prison

Eskan Prison of the MEK

Camp Ashraf was considered the physical container of Rajavi’s cult of personality, in Iraq. The enclosed place, which was several hectares in size, was actually a prison by itself because, despite the walls, barbed wire, guard towers and strict protection, the passage was strictly controlled; contact and communication with people outside the camp, even if they are members’ families, were completely cut off –the situation is still the same in Camp Ashraf 3, in Albania.

But all this does not mean that inside the camp there was no space as a prison; There were several different spaces for imprisonment and torture, the most famous of which was known as the Eskan Prison due to its complicated history.

Although only the ruins of Eskan Prison remain today, there are undeniable evidence and narratives of the lived experience of the former members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in the solitary cells of this prison. They will be discussed in this series of notes. First, a brief explanation about the place and its physical space is provided:

Eskan was actually a building in the southeast of Camp Ashraf that had been built in the early 1980s for the residence of married members of the MEK during the weekends. After a week of non-stop organizational work, the men and women of the Cult of Rajavi went to the accommodation units with their spouses and children on Thursday evening and enjoyed the family center until Saturday morning. A park and a school were built in the area too, out of nearly 4 decades of presence of the MEK in Iraq, they used the place in a moral way only for the few first years.
Since 1989 and after the fatal defeat of the MEK in Operation Forough Javidan and Masoud Rajavi’s order regarding the forced divorce of married members and the permanent celibacy of unmarried members, Eskan was practically out of use. Not long after, Masoud Rajavi ordered the departure of MEK children in 1990, and more than 800 children were separated from their parents and trafficked to Western countries. In this way, Camp Ashraf was cleared of the most insignificant family elements and Eskan lost its meaning.

With the beginning of the 90s and the beginning of the wave of kidnappings by the MEK operatives in Iran’s neighboring countries, Eskan became a reception place for the initial organizing of members who had been deceived by the MEK recruiters in Turkey, the UAE and Pakistan with the promise of work and immigration to Europe. There was also another wave of recruitment of teenagers who had been smuggled to Europe and America a few years ago and now were trafficked to Iraq again as child soldiers to join the so-called liberation army of the group.

Mohammadreza Mobin, a former member of the MEK, was present there in the early days when Eskan turned into a prison. His account is as follows:
“In 1996, this area was called reception of the liberation army. This area was divided into two separate parts, known as upper and lower reception. I was in lower reception. A few months later, the militias [child soldiers] were also deceived from the West. Masoud Rajavi’s son, Mohammad, was among them. But at night, they were taken to another part, which seemed to be the upper reception. The first six months of 2016 were among the most inflammatory days of reception. Almost a large number of us had come from Iran. We were from all ethnicities. Almost in July or August of the same year, the organization took all the militias to the army, and the reception process, for those who came after us, ended very soon, and this issue brought many contradictions to us, including the fact that the MEK leaders did not trust us, who had come from Iran. This was discrimination.

They gradually took us to the upper reception and the lower reception was emptied. In less than two or three weeks, the conflicts between us and the officials of the group escalated. All these contradictions led to the imprisonment of most of those who protested discrimination.

I persistently asked for an explanation about the existing discrimination, but they did not give any answer. So, I asked to leave the group or at least to have a phone call with my family. But no attention was paid. It was the beginning of October when at night, after three days of hunger strike and stay in the hospital, they put me in a Land Cruiser and transferred me to the lower reception area. Everything had changed there. They had built an inspection gate on the way with guardians who had covered their faces.”

Hamid Dehdar Hassani, also a former member of the MEK, writes about his bitter experience of being imprisoned in Eskan. He describes the place:

The former Eskan had been turned into a warehouse and prison. Previously, it was a set of appartments with mostly 4 rooms with a bathroom, a toilet and a room as a kitchen that they had built for couples in the organization, where they settled every Thursday to Friday evening until 1988. But from 1988 onwards, with the start of the internal ideological revolution issues and divorce issues, Eskan was closed and turned into warehouses or prisons. I was imprisoned in one of the rooms of these apartments where the other three rooms had been locked.

