Once the relocation of members of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO, MEK, PMOI, the Cult of Rajavi) from Camp Liberty Iraq, to Tirana Albania, started in 2013, members of the group were supposed to be recognized as refugees and Albania was supposed to be their permanent home before their final relocation in third countries.
Six years passed and about a thousand members left the MKO to live a normal life in the free world but their departure from the group resulted in legal problems for them. It seems that they are recognized as “refugees” only if they are members of the Cult of Rajavi.
In June 2013 when the first group of the MKO members were resettled in Albaniab, the US State Department stated, “The permanent relocation of residents is essential to ensure the safety and security of residents.” However, today those residents who are no more followers of Maryam Rajavi are left homeless and money less because the UN’s Refugee and Migrant Service in Albania (RAMSA) closed its office in Tirana.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees allegedly relocated the MKO in Albania from Iraq on “humanitarian grounds.” “But, on their arrival they were not granted UN refugee status, nor have they been issued Albanian identity documents that would allow them to work or travel,” Ann and Massoud Khodabandeh wrote in Lobelog. “Lack of residency rights also means that they cannot register for a bank account. They have no identity papers whatsoever, except the flimsy piece of paper used to fly them through international airspace from Baghdad to Tirana.”
This means that the MKO defectors’ legal case is neither supervised by the UNHCR nor by the Albanian government. There is no perspective for them for moving to a third country and this is very pleasing for the MKO leaders. The UNHCR, the US and the Albanian government “humanitarian” aids are limited to the isolated barred members in the Cult of Rajavi.
The closure of RAMSA is a gift to the MKO leaders who fear the increasing defection from the group which ends in the collapse of their cult.
Mazda Parsi
Members of the MEK in Albania
In a recent meeting with cult members, Maryam Rajavi told them that ‘the regime is now ruined, we clearly see signs and symptoms of overthrow of the regime – with this situation and the conditions that the regime has been going through for up to a year and a half, we will see that the regime cannot continue and it’s over, over, over …’
After her speech, one of the members called Mohammad Ali Agahi stood up and asked, ‘Sister Maryam, why are you lying to us about this’. Many then attacked him, but more people came to support him and some minutes later the meeting was ended. Mohammad Ali and the other people who supported him were then sent to Quarantine. For those who don’t know, ‘Quarantine’ is a place of isolation where a person is kept alone until the commanders and leading members of the organization come to talk in a process of so-called ‘Virus Removal’.
The fact is that the slogans of the cult have changed so often – according to circumstances – that it has become another ideological joke in their meetings. One day overthrow is the slogan, next day it was our fault there is no overthrow, next day overthrow is not important only obeying the ideology matters. What a joke.
BY Hassan Heyrani,
One of the MEK formers in Germany called me to say that he had heard some news about the members of the cult in Albania.
He said firstly that the cult has taken the decision to remove all those who have separated from the cult in Albania from the country. This is because the cult wants to empty the ‘border’ (or no man’s land) between MEK members and those people who take a salary from the sect and say that they still support the organization. This is because when these separated people come face to face with MEK members in the streets of Tirana street, they create a kind of bad influence on them. This influence makes some of the members who are under pressure in the cult decide to get out.
The cult wants to empty Tirana of every person who it calls so-called mercenaries who are critical of the cult (basically anyone who has left).
I confirmed to this friend in Germany that we in Tirana have also heard that there is currently a register of 35 people who admit that all their costs are paid by the cult, but who do not make this public because the cult doesn’t want it to became public knowledge that it would be willing to transfer these people (because it’s illegal people trafficking by a smuggler). It would also encourage more people to leave if they think the MEK will pay to smuggle them to Europe.
The cost for a smuggler to transfer one person is between 3 and 4 thousand euros or more. So, the cult made indirect contact with a smuggler and told him ‘we have a lot of people to move so reduce the price to 2.5 thousand euros each’. A group of these people have now arrived.
Behrooz Ghorbani, an Iranian priest in Norway, is behind this project and is one of the cult’s mercenaries (in the MEK’s pay). I should mention that I previously spoke to this priest from the International Church in Tirana before I found out who he really is. Ghorbani is trying to raise money to smuggle people out of Albania. He contacted my friend in Germany to ask him for 2,500 euros. But my friend found out this was a deception and Ghorbani was working for the cult because the cost of this project for each person from the beginning to the end is 5000 euros. This includes the cost a trafficker to Greece and secret residence in Greece for a while. Even though this is for around 50 people and costs around 250,000 euros, the cult is willing to pay for it. My friend in Germany also warned me ‘be careful, after this project is done, they will make trouble for you who remain in Albania’.
