Mr. Mehrdad Amiri and Mr. Hojat Rafiee residents of Camp Ashraf escaped the cult on Saturday October2, 2010 at 2 O’clock am.
Mr. Mehrdad amiri, 35, and Mr. Hojat Rafiee, 42 were captured in Camp Ashraf of MKO for more than ten years. They told the families that they decided to runaway although they were seriously terrified by MKO leaders of being arrested by Iraqi forces or Iranian Intelligence." the situation created by the Camp leaders is terribly chocking so members are under too much mental pressure. The women in the group are frightened of being raped so they fear to escape more than their male comrades," they said.
MKO former members
Mr. Ali Barzegar, a former member of MKO, returned home after twenty years of membership in the organization. Mr. Barzegar was welcomed by his family who had been awaiting his return since he had gone on compulsory military service twenty years ago when he was captured by MKO. During those twenty years, he was under psychological manipulation by Rajavi’s destructive cult and deprived from enjoying a normal life.
Dashtestani was a 16-year old teenager when he was captured by Iraqi forces in his way from Abadan to Mahshahr [two towns in SouthWestern part of Iran where Iraq invaded in 1979].in 1988 after ten years of imprisonment in Iraqi prisons when Mujahedin offered him help return to Iran ,he admitted their offer.
He was deceived by MKO due to two reasons .First because he was not informed enough and second was MKO’s dirty recruitment tactics and the mind control system that enhanced and abused that lack of information.
Mr. Mahmoud Dashtestani succeeded to release himself from the bars of Rajavis’ Cult and returned to his homeland and joined his family.
On Monday, January 18, 2010, Nejat Society Shiraz Branch proudly received another defector of Rajavi’s destructive cult.
A delegation of MKO former members met with authorities of Amnesty International. During the meeting they described and clarified the situation of picketing families of Rajavis’ Cult hostages at Camp New Iraq (formerly Ashraf ) as well as the condition and situation of captive members of the MKO Cult. They also declared the families’ rightful demands of visiting with their loved ones. They asked the Amnesty international to intervene and force the MKO aka PMOI/MEK/MKO leadership to allow those families to see and meet their loved ones.
A letter also presented to the Amnesty International
Statement of Massoud Tayebi, the dissociated Vice President of the Army Staff Headquarters and a member of the Central Council of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (aka MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi’s cult, MEK…).
At the time I chose to leave the Mujahedin Organization, I, Massoud Tayebi, was a Vice President of the Army Staff Headquarters and member of the Central Council of the Mujahedin. I also held a high position in the Organizational MO, which is a rank for males only. I have more than twenty years of Organizational activity and work experience with the Mujahedin Organization.
After two decades of active political life with the Mujahedin, I managed to escape the Mujahedin’s base in Iraq, and at present I am living in Europe as a political refugee.
I started my political activity with the Mujahedin in 1978. In 1981 I was arrested and spent one year in Evin’ and Ghezelhesar’ prisons in Tehran. After my release, I continued my political activities with the Mujahedin. The government discovered my activity and one night armed personnel attacked my residence. I escaped the attack and for six months lived underground in the city of Mashhad. In 1984, I was helped to flee Iran by the Kurdish Democratic Party and to join the Mujahedin’s bases in Kurdistan in the north of Iraq.
From then until 2001 I worked in the Mujahedin performing various duties, including with the publicity department. In 1991, I was appointed as a member of the Central Council of the Mujahedin Organization. My name and identity is registered in the Mujahed Publication (Special Edition) of 1991 which is available as evidence.
In 1994, I went to Paris with Maryam Rajavi, returning to Iraq again in .1996. In 1999, in recognition of my 20 years of professional political and organizational activity with the Mujahedin I was appointed as a Vice President of the Army Staff Headquarters. My picture is printed in Mujahed publication No. 562 year 2000. My latest duties in the Mujahedin were to produce and anchor the propaganda program on the 24 hour satellite program of the National Liberation Army of Iran. I have a video recording in which I am performing as broadcaster in accordance with my long relationship with the Mujahedin and also my experience in camera work, I was present in a meeting during which some individuals who were not in agreement with the Mujahedin’s political policy, expressed their desire to leave the organization. Unfortunately, as a result, they were subjected to an unfair trial. This trial was organized and directed by the leader of the Mujahedin, Massoud Rajavi. There was neither a defense lawyer nor a jury in this trial.