In next sections, we will discuss the stories of former members of the Cult of Rajavi from imprisonment and torture in Eskan.

October 22, 2023 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

I come from the land of pain and suffering – Part six

This number, however, reached 80 by the winter of 2003[1380]. These people were sold at different periods to the Iraqis in groups of three and four. The Red Cross visited Abu-Quraib Prison twice during my one-year stay there. Prior to each visit, the prison authorities would visibly and violently torture some of the prisoners in front of others in order to instill fear in everyone’s heart. They would separate those of us former MKO members and would threaten us so as to discourage us from speaking to the Red Cross officials. The Red Cross inspectors were surrounded by two groups at all-time preventing us from getting close to them. Following cooperation between the intelligence and security forces of MKO, Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraqi regime, an agreement was reached among them involving the exchange of 50 former MKO members with 650 Iraqi prisoners of war. [..]

In an event, towards the end of January 2002 [Dey 1380], Abu-Seyf visited Abu-Quraib Prison speaking to me and four other former MKO members. When I confronted him with his false promises and lies, he once more swear that we would be exchanged in the near future. I voiced my protest and said that, under no circumstances, I wish to go back to Iran. I said that I wanted to join my daughter in Denmark. He told me that at the time of exchange, I would be able to tell the Red Cross that I didn’t wish to be returned to Iran. At that time he said, the Red Cross would transfer you to the City of Al-Ramadi first and later sent you to Denmark. The long time prisoners at Abu-Quraib also confirmed that the Red Cross was present during the prisoners of war exchange between Iran and Iraq in 1998 and 1999. They said those who didn’t wish to go to Iran were placed under UN protection.

Mohammd Hussein Sobhani

After two years of being at virtually no contact, Iraqi regime and the Islamic Republic of Iran held meetings on political and security issues in January 2002 [Dey 1380] news of which received widespread coverage in both countries marked a turning point in relations between them. Towards the end of January 2002 [ Dey 1380] ,Iraqi TV announced that 650 prisoners of war were going to be exchanged with 50 Iranian prisoners the following week. They also announced that the Red Cross would be present at the exchange. Our hopes were raised considerably when we heard that the Red Cross was going to be present at the exchange. We, however, didn’t know that the 50 prisoners were former MKO members [dissidents].

On either 18 or 19 January 2002 [28 or 29 of Dey 1380], a voice on the prison loudspeakers asked the prisoners who had been kept in the so-called “protective custody” to gather in the yard. The warden read 50 names who were Mr. Rajavi’s prisoners kept in “protective custody”. My name was among them. The warden asked who wished to return to Iran and who did not? He separated those who wished to be returned to Iran from those who did not. Around 23 or 24 people said that they did not wish to go back to Iran. The warden threatened them telling the prisoners that they had to go back to Iran otherwise they would remain in Abu-Quraib forever. He then began to intimate us by shouting and beating us. A number of the prisoners changed their minds until the number of those not wishing to return to Iran was reduced to 12. A number of my friends, who were former MKO members, and I coordinated our efforts and asked to see the Red Cross and UN officials. The warden spoke to each one of us separately trying first through conciliatory and sympathetic approach, to convince us to go back to Iran. And when that failed, he threatened and ordered us to write a letter stating that we would wish to spend the rest of our lives in Abu-Quraib Prison. He asked me first to write the letter. I refused and told him that I neither wanted to go to Iran nor did I wish to remain in Abu-Quraib Prison in Iraq. I said that I wanted to speak to the UN and the Red Cross. The warden threatened me again telling me that I should write what he dictated to me. I still refused and wrote what I wanted to say. The other 12 people did the same thing, more or less. Finally through the coordinated efforts among MKO representative, Mehdi Abrishamchi and Abbas Davari [in charge of National Resistance Council’s labor committee] and Abu-Seyf, the decision was made to video tape all the prisoners, in which they were supped to express their desire to return to Iran. A number of people, fearing that their names might be taken out of the prisoner exchange list, agreed to be videotaped.

