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Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Nejat Society, April 30 2020:… A few days after the campaign was launched, the MEK fearfully reacted on April 23, 2020 in its website ‘Iran Probe’ with a lengthy article titled: “Iranian regime is campaigning for Albanian entry visas for its terrorists”. The article is a stream of fabricated lies trying to persuade the Albanians not to issue visas for the families. This shows how much the presence of the families is a nightmare for Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, the cult leaders. Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
WHO Albania ; MEK Families Write Their Concerns
Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Terrorists Don’t Need Visas ; They Are Already Welcomed In Albania
Signatures reach 6000 and increasing
A petition was launched by Nejat Society of Iran on behalf of the suffering families of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, Rajavi cult) members urging the Albanian government to allow these families to contact their loved ones trapped in the MEK camp. Link below:
This petition concludes:
“We urge the Albanian government and the ministry of foreign affairs to issue visas to the suffering families on humanitarian grounds to allow them to travel to Albania and help them visit their loved ones in the MEK camp.”
Signatures on the petition have well exceeded 1500 after just 9 days and are rapidly increasing. The daily list of signatories and their locations is forwarded to the Albanian authorities.
This has, of course, alarmed the MEK since like all other destructive mind control cults, the leaders are scared to death of the families of the cult’s members. They know that familial emotions will counter their brainwashing practices on the members.
A few days after the campaign was launched, the MEK fearfully reacted on April 23, 2020 in its website ‘Iran Probe’ with a lengthy article titled: “Iranian regime is campaigning for Albanian entry visas for its terrorists”.
The article is a stream of fabricated lies trying to persuade the Albanians not to issue visas for the families.
This shows how much the presence of the families is a nightmare for Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, the cult leaders.
MEK terrorist cult was expelled from Iraq and admitted into their country by the Albanian government in 2016 and located in a remote, isolated camp. Security experts have always considered this a security threat for Albania as well as for Europe. The MEK presence has also been regarded a negative point for Albania as it tries to become a member of the EU.
Ebrahim Khodabandeh . CEO Nejat Society
The MEK camp, which holds the terrorists imported from Iraq, is entirely and secretly run by the cult’s leaders. Albanian officials have no jurisdiction over it. The inhabitants have no access to, or contact with, the outside world, particularly with their friends and families.
The truth is that the genuine terrorists are already welcomed and living in Albania and they do not need visas.
Those who are denied entry and deprived of contacting their loved ones are old mothers and fathers who have not seen or had any contact with their children for decades.
The Albanian government should pay attention to the just request of the families and enable them to contact their loved ones.
Nejat Society urges the IRI to raise a complaint against Albania at the UN
Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
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Also read:
https://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/over-800-mek-families-petition-albanian-pm-edi-rama-for-access/
Over 800 MEK Families Petition Albanian PM Edi Rama For Access
Nejat Society, Tehran, April 27 2020:… Please answer why the Albanian authorities, in cooperation with the Rajavi cult, are preventing families from communicating with their loved ones? Why has the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered all its embassies not to issue visas to Iranians so that families would not be able to travel to your country? The level of cooperation of the Albanian government – which aspires to join the European Union – with a terrorist cult, is shocking. I look forward to hearing from you and, of course, I am sending this open letter to international, European and Albanian authorities, as well as to the human rights bodies and the media. Over 800 MEK Families Petition Albanian PM Edi Rama For Access
MEK Terrorists in Albania Complicating Edi Rama’s EU Accession Talks
Over 800 MEK Families Petition Albanian PM Edi Rama For Access
Open letter of the CEO of Nejat Society to the Prime Minister of Albania
More than 800 signatures after a week of families’ petition
Mr. Edi Rama, Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania
I am writing on behalf of hundreds of suffering families of the members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, Rajavi cult) who have settled in your country. I would like to remind you that the families’ letters to the President’s Office have remained completely unanswered so far.