I realized how cruel and unfair the Mujahed in really are by holding such trial. This made me think and, after 23 years of serving this Organization, I decided to disassociate myself from the Mujahedin. I hold it necessary to notify others of my disassociation with the Mujahedin Organization through this announcement.
Masoud Tayebi
Dear Mrs. Hillary, Honorable Secretary of State
Respectfully, I would like to introduce myself before anything else. I am an ex member of Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO). In 1990 I became an outspoken critic of what is know as the "forced divorces" and special relations between the organisation and Saddam Hussein, the ousted dictator of Iraq. I was imprisoned for a few months in solitary confinement inside camps of Mojahedin Khalq Organisation in Iraq. I am living in Switzerland now.
I would like to inform your Excellency that the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran was founded in 1965. Its ideology is a combination of Marxism and Islam.Their ideology is based on fighting against capitalism and they believe that the United States of America is the symbol of global capitalism and they call the USA ‘the World-Eater Imperialism’. Their ideological principle and objective is based on fighting against the United States and its interests, and in this regard they have written and published many books such as, The Carter Presidency (World Eater Imperialism). With such an ideology and approach which exists in the Mojahedin, they began their terrorist operations against American citizens and American offices located in Iran in 1971.
As a result of the terrorist operation which happened in 9/11 in the USA, every country became astonished and confused at such brutal and barbaric acts, which targeted thousands innocent people in the twin towers, and all these countries and their governments condemned such brutality and savagery. But, surprisingly the PMOI’s operatives and leaders threw a very big party in Bagherzadeh Garrison in Iraq and celebrated that incident and showed their admiration for that terrorist act by dancing, shouting and congratulating one another in front of their leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
Massoud Rajavi was on the stage and while he had his hands on his waist he began a war cry against the USA, and in his admiration for Osama Ben Laden and his organization, Al Qaeda, he said, ”This was fanatical Islam which trembled and shacked the basis of US Imperialism and they destroyed the twin towers which were the symbol of their power, and successfully reduced it to rubble through their successful mission”. Then he (Massoud Rajavi) with a smile on his face continued his war cry and said, ”What will happen to the USA if revolutionary Islam with our Ideology and Maryam’s leadership comes to power, then this paper tiger (the USA) will be destroyed as a whole.”
After the downfall of Saddam Hussein, all the PMOI members underwent various interviews for recognition of their identification by the US State Department’s agents, the CIA, FBI, and specifically US Military Information section MI. They gained a huge amount of very valuable information from the PMOI members – all of which documents and information substantiate and prove that the ideology and the strategy of the PMOI are all anti-western, and particularly anti USA.
The US State Department has justly listed the PMOI and its political wing the National Council of Resistance (NCRI) as a terrorist organization in its terrorist list. While the State Department listed them as a terrorist organization, it did not have the valuable information which it now has now. In a report that was published in 2005 by the US State Department regarding the terrorist organization list, it mentioned justly that the PMOI is a potential threat and is a very dangerous terrorist organization. In that report it was mentioned that the PMOI has the potential to become a dangerous organization in any period of time because of their special terrorist training and cohesive organizational structure. For instance, on 17th of June 2003 when Maryam Rajavi was arrested by French Police, PMOI leaders ordered their members to set themselves on fire in public streets. If there was no complaint and protest from the international bodies and humanitarian organizations against this kind of brutality and savagery, it was still going to become one of the biggest of human catastrophes.
I must stress that even though the State Department reports of 2005 and 2006 are not complete, that the report shows that this organization is a religious cult.We think the MKO in Iraq is finished, especially after the fall of Saddam Hussein and his government. The Iraqi Government wants to assert its sovereignty, regain its property, the garrison, and they do not want to keep those people on their soil who cooperated fully with Saddam Hussein against their people. So now we should ask ‘why do the leaders of a cult terrorist organization want to keep the Ashraf,s garrison?