To be continued

June 1, 2022 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

I come from the land of pain and suffering – Part five

I was physically and psychologically tortured by Ebrahim Zakeri and others for at least seven to eight hours. I was subjected to the most terrifying and violent torture. A number of them began hitting me on the shin with their army boots. They would tie my hands behind my back, pick me up and slap me around. Sometimes, they would put their mouth next to my ears and would scream loudly. It was torturous and nerve-racking. They feared that I had somehow been able to telephone my family and BBC radio. Therefore they were trying to break me down and force me to sign the letter, so in case the news of my imprisonment were to be broadcast, they would be able to manufacture a document explaining their actions.

Prior to my treatment at the hands of these people, I had spent the night before wondering in the streets of Baghdad and had not slept for 48 hours. This fact intensified the awful effect of the torture. I was subsequently blindfolded and handcuffed again and transferred to another solitary confinement cell where I remained until Dec. 1999-Jan 2000 [Dey 1379].

Mohammd Hussein Sobhani

They sold me (blindfolded and handcuffed again) to Iraqi intelligence and security Organization (Mukhaberat) on 16 January 2000[ 26 Dey] of the same year (later I discovered that three other longtime members of the organization had separately received the same kind of treatment as I. I, however, would not reveal their identities for safety reasons, but I am prepared to give their names to amnesty International, UN High Commission on Human Rights and legal agencies). Other members of the organization and I spent 35 days in Iraqi torture chambers and at Intelligence and Security Organization’s (Mukhaberat) central jail. As long as I was at Rajavi’s jail, I was kept in solitary confinement which placed great deal of emotional and psychological pressure on me.

However, the overcrowded jails at Iraqi Intelligence and Security were unbearable. They put 12 prisoners in a cell three meters by three meters. The prisoners had to sleep on top of each other. Toilet and sink filled one third of the room. The walls of the cell were the color of blood. The half-dark cell was lit only by a dim moonlight. This was in stark contrast to Rajavi’s solitary confinement jail, where four years I had to sleep with the light on every night. And anytime I was awaken by onslaught of mosquitoes, suffocating heat or unbearable psychological pressure, I was not able to go back to sleep. The bright lamps would worsen the throbbing headache that I had to frequently endure.

After two or three weeks, Abu-Seyf came to visit me at Ashraf Base. I protested my imprisonment and demanded to be turned over to UN so I could join my daughter in Denmark. In the past, he, on many occasions because of my post in the HE, had seen me with Mr. Rajavi and Mrs. Maryam Qajar-Azdanlou. Abu-Seyf tried to console me. He tried to portray Iraq as an innocent party to all that had aspired by differentiating between MKO and Iraqi policies. He placed the blame for my years in Rajavi’s solitary confinement on MKO. He expressed his sorrow at my years of imprisonment and torture and my inability to see my daughter promising to transfer me to a new location where UN officials in Baghdad would visit me. He said that I would be able to ask the UN officials to transfer me to Denmark where I could join my daughter.

I along with another three long-time members of the organization were transferred to Abu-Quraib prison on 20 February 2001[1st Esfand 1379] date as received. To my amazement I discovered that 30 to 40 former members of the organization who had been sold to Iraqi government were housed at that prison.

To be continued

May 26, 2022 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Zahra Mirbagheri’s Prison Break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Zahra Mirbagheri, former member of the Mujahedin Khalq escaped the group’s headquarters in Iraq, Camp Ashraf, in 2013. She finally made it after three unsuccessful attempts. Although she was under an extensive control by her commanders and peers, she was determined to leave the MEK’s oppressive atmosphere. “Zahra! You must not get back to Rajavi’s hell!”, she told herself at the moment she started running away.

January 29th, 2013 was a landmark day in Zahra’s life. She was not only barred from the outside world by the barbed wire fences, but also, she was constantly surrounded by the MEK commanders and watched by one or two of her peers because she had previously tried to flee the group three times. “I was under severe mental and physical pressure because I resisted their lies, oppressions and brainwashing system,” she writes in her story. “I was banned from visiting my brother and sisters who were in the group too. A woman was supposed to watch me all the time and to report on what I was doing all day long.”

