Victims of the MEK

Mohammad Gamoosh was hanged in the MEK Camp Ashraf

Born in 1968, Mohammad Gamoosh was from Zanjan, Iran. He was a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war serving in division 46 Orumieh. He was taken as a war prisoner in a joint operation launched by Iraqi and MEK forces against Iranians in Hajomran region. Mohammad Gamoosh had just finished his army service and had planned to get back home but the tide turned.

The MEK forces transferred Mohammad and other POWs to Debes prison near Kirkuk, Iraq. From the first moment Mohammad tried to convince the MEK agents that his army service had finished and his parents had awaited his return but he was totally ignored. Instead, Sadat Darbandi (called Kak Adel), the notorious MEK’s commander humiliated and threatened him. Mohammad did not stop complaining. He was known among POWs for his dissent against MEK commanders.

Eventually, in a cold morning of the winter of 1987, his body was found hanged behind the prison building. A number of members of the Mujahedin Khalq saw Mohammad Gamoosh’s body hanged.

The MEK agents did not allow anyone to ask a question about Mohammad’s fate. A group of 20 to 30 MEK agents came to take his body, suppressing other prisoners violently. They put his body in a jeep, took him out of Debes prison and buried him immediately.

May 29, 2022 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Hamzeh Rahimi was tortured then disappeared in Rajavi’s prison

Hamzeh Rahimi a member of Mojahedin-e Khalq was killed under torture when he was imprisoned in the group’s Camp Ashraf. He was an officer of the Iranian army taken as a POW by Iraqi forces before he was recruited by the MEK. He was deceived to join the MEK by the group recruiters when he was in Iraqi POW’s camp under too much physical pressure.

Mirbagher Sedaqi, former member of the MEK was in the same unit as Hamzeh was in the MEK’s headquarters in Iraq, Camp Ashraf. He states that Hamzeh had been a pilot of F-5 aircrafts in the Iranian army. He recalls the patriotism of Hamzeh although he was in the side of the enemy of Iran.

“When Iraqi military advisors wanted to know about the tactics used by the Iranian army, Hamzeh refused to give information,” Sedaqi writes.

Thus, Hamzeh Rahimi became the target of his commanders. “Since then, Hamzeh was a problematic member,” Sedaghi asserts. “He got disappeared in a few months. His name could not be found either in the list defectors or martyrs of the group.”

MEK commanders setting enmity between two friends

Gholam Reza Shekari was a close friend of Hamzeh’s in the MEK. In 1994, both of them were jailed, interrogated and tortured in the group’s notorious prison called Eskan. Shekari recounts,

“After a week, they jailed me in the same cell that Hamzeh was. We wondered why so many people were jailed, beaten and interrogated every day. Some of them would be disappeared after some time.”

After a month, again GholamReza and Hamzeh were separated. “I was getting weaker and weaker under the daily mental and physical torture. I had nothing to say to the interrogators. So, they kept on beating me.” After a few days they told him that he would be confronted by someone. “I was sure that someone would be Hamzeh,” Gholamreza writes. “Hamzeh had been awfully tortured. His eyes were swollen and bruised. He told some words against me that I was sure were not his own words. He had been forced to say those nonsense.”
That was the last visit of the two friends. GholamReza was not even allowed to ask about the whereabouts of Hamzeh. “The MEK leaders pretended as if he had left the cult,” GholamReza testifies. “However, when Hamzeh’s family came to Camp Ashraf, the authorities of the group gave them the code of his grave in the cemetery of Karbala, Iraq.”

Using oil of food to soothe the wounds left by torture

The third defector who has witnessed the heartbreaking fate of Hamzeh in Rajavi’s prison is Ardeshir Darvishi. “I was jailed there together with Hamzeh Rahimi and Hassan Yazdi,” he recounts in his memoirs of Ashraf prison. “We were shocked. We did not know why we were imprisoned. Assadollah Mosana, Mokhtar, Sayedsadat and Mohammad Mohaddsin, the interrogators, had no answer. They beat us for three nights. The fourth night, they told us to confess that we were the spies of the regime!”
Writing about his own distressing experience of being tortured by MEK commanders, Ardeshir speaks about Hamzeh too. “Hamzeh Rahimi had been tortured too,” Ardeshir writes.

“They had used a cable to beat him on the back and feet. His body had been so swollen that he could not sleep on his back. We applied the oil of our meals on his wounds to soothe his pain.”

After three months of detention under severe mental and physical torture, the suspected rank and file of the MEK were forgiven by Massoud Rajavi and took back to their units in Camp Ashraf –although they were still isolated from the outside world. But Hamzeh was not seen any more. He was disappeared in Eskan prison. “Later we found out that Hamzeh Rahimi had been killed under torture,” Ardeshir states.