We have enclosed a small sample of the evidence which has already been made public concerning the MKO. The charges against the MKO and in particular its leaders include but are not limited to: crimes against humanity and war crimes inside and outside Iran.
With many thanks and regards
Batoul Maleki
Cc:
– Embassy of USA in swiss
– Ministers of Affairs of the EU-
– Relevant MEPs
-Office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maleki
Falling in a well called Ashraf
Interview with Mahmoud Dashtestani a recently defected member of Mujahedin Khalq Organization.
– You mean in your ideological meetings where you could discuss your problems and doubts, you couldn’t ask the question?
– No. when in 2003, Massoud went to conceal, they held 16 or 17 ideological meetings via telephone or the internet. We could only hear his voice. We were seriously scared to ask via which site we could hear the brother {Massoud]’s voice. We didn’t have the courage to say that it looked like the brother’s voice was coming from near hear.
You can never ask about two things in MKO. Money and Massoud Rajavi.
-did you ever see someone ask about Massoud? If yes, how did they respond?
You don’t have to ask or see anything. The psychological atmosphere ruling Ashraf has been created in a way that you never let such questions cross your mind.
In MKO, there is a hierarchy in its security structure, where small mistakes are discussed in lower ranks. There are also two security sections; internal security and intelligence security. There is also a section called counter-intelligence. When you ask about MKO’s financial resources and where Massoud is, you will deal with the counter intelligence section.
– Did they mention any reason for Massoud’s disappearing?
– In a large meeting held in 2003 after the disarmament of the group, Massoud Rajavi himself told us that he would conceal himself because he didn’t want more pressure on Ashraf and members.
Well, naive –minded people may believe this reason but the bottom line is that if anything happens to Rajavi whether he is arrested or whatever, his cult will collapse. He says that his successor is Maryam but I believe that Massoud Rajavi himself is the main axis of the cult. The entire group and its substance only depends on Massoud Rajavi.
But the truth is that Rajavi sees himself as more important than the organization.
– How do you analyze all the cult’s efforts to maintain Camp Ashraf?
– Good question! I don’t analyze. I say the fact I witnessed. In Iran they call Ashraf, “Camp” or “garrison” but in the group the cult it “strategic center of struggle”, that’s why they say even cleaning Ashraf streets is a holy fight. They claim that “Ashraf is the hope of heroic Iranian people!”
– Since I returned to Iran, I have hardly ever seen people who have little information about Ashraf. People do not know where Ashraf is and who mujahedin are? People don’t care about MKO or Camp Ashraf but in the group they claim that in Iran, at least 90% of people watch MKO TV channel. They claim that 90% of Iranians support MKO and hope that Ashraf will release them!
Suppose you are walking in a street in Tehran and you say “I am a Mujahed-e-Khalq” [a member of MKO], you will be hit and crushed by those Iranians of whom some might oppose the IRI.
Ashraf is a symbol in the Rajavi’s cult. MKO has based its activities on protection of this symbol, but the proper symbol links them to their terrorist background which was justified by “armed struggle”. After the disarmament of MKO and gradual defection of forces Ashraf symbol, turned into an abandoned prison.
Translated by Nejat Society
Falling in a well called Ashraf
Interview with Mahmoud Dashtestani a recently defected member of Mujahedin Khalq Organization.
In their mind control system they had to prevent the members’ minds getting into sexual or emotional thoughts. If you think of your ex-wife, you should write it and then read your confessions in your brainwashing meetings where your comrades will attack you, insult you saying that “you are wrong”, “damn you”. “That woman is not your wife any more”. “She is your ideological sister”. “She belongs to the leader”.
The weekly brainwashing meetings are obligatory. You must confess a sin -a sexual one. It will be even worse if you do not confess anything. They take you to a place called Bengali where they talk to you for several days, putting you under too much pressure. They say that you definitely have some sexual thoughts that you are concealing.