Zahra Mirbagheri showing the pendant that Rajavi gave to the women of the organization telling them that they were all connected to him and to no other man

Zahra was sick. Her ear was infected and she had pain in her neck and back. “After three failures in escaping and because of taking too much antibiotics I had become so weak,” she recounts. “I had a herniated cervical disk due to a blow to my neck but I was forbidden to have a doctor’s appointment.”

However, Zahra had made her decision. “I had promised myself to fight the authorities and to escape the Cult of Rajavi. I was determined to survive to reveal Rajavi’s inhumane and evil dogma,” she writes. On January 28th, the group held a meeting in which medical commander of the camp was supposed to justify the participants. Zahra was shocked to see there so many of her comrades who were not sick. The next day, when they went to the Iraqi hospital, she realized that those ones had been ordered to watch the sick members to prevent their likely escape.
The night before going to the medical center, Zahra prepared her military uniform. The next morning, she was dressed up. She was ordered to go to the eating place. Zohreh Qaemi (the then commander of Ashraf) came to the hall to speak once more. Zahra tried to pretend that every thing was normal — after her last unsuccessful attempt to escape, Zohreh Qaemi had conveyed the message of Maryam Rajavi to her, “We have decided that you will die!”.

Zahra and few of other sick members were taken to Iraqi hospital by the western side of Camp Ashraf. She was constantly watched by two female guards who were members of the MEK’s Elite Council. Families of the group’s members were calling on their loved ones who were isolated in the camp from other side of the camp fences. Zahra was ordered to pull her scarf on her face while crossing in front of the families.
“When we arrived in the hospital, I began to look around to find a way out,” she recalls. “I noticed some of the high-ranking commanders of the security unit of the MEK and I found out that I would have difficulties but again I promised my self not to give up.”

In the waiting room, Zahra found a kitchen, she looked for windows. All windows had been screened. The exit door was also closed and blocked with a big table. Zahra looked around to find a new escape route. “As I was looking around, my commander shouted at me, ‘what are you doing?’,” she recounts. “She ordered me to sit down next to her. I was not feeling well but I was really motivated to escape. So, I kept cool and sat down.”
Finally, she was examined by ENT specialist in the consulting room. The interpreter was also a member of the MEK. “The MEK had arranged everything to control members,” Zahra writes. “Nobody was allowed to stay alone with the doctors.” The specialist prescribed antibiotics for her ears so they had to go to the drugstore to take the medicines. In the drugstore, Zahra was still accompanied by her commander.

The next chance was the orthopedic specialist who was supposed to examine Zahra’s neck. Zahra recounts her escape adventure:

“Together with a few women, I was standing in front of the door of the doctor’s room. Ther was a long corridor. We were standing in the middle of it. I noticed another door behind myself. I did not know to where it opens. I looked at the commanders and security guards of the group who were walking through the corridor watching us. I recalled Massoud Rajavi’s words in his last speech, ‘It is better for a hundred of you to be killed than for one to flee’. My heart was pounding. I looked at those brainwashed women around me. ‘Do you have a doctor’s appointment too?’ I asked one of the. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she replied. I smiled and said, ‘No matter, just asked’. Just then, the woman told the others, ‘Let’s go!’.

“It was a landmark moment. I made my decision immediately after the women turned their back to me. I opened the door behind me and rushed though a hall that was for male patients. I turned left and opened another door to a hall that looked to be an eating place. The hall was empty. There was a widow at the end of it. It was covered by a flyscreen. I took out the cutter I had put under my clothes and cut the screen. Fortunately, the window had no glass. I got up to get out of the window and I was lucky that there was a staircase under the window at the foot of the wall. I stepped out and quickly rushed to my left. I reached a metal wall. I squeezed through a 20-centimeter gap in the wall. Again, I began to run. An Iraq soldier was praying before my eyes. He walked to me as soon as he saw me and took me to the commander’s office.

“When I entered the room, their walkie talkie was making too much noise about the escape of a female Mujahed. I could not contain my happiness. On my God! My dream came true. I could manage to escape.”

