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International media reports reveal that families of Mojahedin members in
Iran have staged protests in Tehran outside the US interest section of the
Swiss Embassy where they demanded to be allowed to visit their relatives in
the Mojahedin's bases in Iraq.
For over two years Iran-Interlink has campaigned for the Mojahedin to allow
free and unfettered contact between Mojahedin members and their families,
not only in Iraq but in any part of the world. In particular, as a test
case, Iran-Interlink coordinated the requests of almost fifty families
living in Europe to visit their relatives in Mojahedin bases in Iraq. The
Mojahedin have failed to reply to either Iran-Interlink or to the ICRC or
the UN, either of which were suggested could act as an impartial
intermediary. The only possible conclusion which could be drawn from this
was that these families were being denied access by the Mojahedin
themselves.
Now in a Farsi language statement published 20 May 2003, the Mojahedin
leader Massoud Rajavi repeatedly states that families of Mojahedin members are
welcome to visit, but that they are being
prevented by the Islamic Republic of Iran from visiting their relatives in
the camps in Iraq. The Mojahedin say that they have appealed to the United
States of America's interest section at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, the
International Red Crescent in Tehran and the office of the United Nations
also in Tehran to force the government of Iran
facilitate these visits, which the Mojahedin claim Iran is blocking.
Rajavi also referred to his previous statement of 30 October 2002, in which
he had invited families to visit the bases in Iraq accompanied by UN
officials from Tehran.
Iran-Interlink at that time wrote directly to Massoud Rajavi to take up this
offer. In addition we applied to the Iraqi authorities to grant visas to
the families. Due to
the nature of the regime they denied the visas and said that Rajavi himself should sponsor
these family visits. Rajavi never accepted to do so. Full details of this on-going campaign can be found on our
website. Since October 2002, several letters have been sent to Rajavi,
copied to the ICRC, UN and to Amnesty International. Rajavi has not only
refused to stand by his word but has ignored all intermediaries who could
have facilitated such visits.
Yet Rajavi, from his hiding place in Iraq, has the effrontery to
continue announcing that these families are welcome to visit the Mojahedin's
bases there.
Under the protection of Saddam Hussein, Rajavi was able to deny the presence
of the children of these families in the camps even though there is credible
evidence to state that they were there, at least up to the war. In addition,
although Rajavi was asked many times to take responsibility for and account
for the many members who had been handed over to Saddam Hussein's Security
Forces and incarcerated in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Rajavi has never
replied.
Rajavi
has not
even accepted to publish the names of those killed in the recent war
in order for their families to be informed.
Rajavi has repeatedly refused to take responsibility for any of these people.
It must be stressed that the Mojahedin organisation is a cult, and as such,
no member is allowed to contact their families without supervision. Indeed,
according to one high ranking member who left the organisation voluntarily in 2002,
Hossein Mashoufi, a senior member of the Mojahedin, was recently tried by
Rajavi in a phoney court for discovering and covertly using a free long distance telephone line to contact
both his family in
Germany and Amnesty International in the UK, and asking them for help to get him
out of the Mojahedin camp.
For twenty years Rajavi has
enjoyed the possibility of denying every possible human right to his cult's members
under the protection of Saddam Hussein. For two years we have been demanding access
but were refused because of the situation of Iraq and
Saddam’s protection of this organisation. However, coalition forces are now
in control of Iraq not Saddam Hussein. Coalition forces are also in control
of the Mojahedin. Massoud Rajavi, who has fled and is in hiding somewhere in
Iraq, is no longer in charge of the organisation. Now that you are responsible there, we see
an excellent opportunity
to make this work and for the visits to go ahead so that these people can be
re-united with their families whether in Iraq or anywhere else.
The families in Europe have been ready
for the past few months and we are ready to fly them to Iraq or any other
place acceptable to the new authority in Iraq.
22 May 2003
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