You are aware that the members of this organization are billeted in a camp in Manëz in Durrës County, western Albania. The camp is completely controlled by the organization’s leader – Albanian officials have no authority over it. The MEK organization is run as a destructive mind control cult which prevents its members from communicating with the outside world, especially with friends and relatives.
One week ago, a petition was created for the families, addressing the Albanian government, and by the time I write this letter to you, more than 800 of them have signed it. Link below:
http://chng.it/GCPbBfFPGr
The text of the petition, which calls on the Albanian government to provide conditions for families to communicate with their loved ones in the MEK camp in Albania, as well as the list of more than 800 signatories to the petition are attached.
Please answer why the Albanian authorities, in cooperation with the Rajavi cult, are preventing families from communicating with their loved ones? Why has the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered all its embassies not to issue visas to Iranians so that families would not be able to travel to your country?
The level of cooperation of the Albanian government – which aspires to join the European Union – with a terrorist cult, is shocking.
I look forward to hearing from you and, of course, I am sending this open letter to international, European and Albanian authorities, as well as to the human rights bodies and the media.
Many thanks, in anticipation, for your kind reply to this letter.
Ebrahim Khodabandeh
Nejat Society – CEO
Over 800 MEK Families Petition Albanian PM Edi Rama For Access
Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas
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MEK cult in Albania poses public health risk
Also read:
https://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/mek-families-petition-albanian-government/
MEK Families Petition Albanian Government To Allow Contact Loved Ones
Nejat Society, April 20 2020:… A 2000 member Iranian militant opposition group called the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, aka MKO, NLA, PMOI, and NCR) is based in a remote, isolated camp in Albania. Over a thousand estranged families of some of these MEK members are actively seeking contact with their loved ones. For over three decades, the leaders of the MEK have refused to allow the families of these members to have any sort of contact with their loved ones in the MEK camps (in Iraq and in Albania). MEK Families Petition Albanian Government To Allow Contact Loved Ones
Hosting MEK in Albania Humanitarian, Not Political – Now a National Security Issue: Rama
MEK Families Petition Albanian Government To Allow Contact Loved Ones
Join Nejat NGO Families Petition
Urging Albanian government to let the families to contact their loved ones in MEK camp – Petition
Recipients: Albanian government, UNHCR, European Parliament, Council of the European Union, European Commission
A 2000 member Iranian militant opposition group called the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, aka MKO, NLA, PMOI, and NCR) is based in a remote, isolated camp in Albania. Over a thousand estranged families of some of these MEK members are actively seeking contact with their loved ones.
For over three decades, the leaders of the MEK have refused to allow the families of these members to have any sort of contact with their loved ones in the MEK camps (in Iraq and in Albania).
The Albanian government has allowed the MEK camp to be completely controlled by the leaders of the organization. This situation prevents the families from contacting their next of kin. Some families have had no news of their children for decades. The Albanian ministry of foreign affairs does not issue visas for Iranians (including Iranian families wishing to visit their relatives) to travel to Albania.
We urge the Albanian government and the ministry of foreign affairs to issue visas to the suffering families on humanitarian grounds to allow them to travel to Albania and help them visit their loved ones in the MEK camp.
Please sign the petition at below link, and ask your friends and colleagues to sign the petition of the families too.
Many thanks
MEK Families Petition Albanian Government To Allow Contact Loved Ones
Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas
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Also read:
https://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/mek-base-in-albania-they-gave-us-a-tour/
MEK Base In Albania – They Gave Us a Tour
Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times, February 16 2020:… I wasn’t shown the computer suites, which defectors had portrayed as a kind of troll farm: junior members using multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter, typing messages that criticize the Iranian government, lionize the M.E.K. leadership and promote its paid lobbyists. When Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Bolton made public speeches in recent years, members were ordered “to take a particular line and tweet it 10 times from different accounts,” said Mr. Mohammadian, the former member. I was taken to an empty gym, and then to a small cafeteria. It was already close to midnight, but a small group of women had been told to wait up for me. MEK Base In Albania – They Gave Us a Tour
Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK
MEK Base In Albania – They Gave Us a Tour
Highly Secretive Iranian Rebels Are Holed Up in Albania. They Gave Us a Tour.