May 25, 2022 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Soltani’s prison break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Batul Soltani, former member of the Elite Council of the Mujahedin-e Khalq escaped Camp Ashraf in 2007. She was a long-time member of the group who had been forced by Massoud Rajavi to divorce her husband and to leave her children. She was so brainwashed in the Cult of Rajavi that she was not able to refuse the order of Maryam Rajavi to sleep with Massoud Rajavi. However, once she realized that her commanders were dishonest, she left the group. The story of her escape from Camp Ashraf is really dramatic.

Batul Soltani and her child

Following the so-called ideological revolution that coerced members to divorce their spouses, and after the smuggling of their children out of Iraq, Batul and other rank and file of the group, were kept busy doing difficult physical tasks around their military camp. “I became the commander of a unit of tanks in 1993,” Batul recounts. “I was so busy running eleven tank, each tank three forces. I had no time thinking of myself. I could sleep one or two hours a day.”

Batul Soltani at the MEk’s Camp Ashraf

Batul was gradually elevated in the cult’s hierarchy. She was charged with the security unit and then she was smuggled to Britain to learn using computers and ultimately, she was selected to become a member of Rajavi’s Elite Council. As a member of Rajavi’s close female forces she was coerced to attend Salvation Dance and then to Massoud Rajavi’s bed. Batul Soltani was the first female defector of the MEK who revealed Rajavi’s polygamy cult.
“In 2006, as a member of the Elite Council, I had become the topic of the meetings; I was under the focus of the superior rank,” Batul writes. “I was constantly asked why I looked depressed. Even Massoud Rajavi contacted me several times to understand what was wrong with me but I could not tell them about my anxieties. I had missed my children and my husband. Besides, I had a lot of unanswered questions about the group. I felt like losing my whole life for nothing.”

Batool Sultani, photographed in Paris in January 2020.
Photo: Matthew Cassell for The Intercept

What took place on that special day made her determined to leave the MEK. She had been ordered to fix Mozhgan Parsai’s computer network. She entered the network and she discovered a letter. “I ran into a report about myself that Mozhgan Parsai had prepared to send to Maryam Rajavi. All at once, my whole world came crashing down around me. She had written that the Elite Council was in trouble, that I was distracted by thinking about my kids and that I was morally corrupted. I was astonished to read those words.”

The very day, she packed her bag and made her decision to escape the group. Unaccompanied trafficking was prohibited in Camp Ashraf.

“Even if you wanted to go planting in the garden, you had to be accompanied by a peer as your responsible. They said that these rules were for guaranteeing the security of the group but I swear to God that it was because they did not trust anyone inside the organization.”

Thus, Batul found a way to pretend that she was not alone in her jeep: “I put the pack bag on the driver’s side seat,” she recounts her heroic escape. “I put a helmet on that and I tied a scarf around the helmet. When I reached the checkpoint, I told the guard that my comrade was asleep so I could cross the check point.”
It was late at night. The female guard knew that Batul Soltani was one of the commanders of the group so she did not scrutinize anymore. She drove toward the fences around the camp. “I left the car somewhere around the garrison and I escaped that prison”, she writes.

She cut the barbed wires crawled from under them. The guards in the watchtower did not notice her. She walked to the American camp that was settled by the side of Camp Ashraf for escapees from the Cult of Rajavi. And, she found herself free. She told the American authorities that she would not get back to the Mujahedin-e Khalq anymore.

May 23, 2022 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

Hamzeh Rahimi was tortured then disappeared in Rajavi’s prison

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

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

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

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

MEK commanders setting enmity between two friends

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

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

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

Using oil of food to soothe the wounds left by torture

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 21, 2022 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

The MEK former member: Rajavi is an Iranian Bin-Laden

At a very long ago, this mechanical engineer, born to poor peasants, was attracted to the movement against the Shah’s dictatorship by the speeches of its founders: Mehdi Bazargan,Hanifnezhad and Massoud Rajavi. He joined the Mojahedin organization in his home region in northern Iran. He soon joined the movement’s militia. He explains that,” I knew that the organization carried out violent actions, but I was proud of that since the targets were the monarchy and imperialist agents”. a member of the Majles Shoura (Consultative Council). He specialized in propaganda activities. After his national military service in 1981, he was given his first missions. Heading a group of five activists, he received his orders through coded messages broadcast by the movement’s radio. These operations involved breaking windows of officials’ homes, setting fire to their automobiles and burning portraits of Imam Khomeini. The young Mojahed won the respect of movement leaders, now headquartered in Paris and they asked him to come to their base in Iraq.

