Mujahedin Members and Self-immolation

Rajavi’s interpretation of the holy and foul suicide

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – Part thirteen

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, in our last session, you mainly focused on theoretic and tenable aspects of suicide operations. Your explanations were nice but it would be much better if you elucidate the practical instances of suicides and self-immolations you have personally witnessed. There are reports of some cases committed for a variety of reasons. I mean how Rajavi reacted to these acts and analyzed them. Your explanations will shed light on ambiguities especially if the names of the victims are mentioned.

Batool Soltani: Well, many of these cases can be found happened within the organization. In many cases Rajavi exclusively referred to some instances as proofs when trying to inoculate his mentalities.

Of course, as I have already pointed out, such discourses were held only in the meetings of the Leadership Council and never leaked out. Bear it in mind that he never intended to compare anything with the opponent side or infer anything from these instances of suicide when referring to them. It was an issue discussed within the organizational sphere and, of course, deductions were generally related to internal relations. The main focus was differentiating between the holy and sinful kinds of suicide with the emphasis on romanticizing the suicide and describing it as a noble act which Rajavi theorized according to his interpretations.

I have to point out that some of these suicides were committed just following these meetings like the suicide done by Mehri Moussavi just as some had been recorded before. Of the significance was his skill in presenting examples that could well help to differentiate between the two, that is to say, the presented standards and motivations, which the ranking members were well aware of, behind these suicides could well help to identify whether it was esteemed a holy suicide for the cause of the leader and interests of the organization or despised a sinful suicide for individual weaknesses, flaws and ambitions. Of the suicides that offended Rajavi and made him erupt furiously to hold consequent lengthy meeting with the members of the Leadership Council was the suicide committed by Kamal Haddadi long after the beginning of these discourses. He was a ranking member of the Central Council and that was the cause for Rajavi to be sensitive about the incident.

A look at the list of the members of the Central Council at the time, dissolved after the initiation of the ideological revolution, indicate that he was a ranking commander deposed of his responsibility after the ideological revolution. The emphasis on him as an officer of high ranking is to know how Rajavi degraded such people when treating them for organizational concerns. Kamal was reported to have established a relation with a woman under his command.

The relation could be any organizationally unauthorized relation regardless of being ideological, emotional, moral or even a love affair. They said it was a love affair and the case was sent to Rajavi and Maryam to be dealt with. At the time Rajavi was stationed in Camp Parsian. Before transferring Kamal to Camp Parsian, Mahvash Sepehri began further investigation of the case and put Kamal in a prison cell called ‘Bangal’, an isolated, solitary confinement where they kept the culpable to be judged. She pressed him with recriminations and accused him of immoral relations with the woman. So harsh and disdainfully she treated Kamal that he could easily anticipate what awaited him before Rajavi. He could tolerate no more and committed suicide in his cell.

At the time, I was a ranking deputy in the Leadership Council and was present in the meetings particularly dealing with such cases. I remember the first words stated by Rajavi concerning Kamal’s suicide. He was much enraged by Kamal’s act and said he threw his corpse on the leadership’s table. I have to point out that Kamal’s suicide was never mentioned among the rank and file who thought he had died of a natural death. But all the members of the Leadership Council knew that he had died of psychological pressures impressed by Sepehri. In the very same meeting, Rajavi appreciated Sepehri and said Kamal deserved to be treated so contemptibly and unworthy way to commit suicide. Rajavi never mentioned anything about ideological deviation that could have affected Kamal because it could raise questions. Kamal was shown to have no ideological problem and that he had chosen his path rightfully; his death had to be looked and analyzed from a different angle to preserve the good image of the organization.

What Rajavi depicted was so easy to perceive. Among the members are those who set themselves on fire for the sake of the organization and leader’s interests; in contrast, some others commit suicide for deviant, immoral causes and threw their corpses on the table before the leader. Then he compared the different motivations behind the two acts. Those who committed suicide for selfish causes not only committed sin but also led the organization to the midst of a big problem hard to deal with. The former suicides solved a problem in the course of accomplishing a holy cause while the latter suicides burdened problems on the shoulder of the leader. People from each group lose their lives on their own but it is the contradictory motives that decides who is blessed or condemned; the former has succeeded to release himself of his own self to become selfless and attach to an ideological source without; the latter is a slave of his own self and is reluctant to discharge introspections in the arranged weekly ablution sessions to clean his inside.

Taking opportunity of Kamal’s case to illustrate intended motives of suicide, Rajavi presupposed that following the US invasion, the destiny of Mojahedin would be vague. We would be dispersed and sent to different parts of the world; a group to Iran, another to France, America or any other place. In that case, could we possibly carry the potentiality of being a mobile bomb ready to detonate to safeguard the interests of the leadership? To ideologically justify the suicide operations, he again referred to Kamal’s case and other similar cases of suicide for personal motivations; one killing himself for sexual impulses, another disappointed, flawed and depressed, and Kamal Haddadi who was in contradiction with himself and failed to appear before other members to confess his sins and purge himself. None of them, he said, had committed suicide for the sake of leader and their attachment to him. No status and value could be so noble as compared to that of setting oneself on fire for the leadership and Maryam.

Although motives for suicide varied, what differentiated between the individual and ideological motives, the former described as a sin in the Quran and the latter romanticized and glorified for organizational causes, was the pivotal point where one’s self met and attached itself with that of the leader who well directed the act onto the right path. It was no more suicide but martyrdom and even exceeded it in value. To give further explanation, he said; consider in this very moment something suddenly threatens my life as your leader. One of you may imagine that the threat is removed if you set yourself on fire. In his opinion, the suicide had committed a sin in risking his life to save the leader because the act was non-ideological and performed under no command by the leader; the suicide was now a foul corpse cast before the leader.

It was one of the instances Rajavi delineated and formulated the ideological suicide that differentiated it with a foul and sinful one; the holy suicide has to be performed only and purely by the permission and the command of the leader, otherwise it will be considered a big sin the ideological motives have spurred it. Thus, it can be concluded that the 17 June self-immolations, in contrast to Maryam Rajavi’s rejection to be instigated by the organization, were organizationally planned and orchestrated and approved by the leadership. None of the volunteers set themselves on fire entirely of their own volition; their acts to be esteemed holy, they had to follow the decree and command of the leadership. Does it mean anything else when they glorified the acts of Neda (Hassani) and Marzeh (Mojaveri), both died of the burning injuries, as holy feats? Their self-immolation before anything indicated the degree of their loyalty and submission to the leadership. These instances along with Rajavi’s ideological interpretation as well as his reference to the Quran as a subterfuge to justify his egocentric ambitions may lead us to the bottom of truth.

To be continued

September 3, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Rajavi’s leadership, the criterion to legitimize the ideology

Sahar Family Foundation: We continue with the question, in all aspects of the discussed suicide operations, what were the ideological foundations and historical backgrounds that theorized and justified application of such operations? Were there any reliable historical facts to refer to or Rajavi relied only on his own inferences to justify such deeds? As Rajavi usually theorizes anything before putting it into action, it has to be necessarily true in this case as well. I believe these are key issues, hardly discussed in detail, to help develop a better understanding of such reprehensibly ideological mannerism. So I think you can better disclose untold aspects since you have been so close to the nucleus of decision makings.