Hassan Heyrani, Tirana, Albania
Mr Manoucher Abdi is an Iranian citizen, who many years ago became a part of the MEK (Mojahedin-e Khalq), a revolutionary, formerly terrorist, organization currently characterised as a cult. After many vicious conflicts with various powers in Iran (the Pahalvi monarchy and later the Islamic Republic of Iran) this organization was removed from the list of terrorist organizations. In 2013, in the last months of Berisha’s government, several hundred fighters from this organization came from Iraq, where they were accommodated as allies of the dictator Saddam Hussein in Albania with the official status of UN-protected persons. During the years of Prime Minister Rama several thousand members of this organization (from 2000 to 4000) came to Albania from Iraq, but also from other countries such as Bulgaria. The organization claims that from its Albanian base called Camp Ashraf 3 it continues to carry out a fierce fight against the legitimate government of Iran, which the MEK calls the mullah’s regime of Tehran. Several dozen MEK members have deserted the ranks of the organization citing the case that Rama’s government supports MEK, the cult of Madam Rajavi which supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq. These frustrated, disenchanted MEK survivors continue to live in Albania and the UNCHR pays some money for their survival. Some of them, often financially supported by the MEK itself, have managed to leave Albania and illegally enter various EU countries.
One of the MEK defectors is Mr Abdi Manoucher, born in 1963. For Manoucher the ideals and aspirations of the MEK cult belong to the past. He simply wants to spend the remaining years of his life with his daughter, whom he has not seen for 15 years.
Despite Manoucher’s past, the Iranian authorities have officially stated that they will not hinder his return to his family home in Iran. We remind readers that in September 2013 PM Berisha in a meeting with the then Iranian ambassador in Tirana, Majid Mozafari, emphasized the fact that the Albanian government guarantees that any of them (Mojahedin), who have the full guarantee of the Iranian authorities and wants to return to his country, will face no obstacle from the Albanian authorities. (more can be consulted link: http://arkiva.km.gov.al/?fq=brenda&m=neës&lid=18617).
Berisha’s successor, the current Prime Minister Edwin Rama, is doing exactly the opposite. The Albanian authorities are hindering Manoucher’s return to the bosom of his family in Iran. Despite his repeated requests, Manoucher is prevented from returning to his homeland just to fulfil a whim of Maryam Rajavi, leader of the MEK cult organization. To this arbitrariness of the Albanian government, Manoucher has responded with the only tool that he has: a hunger strike. With a letter to the UNHCR, the Foreign Ministry of Albania, the Albanian Interior Ministry and Prime Minister Rama on 1 April 2019 he has informed them of his decision to start a hunger strike in order to persuade the Albanian government to allow him to return to his family home in Iran.
Such a servile attitude of the Rama Government towards Madam Rajavi goes well beyond the servile positions of the Libohiva quisling government versus Jacomoni, the Emperor King Vittorio Emanuele III. Albania was then a country occupied by fascism, and today it is a free, sovereign country, a NATO member and an aspirant for EU membership, but unfortunately with a prime minister, both myopic and servile.
Counterproductive action of Rama Government
Holding the grandfather Abdi (Manoucher) hostage in Albania is not only a cowardly and disgusting act by Rama’s government against a stateless man on behalf of Madam Rajavi, but is also completely counterproductive and with negative consequences for the Rama Government.
I hope that Mrs Fu-Fu, who covers public relations for the prime minister, will explain to Prime Minister Edvin what a “debacle” regarding public relations it will be for the Albanian Government as Abdi’s hunger strike, among other things, is reflected in foreign and world media, starting with the Danish Dagens Naeringsliv, France’s Le Monde, Italy’s RAI and the US’s Wall Street Journal.
Prime Minister Edwin must also be aware that unlimited servility towards Madam Rajavi will not be enough for the well-paid lobbyists of these stateless people’s efforts to get Mr Rama a 3-4 minute meeting with President Trump at the Oval Office. Such a “coup de main” at the height of the electoral campaign will simply remain a pipe dream which does not even have the slightest chance of becoming reality.