Mohamamd Nazari left for Karachi, Pakistan, where the Mojahedin had offices. From there, he went on to Baghdad a month later. He says:” I had changed a lot. I wasn’t myself anymore. My personality had been stolen from me. I could no longer think for myself. I was completely devoted to the organization and ready for terrorist actions in Iran. “ his first operations were against military targets in Iranian Kurdistan. During the period 1985-1986,the unit he commanded was in combat several times against the Iranian army. He also helped reconnoiter and map Iranian military positions, intelligence which the organization passed on to the Iraqi authorities. The former Mojahed recalls:” dressed in an Iranian Military jacket, I entered the country to scout the situation on the front. Sometimes, I captured Iranian soldiers and handed them over to the Iraqis”. In total his unit fought fifteen engagements against the Iranian Army and carried out dozens of reconnaissance operations in Iran.

In 1992, Mohammad Nazari began to realize the truth about the organization and refused to fight the Iraqi Kurds. He served 45 days in solitary confinement and his break with the organization was now complete. But, fearing for his life, he agreed to a self-criticism and rejoined the ranks. But he had one idea: plan his escape.
A little later, he asked for permission to travel to the United States, in order to visit the brother. His superiors refused to let him go. As a compromise, however they sent him to Germany, now free to travel, Mohammad Nazari went to Italy and asked for political asylum. Eleven months later, he returned to Iran, with the help of country’s embassy in Rome. Now,43, the former Mojahed says: ”I am not proud of my past. I fought for 19 years, but it was for nothing. If I have now agreed to describe my past, it is to unmask the Mojahedin Organization which stole the best years of my life and all dreams of my youth.” He adds:” Rajavi is not a Commander Massoud.

He is a Bin Laden. The afghan leader gave his life for his people. The Iranian,for his part, has not the slightest qualms about sending his men to their deaths. But he, himself, avoids touching a rifle. During all the years during which I worked side by side with him, I never knew where really lived.”

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

May 18, 2022 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Darvishi’s prison break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

Ardeshir Darvishi joined the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) when he was 32 years old. He crossed the Iranian border to reach the MEK’s headquarters in Iraqi territory, Camp Ashraf. He was a sympathizer of the group since his teen years but residing in the group’s base changed his mind about it.

“When I entered Camp Ashraf, I felt like arriving in my dream promised land but after a year and a half I got to know the MEK deeply; I found out that I was wrong,” he says.
After half and a year, he began questioning the group’s attitudes against the rank and file. He wanted to leave the group but he was not allowed to. Instead, he was labeled as being agent of the Iranian government by the group commanders.

Ardeshir Darvishi

In 1994, he was jailed, interrogated and tortured violently in the group’s prison in Camp Ashraf. About 300 of other MEK members were also in Eskan prison, accused of working for the Iranian Intelligence because they had just criticized the group’s ruling system.
Ardeshir’s punishment period was done after a few weeks but again he was not permitted to leave the cult-like system of the MEK. He had to stay in the group for 10 more years.
In 2004, he was serving the group as a loader driver when he decided to escape Camp Ashraf. The group had been disarmed by the US army a year earlier so he was sure that he would not be shot dead by his commanders if he was noticed while escaping.

One day, he drove the loader toward the embankment around Camp Ashraf and opened his way out. He went to camp TIPF that the US army had founded to settle defectors and escapees from Camp Ashraf.
“I surrendered to the Americans who were located near Ashraf,” Ardeshir says. “Zhila Deiheem [an MEK commander] came to the American camp to convince me to get back to Camp Ashraf. Another commander named Hedayat came to warn me that I would be executed if I returned to Iran but I did not care. I returned home by the aid of the Red Cross.”