Batool Soltani: Naturally, as they stated, anything was founded on and done according to a series of presented justifications. That is to say, any resolution had to be justifiably fitted in an ideological apparatus to be practically conceivable. I myself believe that we cannot possibly develop an understanding of the mechanisms that are products of an egocentric will, and in many cases self-instigated, unless we can well analyze fundamental principles. Concerning your question, I will give some details of what I have observed in the different levels and in the level of the Leadership Council in particular.

Regardless of many subjects already discussed, once in 2002 we had a long discourse on the subject you broached. I have to point out that there was a especial book of the Leadership Council wherein you could find the questions, duties and responsibilities of the members of the Leadership Council. Particularly, an article exclusively concerned the subject. Of course, the book was only circulating among the members of the Leadership Council and none of the lower ranks were permitted to touch it. It was exclusively edited for the members of the Leadership Council and would be also referred to as “the Book of Guidance”. The book contained extended degrees of responsibilities as well as the limitations and whatever was considered to be an act of sin. In one of the meetings of the Leadership Council it was enthusiastically debated about the mentioned subject and the historical backgrounds of the suicide operation. In his speech Rajavi underlined that the act of suicide in itself was a big sin and homicide in Islamic teachings. He would say if according to Quran suicide was known to be a big sin then, why we were stressing on suicide and related operations as a working approach. Of course, it was before the widespread self-immolations of June 17.

He would continue focusing on the point that while it was a big sin then, why we took advantage of it for organizational interests and to defend Ashraf. In answer to his own raised question some stood to justify that the suicides were ideologically rooted and done for organizational and revolutionary interests that eventually benefitted masses. He taunted them all about whatever they thought to be serious remarks. He explained that it was all beyond our understanding since we lacked the sound political-ideological capacity needed to reach the accurate answer. The rationalized answer to his own posed question was that in all the wars and battles to which the prophets and imams dispatched their disciples to and also the armed struggle the organization was engaged in some people were inevitably killed. Then, was there any difference between the former warriors called martyrs and the latter combatants killed in the course of suicide operations? Both of the groups he explained to be of help to their leaders to carry out their responsibilities to affect their societies and the revolution they led. He meant that there was no difference between the two groups since both were killed in a battlefront to which they had been dispatched by the order of leaders who intended to accomplish the same cause.

Giving further explanations, he focused on Ahmed Rezai’s suicide act as a sacred feat beyond any regular suicide operation saying his act was sacred and distinguished because he, as the suicide-man, had reached a point where he had detached from his own self and had attached himself to a source without. Any act in any form, being suicide, self-immolation or else, done when the suicide detaches himself from his within and relies on a pivot without not only distances himself from any territory of sin but also transcends himself to a status even above the martyrs. He would interpret that the Quran regards suicide an act of sin because the perpetrator does it in the sphere of observing only his own self and as a result of failing to satiate his own personal will and whim. Then, it would be considered no sin if committed far from selfish tendencies and for a sacred causes to achieve some social and historical ends.

The Quran condemns suicide when motivated by individual urges and the suicide sees no obligation to follow the orders of a leader who intends to alleviate social problems and solve social controversies. It is no more a sin as it relies on and is guided by a pivotal element without who controls deflection when attached to. In fact, Rajavi was commenting on the application of one of the articles of his forced ideological revolution referred to as article F, Fardiyat (individual). The article in particular asserts the relation between the individuals and the leader meaning that it is the leader who legitimizes anything said or done by the individuals. He is the pivot on whom the individuals have to relay and attach themselves for interpretation of anything that happens to be practical and the criterion to assess the accuracy and soundness of thoughts.
SFF: What did Rajavi actually mean, attachment to leadership or ideology? Since it is the ideology, however, that crystallizes the values than the leader whose main role is to interpret and foster them. What did he really mean?

BS: He exactly intended attachment to leadership himself. There were controversies at the beginning on the ideological aspect and some would say that suicide draw its legitimacy from the ideology while Rajavi had a different opinion stressing on the leader as the matrix to which the individual had to secure a liaison. Although it may generally be considered the very same ideology, Rajavi believes that it is the leader who is the spirit without whom anything lacks legitimacy. It is main cause of his strife with the Islamic Republic regime. Attachment to ideology in his opinion is a general perception that actualizes by attaching to the leadership. Then, the matrix one attaches himself to far from his own self is the leader rather than the ideology since from the very beginning the leader has crystallized the ideology itself. As a matter of fact, both are regarded identical with the priority of the former over the latter to justify suicide tantamount to a de facto recognition of a sacred act wherever and whenever the leader wills. Looking it from the angle of Rajavi’s interpretation, the leader is the criterion and the grounds to judge what is lawful, permissible, prohibited and ideologically acceptable. That is where one’s suicide turns to be a big and unforgivable sin if it is unauthorized by the leader regardless of him being directly or indirectly attached.

SFF: What do you mean by directly or indirectly?

BS: By directly I mean a reaction against any direct attempt on the leader’s life when an individual risks his life to save the leader. Any reaction to protect the interests of the leader anywhere on the earth by risking one’s life is an indication of indirect attachment, a responsibility the individuals claim to defend the leadership, his security and interests. In both cases, whether the leader is exposed to direct attempts of assassination or indirect character assassination, one has to protect and defend the leadership and sacrifice himself. To actualize his justifications, he did not even shrink from identifying himself with the prophets and imams. He would say the one who sacrificed himself to protect the Prophet against the harms of the adversaries was identical with the same faithful follower who committed suicide or self-immolation away in the distance to defend his status and interests. Again the criterion was the leadership and his unlimited protection directly or indirectly.
I believe that Rajavi intended to completely remove the doubts formed in the minds of the members of the Leadership Council that suicide was in no way an act of sin and even sacred and glorified if it was committed under the command of the leadership in any form. The suicide who sacrificed himself for the cause of the leadership and his interests anywhere in the world would be rewarded far beyond that of a martyr who had been killed under the command of the Prophet or the leader of the organization.

SFF: At the first look, it seems that the priority is first to guarantee maintenance of the leadership’s interests and then survival of the organization. Can it be the basis for all justifications?

BS: Of course, in one aspect that is to guarantee the interests of both leadership and the organization. But there is one important point to notice, that is, the two are intermingled and inseparable with the priority of the former. The organizational interests can never be discussed separately unless accredited to the leader just as it is with the ideology that draws its legitimacy from the leadership.

To be continued
Translated by Mojahedin.ws

August 22, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Rajavi; set your body on fire to defend Ashraf

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – Part nine

Sahar Family Foundation: In our last talk you pointed out that the prerequisite for membership in Rajavi; set your body on fire to defend Ashraf the organization is to volunteer for self-immolation. Does it mean that the organization reacts against the reluctant and how does it deal with such instances?