In my article I am not appealing to the human feelings of my country’s prime minister, but merely his sound judgment. Keeping an Iranian grandfather hostage in Albania will not bring any benefit to the prime minister but will be a source of endless trouble in the field of public relations. I humbly remind Mr Edvin that the words of MP Majko or ex-professor Klosi, Grida, Salianji & Co, that do not even go down the toilet, make his own cruel decisions for grandfather Abdi bad news for Prime Minister Edvin!
Gjergji Thanasi, Gazeta Impact, Translated by Iran Interlink
Mujahedin-e Khalq former members in Albania gathered together and celebrated the Iranian New Year.
They wished their friends who are still captivated at Camp Ashraf 3, liberty from the MKO cult.
During last years, the MKO defectors in Albania, most with more than three decades of membership in the group, shared with the outsiders what they underwent and witnessed in the oppressive cult-like system of the Mujahedin-e Khalq camps.
The former members’ testimonies and insights caused the liberation of several other members and this process has continued and increased day by day.
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Defectors of the Mujahedin Khalq organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) protested in Tirana, Albania.
About forty former members of the MKO gathered in Eskandar Beik square in Tirana to call on High Commissioner of Refugees to accomplish its responsibilities regarding the defectors of the group. They took action against the HCR that used to recognize them as refugees until they were members of the MKO but stopped its aids immediately after they left the group
“We have a lot of health and financial issues,” the defectors proclaimed. “We wasted twenty to thirty years of our life in the MKO under the poorest condition. Why don’t the HCR and the Albanian authorities care for our judiciary status as refugees?”
Protesters’ main demands are the followings:
- They want their refugee status to be recognized by the HCR otherwise they should be allowed to leave Albanian territory.
- They ask the HCR office in Albania to send their refuge documents to the authorities of the European Union and the office of Federika Mogherini.
- They ask for legal and financial independence in Albania since the HCR is diverting its duties on the MKO authorities.
- They ask for legal permission to visit their families. (They were not allowed to visit their families for the dozen of years they were in the MKO)
Citizens of Tirana passing by the peaceful protesters offered sympathy to them after they read their placards. The action was covered by the Albanian News media and TV reporters interviewed the protesters.
I have wondered why the Trump administration has moved the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, MKO, NCR, Rajavi terrorist cult) to a remote and isolated camp in Albania to keep them intact, even though they were meant to be deprogramed and disintegrated there in the first place.
I wondered what good they might be for the Trump administration now that they are more than one thousand miles away from Iran’s borders and just inside Europe.
Why should the Trump administration bother so much about them? The Americans clearly know how much the MEK are hated by Iranians; even by the opposition groups. And the US and its regional allies know full well that getting near to the MEK would cost them their political and international reputation.
This was until I received confirmed information from friends inside Albania that the MEK members have been used to intimidate politicians in the Balkan states and in Eastern Europe to yield to US demands in the region.
Now I know. The MEK terrorist cult in Europe can be used as the Sword of Damocles and hung over the head of the EU by the hawks of Washington to stoke US-EU conflict.
Everyone knows that the Trump administration is not keen on the internal and international policies of the EU on many subjects, including the Iran issue. And the MEK terrorist members residing just next door can easily be used to bully EU politicians.
I am now more certain than ever that reorganizing the MEK in Albania is a security threat to Europe rather than Iran. And the EU must justly be concerned about the presence of a US backed terrorist cult in Europe.
The Cult-Like Group Fighting Iran
Members of the Trump administration have been providing support to a political sect that aims to topple the Iranian regime in Tehran. Around 2,000 of its members live in a camp in Albania. Former members say it subjected followers to torture and psychological terror.
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Political sect from Albania fights against Tehran
On a country road in northwestern Albania, a rather odd collection of men and women living together in a camp are busy preparing themselves to topple the Iranian regime. Three times per week, many of them apparently practice slitting throats, breaking hands, jabbing out eyeballs with fingers and performing the so-called Glasgow Smile, which involves cutting cheeks from the corner of the mouth up toward the ear. That, at least, is the story told by a former member of the group.
