An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends
(aka; Mojahedin Khalq, MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult)
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... Mr. Dean’s speech stunned me. But then came Rudolph W. Giuliani saying virtually the same thing. At a conference in Paris last December, an emotional Mr. Giuliani told Ms. Rajavi, “These are the most important yearnings of the human soul that you support, and for your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just simply a disgrace.” I thought I was watching The Onion News Network. Did Mr. Giuliani know whom he was talking about? Evidently not. In fact, an unlikely chorus of the group’s backers — some of whom have received speaking fees, others of whom are inspired by their conviction that ...
ELIZABETH RUBIN, New York Times, August 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday
/an-iranian-cult-and-its-american-friends.html
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 14, 2011, on page SR5 of the New York edition with the headline: An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends, Elizabeth Rubin is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, where her article "The Cult of Rajavi" appeared in July 2003.
A FEW weeks ago I received an e-mail from an acquaintance with the subject line: Have you seen the video everyone is talking about?
I clicked play, and there was Howard Dean, on March 19 in Berlin, at his most impassioned, extolling the virtues of a woman named Maryam Rajavi and insisting that America should recognize her as the president of Iran.
Ms. Rajavi and her husband, Massoud, are the leaders of a militant Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedeen Khalq, or Warriors of God. The group’s forces have been based for the last 25 years in Iraq, where I visited them shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
Mr. Dean’s speech stunned me. But then came Rudolph W. Giuliani saying virtually the same thing. At a conference in Paris last December, an emotional Mr. Giuliani told Ms. Rajavi, “These are the most important yearnings of the human soul that you support, and for your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just simply a disgrace.” I thought I was watching The Onion News Network. Did Mr. Giuliani know whom he was talking about?
Evidently not. In fact, an unlikely chorus of the group’s backers — some of whom have received speaking fees, others of whom are inspired by their conviction that the Iranian government must fall at any cost — have gathered around Mujahedeen Khalq at conferences in capitals across the globe.
This group of luminaries includes two former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, Gens. Hugh H. Shelton and Peter Pace; Wesley K. Clark, the former NATO commander; Gen. James L. Jones, who was President Obama’s national security adviser; Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director; the former intelligence officials Dennis C. Blair and Michael V. Hayden; the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson; the former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former congressman who was co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission.
Indeed, the Rajavis and Mujahedeen Khalq are spending millions in an attempt to persuade the Obama administration, and in particular Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to take them off the national list of terrorist groups, where the group was listed in 1997. Delisting the group would enable it to lobby Congress for support in the same way that the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 allowed the Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi to do.
Mrs. Clinton should ignore their P.R. campaign. Mujahedeen Khalq is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us.
When I arrived at Camp Ashraf, the base of the group’s operations, in April 2003, I thought I’d entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Everywhere I saw women dressed exactly alike, in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth in white pickup trucks, staring ahead in a daze as if they were working at a factory in Maoist China. I met dozens of young women buried in the mouths of tanks, busily tinkering with the engines. One by one, the girls bounded up to me and my two minders to recite their transformations from human beings to acolytes of Ms. Rajavi. One said she had been suicidal in Iran until she found Ms. Rajavi on the Internet.
At Camp Ashraf, 40 miles north of Baghdad, near the Iranian border, 3,400 members of the militant group reside in total isolation on a 14-square-mile tract of harsh desert land. Access to the Internet, phones and information about the outside world is prohibited. Posters of Ms. Rajavi and her smiling green eyes abound. Meanwhile, she lives in luxury in France; her husband has remained in hiding since the United States occupied Iraq in 2003.
During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the group served as Mr. Hussein’s own private militia opposing the theocratic government in Tehran. For two decades, he gave the group money, weapons, jeeps and military bases along the border with Iran. In return, the Rajavis pledged their fealty.
In 1991, when Mr. Hussein crushed a Shiite uprising in the south and attempted to carry out a genocide against the Kurds in the north, the Rajavis and their army joined his forces in mowing down fleeing Kurds.
Ms. Rajavi told her disciples, “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.” Many followers escaped in disgust.
So the Rajavis then began preying on Iranian refugees and asylum seekers in Europe to fill their ranks. The Rajavis promise them salaries, marriage, family, freedom and a great cause — fighting the Iranian government. Then the unwitting youths arrive in Iraq.
What is most disturbing is how the group treats its members. After the Iran-Iraq war, Mr. Rajavi orchestrated an ill-planned offensive, deploying thousands of young men and women into Iran on a mass martyrdom operation. Instead of capturing Iran, as they believed they would, thousands of them were slaughtered, including parents, husbands and wives of those I met in Iraq in 2003.
After my visit, I met and spoke to men and women who had escaped from the group’s clutches. Many had to be deprogrammed. They recounted how people were locked up if they disagreed with the leadership or tried to escape; some were even killed.
Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden. From the time they are toddlers, boys and girls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp Ashraf you had to report your dreams and thoughts.
If a man was turned on by the scent of a woman or a whiff of perfume, he had to confess. Members had to attend weekly ideological cleansings in which they publicly confessed their sexual desires. Members were even forced to divorce and take a vow of lifelong celibacy to ensure that all their energy and love would be directed toward Maryam and Massoud.
Mr. Hamilton and Generals Jones and Clark have been paid speakers’ fees by front groups for Mujahedeen Khalq and have spoken in support of the group in public conferences. They claimed ignorance of how the group treated its members.
“I don’t know a lot about the group,” Mr. Hamilton told me over the phone last week. But in 1994, when he was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Hamilton received a report describing the group as a violent cult with a distinct ideology synthesizing Marxism and messianic Shiism.
At a February conference in Paris, Mr. Dean praised the group’s extraordinary “bill of rights.” And General Jones said to Ms. Rajavi: “It is time for those of us from the United States who have come to know and admire you and your colleagues and your goals to do what is required to recognize the legitimacy of your movement and your ideals.” When I asked General Jones last week if he knew that some considered the group a totalitarian cult, he replied, “This is the first time I’ve heard anything about this.”
He said he’d checked with military and F.B.I. officials. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t supporting a group that was doing nefarious things that I don’t know about,” he said. “Nobody brought it up, so I didn’t know what questions to ask.”
IN fact, a 2004 F.B.I. report on the group detailed a joint investigation by the American and German police, which revealed that the group’s cell in Cologne, Germany, had used money from a complex fraud scheme to buy military equipment. The group used children with multiple identities to claim multiple benefit checks from the German government. Evidence also showed that the group had obtained money in Los Angeles to purchase GPS units to increase the accuracy of planned mortar attacks on Tehran.