Batool Soltani: The organization takes no clear position to directly confront in such instances. To answer the question, we need to conduct a deep analysis of a whole organizational reaction against already confronted cases. There was a female colleague who had refused to volunteer for self-immolation but the organization showed no antagonistic attitude towards her before others. It was not the end of the story and the organization commanded me to watch her closely since they believed that she was in trouble with herself and cared not the least for the organization. They would justify that now even ten days after the detention of Maryam in France, she had refrained to be an abstentious volunteer. In fact, the organization avoided to tackle with these members just before the eyes of others and pretended to overlook them. In this way, many others would be impressed to join the side of majority since the impartiality proved to be a working propaganda to attract more than to repel. Furthermore, nobody could accuse the organization of coercing members into acts of suicide and the acts would be propagated as personal outbursts of passion and consequent of strong devotion to the ideology, Maryam and Massoud. The process of indirect control of the disobedient would continue until through an excuse they would be seriously censured. There were some among the rankings of the Leadership Council who refused to volunteer for suicide operations but after a while were suddenly evanesced from the council. In my opinion, the use of clever mechanisms of control to undermine the dissidents functioned much better than exploiting levers of pressure and coercion. And so far it has succeeded to expand glorification of suicide operation as a token of devotion among the insiders.

SFF: You have already stated that self-immolation as a kind of suicide operation has been innovated by the organization. Can you say exactly when the organization selected it as a working lever, and who was the first to suggest it and for what reason?

BS: Well, I have already explained that the suicide operation is not new but was innate in An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations organization from its very formation.

SFF: I mean in its novel form of self-immolation.

BS: Well, it was first conducted to be committed in 17 June operations. We have never witnessed it before.
SFF: To make it more clear, when it was first suggested as a solution and by whom?

BS: It returns to Massoud Rajavi’s last meeting in Camp Ahraf before the fall of Saddam. It was a well known meeting called ‘the meeting of flag’. Of course, the issue was not explicitly mentioned there but it was later discussed in a meeting of the Leadership Council that what should have to be done to defend if Saddam collapsed and Camp Ashraf came under unexpected threat from the outside. For the first time Massoud suggested self-burning as a defensive advantage to safeguard Ashraf. He frankly stated that to repel any threat intended to dismantle Camp Ashraf all had to sacrifice and set themselves on fire. Of course, at the time the organization was not suffering the deteriorating condition of being disarmed and it was still equipped with a variety of heavy and light weapons that could defend itself to some extent. But it seemed that Rajavi was anticipating a near future of invasion that could seriously challenge the organization before it could use its arms. So the best defensive measure was resolved by Rajavi to be suicide through self-immolation. We never saw Massoud again till the manifestation of his novel suggestion in the incidents of 17 June.

SFF: To remind you, I have to point out that the issue of self-immolation emerged for the first time in the letters of the members who wrote them to Massoud Rajavi following his ideological revolution as an indication of devotion to him and his revolution. I remember a letter in Jafarzadeh’s handwriting published by a website in which he had volunteered to commit self-immolation to show his loyalty. These letters date back to 1985 and I mean to say that the issue was first proposed at that time as the letters indicate. Furthermore, even when France was expelling some members to Gabon, Maryam Rajavi is quoted to have said Massoud Rajavi had stopped remonstrant self-immolations as a raised objection against the decision taken by France. Your reference to the meeting dates back to 2002, then, can you remember any earlier occasion when the issue came under notice?

BS: To correct, I was not in the organization at the time you are referring to. I joined in mid 1980s and I have seen none of the things you say in the sources published by the organization.

SFF: All of the instances I stated you can find in the publications of the organization if you have access to them.

BS: It seems that my information as a member of the organization fails to surpass that of yours. I would be grateful if you could give me the address to these sources.

August 6, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Human tragedy in prospect; Mojgan Parsai the first volunteer

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – Part 8

Sahar Family Foundation: In our last session we talked about the possibility of a human tragedy. You said that all volunteers had signed a written pledge for self-immolation. The question is to what degree the organization can exploit these signed pledges to stage a human tragedy?

Batool Soltani: This is an issue of high potentiality. In fact, these letters helped the organization have an effective evaluation to plot its future scenarios. They are substructures on which the organization will lay the groundwork for its political strategies. But regardless of these potential means and developing a true assessment of the devoted on whom it can relay, it shows the organization’s own fascination in such activities that are some true aspects of cultic relations. Admittedly, most cults behave according to pre-planned scenarios in their relations with the outside world. It is also the same with Mojahedin.

When a member like Sedigheh Mojaveri commits self-immolation, for sure her feat has been already discussed in detail in higher echelons of the organization. It fails to be an arbitrary decision, not even one percent, to step into the street and set oneself on fire; any instance of unbridled passion is absolutely rejected by the organization and fails to be accounted as an organizationally directed objective.

Frankly speaking, no member of the organization with whatever ranking, being in charge of any post or else, hardly takes a step uncontrolled and uncoordinated by the organization. In a hierarchical order within an organization with tight discipline and very limited internal democracy, the responsible ranks have to be aware of the slightest overt and covert things about the members under their authority and there is nothing kept secret about the members in respect to their status.

For example, I was in England for four years and my massul (the one in charge) was aware of the single moments of my stay there; it was the same with the members under my authority. Hardly can you find an organization with so strong sense of cohesion and tight internal discipline. Consequently, no decision of self-immolation remains concealed from the ranks in charge and nobody ever dares to disobey the organization to engage in any self-motivated act of suicide.

SFF: From what layer of the organization were specifically the first volunteers of self-immolation in Camp Ashraf? Can you, for instance, name the first volunteer?

BS: You know, anything in an organization emerges from the top layers and gradually, through a well orchestrated mechanism, is spread to lower layers. It is done so skillfully that after a while those in the top can hardly believe that what is so easily embraced and theorized among the lower ranks is a magnified reflex of what had been originated in the top.

SFF: Now, can you name the first volunteer for self-immolation in Camp Ashraf when it was resolved on the act?

BS: In the department I was, Mojgan Parsai was the first who broached the subject and she was also the first volunteer. Her first sentence to begin was ‘It is worthwhile to set on fire whatever we have in Camp Ashraf for Maryam’s freedom’. Of course, what she said was another interpretation of Massoud Rajavi’s message stating that we had to make use of all our facilities and potentialities wherever we were to set Maryam free. He would say any Mojahed breathing on this planet had to be ready to sincerely sacrifice and set on fire whatever he had for the sake of Maryam. Thus, it all began in the echelon of the Leadership Council and the enthusiast slid down to the lower layers. It is also the same with other issues. Consider, for instance, they want to elect a first secretary.

The candidate would be elected in the first layers of the Leadership Council but remained secret. Idiomatically they would say ‘let the string of anything loose and it will unwind to the lowest layers’. They meant that whatever they decided on would be indirectly conveyed to the lesser ranks down to the bottom where it again quickly and energetically bounces back to the top layers as something new. Now it was our time to galvanize them into action and arrange a formal meeting to elect the one we had already decided on. None of the members present at the meeting knew what was really going on and how they had been inculcated to vote for Mojgan Parsai or Sedigheh Hussaini for example. Anything would end happily. On the one hand the top layers had picked up their favorite one and on the other hand, it would be propagated that a candidate had been elected through a totally democratic process. Everyone thought that his/her has been respectfully accomplished. Now suppose that somebody from the top layers had decided to commit self-immolation.

The decision had to be discussed in detail in all three layers of the Leadership Council before being approved by the first secretary and the leadership. I mean to say again that nobody with whatever ranking and organizational status, even if a proxy for the leadership, could take a perverse and decisive action or decision for whatever personal and organizational objective. Only those familiar with the layers of the Leadership Council can understand what I mean.