The camp, roughly the size of 50 football fields and surrounded by high fences, is located just a 35-minute drive from the lively bars of downtown Tirana, but the people inside live in something of a time capsule. Former members of the group report that most of the 2,000 camp residents aren’t allowed to possess mobile phones, watches or calendars, though members of the organization that operates the camp deny those claims.
“My daughter is living somewhere in there,” says Mostafa Mohammadi, a 61-year-old Iranian man with a high forehead and deep eye sockets. Her name is Somayeh, a woman of 38. Her father, who lives in Canada, claims that she is being held in the camp against her will, which is why he spent several months in Albania last year. During a meeting there, he said:”I don’t have anything to do with politics. Please, I just want to see my daughter.”
Just like everyone in the camp, Somayeh Mohammadi is a member of the People’s Mujahedin, a once-militant Iranian opposition group that was listed by the United States. and Europe as a terrorist group until 2012. These days, however, several members of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump are supporting the group, commonly known by the abbreviation MEK. Both the administration and the MEK, after all, want to see the end of the current regime in Iran — and now that the group has Washington’s backing, the Mujahedin apparently hopes that its time has finally come.
On the sidelines of the Middle East conference in Warsaw, which began on Wednesday, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of possible”war”with Iran. And at an MEK rally in Warsaw, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani called for regime change in Tehran.
For almost 30 years, several thousand members of the People’s Mujahedin lived in exile in Iraq, but in 2013, many of them moved to Albania. And since 2017, the majority of the group has lived in the isolated camp near Tirana.
Growing Influence
Ever since the group set up shop in Albania, however, more and more members have defected.
Some tell stories of torture experienced in the camp and of group sessions in which members are required to open up about their sexual fantasies. Women are allegedly forced to wear headscarves. And all of it takes place in the name of a phantom leader named Masoud Rajavi, who hasn’t been seen since 2003. Indeed, it isn’t even clear if he is still alive; photos from the 1990s show a mustachioed man in a green uniform.
The residents of the camp are just one part of the movement, which is led by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of the vanished leader. The 65-year-old commutes between Albania and her office in Paris, from which she leads the group’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is active in both Europe and the U.S. NCRI is structured as a kind of interim government, ready to take over in Tehran as soon as the current regime is toppled and the group has offices in many capital cities, including one in Washington not far from the White House. In Berlin, NCRI has an office in the Wilmersdorf district, located just southwest of the city center. The movement in Germany has just a few hundred members, but it has several thousand members around the world.
Maryam Rajavi is the acting leader of the People’s Mujahedin. Her husband has not been seen since 2003.
And they have proven to be adept lobbyists, having won over influential supporters in recent years. U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Giuliani have all spoken at NCRI events and they all view the group as a viable alternative to the current regime in power in Tehran.
“The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government, which Madam Rajavi represents,”Giuliani said at an annual NCRI rally in Paris in June 2018. And he suggested that such a regime change could come soon:”Next year, I want to have this convention in Tehran!”he said. Both Giuliani and Bolton have even visited the group in Albania, and last Monday, the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, the national security adviser issued a video message addressing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in which he said:”I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”
But who are Trump’s allies inside the secretive camp? Two lion statues guard the large iron gate at the camp’s entrance and guards call out”No, no!”if anyone stops out front. Three men march out of the gate and refuse to answer any questions, promising that interview requests will be responded to the next day. But nobody ever calls.
DER SPIEGEL never received a response from the People’s Mujahedin or from the NCRI to any of its interview queries prior to the visit, neither from Tirana, Paris or Berlin. A lawyer representing the group likewise declined to discuss the case of Somayeh Mohammadi. Indeed, the group only responded when DER SPIEGEL sent an email outlining the accusations that had been made against it, with an NCRI spokesman in Berlin essentially denying everything. On its websites, the organization claims to stand for democracy, human rights and the strict separation of church and state in Iran.”We want a pluralist system, freedom of parties and assembly,”it says, for example, in an article entitled”Maryam Rajavi’s Ten Point Plan for Future Iran.”
The statements suggest that once the People’s Mujahedin take over power in Iran, everything will immediately improve. But reports from those who have experienced life in the camp do not reflect that message. Instead, they appear to be prisoners of their own rebellion.