It is possible that such plots do not bother General Jones and other supporters of the group. But Iraq will no longer tolerate its presence. Its government wants the Mujahedeen Khalq out of the country by the end of the year. In April, Iraqi forces attacked Camp Ashraf. General Jones and other supporters of the group were outraged.
They are right that we should have compassion for those trapped inside the camp. A 2009 RAND Corporation study found that at least 70 percent of the group’s members there were being held against their will. If the group’s American cheerleaders cared for those at the camp half as much as they did for the Rajavis, they would be insisting on private Red Cross visits with each man and woman at Camp Ashraf.
American officials who support the group like to quote the saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” By this logic, the group’s opposition to the Tehran theocracy justifies American backing. But there is another saying to consider: “The means are the ends.”
By using the Mujahedeen Khalq to provoke Tehran, we will end up damaging our integrity and reputation, and weaken the legitimate democracy movement within Iran.
As a senior State Department official told me, “They are the best financed and organized, but they are so despised inside Iran that they have no traction.” Iranian democracy activists say the group, if it had had the chance, could have become the Khmer Rouge of Iran.
“They are considered traitors and killers of Iranian kids,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Mujahedeen Khalq’s status on the terrorist list is under review. “They are so unpopular that we think any gesture of support to them would disqualify and discredit us as being interested in democratic reform.”
If the group is taken off the terrorist list, it will be able to freely lobby the American government under the guise of an Iranian democracy movement.
Recent history has shown that the United States often ends up misguidedly supporting not only the wrong exile groups in the Middle East, but the least relevant ones. We cannot afford to be so naïve or misguided again.
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Also
http://www.iran-interlink.org/files/News/newyorktimes130703.htm
The Cult of Rajavi
Monday July 13, 2003
Elizabeth Rubin
The New York Times MAGAZINE
For more than 30 years, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People's Mujahedeen, has survived and operated on the margins of history and the slivers of land that Saddam Hussein and French governments have proffered it. During the 1970's, while it was still an underground Iranian political movement, you could encounter some of its members on the streets of New York, waving pictures of torture victims of the shah's regime. In the 80's and 90's, after its leaders fled Iran, you could see them raising money and petitioning on university campuses around the United States, pumping photographs in the air of women mangled and tortured by the Islamic regime in Tehran. By then, they were also showing off other photographs, photographs that were in some ways more attention-grabbing: Iranian women in military uniforms who brandished guns, drove tanks and were ready to overthrow the Iranian government. Led by a charismatic husband-and-wife duo, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, the Mujahedeen had transformed itself into the only army in the world with a commander corps composed mostly of women.
Until the United States invaded Iraq in March, the Mujahedeen survived for two decades under the patronage of Saddam Hussein. He gave the group money, weapons, jeeps and military bases along the Iran-Iraq border -- a convenient launching ground for its attacks against Iranian government figures. When U.S. forces toppled Saddam's regime, they were not sure how to handle the army of some 5,000 Mujahedeen fighters, many of them female and all of them fanatically loyal to the Rajavis. The U.S soldiers' confusion reflected confusion back home. The Mujahedeen has a sophisticated lobbying apparatus, and it has exploited the notion of female soldiers fighting the Islamic clerical rulers in Tehran to garner the support of dozens in Congress. But the group is also on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, placed there in 1997 as a goodwill gesture toward Iran's newly elected reform-minded president, Mohammad Khatami.
With the fall of Saddam With the fall of Saddam and with a wave of antigovernment demonstrations across Iran last month, the Mujahedeen suddenly found itself thrown into the middle of Washington's foreign-policy battles over what to do about Iran. And now its fate hangs precariously between extinction and resurrection. A number of Pentagon hawks and policy makers are advocating that the Mujahedeen be removed from the terrorist list and recycled for future use against Iran. But the French have also stepped into the Persian fray on the side of the Iranian government -- who consider the Rajavis and their army a mortal enemy. In the early-morning hours of June 17, some 1,300 French police officers descended upon the town of Auvers-sur-Oise, where the Mujahedeen established its political headquarters. After offering the Iranian exiles sanctuary on and off for two decades and providing police protection to Maryam Rajavi, the French mysteriously arrested Rajavi along with 160 of her followers, claiming that the group was planning to move its military base to France and launch terrorist attacks on Iranian targets in Europe. Immediately, zealous Mujahedeen members in Paris, London and Rome staged hunger strikes, demanding the release of Maryam, and several set themselves ablaze.
In Washington, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on South Asia, accused the French of doing the Iranian government's dirty work. Along with other members of Congress, Brownback wrote a letter of protest to President Jacques Chirac, while longtime Mujahedeen champions like Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, expressed their distress over Maryam's arrest. But few, if any, of these supporters have visited the Mujahedeen's desert encampments in Iraq and know how truly bizarre this revolutionary group is.
Recently, I went to visit Camp Ashraf, the main Mujahedeen base, which lies some 65 miles north of Baghdad in Diala province, near the Iranian border. Ashraf is 14 square miles of ungenerous desert surrounded by aprons of barbed wire, gun towers and guards in trough-like bunkers, shaded by camouflage netting and dehydrated palm trees, their trunks thickened by dust. As you pass the checkpoints and dragons'-teeth tire crunchers into the tidy military town, you feel you've entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around; about 50 percent of the soldiers are male. But everywhere I turned, I saw women dressed in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth along the avenues in white pickups or army-green trucks, staring ahead, slightly dazed, or walking purposefully, a slight march to their gaits as at a factory in Maoist China.
Pari Bahshai, a stocky Iranian woman in her mid-40's and the military commander of Ashraf, was my tour guide for the day. We drove through the grounds in her white Land Cruiser out to a dry, burning plain where dozens of young women were buried in the mouths of their tanks -- adjusting, winching, tinkering with the circuits and engines that keep their fighting machines alive. There were neat rows of Brazilian Cascavel tanks, Russian BMP armored vehicles and British Chieftains, most of them captured from Iran at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
Some of the women smiled shyly; others were expressionless as Bahshai -- who was tough but indulgent and whom they clearly loved -- made her introductions. ''When they first come here, it's hard for them to deal with these armored vehicles,'' she said. ''They don't believe in themselves. They think only men can do it. But as they see the others, they overcome their insecurity. I went through this process myself.'' Hossein Madani, a Mujahedeen political spokesman who was my minder for the day, said, ''These young women are all new from Iran or countries abroad.''