Their arguments and sometimes quarrels in the meetings were justified as “human science”! What a human science! They call it monotheist “Anthropology” in which they use peer pressure as weapon. They say peer pressure is just like the leader.
They always label the members as “ogle”. For instance, when you watch CNN news on Mujahedin’s TV, they accuse you of watching the female speakers with sexual desires!
According to MKO, all the cults’ members are melted in Maryam’s revolution that was anti-bourgeoisie and anti –exploitation.
Her revolution begins with “the value of women”. So men should divorce their wives so that they are not exploited by their husbands any more. If they are really sure that all members have been melted in Maryam’s revolution, why are they so worried about any mistake made by members and they try to keep them under their control?
In Ashraf there are various security units such as street patrolling, regional protection, road security, gates security, Ashraf security,… if they claim that members have been unified with Maryam’s revolution, why these too many bars?
During the past six months, I travelled through half of Iranian territory, I was never asked a question but in Camp Ashraf if you want to go outside – to the streets in front of your unit- to do some exercise or to go for a walk, you have to ask at least three superior officials for permission and also you cannot go alone, you have to go with a superior member who monitors you.
We were about one thousand and 300-400 hundred people who joined Ashraf after the war[Iran – Iraq] ended and at the time of Gulf war. Today there might be less than 300 people who daren’t leave the camp because of their fear not because of being faithful to MKO.
When I escaped the camp and went to the hotel I saw some of those members that Massoud had told about them,” they were killed while escaping “or” they are now wandering in Iraq looking for a piece of bread to eat.” I saw them, living a normal life in the hotel waiting for their return to Iran or their immigration to Europe.
A few days ago, a family called me saying that they were afraid if their brother – who is in Ashraf – returned to Iran, he would be arrested. I told them that nothing would happen to him. I am living in Iran right now.
– Mr. Dashtestani, Massoud Rajavi has been hiding since 2003. Have the members ever asked where he wass or why he disappeared?
– You can never ask such a question in camp Ashraf, because you will be seriously tortured mentally and psychologically.”What do you mean?”,”Do you mean Massoud Rajavi?”,”Your brother?”,”Why do you ask such a question?”
My best friend was Akbar Mohebi. We were captured together in 1979. He is really my intimate friend but I didn’t dare to ask him the question even when we were both alone.
Translated by Nejat Society
Falling in a well called Ashraf
Interview with Mahmoud Dashtestani a recently defected member of Mujahedin Khalq Organization.
Dashtestani was a 16-year old teenager when he was captured by Iraqi forces in his way from Abadan to Mahshahr [two towns in SouthWestern part of Iran where Iraq invaded in 1979].in 1988 after ten years of imprisonment in Iraqi prisons when Mujahedin offered him help return to Iran ,he admitted their offer.
He was deceived by MKO due to two reasons .First because he was not informed enough and second was MKO’s dirty recruitment tactics and the mind control system that enhanced and abused that lack of information.
Q: Please introduce yourself and explain how you were recruited by MKO?
Dashtestani: I am Mahmoud Dashtestani. I was born in 1965. I was captivated as a civilian when I was commuting from Abadan to Mahshahr in 1979. I was then imprisoned in Iraqi Camps for about ten years.
In the late years of my imprisonment when Iran and Iraq had both admitted a ceasefire, too much propaganda was launched by MKO in POW camps. They persuaded the prisoners to join their organization. Anyway, under too much pressure and due to lack of information on the group I was deceived by MKO and then I joined Camp Ashraf. I was hopeful to return to Iran by the possibilities that MKO would provide for me.
– How could you manage to leave the group?
– After two months, we asked why they did not return us to Iran. They told us that they had recently sent some people to Iran and all of them had been executed or sentenced to long-term imprisonment.
Then, Massoud Rajavi held a meeting for us to repeat the above mentioned lies. Terrified of returning to Iran, we were pulled into the cult. We were supposed to attend ideological meetings six hours a day. We were gradually so manipulated that we thought the whole world was consisted of Mujahidin and Ashraf.