Systematically, when one from the top volunteers for self-immolation, as I did, it denotes that the person has grabbed at the loosed string whether he accedes to it or not. When I myself unwillingly volunteered for the act, in fact, I was sizing the string Mojgan Parsai had let down to let it pass to lower levels. It was only a reaction to what the organization tried to instill into the members. When I saw how devoted Mojgan was when she announced her readiness to burn herself for the sake of Maryam, although I did not know how sincere she was in what she claimed, naturally it could impress me to be the second to volunteer. Of course the sincerity is not at all a matter of any significance but the enthusiast and incitement such an atmosphere created among others.

Now the question is how the incitement could provoke the human tragedy you mentioned. Through the same mechanism of the idea being passed down from the top to the down, the crystallized ideas in the lesser layers very easily generate actions and the created enthusiast erupt into actions that may lead to human tragedy. It is much expected among the lower layer than the top since the rank and file are more emotive and impulses from the top easily impress themselves on them. Of course, you may notice that the top layers never fail to show off their emotions but for sure they are rational and reasonable when they have to act.

That is why they are the first to volunteer but hardly the last to put the words into action; unlike them, the lesser layers are resolute not only to do what they volunteer themselves for but also enter a compete and try to outstrip each other. That is how it may end to a human tragedy in its worst form. When I see that a ranking member like Mojgan Parsai volunteers for self-immolation, what do you expect of me as a subordinate! To be sure, as I have been already notified, I will not be the one to set myself on fire when the time comes because I know they will never let me harm myself as one belonging to the higher echelon. However, the occurrence of a human tragedy inside Camp Ashraf depends on Massoud Rajavi’s will and a number of other factors well identified by him to trigger the disaster. And it is all because of the strategically decisive role Camp Ashraf plays in Mojahedin’s existence and survival. So important an issue it is for Mojahedin that it requires a long discourse.

To be continued

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

July 22, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Suicide operation, a lever to defend Camp Ashraf

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – Part seven

Sahar Family Foundation: If you will, Mrs. Soltani, let’s have a talk over claimed challenges that presses the organization to react by suicide operations. I mean, what are the threats that concern the organization to prescribe suicide operation to confront? Is there actually any objective worth of concern or claims are merely grounded on propagation or a falsely intensified atmosphere?

Batool Soltani: It can be argued from many angles; one, the actual and objective backgrounds that lead to the possible perpetration of operations and second, operations merely planned to keep members in a status of readiness and to isolate them from passivity. Members have to be always kept busy doing something while raising in them a high morale of obedience and submission. Members in Camp Ashraf are on alert of committing mass suicide on the grounds that there are many blind spots round the camp through which outsiders might easily infiltrate to either kidnap the members of the Leadership Council and use them as hostages or kill them. The possible reaction to these threats could be a mass suicide of the insiders.

SFF: Were there just conjectures or there were some truth in what they claimed?

BS: Both of them. In some cases there were well grounded reasons but sometimes they fabricated things. Once, I remember, they distributed cyanides among the members of the Leadership Council after they had collected them all. No clear reason was presented but soon we came to know the cause. One of the members who had left for the American-run camps had informed that the organization had built secret jails just where our base was situated. So, one night American forces entered the camp in an attempt to discover the secret place. Of course, the report was one of many dubious ones already reported to Americans. But the organization had smelled a threat, a warning to something that could hit unexpectedly and thus, it distributed the cyanides to react immediately if needed.

SFF: You mean any entrance to Camp Ashraf for whatever reason is looked on as a threat against which the sole solution is suicide?

BS: Exactly. That is what, for instance, they mean by referring to the human tragedy in the issue of their expulsion from the Camp Ashraf and Iraq. By human tragedy they mean a mass protest through a mass-immolation. They are so resolute that they will deliberately set the reluctant ones on fire on pretence of willing actions since the dead never speak. What Rajavi stresses on as human tragedy should have broader dimensions but the least they can do and will impose on others can be nothing but the working means of a mass suicide.

That is what they exclusively argued on in the level of the Leadership Council. Among the rank and file it was deeply instilled that defense of Ashraf was a matter of life and death and all members had to become human shield to defend it. The issue of human shield was discussed with the members one by one in 2006. The protest against general relocation could be shown either by individual self-immolation or mass suicide. The question was first put forward by Rajavi himself that how members would react were the Iraqis to transfer Camp Ashraf altogether. The presented solution was human shield as a defensive measure since all knew about the Iraqis’ felt hatred towards Mojahedin because of their collaboration with Saddam and their effective role as his private army. Mojahedin were present wherever Saddam needed them to suppress his dissidents.

Therefore, Mojahedin have no other way but to think of a working means to confront any posed threat against their bastion by the Iraqi new government’s resolutions. The Fall of Saddam has led them to a dire situation with no authoritative protector and they have to think of a defensive vehicle for themselves. They even devised an organizational hierarchy entitled the organizational pyramid to protect Camp Ashraf. However, the foremost priority was to protect the members of the Leadership Council since it is the pivotal issue for Rajavi, that is to say, protection of the members of the Leadership Council equals to protection of Camp Ashraf. Here again, as you see, anything revolves round a strategic axis contrived by Rajavi and whatever he conjures is somehow entwined with this organizationally devised Leadership Council.

SFF: Then, Rajavi believes that protection of Camp Ashraf is strategically possible through suicide operation and human shield. Will you explain to what degree such lever can actually work as a protecting means?

BS: to understand to what extent it is working, we have to refer to already occurred instances. Following Maryam Rajavi’s arrest the organization proved its seriousness and persistence in carrying out such operations. So far it has proved that it can persuade or coerce insiders, willingly or unwillingly, into committing whatever it deems necessary to achieve its ends and the insiders’ will has actually no effect in the accomplishment of the organization’s demands. The sole way to avoid being an accomplice in the organization’s plots is to take your courage to escape by a well drawn plan, as I did. Now with the withdrawal of the American forces, the sole hope of easy escape to the TIPF has actually vanished and hardly members find an easy way out. Even in the time of Saddam it was impossible and, if anybody insisted, cost members a lot to get themselves out of the organization; it was only through the notorious Abo-Ghorib prison and other places that someone could manage to detach. That is why I insist on saying that members have no other choice but to consent to whatever the organization demands them to do and under no condition they follow a will of their own.

SFF: Then, you believe that any attempt by Iraq to expel or relocate Mojahedin will lead to such activities (suicide operation).

BS: Certainly.

SFF: What factors can you exclusively refer to now talking over human shield and tragedy?