One by one, the youngest Mujahedeen sprang to life to recite their stories. A dark-haired beauty blurted out fast and robotically in Farsi, with a comrade translating into English: ''I came from Tehran six months ago. I'm 20 years old. I was in a very unstable psychological situation in the last days of my stay in Iran. I wanted to commit suicide. Why? Because we had no right to express dissent. There was no freedom. Even personal things young people wanted to do like go out to parties or wear makeup or just go out freely. Many of my friends were burning themselves to die or becoming addicted to drugs. On the Internet, I came across a saying of Maryam Rajavi, 'You're capable and you must,' and I felt after that, that I was also capable. I got my self-confidence. I always believed women were weak, but when I read Maryam Rajavi's words, I got the self-confidence to come here.''
I asked her a question to slow her down, but she simply pushed the pause button in her mind, released it when my question ended, and the tape rolled on. ''My two brothers were supporters of the Mujahedeen,'' she said, ''and were executed by the Khomeini regime.''
Several months ago, she e-mailed the Mujahedeen, who then facilitated her passage to Turkey, where she was met at the border, put on a train to Ankara and then Iraq. ''I was educated in courses of Mujahedeen history, Iranian history and the current political situation,'' she carried on. ''Now I'm in artillery class.'' She explained what it was like to be in Iraq during the U.S. bombing. ''I was scared, but I reminded myself that I came to struggle against fundamentalism, and the fact that I was a member of the Mujahedeen family gave me strength.'' And then she stopped, said thank you and went away.
There were three more just like her. ''When I was in Iran, I didn't think I could drive a tank and shoot a gun, but when I saw sister Maryam Rajavi, I got hope that I can do everything,'' said Shiva, a 21-year-old tank driver. ''Now that I know Maryam Rajavi, I want other people to know about her too, because the freedom of Iran depends on her.''
After the parade of testimonials, I was whisked onto a tank for a spin around the training ring. The women were giddy, affectionate and proud of their vehicles. They all told me how much self-confidence they had gained through Maryam. I had heard that the Mujahedeen must take a vow of ''eternal divorce,'' that the young ones can never marry or have children and that the older ones had to divorce their spouses sometime in the late 1980's. I asked Sima, a woman in her late 20's, whether she ever regretted making that celibacy commitment. ''When I feel that I'm getting closer to my goal,'' she shouted in English against the wind, ''it's a more beautiful feeling than anything else. It's love.'' And what was her goal? ''I have to teach the women in Iran to feel like I feel inside and rebuild what Khomeini destroyed. He is killing the soul of every person.'' I noticed that everyone, young and old, at Camp Ashraf referred in the same programmed way to the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini as if the charismatic icon of the Iranian revolution hadn't died 14 years ago. Sima said that whenever she lapsed into the ''normal girl dreams'' of marriage and children, she looked around her and said she felt proud. ''In the difficult situations, I see happiness in the faces of my sisters.''
Nadereh, an Iranian woman who had grown up in Toronto, told me she had broken off her engagement to come to Iraq. ''I was living the best life in Toronto,'' she said. ''I was studying physiotherapy and body mechanics. I had friends and family. But I was lacking something.'' Then one day in 1998 she lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, and heard on Iranian TV that Assadollah Lajevardi, known as the butcher of Evin, the political prison in Tehran where thousands of Mujahedeen were tortured and executed, had been assassinated. The Mujahedeen claimed to have carried out the celebrated operation. ''I couldn't stand it anymore. I thought, What are you doing for your people?'' Now she drives a Katyusha rocket truck.
After we stopped and dismounted, I noticed my minder, Madani, asking the girls what words we had exchanged out there in the wind. And when he came back, Bahshai picked up her feminist cant about the ''crimes of the misogynist regime'' in Tehran and how Maryam paved the way for women to ''qualify for a hegemonic role'' in the army's general staff. As she would say later, ''Women under Khomeini commit suicide; women here become responsible.''
Though Maryam Rajavi spends most of her time in France or lobbying in the West, her smiling green eyes stalk Camp Ashraf almost as ubiquitously as the image of Saddam in Iraq or Khomeini in Iran. Her photographs in flowery blouses grace bedsides, dining tables, lecture halls and even tanks. Back in the 1960's, the founders of the Mujahedeen were students who melded revolutionary Islam with Marxism, and they were among the few to battle the shah with weapons. Like other radical students in the 60's, they rejected bourgeois values, spurned individualism and found respite in the militarized life of a cause. They were also vehemently against U.S. involvement in Iran and killed several Americans working in Tehran. Most of the student leaders -- except Massoud Rajavi and a few others who were in prison -- were executed in the 1970's.
After the shah was overthrown in 1979, Rajavi, with his charismatic style, gathered thousands of followers. He initially supported Khomeini, but quickly fell out with him and his ring of clerics. And in 1981, he plotted to bring down the Islamic regime. Rajavi dispatched his people into the streets of Tehran, and many were summarily executed. The Mujahedeen detonated a powerful bomb that killed more than 70 officials in the Iranian theocracy. (Today's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, lost the use of his right arm in one such explosion that year.) In retaliation, thousands of Mujahedeen members were arrested and then executed or tortured inside Evin Prison -- including many of today's Mujahedeen commanders in Iraq.
Rajavi fled to Paris in disguise. There, he established the National Council of Resistance in Iran, the political umbrella of the Mujahedeen. In 1986, the French began forging ties with Khomeini and kicked out Rajavi and his squads of assassins, who ran into the arms of Saddam Hussein. Hussein had been welcoming the Mujahedeen for several years. (Many Mujahedeen political supporters did stay on in France as political refugees.) Rajavi, in return, betrayed his own countrymen, identifying Iranian military targets for Iraq to bomb, a move most Iranians will never forgive. Then, right after the Iran-Iraq cease-fire in 1988, as if orchestrating the tragic turning point in his own Rajavi Opera, he launched thousands of his warriors on ''Operation Eternal Light'' across the border to capture Iranian territory. Two thousand Mujahedeen fighters -- many of them the parents, husbands and wives of those who are now in Iraq -- were killed by the Revolutionary Guard.