Between the years of 1993 and 2002 people could rarely succeed to leave Camp Ashraf. If you wanted to leave the camp, you would have to go to Abu-Quraib prison first and you would stay there for seven or eight years, otherwise you would have to stay in the camp’s prison, called “departure gate”, for two years, so that all your information would be wiped out of your mind.
Since 2003, after the US invasion to Iraq, until 2009 when I succeeded to return to Iran, I asked several times for leaving Ashraf but each time they held longtime ideological meetings where my old and intimate friends made an emotional atmosphere to convince me to stay in the Camp. Any way I was dissuaded by them.
But now that I am in Iran, if you ask me how I feel, I tell you that I have one precious thing here; freedom. Here, my mind, my sole, my emotions, my feelings, my life are free. I am free to choose what to eat, what to wear, where to go. You are totally free in your life and that’s what you can never imagine in Camp Ashraf where everything begins and ends in the leader and his will.
– Do you have any regret of leaving Ashraf?
– Not at all. I just regret why I didn’t return to Iran earlier, because Iran is not like what they publicized in MKO. I don’t mean that there is no problem in Iran but it is entirely different from what their propaganda says.
– What do they say about Iran? Let us know!
– There is an obligatory program on Monday afternoons. They show the members some films of social issues like poverty, addiction, courts, divorce, suicide, immoral relations, prostitutions, and then they say that’s the whole thing which exists in Iran. they say,” This is Iranians’ routine life”.
In Ashraf garrison no emotion or feeling is found. Emotions towards your family, parents, brother, sister, wife and kids are meaningless. Everything is meaningful under will of the leader. In such an atmosphere, when we saw those so-called films of Iran, we thought that we really had a good life in Ashraf. We thought that we were really struggling for a monotheist classless society.
When I returned to Iran, I expected to see all men and women addicted in the streets! I thought I would see people hung on every square! I was seriously anxious about such scenes in Iran.
When I was first faced by Iranian authorities, I really got hopeful. They visited me in a hotel in Iraq where a room was allocated to me by Iranian Embassy. They asked me if I wanted to get back to Iran or to go to a third country. I answered “Iran” although I was in fear of those films I had seen in Camp Ashraf.
MKO leaders say that you shouldn’t think about family because it leads you to emotions. If such thinking crosses your mind, you should write in your daily record and then read it in the brainwashing meeting, every week. Thinking of emotions will decrease your love for leader, according to Rajavi. If you think of your mother, she is then called IRI’s mercenary.
– Even mother and father?
– Yes, absolutely .”Mother” is definitely a permanent case in brainwashing meetings.
When Rajavi launched those brainwashing meetings, he proudly told us that he granted them as gifts to his members.
The subjects of the meetings were mostly about sexual issues.
Translated by Nejat Society
Two more residents of Camp Ashraf escaped the cult today at 2 O’clock am.
Mr. Mehrdad amiri and Mr. Hojat Rafiee joined the families who were asleep in their camps at Ashraf gates.
![blank](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
The two defectors were really happy to be among Iranian families without the sever control they used to bear in the cult, according to Sahar Family Foundation report.
Mr. Mehrdad amiri, 35, and Mr. Hojat Rafiee, 42 were captured in Camp Ashraf of MKO for more than ten years. They told the families that they decided to runaway although they were seriously terrified by MKO leaders of being arrested by Iraqi forces or Iranian Intelligence.”the situation created by the Camp leaders is terribly chocking so members are under too much mental pressure. The women in the group are frightened of being raped so they fear to escape mote than their male comrades,”they said.
![blank](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Mr. Amiri and Mr. Rafiee were recruited by MKO recruiters when they were in Turkey looking for job. The two defectors spoke of daily long-term manipulation meetings held by the Camp leaders in order to impose more pressure on members and make sure that they will not escape. The residents are under strict supervision even when they go to bathroom, according to SSF.
The two newly escapees who were still afraid of being executed, were calmed down by families residing at Ashraf Gates.Download Ashraf residents escape the cult