Another former comrade of Hamzeh is Ali Moradi. They were both from military personnel of the Iranian army before they joined the MEK. In 1992, in a visit of an American military advisor to camp Ashraf, as former officers of the Iranian army, Ali and Hamzeh told him about the capacities of the Iranian army. The result was troublesome for both of them.

They were summoned to Mahvash Sepehri’s office. She criticized them for what they told the American advisor. “She questioned us why we had spoken to the American guest in person; why we had talked of the Iranian army.” Ali recalls. “’Why did you defend the Iranian army’, she asked us.” Ali and Hamzeh were shocked by Sepehri’s questions. “Since then, Hamzeh started hating the group, he opposed all of their orders and agendas,” Ali continues. “So, he was always under pressure by the commanders. He was humiliated by them. Eventually in 1994, he was imprisoned, tortured and killed in Ashraf prison. No trace was left of him.”

Hamzeh Rahimi was not the only victim of MEK’s violence against its own members. Parviz Ahmadi and GhorbanAli Torabi were also killed in that very year in the notorious prison of the MEK.

May 21, 2022 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Darvishi witnessed Parviz Ahmadi’s killing under torture in the MEK

Ardeshir Darvishi, 63, was a sympathizer of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization while he was an army officer of the Iranian army. He left the army in 1991 and joined the group in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, but he soon regretted his decision.

“When I entered Camp Ashraf, I felt like arriving in my dream promised land but after a year and a half I got to know the MEK deeply; I found out that I was wrong,” he told the judge of the Iranian court to appeal against the leaders of the MEK.

Ardeshir asked for leaving the group but there was no exit in the Cult of Rajavi. In response, in 1994 he was jailed in the notorious prisons of Ashraf called Eskan. “I was jailed there together with Hamzeh Rahimi and Hassan Yazdi,” he recounts in his memoirs of Ashraf prison. “We were shocked. We did not know why we were imprisoned. Assadollah Mosana, Mokhtar, Sayedsadat and Mohammad Mohaddsin, the interrogators, had no answer. They beat us for three nights. The fourth night, they told us to confess that we were the spies of the regime!”

Ardeshir and other prisoners were taken to the torture room constantly and were beaten by cables and wooden sticks. One night, the torturer Mokhtar Janat Sadeghi pulled out his nails. “A nail of my fingers and one of my toes were swollen and infected. I fainted of severe pain and ache.”

Ardeshir also writes about the fate of his two other comrades. Hamzed was killed under torture. Ardeshir did not see him anymore. To get rid of tortures, Hassan tried to kill himself twice.
Besides, Ardeshir witnessed another murder under tortures in Rajavi’s jails. Parviz Ahamadi is one of the two people whose killing by the torturers of the MEK was documented by Human Rights Watch in the report published on the group titled “No Exit” in 2005.

“In order to pass the corridor from our cell to the torture room, our eyes were blindfolded,” Ardeshir writes. “In that dark and wet room, I could hear the others’ moaning.”

At one of those nights, the corridor seemed crowded. While being taken to the torture room, Ardeshir heard them talking about Parviz Ahmadi’s dead body. He used the opportunity and tried to remove a part of the cloth on his eyes. “Sayedsadat told, ‘Take the body!’”, Ardeshir recounts. “Sirous Janat asked, ‘what’s up?’. He replied, ‘Parviz Ahmadi died’. They took the dead body immediately and sent me back to my cell. I remember that Adel who was the director of the prison said, ‘I will tell Maryam (Rajavi) about him stop interrogating others for tonight.”

The death of Parviz Ahmadi under torture in 1994 has been testified by several former members of the MEK. Ardeshir’s account indicates that Maryam Rajavi the co-leader of the group was aware of everything taking place in the their prisons.

QorbanAli Torabi is another victim of torturers of the Cult of Rajavi whose killing has been in the limelight in recent months after his son Mohammad Reza (Ray) Torabi began to appeal the MEK’s leaders for his father’s death.

May 16, 2022 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Victim of the Cult of Rajavi: I was brainwashed

As a passionate teenager, Ali Biglari fled home to go to the front of Iran-Iraq war. He dreamed of defending his homeland against the aggressive enemy. However, he soon was taken as a war prisoner by Iraqi forces.
The recruiters of the Mujahedin Khalq succeeded to convince him to join their group after three years of imprisonment in Rumadi Camp, Iraq.

Ali Biglari

Once he entered the MEK’s headquarters in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, he found out that he had stepped in the wrong path but the brainwashing system of the Cult of Rajavi continued to keep him for many years.
Ali Biglari could finally manage to return home in 2003, after 14 years of imprisonment and mental and physical torture in the MEK’s cult-like structure. “The bitterness of freedom” is a recently-published book based on Ali’s life experience as a victim of the Cult of Rajavi.