The coup de grace that metamorphosed the party into something more like a husband-and-wife-led cult was Massoud's spectacular theft of his colleague's wife, Maryam. Massoud fell in love with her and invented an entire political program to elevate her into a revolutionary queen and to justify her divorce from her husband. Women should be equal to men, Massoud claimed, and Maryam should be an equal leader by his side. But working together without being married would be a violation of Islamic law. So he maneuvered her divorce and called it a ''cultural revolution.''
As Ervand Abrahamian, a historian and author of ''The Iranian Mujahedeen,'' told me: ''Rajavi said he was emulating the prophet'' -- Muhammad -- ''who had married his adopted son's wife to show he could overcome conventional morality. It smacked of blasphemy.''
Rajavi liked having women around him and overhauled the command structure to replace the men with women -- this time calling it a ''constitutional revolution.'' It was also politically astute and added alluring spice for their public-relations campaign in the West.
"Rajavi, Rajavi, Iran, Iran, Maryam, Maryam, Iran, Iran,'' shouted a dozen young women commandos, trotting with their Kalashnikovs on a scrubby field, camouflage leaves and twigs bouncing on their helmets, their faces blurred by green paint. ''Run, run, fire, fire.'' They rolled, crouched, crept, fired and regrouped around their commander. One stepped forward: ''We weren't coordinated.'' Another shouted, ''The distance between us was too much.'' Another shouted, ''Our speed wasn't adequate.'' They were given a rest and then, spotting me, skipped up on cue, sweating and out of breath. Nineteen-year-old Sahar began: ''My mother was pregnant with me when she was arrested, and I was born in Evin Prison in 1983. When I was 1 year old, my father was executed for supporting the Mujahedeen. Now I drive a Cascavel. My mother is at another base. It's one of the reasons I decided to join the army.''
As the leaders like to boast, the Mujahedeen is a family affair. (''We have three generations of martyrs: grandmothers, mothers, daughters.'') Most of the girls I was meeting had grown up in Mujahedeen schools in Ashraf, where they lived separated from their parents. Family visits were allowed on Thursday nights and Fridays. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, many of these girls were transported to Jordan and then smuggled to various countries -- Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, England, the United States -- where they were raised by guardians who were usually Mujahedeen supporters. When they were 18 or 19, many of them decided to come back to Iraq and fill the ranks of the youngest Mujahedeen generation. Though ''decided'' is probably not the right word, since from the day they were born, these girls and boys were not taught to think for themselves but to blindly follow their leaders. ''Every morning and night, the kids, beginning as young as 1 and 2, had to stand before a poster of Massoud and Maryam, salute them and shout praises to them,'' Nadereh Afshari, a former Mujahedeen deep-believer, told me. Afshari, who was posted in Germany and was responsible for receiving Mujahedeen children during the gulf war, said that when the German government tried to absorb Mujahedeen children into their education system, the Mujahedeen refused. Many of the children were sent to Mujahedeen schools, particularly in France. The Rajavis, Afshari went on to say, ''saw these kids as the next generation's soldiers. They wanted to brainwash them and control them.'' Which may explain the pattern to their stories: a journey to self-empowerment and the enlightenment of self-sacrifice inspired by the light and wisdom of Maryam and Massoud.
As we cruised around the grounds, Hossein Madani said: ''Did you know that they built all this from scratch? That's why the combatants love their base so much.'' And it was true; the Mujahedeen had managed to cultivate out of the desert their own little paradise with vegetable gardens, rows of Eucalyptus and poplar trees, sports fields and Thursday night movies. When I asked about the fact that the land -- along with all clothing, ammunition, gas and the like -- had been donated by Saddam Hussein and that the Mujahedeen was, in effect, fighting one dictatorship under the wings of another, both Madani and Bahshai insisted that the Mujahedeen's precondition for setting up bases in Iraq was independence from Iraq's affairs. ''All we've used is the soil,'' Bahshai insisted. Either she was an adept liar or in deep denial, since everyone I spoke to -- Iraqi intelligence officers, Kurdish commanders and human rights groups -- said that in 1991 Hussein used the Mujahedeen and its tanks as advance forces to crush the Kurdish uprisings in the north and the Shia uprisings in the south. And former Mujahedeen members remember Maryam Rajavi's infamous command at the time: ''Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.''
Though for years the Mujahedeen preached a Marxist-Islamic ideology, it has modernized with the times. Today, one of the standard lines of the Mujahedeen's National Council of Resistance to politicians in Europe and America is that it is advocating a secular, democratic government in Iran, and that when it overthrows the regime, it will set up a six-month interim government with Maryam as president and then hold free elections. But despite its rhetoric, the Mujahedeen operates like any other dictatorship. Mujahedeen members have no access to newspapers or radio or television, other than what is fed them. As the historian Abrahamian told me, ''No one can criticize Rajavi.'' And everyone must go through routine self-criticism sessions. ''It's all done on tape, so they have records of what you say. If there's sign of resistance, you're considered not revolutionary enough, and you need more ideological training. Either people break away or succumb.''
Salahaddin Mukhtadi, an Iranian historian in exile who still maintains communications with the Mujahedeen because it is the strongest armed opposition to the Iranian regime, told me that Mujahedeen members ''are locked up if they disagree with anything. And sometimes killed.''
Afshari, who fled the group 10 years ago, told me how friendship was forbidden. No two people could sit alone and talk together, especially about their former lives. Informants were planted everywhere. It was Maryam's idea to kill emotional relationships. ''She called it 'drying the base,''' Afshari said. ''They kept telling us every one of your emotions should be channeled toward Massoud, and Massoud equals leadership, and leadership equals Iran.'' The segregation of the sexes began almost from toddlerhood. ''Girls were not allowed to speak to boys. If they were caught mingling, they were severely punished.''
Though Maryam and Massoud finagled it so they could be together, they forced everyone else into celibacy. ''They told us, 'We are at war, and soldiers cannot have wives and husbands,''' Afshari said. ''You had to report every single day and confess your thoughts and dreams. They made men say they got erections when they smelled the perfume of a woman.'' Men and women had to participate in ''weekly ideological cleansings,'' in which they would publicly confess their sexual desires. It was not only a form of control but also a means to delete all remnants of individual thought.