BS: You know, following the incident of 17 June, we received piles of letters by rank and file volunteering for suicide. The act was later hallmarked as an indicative of devotion and they began to closely examine to see who among the ranks had dodged devotion. I was among those who had not volunteered for suicide but they reproached me as a ranking member and I volunteered reluctantly; otherwise I would be suspected to be at odds with the organization. However, the organization insisted that none of these volunteers had to engage in self-instigated suicides since no individual had the right to spill a drop of his/her blood unless approved by the organization. Any form of suicide or self-immolation uncoordinated by the organization is considered to be a useless, unproductive act. So sensitive is the organization about these suicide acts that they say commission of any suicide legitimizes only after we organize them and issue orders. So it becomes clear that self-immolations in France were all organized as a political lever. To make sure, I had an argue with Mojgan Parsai (in Camp Ashraf). I told her as I had volunteered for suicide, I wanted to set myself on fire before the American’s base there. Of course, it was only to see what her reaction could be. She took me to her office and talked to me for two hours saying that it was a useless act there while Sedigheh (Mojaveri) and Neda Hassani’s acts of self-immolation were politically worthwhile in France. She said if I committed suicide in the camp nothing changed but the organization lost a member of the Leadership Council, not even a slight report of my suicide would be published in the local papers let alone being mentioned in an international scale. The act could be exploited to the maximum degree for political and propaganda purposes in France or England. That is why I emphasis that Mojahedin encounter no obstacle in creating a human tragedy as it has already displayed its potentiality following the arrest of Maryam Rajavi; the organization has many volunteers who have signed to commit suicide whenever and wherever commanded.

To be continued

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

July 18, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

The red-line discriminating between word and action in suicide operation

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – Part six
Sahar Family Foundation: Will you please specifically recount instances of what can be defined as classified information?

Batool Soltani: Well, what can be specifically referred to are those information that supply details on the locations of headquarters within Auver-sur-Oise and Camp Ashraf. That is to say, any geographical, security detail about these and other camps mostly concerning the compounds of the leadership. There is much more related information; the extent of security measures for the entrance and the control of inter-organizational affairs, the whereabouts of cadres situated inside the camps and their hierarchical relations, and information about those organizationally permitted to pass in or out of these places. Regular and irregular visits of these places by the leadership, the setting plan of the buildings and the sections in the camps and the people positioned in them, how the security systems work to control the cadres’ shifts and what are the defensive measures, human or mechanically controlled, to reduce or counter threats from the outside are all instances of classified information. Of other instances to name are the existing differences within the Auver-sur-Oise and Camp Ashraf, the security check-points to ensure safe passage in and out, internal offices that verify the validity of the passports and visas, the rankings in the charge of controlling and issuing ID cards for individuals to enter the camps or the cadres who leave on missions. Anybody entering Mojahedin’s enclave is regarded to have passed over the red-line of a highly secretive boundary that is totally concealed from the outside world.

SFF: We will talk on the issue further later on. But now let’s have a look on the issue that any suicide operation inevitably has its own consequences. The aggressive kind, for example, will willingly or unwillingly lead to the death of some innocents in the vicinity. For instance, when the organization plotted suicide operations to assassin the leaders of Friday-Prayer, many other innocent crowds were perished along with the main target. I want to know how does the organization justify such deeds and who are in charge of deciding to stop or carry out these operations. Better to say, where lays the drawn red-line that justifies such operations?

BS: Your question can be answered from many angles. First, we have to ascertain how the organization and Rajavi in particular draw the red-line between the word and theory for carrying out these operations. Second, we have to see to what extent the words are actually practical, and third, what is the position of the leadership concerning what should not have actually happened and how he has treated with the disobedient. They are all related to understand the question and its different aspects. First of all, the red-line and instances are drawn just by the leadership and all operational ranks have to submit to it. Nobody dispatched for an operation can defy Rajavi’s drawn red-line and any operation team knows well that accomplishment of mission eclipses any other priority. Now, it is important to distinguish between Rajavi’s red-line of word and action. The red-line in Rajavi’s word is taking heed of protecting the life and property of the public who have no role in the operations as well as public buildings and passages. Interestingly, no saboteur is permitted to desist from the plotted operation just because he/she is overstepping the red-line. The only person with the authority to halt the operations is Masoud Rajavi himself.

Now, the question is, and only Rajavi can give a proper answer, how it is possible exactly to stop crossing the red-line in the course of an operation that has to be unquestionably performed and which only Rajavi himself can order to be halted. The context and setting of some of these operations invariably requires sacrifice of innocent people in the vicinity. Once, for example, when a terror team was sent to assassin Asadollah Lajevardi in Tehran’s bazaar, the role of crowds in the bazaar can never be underestimated since they play the role of a deterrent factor both while targeting the victim and when escaping from the scene; there are always people in the scene who may in an automatic reaction interfere or hinder and the assassins see no other way but to shoot at them to open the way or one may come between the assassin and the target. Naturally, there are two options; either you have to abandon the operation and escape or accomplish the mission regardless of violating the red-line with whatever casualty.

The latter requires that you have to be serious in completely obliterating any obstacle on the way. And Rajavi himself knows all these truths that it is impossible to carry out an operation of assassination without harming other innocents. It is the same case with suicide operations with the difference that the agent knows he/she hardly returns alive which greatly helps to violate the red-lines. But in the former, a hope fosters in the assassin that he/she may escape the scene with the aid of people, a hope instilled into him/her by the organization itself. As a result, the assassin tries to tie his/her destiny to a little of overstepping the red-line since the organization had falsely ensured him/her that people would create a protecting shield for a member of the organization to escape safely. But it differs in a suicide operation; here the accomplishment of the operation is of the higher significance than the number of the casualties present at the scene. Besides, the suicide is no more alive to be counted responsible for the innocent killed. Thus, this kind of operation is excluded from our issue of discourse and remains the kind after which the team has to necessarily return to its base after the operation.

When Rajavi plotted assassination of people like Lajevardi or the army commander Sayad Shirazi, he knew well that killing was an inseparable part of a planned operation which could never be fulfilled unless through homicide. Then, it is absolutely absurd if he maneuvers and insists on vocalized principles of his drawn red-line since the nature of these operations necessitate killing and blood-shed. Consequently, the assassin is not the authority to decide to stop or continue, he/she is only executing a killing plan drawn by somebody else watching the operation from many hundred kilometers away. It is really in absolute contradiction to Rajavi’s stated red-line and out of the control of the operatives. At the end, we see that there is nobody to be held responsible for violation of the red-line that has caused many innocent deaths; in fact, it is one of those Rajavi’s adopted childish tactics.

Now let’s see what are Rajavi and the organization’s reaction against operation teams that may have inadvertently violated the red-lines in the course of the operation. Here, the operatives may have been killed, arrested or returned. But, in any case, they are not the ones to be held responsible but their commander in charge of the operation. Rajavi severely reprimands them for the killings that are considered a violation of the stated red-lines. Of course, he is well aware of the fact that he is the sole one to be held responsible for the crime, but that is how he deals with the fallout and condemns others calling them inefficient and else. But nothing more happens and nobody is punished and all ends in a room in an outburst of humiliating words and sever reprimand because all know that Rajavi himself had practically a better understanding of what might happen and which he had implicitly given his seal of approval to cross his own drawn red-lines. But somebody has to be held responsible for mere formality who, of course, fails to be the leadership. I have to add that such a performance of formality runs only when the organization is disclosed by undeniable facts that tie it to the incident which it must be held accountable for. However, in many other cases, the success of the operation never lets anything else take a back seat and overshadows anything that more often fails to be ever mentioned and is of marginal interest to the organization.
To be continued
Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, July 08, 2009
Translated by Mojahedin.ws

July 9, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Suicide operation, an ultimate solution to security dilemma

Sahar Family Foundation: Can you elaborate on classified information in the organization, as it may have different definition in terms of use?