Depending on whom you ask, the People’s Jihadists are Iran’s government-in-waiting or a duplicitous terrorist cult that forbids sexual thoughts. What are they doing in Albania?
The entrance to the camp housing members of the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Jihadists, near Manez, Albania.Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
MANEZ, Albania — In a valley in the Albanian countryside, a group of celibate Iranian dissidents have built a vast and tightly guarded barracks that few outsiders have ever entered.
Depending on whom you ask, the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Jihadists, are either Iran’s replacement government-in-waiting or a duplicitous terrorist cult. Journalists are rarely allowed inside the camp to judge for themselves, and are sometimes rebuffed by force.
But after President Trump’s decision to assassinate Qassim Suleimani, a powerful Iranian general, it seemed worth trying again. Would a group that claims to want a democratic, secular Iran allow a reporter inside their camp?
The group’s loudest allies include Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and John R. Bolton, his former National Security Adviser. Both have received tens of thousands of dollars for speaking at the group’s conferences, where these influential Americans describe the People’s Jihadists as Iran’s most legitimate opposition.
Initially, the group ignored several requests for access. So less in hope than desperation, I drove to its base and presented my credentials to a guard.
Three hours later, shortly before sunset, I got a call. To my surprise, I was being allowed inside. So began a series of interviews, propaganda sessions and tours that lasted until 1:30 a.m. A New York Times photographer was admitted several days later.
The group perhaps hoped to correct the impression left by previous journalistic encounters. A visit in 2003 by a Times reporter to the group’s former base in Iraq ended badly after her subjects spoke from a rehearsed script, and she was barred from talking to people in private.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
This time around, most residents were off limits, but officials did allow private interviews with several members.
At my request, these included Somayeh Mohammadi, 39, whose family has argued for nearly two decades that she is being held against her will.
“This is my choice,” said Ms. Mohammedi, after her commanders left the room. “If I want to leave, I can leave.”
While the group may not have tried to hide Ms. Mohammedi, there were several odd and telling moments when secrets were tightly held.
In particular, senior officials stumbled when asked about the whereabouts of the group’s nominal leader, Massoud Rajavi, who vanished in 2003.
“Where is he?” said Ali Safavi, the group’s main representative in Washington. “Well, we can’t talk about that, that’s … ”
He trailed off, staring at his feet.
Is he still alive? Is he in Albania?
“We can’t talk about it,” Mr. Safavi replied, after several seconds of silence.
Credit…Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Founded in 1965 to oppose the Shah of Iran, the group later rejected the theocracy that replaced him.
Immediately following the revolution, the group attracted significant public support and emerged as a leading source of opposition to the new theocratic regime, according to Professor Ervand Abrahamian, a historian of the group.
The group claims it still attracts significant support, but Mr. Abrahamian said its popularity plummeted after becoming more violent in the early 1980s.
“When you talk to people who lived through the revolution, and you mention the name ‘Mujahedeen’, they shudder,” said Mr. Abrahamian.
By the 1980s, the group’s ideology had begun to center on Mr. Rajavi and his wife, Maryam.
To prove their devotion to the Rajavis, members were told to divorce their spouses and renounce romance.
At the time, the group was based in Iraq, under the protection of Saddam Hussein.
Its destiny changed after the American-led invasion of Iraq. After an initial standoff, the group, also known as the M.E.K., gave up its weapons. Despite having been listed by America as a terrorist organization in 1997, it was placed under American protection.
But in 2009, American troops ceded responsibility for the M.E.K. to the Iraqi government. Led by politicians sympathetic to Iran, the Iraqi authorities tacitly allowed Iran-allied militias to attack the group.
American and United Nations diplomats began searching for a safer country to house the group. After intensive lobbying by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, the American government also removed them from a list of terrorist organizations in 2012.