One of the most disturbing encounters I had in Ashraf was with Mahnaz Bazazi, a commander who had been with the Mujahedeen for 25 years. I met her in the Ashraf hospital. Bazazi was probably on drugs, but that didn't explain the natural intoxication she was radiating, despite -- or perhaps because -- she had just had her legs amputated after an American missile slammed into the warehouse she was guarding. The doctor told me he never heard her complain. ''Even in this way, she's confronting the Mullahs,'' he said. Bazazi interrupted him. ''This is not me personally,'' she said in a soft high voice. ''These are the ideas of the Mujahedeen. It's true I lost my legs, but my struggle will continue because I have a wish -- the freedom of my country.'' At the foot of her bed, surrounded by candles, stood a large framed photograph of Maryam in a white dress and blue flowered head scarf.
In the chaotic days after the fall of Baghdad, several Mujahedeen members managed to flee the military camps and were in Kurdish custody in northern Iraq. Kurdish officials told me they weren't sure what to do with them. One was Mohammad, a gaunt 19-year-old Iranian from Tehran with sad chestnut eyes. He hadn't heard of the Mujahedeen until one day last year when he was in Istanbul desperately looking for work. A Mujahedeen recruiter spotted him and a friend sleeping on the streets, so hungry they couldn't think anymore. The recruiter gave them a bed and food for the night, and the next day showed them videos of the Mujahedeen struggle. He enticed them to join with an offer to earn money in Iraq while simultaneously fighting the cruel Iranian regime. What's more, he said, you can marry Mujahedeen girls and start your own family. The Mujahedeen seemed like salvation. Mohammad was told to inform his family that he was going to work in Germany and given an Iraqi passport.
The first month at Ashraf, he said, wasn't so bad. Then came the indoctrination in the reception department and the weird self-criticism sessions. He quickly realized there would be no wives, no pay, no communication with his parents, no friendships, no freedom. The place was a nightmare, and he wanted out. But there was no leaving. When he refused to pledge the oath to struggle forever, he was subjected to relentless psychological pressure. One night, he couldn't take it anymore. He swallowed 80 diazepam pills. His friend, he said, slit his wrists. The friend died, but to Mohammad's chagrin, he woke up in a solitary room. After days of intense prodding to embrace the Mujahedeen way, he finally relented to the oath. He trundled along numbly until the Americans invaded Iraq, when he and another friend managed to slip out into the desert. They were helped out by Arabs, and then turned themselves over to the Kurds, hoping for mercy. Mohammad fell ill, and the next thing he knew he was in prison. ''The Mujahedeen has a good appearance to the outside world, but anyone who has lived among them knows how rotten and dirty they are,'' he said.
Another Iranian whom I met at the Kurdish prison told me that he had been a zealous Mujahedeen supporter for years in Iran, and when he finally made it to the Iraqi camps, he was horrified to discover that his dream was a totalitarian mini-state.
Before I left Camp Ashraf, Massoud Farschi, one of the Mujahedeen spokesmen who was educated in the United States, told me that he thought the Mujahedeen was in the best position it had ever been in. ''We've said all along that the real threat in the world is fundamentalism, and now the world has finally seen that.'' The Mujahedeen, he said, is the barrier to that fundamentalism. Nevertheless, two days later, in early May, Gen. Ray Odierno of the Fourth Infantry Division was dispatched to the camp to negotiate the Mujahedeen's surrender. American tanks were posted outside Ashraf's gates, and two B-52's were circling the skies above. After a day of discussion, the Mujahedeen commanders reached a capitulation agreement in which they would consolidate their weapons and personnel into two separate camps. Lt. Col. John Miller, also with the Fourth, attended a ceremony in which the men and women bid farewell to their tanks. ''We saw folks kissing their vehicles, hugging them,'' he said. One 50-year-old man broke down in front of them, wailing. The women, he said, were much more controlled. Not so the women in Europe, who until recently were crying on the streets for the release of their beloved Maryam. They got their wish; a court ordered her released on bail. As for Massoud Rajavi, he has not uttered a peep. In fact, he seems to have disappeared. Some Iraqis claim to have seen him a few days before Baghdad fell boarding a helicopter south of the capital.
After the negotiations with the Mujahedeen, it was reported that Odierno said he thought that the group's commitment to democracy in Iran meant its status as a terrorist organization should be reviewed. There are also Senate staff members, Pentagon officials and even some people in the State Department who have said that if all the Mujahedeen is doing is fighting the ''evil regime'' in Iran, it quite likely that it will be removed from the State Department's terrorist list. ''There is a move afoot among Pentagon hard-liners,'' one administration official said, ''to use them as an opposition in the future.'' Recently Brownback submitted an Iran Democracy Act modeled on the Iraqi Liberation Act, which would set aside $50 million to help opposition groups overthrow the regime. The Mujahedeen, their U.S. supporters say, has provided the United States with key intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. One Congressional staff member working close to the issue said that there was a national security directive circulating ''that includes a proposal for limited surgical strikes against the Iranian regime's nuclear facilities. We would be remiss if we did not use the Mujahedeen to identify exactly what the Iranians have and in the longer term, to facilitate regime change.''
Meanwhile, inside Iran, the street protesters risking their lives and disappearing inside the regime's prisons consider the Mujahedeen a plague -- as toxic, if not more so, than the ruling clerics. After all, the Rajavis sold out their fellow Iranians to Saddam Hussein, trading intelligence about their home country for a place to house their Marxist-Islamist Rajavi sect. While Mujahedeen press releases were pouring out last month, taking undue credit for the nightly demonstrations, many antigovernment Iranians were rejoicing over the arrest of Maryam Rajavi and wondering where Massoud was hiding and why he, too, hadn't been apprehended. This past winter in Iran, when such a popular outburst among students and others was still just a dream, if you mentioned the Mujahedeen, those who knew and remembered the group laughed at the notion of it spearheading a democracy movement. Instead, they said, the Rajavis, given the chance, would have been the Pol Pot of Iran. The Pentagon has seen the fatal flaw of hitching itself to volatile groups like the Islamists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and, more recently, the Iraqi exile groups who had no popular base at home. It seems dangerously myopic that the U.S. is even considering resurrecting the Rajavis and their army of Stepford wives.
Elizabeth Rubin is a frequent contributor to the magazine. Her last article was about political reformers in Iran.
. ------------ Also Iraq to sue states supporting Mojahedin Khalq Terrorist group (aka; MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) . ... "Iraq will sue those governments that support the MKO in order to harm Baghdad," Maliki said at a Saturday press conference, Al-Alam news network reported. "The Western states put the MKO on the list of terrorist groups for its crimes against Iraqi people, but they support it now," he noted. Maliki was referring to a recent decision by a Spanish court to summon the Iraqi premier regarding the incidents in Camp Ashraf -- where the MKO terrorists are currently located ...