Batool Soltani: It is the kind and degree of information that every member of the organization Suicide operation, an ultimate solution to security dilemma carries concerning himself, his responsibility and his relation with other cells. More specifically, there were other ranks who, because of their organizational responsibilities, knew the residence of the leadership and his/her visiting locations. Of course, this classified information vary in terms of sensitiveness and secrecy according to the responsibility of the members and their contact with higher rankings but the importance lies on the concentration of the information in the hands of the members who form the linking ring between others.

The operation teams who came to Iran for armed operation, for instance, carried some related information, or it was the same with members residing in other European countries out of the headquarters in Auver-sur-Oise. They knew details about the location of the camps, the members and their responsibilities and even information about the launched operations or those at hand. As a result, the organization emphatically required the teams about to embark on operations to swallow their cyanide capsules as soon as they felt a risk of arrest.

The emphasis got stronger especially after the 9/11 terrorist incident when the traffic in European countries were under heavy surveillance and there was a high possibility of arrest that could lead to extraction of information under investigations. We had strict order, especially the members of the Leadership Council who carried a high volume of information, to commit suicide if anyone came to be a suspect in confrontation with Interpol.

The rankings travelling between Iraq and the Europe or between Auver-sur-Oise and other countries had strict instruction for self-annihilation. It can be said that the most secure and safest measure of protecting information devised by the organization was suicide. The important point to consider here is the cheap value of man within the organization.

SFF: Will further explain the responsibilities of the members of the Leadership Council concerning the classified information?

BS: The information that the members of the Leadership Council carried were classified as secrete. It was because of their relation with the leadership which was systematically regarded very important. It meant that they had to take the ultimate precautionary measures to protect themselves not because of their own life but as they carried foremost organizational information which made them suicide vanguards. They had always a guard accompanying them who had the responsibility of finishing the job if he/she refrained to commit suicide or possibly thought of a mischief or escape. A member of Leadership Council had to have a ready scheme of suicide being it with cyanide, gun or any other way.

But the priority was always laid on the destroying of the carried documents before doing away with yourself. The means depended on the circumstance and how you could prepare them as easy as possible. There was a time when the organization possessed no gun and cyanide was the best choice, but the time came when it was vice-versa. I was one of those who always carried a gun when in Camp Ashraf or whenever I had a trip to Baghdad. We had strict orders to shot ourselves when sensing the minimal danger of being attacked or arrested. Once I was in England and although I was not yet a member of the Leadership Council, I had instruction of committing suicide since I had second hand but sensitive information like the location of headquarters where the Rajavis lived or moved and the security measures concerning them. It was the same with the information about the headquarters in Auver-sur-Oise and in possibly in other countries.

Of course, some information were declassified within the organization as they happened to lose their secrecy and importance, but they remained classified for the outsiders. In some occasions when the carried information were of a very high secrecy, the members carried a mixed means of suicide, that is to say, both gun and cyanide because in some cases the cyanide had failed to act. Later it was decided to carry two cyanide capsules to ensure that one at least would work.

That is how they emphasized on measures of protecting information and were sensitive about them. All this complicated, systematic deeds happened in an atmosphere as if they were living in a different planet. That is why far from any rationale and logic, to guarantee the protection of the information, the organization grabs at a most secure way, suicide and self-annihilation.

SFF: You said in some cases the cyanide had failed to act. Can you explain about them?

BS: As far as I can remember it record in the related report, it was the time when Arash Sametipour had been sent to Iran for operation. He broke his cyanide when he was on the verge of arrest but the capsule failed to work and he went into a coma only to revive after a while. It had critical aftermath for the organization. Unaware of the arrest of Marjan Malek, for example, the organization first announced her martyrdom in the course of her operation and even Rajavi himself appreciated her as a heroine but later, when it was revealed that she had failed suicide and was in custody inside Iran, anything changed overnight and she was declared to be an agent of the Islamic Republic. The failure of suicides was thus very crucial and cost the organization a lot; it was commitment to these suicides that decided the organizational identity and the status of the individuals in the organization.

Noteworthy, following the reported cases of failure, there established a section whose responsibility was to check over the vehicles of suicide to ensure its efficacy. There were two kinds of check up, routinely done or case related. The former was done in a frequent period of a few months while the latter was a test of an operative’s cyanides before his dispatch to the mission. Once in Camp Ashraf, before the presence of Americans and when they had no limitation, they exclusively provided two cyanides for each member of the Leadership Council. But then everything changed and there came a time when cyanides and guns were not as abundant as before; the cyanides were all collected from among those who once had to carry them.

Instead, they innovated a new way of controlling members with sensitive and secrete information and members of the Leadership Council in particular. Now there was a special division with the responsibility of constant monitoring and surveillance of the members with highly classified information; they had the responsibility of helping them through any available means to eliminate themselves in case of facing any risk of arrest or else; the means could be a gun, cyanide, petrol, ethanol or anything else.
Translated by Mojahedin.ws

July 5, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

No suicide operation unless commanded by the organization

Sahar Family Foundation: Will you explain when for the first time you came to know about the suicide operation in the organization and how did they justify it and give trainings?

Batool Soltani: The first time I was notified about the sacrosanct suicide operation was when I was under political-ideological trainings to be accepted within, to be exact, when I was a trainee member studying the history of the organization. In the course of the discourses it happened to talk about Reza Rezai, as the first martyr of the organization and the first reverent suicide. The organization highly termed it the sacrosanct suicide operation and tried to inspire us with it.

They explained that when Reza was ringed by police, he detonated a hand grenade killing himself along with a number of SAVAK agents. Then they began to give reasons for his daring act saying not only he eluded being arrested alive but also destroyed his arms, information and his body to frustrate the agents’ attempt to have access to them. He was presented as an organizational archetype for the members to follow, a hero whose adherents could never be hindered to accomplish organizational ends. In fact, by the story they intended to mark some points. First, the aspiring members had to bear in mind that a devoted Mojahed disappointed the enemy even in obtaining access to his body.

Second, it was a daring act that needed ultimate bravery one could ever achieve; in the course of trainings, recruits thought it was the last stage a combatant could make it through the stages of the struggle and thus, the trainings seemed much valuable and we tried to comprehend and learn them as fully as we could. In many occasion, for instance, Massoud Rajavi reiterated that Reza deprived the enemy of accessing his information and even his arms and body. Of course, his words were much influential to create a sacramental atmosphere to halo the act and Reza, in this particular phase of trainings, became the sole archetype that could well inspire the trainees with courage, and he did indeed.

SFF: what was specific in Rezai that they made an archetype out of him?

BS: As I pointed out, he was displayed a paragon in some manners especially in his confrontation with police and an example of one with many potentialities that could be followed as a model. Maybe they had anticipated that they could successfully meet organizational ends through these suicide operations and the forces had to be prepared psychologically to carry out the mission. Besides, any training requires a certain model and there was no better match in the organization than Rezai to exemplify for others. Another point about him was his mental potentiality as well as his physical. He was illustrated to be much active in his clashes but he was also mentally competent in analytical and theoretical issues. Perhaps they meant that a combatant had to attain a high versatility but easily sacrifice himself. That is to say, even the mental potentialities of a formidably intellect member hat to in no way interfere with the commitment to the suicide act. These were all aspects of the illustrated archetype that could practically influence the trainees.