A year later, they were finally welcomed by Albania. The Albanian government hoped its hospitality would curry favor with Washington, according to the foreign minister between 2013 and 2019, Ditmir Bushati.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
The group purchased several fields in a valley 15 miles west of Tirana, the capital, and built a camp there.
When I visited, the base seemed oddly empty. The group claims it houses about 2,500 members. But across the two days, we saw no more than 200.
The others seemed to have been sequestered away — or to have left the group altogether.
Dozens of former members now live independently in Albania. I met 10 of them, who each described being brainwashed into a life of celibacy.
Inside the group, they said romantic relationships and sexual thoughts were banned, contact with family highly restricted, and friendships discouraged.
All recounted being forced to participate in self-criticism rituals, whereby members would confess to their commanders any sexual or disloyal thoughts they had.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
“Little by little, you are broken,” said Abdulrahman Mohammadian, 60, who joined the group in 1988 and left in 2016. “You forget yourself and you change your personality. You only obey rules. You are not yourself. You are just a machine.”
The group strongly denied the accusations and portrays many of its critics, including Mr. Mohammadian, as Iranian spies.
I was taken on a three-hour tour of a museum about the M.E.K.’s history, where the exhibits did not mention Saddam Hussein or forced celibacy. Instead, they focused on the group’s persecution.
Some rooms had been turned into replica torture chambers, to explain how Iranian jailers punished and interrogated supporters during the 1980s.
In each room, members waited in silence for me. These turned out to be survivors of the torture — ready to personally explain each method of repression.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
One survivor, Raheem Moussavi, stood beside a bloodied mannequin and slowly detailed the four different techniques the Iranian torturers used to beat him. The process culminated in being whipped by a metallic cat-o’-nine tails.
Searching for influence, the group has turned increasingly to the internet.
I was shown a recording studio, where two musicians compose anti-regime songs and music videos for release on Iranian social media.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
I wasn’t shown the computer suites, which defectors had portrayed as a kind of troll farm: junior members using multiple accounts on Facebook and Twitter, typing messages that criticize the Iranian government, lionize the M.E.K. leadership and promote its paid lobbyists.
When Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Bolton made public speeches in recent years, members were ordered “to take a particular line and tweet it 10 times from different accounts,” said Mr. Mohammadian, the former member.
I was taken to an empty gym, and then to a small cafeteria. It was already close to midnight, but a small group of women had been told to wait up for me.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
They scoffed at the idea of the troll farm. As for the limits on their private lives, they said such discipline was necessary when battling as cruel an adversary as the government of Iran.
“You can’t have a personal life,” said Shiva Zahedi, “when you’re struggling for a cause.”
After I left, the group put me in touch with three former American military officers who had helped guard an M.E.K. camp in Iraq after the American invasion.
Each spoke glowingly about the M.E.K., and said its members had been free to leave since the American military began protecting it in 2003.
American officers had access to every area of the Iraqi base, and found no prison cells or torture facilities, said Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who commanded the military policemen guarding the camp in 2003 and 2004.
“I wanted to find weapons, I wanted to find people tied to beds,” General Phillips said. “We never found it.”
But other records and witnesses gave a more complex account.
Capt. Matthew Woodside, a former naval reservist who oversaw American policy at the Iraqi camp between 2004 and 2005, was not one of those whom the M.E.K. suggested I contact.
He said that in reality American troops did not have regular access to camp buildings or to group members whose relatives said they were held by force.
Credit…Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
The M.E.K. leadership tended to let members meet American officials and relatives only after a delay of several days, Captain Woodside said.
“They fight for every single one of them,” he said.
It became so hard for some members, particularly women, to flee that two of them ended up trying to escape in a delivery truck, he recalled.
“I find that organization absolutely repulsive,” Captain Woodside said. “I am astounded that they’re in Albania.”
Besar Likmeta contributed reporting.