Press TV, Baghdad, July 31, 2011 Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has announced that his country will sue the governments supporting the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group. Iraqi lawmakers slam US intervention Iraqis continue to protest MKO camp ------- Also New U.S. approach to Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO, MEK) in Camp Ashraf overlooks the victims’ human rights . ... The problem is not the name of Camp Ashraf or the name MEK. The Rajavi’s cannot simply re-name, re-brand or even relocate their group for political expediency and expect the ‘members’ to continue as their slaves. To solve this problem (before the question of whether they want to work for or against anyone) the residents must be given access to the outside world, to their families, to media, communications, get paid for their work and have access to the post office, cinema, marriage registry, birth registry, police station, legal aid, courts and legal bodies of the country they are living in etc. Nine years after the fall of Saddam ... Massoud Khodabandeh, MESConsultants, July 05 2011 Attitudes are slowly crystallising and shifting over what should be done about the MEK, with the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey introducing a new and positive approach in U.S. dealings with the group in Iraq. But the July 4 Miami Herald article ‘Iranian dissidents in Iraq want refuge in 3rd country’ , also highlights the danger that various elements are still trying to derive their own benefits from the MEK even though the demise of Camp Ashraf has become inevitable. Of course you would need to ask those involved what they each hope to get out of such a defunct group. Ambassador James Jeffrey, addressing only MEK leaders, has urged them to “‘dissolve’ their paramilitary organization and become refugees someplace else in Iraq”. In its turn the MEK itself has already threatened to massacre its own members if any external body interferes in the camp. Jeffrey added that the group "really believe that the U.N. and the United States will protect them forever." Well, they have good reason to believe that to be so. Trita Parsi’s timely article Washington's Favorite Terrorists exposed U.S. hypocrisy in dealing with the MEK in Washington. But we may very well see a similar level of support continuing in Iraq. The obvious way this would manifest would be for the MEK to be taken (en masse) inside a U.S. military base and held there until further notice. This would protect the group from Iraqi attempts to expel them from the country, and also obviate the need for the U.N. to enter Camp Ashraf and rescue the individual residents from their enforced imprisonment by the MEK leadership. The wholesale transfer of the residents of Camp Ashraf would truly be a human rights disaster. The sooner it is acknowledged that Rajavi is nobody’s representative but his own, the sooner the victims of the MEK will be helped. From the hardliners in Iran who want to keep their dangerous foreign backed enemy, to the neoconservatives in the U.S. who want to keep the hatred between Iran and the west (as the neocon version of Holocaust denial, the fact that the MEK has killed so many Iranians is what feeds this hatred), to Iraqi internal factions which want to use the MEK for attacking other factions, to Europeans who still believe the MEK are a useful bargaining chip with Iran or can be used to influence the internal affairs of Iraq. All these have an interest in keeping the MEK intact. None wants the dissolution of the camp or the organisation. They all want to stop the camp being disbanded because they are using the MEK for their own various agendas. The problem is that without taking the necessary action to access the individual residents of the camp they are essentially being left in the ownership of the Rajavis and their backers. In this respect where are the human rights organisations which should be directly involved in helping these victims? What attempts have the U.N. made to actually get inside the camp and have free access to the residents? Human Rights Watch published its ‘No Exit’ report in 2005 which was laudable, but what have they done since then? Amnesty International still prefers to think of the MEK as an entity and ignore the existence of the individuals in the camp. What has AI said about the internal problems of the residents; the daily violations and abuses of their basic human rights? The problem is not the name of Camp Ashraf or the name MEK. The Rajavi’s cannot simply re-name, re-brand or even relocate their group for political expediency and expect the ‘members’ to continue as their slaves. To solve this problem (before the question of whether they want to work for or against anyone) the residents must be given access to the outside world, to their families, to media, communications, get paid for their work and have access to the post office, cinema, marriage registry, birth registry, police station, legal aid, courts and legal bodies of the country they are living in etc. Nine years after the fall of Saddam and the disappearance of the cult leader it is not acceptable for a U.S. official to simply try to move the group from one part of the world to the other part without the slightest concern about the human rights of the captives there. ---------- also Camp Ashraf and the Mojahedin Khalq Iran Interlink Third Report from Baghdad . ... Iran-Interlink representative Anne Singleton travelled to Iraq mid April at the invitation of the Baghdad based human rights NGO Baladiyeh Foundation, officials of the Government of Iraq and other NGOs involved in the Camp Ashraf problem. The Baladiyeh Foundation, headed by Mrs Ahlam al-Maliki, provides humanitarian assistance to a wide range of deprived sectors of Iraqi society arising directly from the invasion and occupation of Iraq by allied forces in 2003. Baladiyeh Foundation is concerned by the humanitarian crisis at Camp Ashraf caused by the group’s leaders who are refusing to allow access to human rights organisations to verify the wellbeing of all of the camp’s residents ... Iran Interlink, April 2011 Further information can be found at www.camp-ashraf.com . First Report (February 2008) - (PDF version) Second Report (September 2009) - (PDF version) Third Report (April 2011) - (PDF version) ------- Also Washington pressures Iraq to provide sancutary for Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) terrorists Talabani: Iraq's patience has worn thin . ...Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, voiced his support for Iran's call to shut a military camp in central Iraq that has served as a base for an Iranian insurgent group, the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MeK. Washington, while designating the MeK as an international terrorist organization, has pressured Iraq to continue to provide sanctuary to some 3,400 MeK fighters over fears they would be persecuted if they returned to Iran. Mr. Talabani said in a speech to the terrorism conference Saturday that his government's patience with the MeK had worn thin. The MeK camp "will be shut down by the end of the year," Mr. Talabani said ...
Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2011 Iran Woos US Allies As Troops Withdraw Iran is moving to cement ties with the leaders of three key American allies -- Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq -- highlighting Tehran's efforts to take a greater role in the region as the U.S. military pulls out troops. ---------- Also Iraq: Ashraf Camp will be closed, West should take Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) back home . ... The Iraqi government’s position towards the ‘terrorist’ Mojahedin E-Khalq Organization is very clear, and the Ashraf Camp, used by that group as its headquarters must close by the end of the current year, 2011,Baghdad had called on International Organizations to help it in this issue.We have proposed the formation of a special committee, to comprise representatives of the Iranian and Iraqi sides, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the Committee is scheduled to convene in the nearest possible time. the Western states must present help in this respect, including the acceptance of persons, belonging to ... Aswat al-Iraq, Baghdad, June 23, 2011 BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Hoshiar Zibary, has said during his current visit for Tehran, that Ashraf Camp, in northeast Iraq, inhabited by the anti-Tehran Mojahedin E-Khalq Organization, must close by the end of the current year. ----------- Also Iraq - France relations strained over Washington backed terrorist group event in Paris (aka;Mojahedin Khalq, MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) . ... The Iraqi government summoned the French ambassador to Baghdad to protest at Paris for hosting a conference of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) where the terrorist group raised unfounded allegations against Baghdad. "To affect the international community and attract international support, the MKO has claimed that the Iraqi government has killed 35 members of the group and injured 350 others," the Iraqi government said on Monday. "But, this is a sheer lie and Baghdad has not carried out such an action," the statement added. The Iraqi people have announced their opposition to the presence of the MKO members ... Nakhel News, Baghdad, June 20, 2011 Iraqi Gov't Summons French Envoy over MKO Accusations The Iraqi government summoned the French ambassador to Baghdad to protest at Paris for hosting a conference of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) where the terrorist group raised unfounded allegations against Baghdad. "To affect the international community and attract international support, the MKO has claimed that the Iraqi government has killed 35 members of the group and injured 350 others," the Iraqi government said on Monday. ------- Also Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult) Violence against members' families . ... The images you see below show the eastern part of Ashraf Cultic garrison. Every day at this part, some of the brainwashed members of the “ destructive mind-control Cult of Rajavi”, covering their faces ; target the suffering families -who are awaiting their beloved ones’ visit eagerly – by strings and catapults. On these photos one can see the families trying to invite the brainwashed elements to talk friendly instead of throwing stones. Although the only way the MKO cultic system is acquainted with is: “violence” no matter against whom. It is said that some of these people are Iraqi mercenaries who are stationed inside the camp through ... Sahar Family Foundation, June 09, 2011 Link to the original report (Persian) The images you see below show the eastern part of Ashraf Cultic garrison.
http://www.iran-interlink.org/index.php?mod=view&id=10438
Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult)continued terror campain
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/191612.html
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
"Iraq will sue those governments that support the MKO in order to harm Baghdad," Maliki said at a Saturday press conference, Al-Alam news network reported.
"The Western states put the MKO on the list of terrorist groups for its crimes against Iraqi people, but they support it now," he noted.
Maliki was referring to a recent decision by a Spanish court to summon the Iraqi premier regarding the incidents in Camp Ashraf -- where the MKO terrorists are currently located.
The Iraqi prime minister also said that Iraq does not recognize the Spanish court's order.
The MKO fled to Iraq in the 1980s, where it enjoyed the support of executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and set up Camp Ashraf in the eastern province of Diyala, near the Iranian border.
The terrorist group cooperated with Saddam in the massacres of Iraqi Kurds and in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and has committed numerous terrorist acts against both Iranians and Iraqis.
on US support for Mojahedin Khalq (MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult)
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=10292
http://mesconsult.com
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=10235
www.iran-interlink.org 
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=10255
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/markets/newsfeeditem.aspx?id=148573656221514
The Afghan and Pakistani presidents, visiting Tehran, discussed with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "many issues. . .that might come up after the NATO military force goes out of Afghanistan," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in an interview here Sunday.
"The three presidents were very forthcoming in carrying out the cooperation and contacts so as to make sure things will go as smoothly as it could," he said.
That was a jab at Washington, which is increasingly in competition with Tehran for influence in the region, particularly as popular rebellions have surged across the Middle East and North Africa since January.
The overtures by U.S. nemesis Iran come amid tensions between Washington and three governments that have each received billions of dollars in U.S. aid. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, before traveling to Tehran, welcomed President Barack Obama's announcement on Wednesday that the U.S. would withdraw 33,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan over 15 months.
The U.S. is also committed to withdrawing all of its remaining 45,000 troops from Iraq by year-end; some U.S. military officials want some troops to stay to serve as a check on Iran, but Iraqi hostility to the U.S. presence has been an obstacle.
In Pakistan, military and civilian leaders are under domestic pressure to curb U.S. ties, in a wave of anti-Americanism fueled by the U.S. raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden at his home in Pakistan.
Tehran has been pressing Afghanistan -- Iran's neighbor to the east -- and Pakistan to end their military alliances with Washington.
Officials at the White House and State Department declined to comment on Sunday on the Tehran meetings.
U.S. and European officials have said they believe Iran's regional ambitions are hampered by a stagnant economy and growing political infighting in Tehran that could cost Mr. Ahmadinejad his job.
There are also historical tensions between neighbors -- and in some cases, current conflicts. Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari that Pakistan must stop lobbing rockets into his country, according to a statement from Mr. Karzai's office. Mr. Zardari denied Pakistan's military was firing the rockets.
But Iran's government took every opportunity to play up its international ties during a weekend that also included a conference in Tehran attended by representatives from around 60 countries.
The Obama administration and European nations had lobbied countries against attending what Iran called an "International Conference on the Global Fight against Terrorism." The U.S. characterizes Tehran as the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
The event was also attended by diplomats from U.S.-friendly countries such as Mongolia, Oman and Indonesia. The United Nations and Organization of the Islamic Conference both sent representatives.
"Pakistan and Iran share an historic bond," Mr. Zardari told the conference on Saturday, when his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was honored by Iran's government.
For its part, the U.S. charges Tehran with fomenting instability by providing arms and training to insurgent groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Kata'ib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, that battle American forces. Tehran denies the charge.
For the most part, the conference followed a pattern many U.S. and European officials anticipated. Iranian, Cuban and Palestinian representatives -- mixing with North Korean, Zimbabwean and Myanmar diplomats -- branded Israel the world's largest terrorism threat.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, addressed the conference and said the definition of terrorism is abused internationally.
On Friday, after a three-way meeting between the Iranian, Afghan and Pakistani presidents, the three leaders pledged to intensify their joint efforts to fight militant groups and combat narcotics trafficking, while "rejecting foreign interference" in their countries, according to a statement. The three also agreed to meet next year in Islamabad.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, while in Tehran, voiced his support for Iran's call to shut a military camp in central Iraq that has served as a base for an Iranian insurgent group, the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MeK.
