not?” Rohrabacher shot back.

“That’s one of the things we’re looking at,” Kerry replied.

Kerry went on to describe a new position he had created within the State Department, that of senior advisor for Mujahedin-e Khalq resettlement. In October of last year, he appointed Jonathan Winer, a longtime Kerry adviser and an expert in international law, to the position.

Rohrabacher’s bill is co-sponsored by many of the same lawmakers who initially backed delisting the MEK from the terrorist roll. As of Thursday, there were 46 co-sponsors.

But administration officials privately suggest that Rohrabacher’s bill, and any other efforts to grant asylum to the MEK in the United States, face nearly insurmountable odds.

“It’s one thing to unfreeze their assets [by removing the terrorist designation], but asylum is a whole different ballgame,” an administration official said, speaking on background to The Huffington Post. To illustrate how limited U.S. asylum policy is in practice, the official noted that out of the more than 135,000 applications received from individuals fleeing Syria’s bloody civil war, only 31 were admitted in the last fiscal year.

“The policy concern with asylum is what kind of precedent that might set for the future. By those standards, the MEK isn’t looking very good,” said the official.

So far, Winer has managed to secure visas from the Albanian government for more than two dozen MEK members.

Other than that, however, it’s been an uphill climb to convince other countries to accept MEK members, due to their cult-like characteristics and near-religious devotion to the Paris-based Maryam Rajavi and her husband, Massoud Rajavi. Under the Rajavis, MEK members have instituted forced celibacy, mandatory divorce and gender segregation, according to a 2009 report from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation. The MEK is also still widely viewed as a militant organization with a “cultic focus on suicide,” wrote the Rand authors, despite the group’s having formally renounced violence in 2003.

But long odds don’t mean the MEK won’t keep trying to gain asylum in the United States. No longer restricted by the terrorist designation, they are now free to spend their millions of dollars — the source of which remains murky — without fear of Treasury Department scrutiny. In 2013, they opened a formal office in a high-rent building on Pennsylvania Avenue and set about expanding their already large cadre of prominent Washington lobbyists.

Around Washington, the MEK is known for having spent millions of dollars on a highly visible advocacy campaign to help secure their delisting as a terrorist organization. To plead their case, the group hired dozens of former administration officials turned government affairs consultants, including Andrew Card, onetime chief of staff to President George W. Bush, and James Jones, former national security advisor to President Barack Obama.

By Christina Wilkie,

March 15, 2014 0 comment

The cult of Rajavi

Women’s rights according to Maryam Rajavi

Since 1985 when the so-called" Ideological Revolution" was run by the leaders of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO), the group was officially turned into a cult. It was an absolute deviation from a Women's rights according to Maryam Rajavi political violent opposition group to a terrorist cult of personality in which the members were forced to divorce their spouses and to dedicate their whole mind and heart to the group guru, Massoud Rajavi. He—who is currently disappeared— launched its abusive mind control system to indoctrinate members and maintain them in the cult.

Abusive attitude of the leaders of the Cult of Rajavi has had different dimensions; the most crucial one seems to be endured by female members of the cult. Although the self-claimed president of the MKO’s propaganda arm, Maryam Rajavi chants the slogan of “Revolutionary, Progressive, Moslem Women” among her Western brainwashed and/or paid audience, women who have recently left the MKO are free and courageous enough to reveal the real situation for women inside the cult.

Women’s rights abuses committed in the Cult of Rajavi included forced labour, sleep deprivation, mandatory celibacy and particularly sexual abuse. The former was not actually committed by use of violence but the mechanism that made female members to endure such a treatment is really important.

In 2012 a number of defected women of the MKO spoke out about the sexual abuses they suffered in the MEK. They described how Massoud Rajavi, deceived them into sleeping with him after attending a ceremony called "Salvation Dance" in which the token women had to dace naked in front of him—Maryam Rajavi has actually been the real organizer of that cult jargon, she tried to convince the elite women who were selected to marry Massoud to do what she called "uniting with the ideological leader".

Former members of the MKO also exposed a program of coerced hysterectomies for all women members in order to "neutralize their sexuality". This way the cult leaders tried to cut the last links that might have tied the female members to the outside world.

The coercive sexual relationship in the MKO may not seem to be a forced jargon but when the female members get departed from the cult structure the whole story turned out to be a rape. Until the cult member is mentally and physically imprisoned by the leaders every order by the cult leader may sound normal and sometimes necessary but as soon as they find the least opportunity to break through light and normal life, they will find out the agonies and abuses they have suffered.