End
MEK Base In Albania – They Gave Us a Tour
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The Many Faces of the MEK, Explained By Its Former Top Spy Massoud Khodabandeh
Secret MEK troll factory in Albania uses modern slaves (aka Mojahedin Khalq, MKO, NCRI ,Rajavi cult)
The Life of Camp Ashraf. Mojahedin-e Khalq – Victims of Many Masters
By Anne Khodabandeh (Singleton) and Massoud Khodabandeh
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Also read:
Nejat Society, Tehran, April 27 2020:… Please answer why the Albanian authorities, in cooperation with the Rajavi cult, are preventing families from communicating with their loved ones? Why has the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered all its embassies not to issue visas to Iranians so that families would not be able to travel to your country? The level of… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Nejat Society, Tehran, April 11 2020:… With regards I would like to inform you that Nejat Society is an NGO consisting of the families of the members of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, NCR, Rajavi cult) and the former members of this cult. This society strives to establish some sort of connection between the suffering families and their loved ones… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iran Interlink, March 10 2020:… MEK, an extreme example The notorious camp of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi Cult) in Manez in Albania is a very clear and extreme case of holding modern slaves. These individuals have been subject to mind manipulation and brainwashing over many years in Iraq and now in Albania and they are… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iran Interlink, March 08 2020:… In a similar way, leading members of the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi Cult) which is based in Albania, make frequent visits to Italy, which has the largest cluster of infections after China, South Korea and Iran. Although the members live in a secretive closed camp named Camp Ashraf 3, some… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Nejat Society, Tehran, March 01 2020:… I address you on behalf of thousands of suffering families of members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, better known as the Rajavi cult) residing in a remote isolated camp in Albania, about the severe abuses of basic human rights there. The MEK finished the process of transferring from Iraq to… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iran Interlink, February 13 2020:… The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, NCRI, NLA, or better known as the Rajavi cult) had a military base in Iraq facilitated by Saddam Hussein and they actively participated against their own county alongside the enemy in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. This was alongside a terrorist campaign waged inside Iran in the early… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iran Interlink, October 10 2019:… Now the Iranian Maryam Rajavi, leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, NCR, NLA, Rajavi Cult) is playing (and has played for a long time) the same role as the Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi, this time in relation to Iran. On Monday September 30, 2019 in Washington, the group, which has close ties… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iran Interlink, August 27 2019:… The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, NCR, NLA, Rajavi Cult), an armed opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran, faced dramatic changes after Iraq was invaded by US forces in 2003, and Saddam Hussein, the only state sponsor of the leader Massoud Rajavi, was toppled. John Bolton, who served as the US government… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iranian Oral History, August 13 2019:… According to the Iranian Oral History website, the 304th ‘Night of Memorials of Holy Defense’ was held on Thursday evening, July 25, 2019 at the Sureh Hall of the Hozeh Honari. In this meeting, Bakhshali Alizadeh, Ibrahim Khodabandeh and Mohammad Mosaheb, related some of their memories of Mujahidin Khalq Organization and Mersad… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Fars News, August 12 2019:… An ex-member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as the MEK, PMOI and NCRI) said the terrorist group moves in line with the White House policies and is now seeking to empty the Iranian society from hope. Khodabandeh, a former high-ranking MKO element, made the revelations in an interview with FNA on Saturday.… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, Iran Interlink, May 24 2019:… Bolton believes that Massoud (or Maryam) Rajavi of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi cult), just like Ahmed Chalabi during the war against Iraq, can be beneficial in creating excuses and repeating the White House’s wishes under the banner of a so-called opposition group White House crumbling under the weight of Bolton’s… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
Ebrahim Khodabandeh, May 13 2019:… Since I left the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK, MKO, Rajavi terrorist cult) and came back to Iran in 2003, I have realized that this cult is now much more hated by Iranians than the Tudeh Party, and these Iranians include every opposition to the Islamic Republic inside and outside the country. The MEK assassinated thousands of… Terrorists Don’t Need Albanian Visas ; Petition Signatures reach 6000