Washington, while designating the MeK as an international terrorist organization, has pressured Iraq to continue to provide sanctuary to some 3,400 MeK fighters over fears they would be persecuted if they returned to Iran.
Mr. Talabani said in a speech to the terrorism conference Saturday that his government's patience with the MeK had worn thin. The MeK camp "will be shut down by the end of the year," Mr. Talabani said. "We intend to prevent any kind of invasion to be launched against any of our neighboring countries."
---
Maria Abi-Habib in Kabul and Maya Jackson Randall in Washington contributed to this article.
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=10214
http://en.aswataliraq.info/Default.aspx?page=article_page&c=slideshow&id=143317
“The Iraqi government’s position towards the ‘terrorist’ Mojahedin E-Khalq Organization is very clear, and the Ashraf Camp, used by that group as its headquarters must close by the end of the current year, 2011,” Zibary told a joint news conference with his Iranian Counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehy, in Tehran, carried by the Iranian Fars News Agency on Wednesday, adding that “Baghdad had called on International Organizations to help it in this issue.”
Zibary said that during his talks with his Iranian Counterpart in this respect: “We have proposed the formation of a special committee, to comprise representatives of the Iranian and Iraqi sides, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the Committee is scheduled to convene in the nearest possible time.”
The Iranian Al-Aalam Satellite TV Station had quoted Zibary as saying that “the Western states must present help in this respect, including the acceptance of persons, belonging to the said ‘clique,’ wishing to move to their countries, as well as preparing the suitable platform for the return of those of them, wishing to return to Iran.”
Answering a question about the dossier of the Iranians, detained in Iraq, he said: “The Iraqi government had released hundreds of Iranians, who were detained in Iraq due to the end of their official residence or ignoring Iraqi laws,” confirming that the Iraqi government was striving to release the remaining Iranians in the near future.
Regarding Iraq’s position towards the developments in Bahrain, Minister Zibary said: “We respect the sovereignty of Bahrain and believe that the Bahraini people must appoint their government and system, and define their fate by themselves,” reiterating Iraq’s rejection of atrocities against Bahraini demonstrators, “because today’s world does not allow such measures against demonstrators, demanding their rights.”
As regards to the future of the foreign forces in Iraq, the Iraqi Foreign Minister said that “the political forces in Iraq were coordinating their attitudes, in order to define a final position towards the future of the American forces in the country.”
Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Hoshiar Zibary, had began a visit for the Islamic Republic of Iran, leading a high-level delegation, representing his Ministry’s leading officials in the bilateral, legal and consular affairs, to carry out talks with the Iranian side and discuss Iraq’s relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=10195
(Cult leader Massoud Rajavi)
Translated by Fars News
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9003300943
link to the original report (Arabic)
http://nakhelnews.com/pages/news.php?nid=8981
"But, this is a sheer lie and Baghdad has not carried out such an action," the statement added.
The Iraqi people have announced their opposition to the presence of the MKO members in their country and have long staged protest rallies in front of the MKO's main training camp in the Northern Diyala province to condemn the US-backed presence of the terrorist group in their country.
In a most recent case, a group of Iraqi people gathered outside Camp Ashraf in May, and called for the expulsion of the terrorist group from the country's soil.
The Baghdad government has assured the Iraqi people that it is determined to expel the MKO from Iraq by the end of 2011.
The family members and relatives of the members of the MKO have also gathered outside the terrorist group's main training camp in Iraq for more than a year now.
The MKO ringleaders have already adopted numerous measures to confront those relatives who have camped outside the Camp of New Iraq (formerly known as Camp Ashraf) in Iraq's Northern province of Diyala.
The MKO ringleaders have not allowed a visit between the group's members and their families.
After MKO ringleaders saw the number of defectors were increasing, they resorted to harsher measures and tried to haunt down fugitives in violation of their agreement with the Baghdad government which bans any activity or trafficking of the group members beyond the camp boundaries.
And after the Baghdad government failed to persuade the terrorist group to respect the agreement terms, it ordered the Iraqi Army to tighten control on the camp to prevent any illegal trafficking or infiltration, but the MKO attacked the Iraqi guards and killed and wounded many of them.
An Iraqi commander who was present on the scene of clashes in early April revealed later that the MKO sparked the armed conflict with the Iraqi security forces responsible for guarding the camp in a move to kill its dissident members during the clashes.
According to a report published by the website of the Habilian association in mid April - a human rights group formed of the family members and relatives of the Iranian victims of terrorism - the Iraqi commander, who was speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the move by the MKO was not unprecedented since the group had previously forced its dissident members to start armed clashes with the Iraqi forces.
"The MKO's foremost front was formed of the dissident members of the group during the recent clash. They were forced to be there and be killed," the Iraqi commander reiterated.
But, in an astonishing move which substantiated the West's double-standard policies on human rights and terrorism, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called on Iraq to ignore the illegal activities of the MKO, including its armed clashes with the Iraqi soldiers.
The European Union has lately changed approach towards the terrorist MKO in a move to pressurize Iran to stop its progress in the civilian nuclear technology.
Some ranking members of the MKO who have had a role in the assassination of a large number of Iranian citizens and officials are currently living in France.
Before an overture by the EU, the MKO was on the European Union's list of terrorist organizations subject to an EU-wide assets freeze. Yet, the MKO puppet leader, Maryam Rajavi, who has residency in France, regularly visited Brussels and despite the ban enjoyed full freedom in Europe.
The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).
Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.
http://iran-interlink.org/?mod=view&id=10148
Rajavi deploys his Special Guard to attack families with catapults
Translated by Nejat Society
http://www.nejatngo.org/en/post.aspx?id=3721
http://iran-interlink.org/fa/index.php?mod=view&id=10050
Every day at this part, some of the brainwashed members of the “ destructive mind-control Cult of Rajavi”, covering their faces ; target the suffering families -who are awaiting their beloved ones’ visit eagerly – by strings and catapults.
On these photos one can see the families trying to invite the brainwashed elements to talk friendly instead of throwing stones.
Although the only way the MKO cultic system is acquainted with is: “violence” no matter against whom.
It is said that some of these people are Iraqi mercenaries who are stationed inside the camp through whom the organization puts forward its sabotage and crisis mongering operations inside Iraq.
Families have lodged a complaint along with strong documents against the leadership of the MKO to the judiciary system of Iraq; although it may be blocked by US agents and other related elements, the same as other complaints and documents. 