Ardeshir Deihimi got back to his family in his home town in Lorestan, Iran. He rebuilt his life; found a job, married and had children. However, he still regrets the 13 years he lost in the MEK. Last year he filed a petition against the leaders of the MEK in an Iranian court. His petition was eventually submitted to the International Court of the Hague.

May 17, 2022 0 comments

The cult of Rajavi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 16, 2022 0 comments

Former members of the MEK

Goli’s Prison Break, an account of escaping Camp Ashraf

“We were lucky that we could manage to escape Camp Ashraf,” Mohammad Reza Goli writes. “If we had been arrested while escaping the camp, we would have been at risk of any kind of punishment by the group commanders.”

Goli, was a member of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) for 23 years. In the spring of 2011, after he lost 36 of his comrades in the operation against Iraqi forces, he decided to leave the group. (On April 6th, Massoud Rajavi ordered his unarmed forces to attack the Iraqi armed forces who were supposed to enter Camp Ashraf to build a station. Members of the Cult of Rajavi had been coerced to stand as a human shield against Iraqi military vehicles. The clashes left the MEK’s rank and file with 36 people dead and hundreds injured.)

Mohamamd Reza Goli

“After the April 6th clashes, I got determined to leave the Cult of Rajavi”, Goli writes in his memoirs on his escape from the cult. It was not easy to break through the tall, highly guarded fences of Camp Ashraf. Together with a comrade, he started planning the escape but, in the cult-like atmosphere of the group it was not easy to talk to each other about the simplest issues either.

“We had to secretly discuss our plan in the way to go to the eating place or while eating meals there,” he states. “This way, we planned how to escape and we divided the tasks.”
They needed a ladder, to climb the fences around Camp Ashraf but it was not enough. The fences included three rows of circled barbed wires of which the width was about 1.5 meters. Thus, they needed a tool to put on top of the fences to move through it.

“We made it from wood and we found a ladder. We put them near the fences,” Goli explains how they prepared the equipment they needed for their prison break.

They chose Thursday night for their flee because that was the only time in the week that members were a little free to do sports or have gatherings in the eating place. The were under less control. Other times of the week they had to do the tasks they are ordered to and they had to attend self-confession and self-criticism meetings.
“On Thursday night I went to the eating place but I could not eat dinner,” he says. “I was not stressed out or scared but I felt guilty. I felt like a traitor to my 23 years background of struggle. However, the atmosphere of the group was so poisonous and negative that I was not able to stay.”

It was about nine o’clock when Goli and his friend went out from the door behind their unit to take the ladder and move it to the wall of the unit. They succeeded to cross the wall and now it was time to go to the Southern fence of Camp Ashraf.

The Southern side of the camp was guarded by three people. That night, Goli himself was supposed to take the post at ten o’clock. They waited in ambush for the other guard to leave. “We crawled to the fences carrying our pack backs, the ladder and the wooden board,” he writes. “We climbed up the ladder and threw our back backs on the other side of the fence and then we jumped down the fence.”

Goli and his friend could manage to escape the bars of the Cult of Rajavi. They had to submit themselves to Iraqi forces who were in charge of guarding camp Ashraf. “I told the Iraqi soldier that we had escaped Ashraf.” Goli writes. “He called his commanders to inform them that two people had left the camp.”
“While Waiting for Iraqi officers we were watching our ex-comrades on the other side of the fences inside Camp Ashraf,” Goli continues. “The guard noticed the ladder on the fence. He rushed to call the commanders. Fifteen people of forces of our unit came to the scene. Commanders came in their Land Cruisers. They were frightened. They looked confused. They were looking all around.”

The funny part of the story is that Goli and his friend wave to them to let them know that they had left the group in order that they stop looking for them but they kept on searching. “The idiots were so freaked out that they could not stop searching. They thought that they would find other escapees among the bush.”
Leaving the Cult of Rajavi is unforgivable. “They had no arms,” Goli says. “If they had had arms, they would have shot us undoubtedly.”

Eventually, Goli got back to his family in his home town, north of Iran. Today, he writes his account of years of living under the modern slavery of the personality cult of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, in Persian.

May 14, 2022 0 comments

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