Fortunately, until now there have been a few female defectors who have started denouncing the extreme violation of women rights in the MKO. Unfortunately, there are still a large number of women taken as hostages in the Cult of Rajavi. Let’s hope the best for those captured ones even though Maryam Rajavi could be able to deceive a few number of woman’s rights advocates in the world.

Mazda Parsi

March 12, 2014 0 comment

Camp Liberty

Seven refugees from Camp Hurriya received by Italy

As part of the humanitarian effort by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs together with the Ministry for Home Affairs, 7 Iranian refugees arrived in Italy today from Camp Hurriya, in Iraq. Their arrival in our country is a response to the numerous appeals by the United Nations to find an agreed solution, one that is fully

Seven refugees from Camp Hurriya received by Italy respectful of human rights, for the former residents of Camp Ashraf. It was promoted by the Farnesina in collaboration with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

This concrete gesture confirms Italy’s front-line commitment to defend and respect refugees’ human rights and underscores our country’s efforts to support the Iraqi Government’s right to territorial sovereignty.

The group arriving in Rome today brings the number of Iranian refugees, former residents of Ashraf, received in Italy to 15. Priority has been given to women and persons needing medical treatment, which will be provided in our country’s healthcare facilities.

The Italian Embassy in Baghdad is continuing with its contacts with the Iraqi authorities and local UNHCR officers to assess whether Italy can take in other refugees, in line with the commitment of our main international partners.

Reliefweb.int reported from Government of Italy

March 8, 2014 0 comment

Former members of the MEK

Breaking borders into insanity

Massoud Khodabandeh is chartered engineer of electronics from Leeds University, UK. While he was studying in Newcastle to gain engineering diploma, joined groups of students opposing the Shah’s regime. In 1978, Mr. Khodabandeh co-founded the Society for Iranian Muslim Students in Newcastle Polytechnic, which included MeK members and sympathizers. He notes that nearly all persons who joined the MeK after the revolution were either pupils or technical students.

“I was first introduced to politics in Iran, but became more interested in the various opposition groups while a student in Newcastle. I joined groups of students opposing the Shah’s regime, and in the last years of my stay in Newcastle became more and more interested in the so-called ‘revolutionary groups’, one of which was the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization of Iran (MKO).” Massoud Khodabandeh describes that period. “In those days the Mojahedin comprised no more than a group of martyred or imprisoned young people who were [considered] as followers of Ayatollah Khomeini.”

In 1981, Mr. Khodabandeh in Paris joined Massoud Rajavi and the other Mojahedin, who had fled Iran following the MeK failed revolt on June 20. With fluent English and a little French, Massoud Khodabandeh was assigned to a team specifically taking care of Rajavi’s personal affairs. He travelled to Baghdad a few weeks before the arrival of Massoud Rajavi from Paris.

During the years of staying in Iraq, Mr. Khodabandeh participated in many joint projects with the Iraqi army. These included electrical and Telecom training to the Republican Guards of Saddam Hussein. During these years, he also escorted Maryam Rajavi on her holidays to European as well as Arab countries across the world.

Up to 1996, Massoud Khodabandeh was a high ranking commander of the National Liberation Army in charge of the security of the leadership. He was also member of the Executive Committee of the MeK a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the so called political wing of the Mojahedin. On that year, he seceded from the Rajavi’s clult. According to Mr. Khodabandeh, from year before, he was disagree with “un-diplomatic, un-political, and in many cases inhumane conducts” of Rajavis. In 1996, he left the organization to London and presented himself to the British authorities (and later the French authorities. )

Currently, Massoud Khodabandeh is director of Middle East Strategy Consultants and engages in helping the authorities in Iraq to bring about a peaceful solution to the impasse at Camp Liberty and help rescue other victims of the MeK cult.

Maryam Sanjabi of Call of Truth has interviewed Massoud Khodabandeh about untold story of the MeK. What follows is an excerpt of the interview:

• The MeK ideology which is mixture of Marxism and Islam could not hide its contradictions within itself forever. On the other, only a person with abilities, motivations, and psycho complexes of Rajavi could bring the MeK to the current point.

• There would be disputation over causes of this disaster (the MeK), but no one doubts that it is a real disaster. Today, all agree that this group has all the specifications of a cult. But a cult that pretend being an organization.

• “Organization” has distinctive feature, as “cult” has. It is not possible that a group for 30 years has a self-styled leader at the head, and his wife, with repugnant obscenity, calls herself “president”, at the same time has not one page of Statutes, regulations, laws, and methods. Furthermore, which organization every day shifts its policy and strategy and tactics?