![Gholamreza Shekari](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Gholamreza Shekari; Tirana; Der Spiegel
‘Lies, Manipulation and Fear’
It is, of course, undeniable that the regime in Tehran and the People’s Mujahedin are engaged in a propaganda war and lies from both sides are to be expected. But DER SPIEGEL has spoken with 15 former camp residents, some of them for several hours — and their stories are largely consistent on the most important point: The organization is essentially a sect that is difficult to escape.
Gholamreza Shekari, a slender 50-year-old man with bony cheeks, says he spent 27 years as a member of the People’s Mujahedin, adding”the organization’s public face is liberal. Internally, though, it works by way of lies, manipulation and fear.”
Shekari fell into the group of fighters as a 20-year-old, as many others apparently did as well — through false promises. In 1988, during the confusion of the Iran-Iraq War, he fled across the Iraqi border, where he met members of the People’s Mujahedin.”They spoke of freedom and democracy for Iran,”Shekari says.”And then they promised me that they would arrange a visa for Europe for me.”He believed them.
Later, he says, they took his documents and told him that if he left the group, he would end up in an Iraqi torture prison. An organization spokesman rejects the claim as a”ridiculous and fictitious film scenario.”
“They told us lies to ensure our obedience,”says Shekari.”We were guarded and forced to break off contact with our families.”Claims that fighters were banned from maintaining contact with their families are”baseless lies,”says the organization.
Shekari says that he repeatedly asked when he would be allowed to leave. But that turned out to be a mistake: According to Human Rights Watch, the organization began torturing members who wanted to leave the group or who asked critical questions in the mid-1990s.
“They insulted me as a spy, beat my shins until they were bloody and put out burning cigarettes on my skin,”Shekari says. After a week, he says, his lower legs were completely black. He rolls up his jeans to reveal scars covering his legs.
Ultimately, he says, the leader Masoud Rajavi gathered all those who had been tortured.”He threatened that if we ever spoke about it, we would be handed over to the Iraqis, which would mean additional torture or death.”
Group Denies Torture Claims
When confronted with these accusations, the spokesman for the organization’s German chapter says that”neither in the 1990s, nor before or after, did the group keep its members prisoner or torture them.”
Despite everything, Shekari remained with the organization for another 23 years, which at best could be explained as being the result of brainwashing. Only in Albania did the others allow him to leave, in September 2016. Now, he lives in a sparsely furnished apartment in Tirana and receives financial support from the UN Refugee Agency. He doesn’t have much choice but to stay where he is because, as an Iranian, getting visas is difficult and there are many countries to which he is not allowed to travel.
After he left the group, he says he received the equivalent of 350 euros per month from the group for half a year”so that I would keep my mouth shut,”Shekari claims.”The organization claims that we are all agents so that nobody believes us,”he says.”But I’m not working for anyone.”
The People’s Mujahedin used to receive funding from the erstwhile Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but these days, group supporters collect donations and can often be seen in the pedestrian zones of German cities, showing passersby photos of executions in Iran. They operate under the cover of organizations with names like the”Association for Future Hope”or”Aid Organization for Human Rights in Iran.”According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, these and other groups are linked with the People’s Mujahedin. In a message written to DER SPIEGEL about the camp’s financing, the group wrote:”All costs are covered by supporters of the resistance both inside and outside of Iran.”
Security experts believe that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel also provide the group with financial support, but there is no proof for that supposition. The organization writes:”We haven’t received even a single euro from any government.”
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Masoud Rajavi launched what he called an”ideological revolution”in 1985. He married the wife of a confidant and forced all others to get divorced
An ‘Ideological Revolution’
The transformation into a sect-like organization can be explained by history. After the overthrow of the shah, the militant group, still adamantly anti-American at the time, lost the ensuing power struggle and was persecuted by the religious regime under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. The members fled to Iraq, from where they carried out terrorist attacks in Iran and fought against their own country in the Iran-Iraq War.
Fearing that the group might disintegrate, leader, Masoud Rajavi launched what he called an”ideological revolution”in 1985. He married the wife of a confidant and forced all others to get divorced, with children being sent abroad. Loyalties other than the one to the group’s leader were no longer to be tolerated — and that is when the personality cult surrounding Rajavi and his new wife Maryam began. Still today, many camp residents continue to wear the leader’s likeness on a chain around their necks.