Javad Kamvar; Writer of the book: bitterness of freedom, and Ali Biglari

“The title of the book implies that the central character of the book was freed from Iraqi prison but immediately after he was imprisoned in the MEK’s prison,” Javad Kamvar, the author of the book says. “He regretted but there was no way back. He could not accept the ideology of the MEK so he was under too much organizational pressure that led him to commit suicide. He survived but the MEK leaders handed him to Iraqi notorious prison, Abu Ghuraib.”

Ali Biglari never became an official member of the MEK’s army but he was coerced to stay in the group. “I had no idea that Camp Ashraf was a camp surrounded with barbed wires,” he says. “I thought it was a city in which I would have a normal life but as I arrived in Ashraf, the exit was shut for me for 14 years. I was brainwashed there.”

April 18, 2022 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Alireza Taherloo; burned alive under the order of Massoud Rajavi

Alireza Taherloo joined the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) after the Iranian 1979 revolution. He used to work in the political phase of the group. In 1982, a year after the MEK launched a bloody armed struggle against the newly established government of Iran, Alireza was arrested by the Iranian security forces.

He was freed in 1992 after he served his ten-year-long sentence. “He was looking for a job after he was released,” Alireza’s sister told Nejat Society. “Because of his criminal record, it was too difficult for him to find a job so he traveled to Turkey to find a good job.”

Alireza Taherloo

In Turkey, Alireza was once more recruited by the MEK’s active recruiters there. “He was no more interested in working with the MEK but they deceived him and took him to Iraq,” his sister said.
Alireza arrived in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, in 1993 but only one year later, he was jailed in Camp Ashraf under the accusation of being the agent of the Iranian government. At the time, a large number of MEK members had been accused of such allegations. They were imprisoned, violently interrogated and tortured by their own commanders in Ashraf.

Nasir Heidari who was one of the suspected members of the group recalls: “They took Alireza Taherloo to our cell. He had been terribly tortured. His mental and physical conditions were not normal. We all had to sign a paper to confess that we had come to Ashraf to kill Massoud Rajavi otherwise tortures would be continued.”
After months of imprisonment and torture, Alireza was released but he was not mentally balanced. He was kept in isolation because he usually opposed commanders’ orders.

On April 8th, 2011, when Massoud Rajavi ordered his disarmed members to attack Iraqi forces who were supposed to build a station in Camp Ashraf, Alireza was coerced to commit suicide.

Alireza Taherloo

Khodabakhsh Miri, MEK defector who witnessed the deadly clashes in the morning of April 8th, testifies about Alireza Taherloo’s killing: ‘’He was in a car sitting next to his commander, Kianoush Salahpour. The car stopped. Alireza was listening to the commander. He took off the car and went towards Iraqi forces and set himself on fire.” Alireza burned alive before the eyes of Iraqi forces and his commander.

On April 8th, 2011, Massoud Rajavi ordered his members to scarify themselves to stop Iraqi forces from entering Camp Ashraf. Thirty-six members of the MEK were killed and hundreds were injured in the clashes between the MEK’s rank and file and Iraqi army. Iraqi police were supposed to return the lands in north of Camp Ashraf to their original owners, Iraqi farmers of the region. The lands have been confiscated from the farmers and donated to Massoud Rajavi by Iraqi’s former dictator, Saddam Hussein.

April 13, 2022 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Nasrin was killed by the MEK top commander

Nasrin Ahmadi was in her early twenties when she joined the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in 1992. She did not survive the group’s regulations so long. She was killed only three years later.

Khalil RamezaniNasab, a former member of the MEK recalls Nasrin as a young girl (age 25) driving BMP tank in Camp Ashraf. “Soon after her arrival in Ashraf, she was fed up with the undemocratic atmosphere of the group”, Khalil says about Nasrin. “She was disappointed with the maltreatment of commanders against the rank and file. So, she started dissent; she wanted to leave the group.”

Nasrin Ahmadi

As it is expected in any destructive cult, departure from the cult of Rajavi was forbidden. Mahvash Sepehri the top commander of Nasrin called on eight of her sub-commanders including Khalil RamezaniNasab to work on Nasrin in order to convince her to stay in the group. “Mahvash Sepehri ordered to hold a meeting for Nasrin,” Khalil recalls. “Mahvash and other commanders tried to dissuade her from leaving the group. The meetings lasted eight hours. Nasrin was determined to leave the group. She said that she was not willing to stay any more and she wanted to leave the group as soon as possible.”

Nasrin Ahmadi

That was Nasrin’s last word. Khalil witnessed that Mahvash Sepehri got extremely angry and began to beat Nasrin with a metal stick. Khalil says, “I was terribly frightened by watching the scene. I was shocked and speechless looking at the dead body of the girl.”

Mahvash Sepehri

Mahvash orders the men to take the Nasrin’s body out. “Two hours later, Mahvash Sepehri called on us again,” Khalil recounts. “Nasrin died because of a brain stroke!” She told us and warned that nobody should speak about how Nasrin really died.”

May 2, 2021 0 comments