• The MeK has all the features of a cult. The Cult Information Center, based in London, provides a definition for cults that most specialists and psychiatrists verify it. It says that a cult or sect is a group that has all five characters below:

1. Apply psychological coercion to recruit, retain and control members.

(In case of Rajavi’s cult, it is enough to refer to brainwashing sessions, ideological revolution, the so-called boiler meetings and daily reports)

2. Constitutes a totalitarian society.

3. The founder or leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, unpredictable, and charismatic.

4. Believes that “the ends justify the means”.

5. Cult’s wealth does not benefit its members or society.

• Under Saddam, Rajavi used to receive capita per the number of members. The higher the numbers, the more earnings. That is why he gets people into Iraq and keeps them there.

• Since 1382 (2003), more than 1,000 members have defected Rajavi’s gang.

• Out of 210 members who entered Albania, 75 of them upon arrival announced defection and even refused to stay with the others one night.

• Rajavi, best of all, knows that the main threat to his organization neither is IRIG nor is Iraqi army. His threats are those who have been deceived for three decades to work without pay. Masoud and Maryam have repeatedly said that someday one of those people will kill them.

• This week ago in Paris, Maryam Rajavi explicitly ordered physical elimination of survivors and dissidents of the cult…. Rajavis have announced that overthrow of the Islamic Republic requires elimination of critics and dissidents.”

• Preparing food and other daily necessities of Maryam and Masoud Rajavi was at the hand of Hosein Dalili, brother of Bijan Rahimi (Khosro Itelaat). As you know, Hosein Dalili recently died in Iraq due to cancer and Rajavi until the last day refused to send him out.

• Masoud Dalili, senior commander of Rajavi’s escort team, two years ago escaped from the MeK. But they could kidnap him from the Baghdad Hotel, and return to the Camp Ashraf. There, after two years of torture, they killed Dalili and burned his face so maybe the Iraqi forces not discover his identity.

• In meetings with the chief of Iraqi intelligence, Dr. Barak, Rajavi used to obligate me to buy a special Cuban cigar that its maintenance needed to a box made in Cuba that with its special equipment kept constant temperature and humidity. Similarly, when Baghdad was under bombardment of US army, I was required to purchase several dozen types of specific French cheeses for Tariq Aziz who was stationed on the last floor of Rashid Hotel (the site was partially protected from air attack due to the presence of reporters).

• Rajavi is not a normal man. He is a different person and knowing him is a different job. Rajavi’s illness is odd and very dangerous. For myself, I’ve seen different persons at all levels but I dare to say that I’ve never seen anyone like him who has no boundaries in no field except self-preservation. I think that anybody has a boundary that eventually stops over it. Ordinary persons no way can break boundaries into infinity. It requires madness; an exceptional madness that Rajavi has it. He is the only one who still hunts for new boundaries to burst it and be satisfied.

• Maryam Rajavi has another type of madness. But even she is motivated by Masoud. Maryam Rajavi’s pugnacity, tyranny, ignorance and crime are engine by her husband.

March 6, 2014 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The MKO disappointed with the Spanish ruling

“Lawmakers in Spain voted on Thursday [February 25th] in favour of a bill that will reduce the capacity of the country’s courts to pursue cases of human rights abuses committed abroad.” The Local Website reported.

The bill curbs the use of the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which allows judges to try certain cases of crimes against humanity that took place in other countries.

Mujahedin Khalq Organization was seeking to manipulate the Spanish judges to promote its agenda.

After the September 1st Camp Ashraf clashes and the allegedly 7 Camp residents missing, MKO leaders forced members in Camp Liberty into hunger strike. After 107 days of fruitless show of hunger strike and the escalation of criticisms, Maryam Rajavi ordered an end to the hunger strike under the pretext that a Spanish investigative judge accepted to investigate the allegations of two members of the MEK that Iraq’s National Security Advisor has been involved in Camp Ashraf events.

Then the group websites broadcasted this as a ‘victory’ and in Farsi they portrayed this as an actual court ruling against an Iraqi official.

The pass of the bill is a bad news for MKO leaders. Under the bill, judges could investigate crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide only if the suspect is a Spanish national, a foreigner living in Spain or a foreigner in Spain whose extradition has been denied by Spanish officials.

The spokesman of Spain’s ruling conservative Popular Party said the reforms outlined in the bill were needed to avoid "useless disputes that only generate diplomatic conflicts".

March 5, 2014 0 comment

Newer Posts

Older Posts