The last time Masoud Rajavi was seen was in March 2003, shortly before the first American bombs began falling in Baghdad. But Maryam Rajavi continues speaking about her husband as though he were still alive. Not long after the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Americans captured the People’s Mujahedin’s camp and disarmed the group. Soon, though, the organization began claiming it backed the U.S., even though it had been fighting on behalf of Saddam Hussein only a short time before.
The group’s disarming could have spelled the end, but hardliners like then-U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted to use them as leverage against Iran. Already in 2002, the group had worked with the Israeli secret service Mossad in revealing that Iran had begun covertly enriching uranium.
In 2007, units of the People’s Mujahedin began to receive training at a U.S. military facility in the desert of Nevada — even though the group was still listed by Washington as a terrorist organization at the time. And now, the Trump administration has taken the position that the People’s Mujahedin has been demanding for years: a hardline stance toward Iran. And the group believes that it has played a role: When Trump abandoned the nuclear deal with Iran in May, the group’s commanders celebrated as though they had just won a great victory.
Their list of supporters is currently longer than it has ever been, including numerous U.S. Senators and members of the U.S. military and security apparatus. The former Saudi Arabian intelligence chief, Turki Bin Faisal al Saud, is also a proponent. In the European Parliament, a group called Friends of a Free Iran advocates on behalf of the People’s Mujahedin as does a multipartisan group in the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, called the German Solidarity Committee for a Free Iran.
Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani:”The mullahs must go, the ayatollah must go, and they must be replaced by a democratic government, which Madam Rajavi represents.”
In October, Martin Patzelt, a parliamentarian with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), visited the camp in Albania together with former Bundestag President Rita Süssmuth, also of the CDU. Süssmuth raved about the”joie de vivre culture”among the People’s Mujahedin, adding that the Iranian secret service has repeatedly propagated”terrible things”about the group.
The People’s Mujahedin has often rejected all manner of accusations as propaganda from Tehran. And it has been an effective strategy, in part because Iran has brutally persecuted the group in the past and executed thousands of its followers.
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around a thousand members work in the so-called”computer division,”allegedly using fake accounts to post pro-organization propaganda on Twitter and Facebook
War Footing
The depictions of those who have left the organization make it sound like the group is constantly on war footing. Eight residents sleep in each room and they have to get up between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. In addition to combat training, they also take care of construction projects in the camp. The defectors also say that around a thousand members work in the so-called”computer division,”allegedly using fake accounts to post pro-organization propaganda on Twitter and Facebook. Others, say former members, use the messenger service Telegram to entice new Iranian recruits to join them in Albania.
The group’s spokesman counters that claims that the organization is running a troll factory are merely an”attempt to cover up fake accounts belonging to the Iranian regime.”
Former group members say that there are some 200 commanders in the camp and they sometimes read out a letter from their vanished leader, including sentences like:”Have no fear, victory is ours, we will be in Iran.”
The question as to why the Albanian government tolerates the Iranian group in their country is one that the Interior Ministry in Tirana is not willing to answer. But U.S. government documents make it clear why the People’s Mujahedin ended up in Albania in the first place.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the situation became increasingly dangerous for them. During her time in office, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped find a solution, together with the United Nations, and ultimately Albania agreed to accept a number of group members. In return, the U.S. donated $20 million to the UN Refugee Agency and pledged development aid to Albania.
Starting in 2013, group leaders began buying up more and more land and ultimately built the camp, including dozens of white containers and gray, two-story buildings. They house a large kitchen, a bakery, a music studio, a computer center and a dentistry practice — at least according to a propaganda video. On another one of the few videos from inside the camp, Somayeh Mohammadi can be seen, the woman whose father has been trying to free her for 21 years. In the clip, she is wearing a uniform with a headscarf and is being interviewed by two Albanian journalists. Her father, she says, is an agent of the Iranian regime and insists she wants to remain in the camp.”Here is a free country. If I want to go anywhere, I can go.”
The story that her father has to tell, one backed up with documents and video material, sounds quite different. Mohammadi himself was a long-time supporter of the organization and he collected donations for the group in Canada, where he has lived since 1994. When Somayeh was 17 years old, a woman from the organization offered her a”short trip”to the camp in Iraq.
![Mostafa Mohammadi; Somayeh Mohammadi father](https://www.nejatngo.org/sq/wp-content/uploads/blank.gif)
Iranian families of some of the 3,200 members of the MEK, who said loved ones were trapped at the MEK base in Iraq at Camp Ashraf, during a conference on Nov. 25, 2011, in Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi government said it would close the base by the end of that year.