SFF: In what level of background did they arrange for this discourse?

BS: Everyone in the organization has to necessarily undergo these instructions, even if some had already passed them. It made no difference; any recruit had to pass through these discourses which the suicide operation was an inseparable part. Even I, a ranking member of the leadership Council, was constantly exposed to these discourses. It was an issue of high priority on the agenda before the leadership when the organization reached a critical stalemate. In the process of dispatching operation teams across the Iranian borders to carry out operations inside Iran, the prerequisite was a proclaimed preparedness for committing suicide. They were thoroughly checked and approved by higher ranks before they were assigned for the mission. The responsible ranks tested them to make sure they would break and swallow their cyanide capsules or did other self-annihilation actions when sensing danger. The interesting point in all these was that a second fellow had to give a pledge that his comrade committed self-annihilation and promised that his comrade would certainly destroy himself in face of danger and in any possible way.

In general, it is a responsibility all have to assume in the organization. Before the invasion of the US against Iraq, for instance, all members took the responsibility of committing suicide by chewing their cyanide capsules if Camp Ashraf would be invaded by the US forces or any threat of arrest, security inspection or else would foreshadow the camp. We had also preplanned arrangements for committing suicide by Cyanide and spilling petrol or ethanol over bodies. We were told to kill or set ourselves on fire if the US forces ventured to enter the camp to start a house by house inspection. Even later and in course of the US’s deployment of forces in the region, we were routinely checked to make sure we were in the state of readiness. Even among the cadres of the Leadership Council they were making a firm stand on self-annihilation if any threat would be posed against the camp by any forces being them Iraqis, Americans, Iranians and Kurds. It was discussed in details how to perpetrate the deed when the right time came: the members had taken the responsibility of reciprocally setting each other on fire by the means of petrol, ethanol and other flammable substances.

In the Leadership Council we were frequently notified that anybody had to be prepared for being killed or suicide. It has always been a key point in varying phases of the organization. In the phase of venture operations, the operatives’ priority was to commit suicide by chewing the carried cyanides, a commitment that the members had to be again checked for its performance in the phase of the US invasion. It was exactly what happened in the case of the 17 June self-immolations; everything was already provided for the operations and the volunteers were only ready for the signal to begin.

SFF: How they assessed and discussed the suicide operations in the Leadership Council? In how many possible ways could they be committed and under what literature they could be justified?

BS: There was a certain book in which an article especially focused on the suicide operation and definitely on the issue of arbitrary suicides. It mainly argued that an act of suicide could be appraised worthwhile and valuable only if committed under some organizational instruction and command; otherwise it was worthless and liable to criticism and belittled by the organization. It was even worse if it was a suicide done in objection to the organization; the perished body was then nothing but a corpse on the hands of the organization.

Even the bodies of these opponent suicides were buried in a different graveyard outside far from Camp Ashraf. The suicides had to be justified according to organizational line of ideology and principles as stated earlier and the cadres of the Leadership Council were not exceptional but on the front-line with the priority of using guns and cyanides. Soon after guns and cyanides were collected and confiscated, petrol and ethanol were replaced as the alternate means. None of the self-burnings done in France were arbitrary but justified organizationally; otherwise they failed to be glorified as they did. In one case, inside Camp Ashraf, a member called Rasoul, blinded in one of military operations, set himself on fire in protest against one of the articles of the ideological revolution called ”article D” (it was about superiority of women over men in all levels of organizational relations and activities). His commission infuriated Rajavi who stated that his act done in opposition to such an issue was denigrated and did not qualify a devoted member to be buried in Ashraf graveyard where the martyrs had been buried. The news of his suicide was heavily censored and they belittled it as a contemptuous act in the organization.

SFF: When they began to collect cyanides?

BS: Once Marjan Akbari snitched the cyanide belonging to her responsible rank and killed herself. Her suicide was masqueraded and reported to be a heart attack but all cadres of the Leadership Council knew the truth about her death and from then on they collected all cyanides. In one occasion, the American forces got suspicious of existing cyanides in Camp Ashraf and began to search for them but they had all been already collected and hidden in a secure place. Of course, at the same time all cadres of the Leadership Council carried capsules.

SFF: Did not Americans know that the organization had cyanides?

BS: It seems that at first they did not, but later on they began to suspect and search for them. As a result, all cyanides were collected and delivered to Zohreh Akhyani and the members were told to seek for alternative working means of suicide. However, it was resolved that in case of any threat against Camp Ashraf, the cyanides had to be distributed among the cadres of the Leadership Council.

SFF: What was the substitute for the cyanides?

BS: Both petrol and ethanol. There were even some places where they distributed the flammable liquids for the purpose of suicide.

To be continued

Translated by Mojahedin.ws – July 1, 2009

July 1, 2009 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

Tension Grows Over Plans to Close Camp Ashraf

The Camp Is the Last Place Belonging to the MEK Iranian Opposition Group
Fifty miles from the Iranian border, a tense drama is quietly unfolding asthe Iraqi government grapples with the fate of several thousand Iranian opposition members who refuse to fade into history.

The opposition Mujahideen al-Khalq (MEK) has been closely watching the protests next door in Iran over reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But their interest isn’t in whether the Iranian leader gives in to calls for a recount. It’s their belief that the protests could somehow topple the entire system of Iran’s religious leadership.

The prospect of a change in Iran’s government is viewed by many to be as unlikely as the MEK’s hope that Iraq will change its mind about shutting down a camp that has been a major irritant in Iranian-Iraqi relations.

In recent weeks, the leadership of Camp Ashraf, the former main military base of the MEK, has accused Iraqi riot police of entering the camp north of Baghdad and threatening some of its 3,400 residents.

Western officials familiar with the case say Interior Ministry rapid deployment forces stopped outside the main gate in what appeared to be a show of force, without going into the camp.
They say, though, that the standoff could very easily turn violent, given the combination of Iraqi troops not known for their restraint and an extremely disciplined organization intent on creating an international incident.

In 2003, several MEK protesters in Paris set fire to themselves to protest the arrest of the organization’s leader.
The stakes are so high, say Western officials, because Camp Ashraf, which before the war had its own tanks and mortars, has been central to the wider organization.
“Camp Ashraf is the last place they have,”says one Western official.”You have to ask – what is the MEK without it?”

Funded and Armed Under Saddam Hussein
The sprawling camp, with its manicured gardens and tree-lined streets, is a holdover from Iraq’s bitter conflict with neighboring Iran, including eight years of war. Under Saddam Hussein, the MEK was funded and armed – launching extensive attacks on Iran from Iraqi soil.
With the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, the MEK was disarmed by US forces. The Iraqi government, which along with the United States considers the MEK a terrorist organization, says its members have no legal right to be here and has asked them to voluntary return to Iran or to third countries that might take them.

“Without legal status here, they don’t exist,”says one Western official.”It is an impossible situation.”
In a measure of the persistence of the MEK’s lobbying efforts targeting government officials, as well as the sensitivity of the issue, all of the officials who spoke about the subject asked to remain anonymous. The Iraqi committee in charge of the issue declined all requests for comment.