Photo: Scott Peterson/Getty Images
‘The Organization Gives Nothing’
Somayeh never came back. The organization sent a cassette recording of Somayeh saying that she had decided to remain in the camp. Her father says that the organization lured him to places in various countries with the promise that he could see her, but instead used him in demonstrations.”The organization gives nothing without getting something in return,”Mohammadi says.
On one video from June 2003, Mohammadi can be seen in front of the French Embassy in Ottawa, apparently drenched in gasoline as he pulls out a match — which a journalist then knocks out of his hand. At the time, group leader Maryam Rajavi was in pre-trial detention in France on suspicions of terrorism and protesters in many countries had lit themselves on fire in front of French embassies. Because he too had apparently been preparing to do the same, Mohammadi was considered a hero within the group from that moment on. He was even allowed to visit his daughter in the camp. But he ultimately distanced himself from the group and began filming everything in an attempt at collecting evidence that she was being held against her will.
On Oct. 17, 2013, Somayeh sent a letter to Canadian authorities, in which she wrote:”Please help me return to my former country, Canada, as soon as possible.”But Somayeh doesn’t have a Canadian passport and the authorities were unable to help her.
But then, she apparently changed her mind yet again — and a book was even published in her name as a PDF document, in which she claims that she wants to stay with the People’s Mujahedin.
“Who knows what they did to her,”says her father.
By Luisa Hommerich / DER SPIEGEL
Albania has been at the center of Iran’s diplomatic attention in the past few years. Once supported by Iran, the tiny Muslim country has now become a base for the Mujahedin-e Khalq organization, an anti-Iran terrorist group targeting Iran’s security from inside Albania. Camp Ashraf 3 is MKO’s new base in Albania hosting around 3000 MKO members who have left Iraq. With the support from Saudi Arabia and the U.S., the terrorist group’s camp in Albania has been built in 18 months.
One of the most important activities of the MKO in Albania is the terrorist group’s cyber activities. MKO’s cyber unit enjoys 1300 members with several thousand fake accounts in Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and Instagram. According to some defected MKO members, a part of this highly protected facility is a factory for creating fake accounts on the internet which is dedicated to mass manipulation of the social Media.
They are tasked with duties such as creation and management of accounts under the cover of different guilds, spreading lies against the Islamic Republic of Iran, diverting peaceful protests to violent movements, etc.
Hassan Shahbaz, a defected MKO member said in an interview with Aljazeera: “We used to receive daily orders instructing us to emphasize on major topics and current problems in Iran. For instance, unemployment, high prices, and poverty were among the topics to which we had to attract the attention of people and blame the Islamic government in Iran for these problems. This was our daily task on the internet.”
Recruiting cyber experts, indicates the fact that MKO leaders view the internet and its impact on the Iranian security seriously. The internet has turned into a soft-war battlefield against Iran and anti-Iran groups have found a tool to damage the country with the least expenses. The end-goal of the terrorist MKO is a regime-change in Iran. The soft-war waged against Iran by enemy-states and their affiliated groups like the MKO is based on spreading gossips, propaganda, and the exaggeration of domestic problems.
Dr. Reza Ekhtiari Amiri,
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amnesty_International#Amnesty’s_controversial_visits_to_the_camp_of_the_People’s_Mujahedin_in_Albania
In December 2018, Amnesty published a report entitled, ‘Blood-soaked Secrets,’ that accused Iran of carrying out the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988.
Much of the evidence used in the report was based on the testimonies of members of the People’s Mujahedin who are now resident at a camp complex located in Albania, just outside of the capital, Tirana.
According to the report, Amnesty’s researchers,”undertook three field trips to Tirana, Albania, where a substantial number of survivors and family members are based.”
However, many reports indicate that human rights abuses take place at this camp and that members are allegedly subjected to indoctrination and torture.
An NGO, the Nejat society, which represents the families of members of the People’s Mujahedin who have been denied access to meet them, has complained that Amnesty should never have been complicit in human rights abuses that occur at the camp by approaching members that have likely offered testimonies under duress.
Iran Interlink, a charity run by two former members of the People’s Mujahedin, has also lent weight to the criticism by the Nejat Society of Amnesty for visiting the camp in order to elicit information.