The MEK itself, which routinely issues statements accusing Iraqi authorities of trying to kill its members, did not respond to specific questions about plans to relocate the residents.
About 100 of the camp’s 3,400 residents are believed to have dual nationality. Another 1,000 have been residents of other countries. Despite the MEK’s listing as a terror group by the US and Iraq, the residents of Camp Ashraf are not individually considered terrorists.

Relocation Offers Are Hard to Come by
But in line with comments by the previous head of Iraq’s National Security Council describing MEK members here as”brainwashed”and potentially dangerous, persuading other countries to accept more than a few of them has been a very tough sell.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has given about 250 former camp residents refugee status, but so far only a handful of them have been accepted by any country for resettlement, officials say.

About 600 of the camp residents have left voluntarily since 2003. The Iraqi government has said it plans to move the remaining individuals to another region of Iraq, farther from the Iranian border, but has not yet told camp leaders where it intends to relocate them.
“The closer we get to that eventuality, the more tense it will become,”says one official, saying whether or not violence broke out would depend on the instructions residents received from the MEK leadership.

In interviews at Camp Ashraf in April, camp residents, under very tight control by the organization and with their contact with family outside restricted, said they would never leave the camp, the only home many of them have known for more than a decade.

One Former Resident’s Legal Limbo

Camp leaders provided reams of documents listing the residents under Geneva Conventions as protected persons during the fighting in 2003. But that does not address the current issue of the residents’ lack of legal status in a country that is no longer at war with Iran or under attack by the US.
Some of those who have made the difficult decision to leave Camp Ashraf have found themselves in limbo.
In a hotel in Baghdad’s Green Zone in May, an MEK member who had left was waiting for travel documents to be reunited with her daughter whom she had given up 17 years ago at the age of 2.
The woman, who said she did not want to give her real name for fear of Iranian retribution, asked us to call her Zahra. She had been at MEK camps in Iraq for 21 years and had sent her Baghdad-born daughter to be raised by other MEK members abroad after the organization decided to break up families, believing that such attachments hampered their members’ commitment to the cause.

“It is difficult for other people to understand. All of us in the camp are political people”dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian regime, she said.
Zahra was given refugee status in Sweden after being imprisoned in Shiraz as a teenage protester in the 1980s. She said she left Camp Ashraf because it had been difficult in the past year to get physical therapy or pain medication for an injury sustained during a military operation shortly after she arrived in Iraq.
“They [the camp leadership] said to me, ‘You can go if you want to,'”she said.

Officials privately said that after Zahra began lobbying on behalf of the MEK with Iraqi members of parliament opposed to the government’s decision to close the camp, she was moved across town to a much smaller hotel where several other MEK members are being held while they await documents to leave the country.
In a phone call from her new hotel room, she said she was prevented from leaving the hotel and had gone on a hunger strike. The German Embassy said it was following her case, and other officials said her health did not appear to be in danger.

Iraqi government guards posted in the lobby of the hotel prevented access to her and would not allow the hotel phone to be used to call her room, saying she needed permission from more senior Iraqi officials to talk to anyone.

“It’s part of the problem…. The Iraqi government has not decided how it wants to deal with individuals,”says one Western official, noting that resettlement to a third country often took months or years.”They have to give them an incentive to want to leave the camp.”

By JANE ARRAF- Baghdad

June 30, 2009 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Suicide operation; a solution or sidestepping it

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – Part two

Sahar Family Foundation: Our greetings Mrs. Soltani. We are ready to continue the issue of suicide operation if you will. I will pose the first question unless you have some preliminary remarks to add.

Batool Soltani: before we continue with your question, I deem it necessary to add explanations on the previous session’s discourse. First, what motivates an operator to commit suicide when he happens to come face to face with the security forces and the police? Does it mean that there is absolutely no other way? Is it not really possible for a militiaman to strengthen himself physically and psychologically to bear pressures of probable tortures, prison and investigations instead of committing suicide as the last solution? It might be the easiest way to protect some information but for sure it fails to be equal to the value of a man’s life. Another point is that it may be regarded an act of bravery in itself, but can it not be considered an act of the ultimate weakness and a sense of inferiority? These questions may seem illogical in an obsessive atmosphere where anything is routinely scrutinized from a security point of view that may threaten the existence of the organization. But it does not mean that in no condition there is a logical and rational solution to any issue. Although a conjecture, I think it can be confirmed if discussed in detail with the wise and elite.

But how the organization justifies the suicide operation as the first and the last solution? What are its good reasons for exchanging such an easiest and simple way for a man’s life? Within the organization they say the capacity of enduring interrogational torture varies from person to person. I think I have read things in the organization’s sources about the applied inconceivable measures to assess the members’ resistance and response to the tortures by exposing them to a diversity of physical pressures like flogging, depriving them of sleeping, suspending them handcuffed from the ceiling in a variety of conditions and the like. Then they would conclude that in spite of varying degrees of resistance, it could be measured but the exact degree would always remain a matter of obscurity. In fact, nobody could stand the tortures that could continue to no definite degree. Of course, they knew that not all members would be put under the same tortures; it depended on the ranks and the extent of the information they held. Thus, an arrested key element and cadre to whom the survival of the organization depended would break in some point under the tortures, so suicide would be much more guaranteed than making a risk. It is instilled into him that suffering and torture are inevitably awaiting him and nothing is known to what degree he can hold out the arbitrary tortures that warrant the agents’ access to the concealed information. This is the angle of the organization’s look at the issue that needs to be studied in depth in itself.

As I pointed out earlier, the organization’s standards are absolutely different. The organization unrelentingly persisted that the ultimate solution to any problem was to offer a sacrifice. Somebody had to be sacrificed for the cause of the organization, which has been regarded more precious than the life of a militiaman, through suicide, self-harming operations or other similar acts. In one instance, as I remember, Rajavi in justification of the failure of the Operation Eternal Light stated that he had known from the very beginning that it was a futile operation from a military viewpoint, but he did it as it was tied to the survival of the organization that required so many lives. So worthless are evaluated the lives of the members that he sends them to their death in swarms to prove that the organization and the Rajavis are still breathing.

In a message he stated that if anybody set himself on fire in Camp Ashraf, it would be a cost paid to minimize the limitations imposed on the camp by the US forces. I mean the suicide case by Yaser Askari who was said to have committed suicide because of the imposed pressures on Camp Ashraf. The act is no more a countermeasure to protect the organization against any threat of annihilation but rather a means to further certain organizational, and even personal, ambitious objectives. Here the intention is no more measuring a member’s resistance degree in case of undergoing torture, rather suicide turns to be an imposed means to serve the survival of the organization, a purpose he, the member, has been destined from the very beginning to sacrifice himself for. I mean to say that the organization’s innovated self-burnings like that of 17 June and that of Yaser Askari in Camp Ashraf have been the easiest chosen solutions to overcome the crises. Even beyond that, the act is sanctified and glorified as a model for others to follow fervently instead of criticizing its exploitation for vague and hollow purposes. And as an alternative, the organization looks for belligerently innovated means that devour more sacrifices; crushed, scorched, crumbled bodies with no identity.

To be continued
Translated by Mojahedin.ws

June 22, 2009 0 comments

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