Statement Issued by Families of Mojahedin Members in Baghdad

Iran-Interlink has previously described the Mojahedin as a cult. It is one of the reasons we have also campaigned for families to visit their relatives in the Mojahedin. Although our campaign is not linked to that of Nejat Association, which operates from inside Iran, it is clear that one of the greatest difficulties that families of cult members face is the denial of access to their relative.

While the world pays attention to the terrorist activities of the Mojahedin, which are real and should not of course be given any less priority, former members have stated for years that the conditions for members inside the Mojahedin have deteriorated year on year as this cult culture takes its toll on the psychological and emotional health of all the members. Even those who believe they are willing adherents of Rajavi’s ideological system are unwittingly damaging their mental health by submitting to the methods by which they are kept loyal.

There follows excerpts from a statement from Nejat Association issued 24 July 2003

By order of the Ideological Leader and the Commander-in-Chief of the unarmed National Liberation Army in Fort Ashraf, Rajavi’s hoodlums took forced signatures from the guests and beat up some

… Today, with the downfall of Saddam Hussein, the wind of freedom in Iraq is exposing the undisputed reality of Saddam’s barbarism, including the mass-graves which are being discovered every day. Believe us when we say that after the fall of Rajavi’s terrorism, the world will see what was really behind the democratic centralism of his organisation which was built on how many mass graves in order to control his forces, and how by enforcing the ideological revolution with the so-called ‘on-going operation’ ⁽¹⁾ he was dictating this to his own people. Many facts have already come out and this is another one which follows…

A few days ago, tens of families of the Mojahedin, while accepting the hardship of the situation in Iraq, got to the gates of Fort Ashraf and with political pressures and resistance and insistence, Rajavi opened the doors so that they could see their children. Rajavi asserts that he has popular support and that he is paying the price for the freedom of these people by putting ‘neshast-e dig’ and ‘qosl-e haftegi’ ⁽²⁾. In this instance Rajavi was faced with the families’ courageous actions which showed that not only among the ordinary people, but even among the families of the Mojahedin Rajavi lacks any credibility.

So, Rajavi decided to punish some of these families who, in any culture would have been considered as guests. Rajavi treated the families as he usually treats the dissident members who want to leave him.

First, as with dissident members, he tries kindness; hosting them with a banquet of sweets and fruit he tried to create an attractive atmosphere for the families and to convince them that their children are at the centre of democracy and freedom and well-being.

With the failure of this, he began to demand signatures, telling them that they have to sign what is being dictated to them, including that they are fully satisfied with the Mojahedin. Otherwise, they could not see their children. These are the same kind of signatures that they usually take from the people who want to leave. They have to sign to say that they are spies and agents, etc.

Rajavi’s hoodlums, who failed to succeed with hospitality and then did not succeed in getting signatures, gave up trying to fool these families and on the order of their leader nominated some of the families to be beaten up.

In the cycle of these events, one of the guests named Hossein Ghaffari, who was there to see and take away his wife’s brother and was suspected to be the head of this delegation of families, was beaten up by the MKO and then was given to the US forces as somebody who they have found as an agent from the Iranian regime. Mr Ghaffari, was handcuffed naked and was interrogated for eight hours by the US forces on the basis of the MKOs story. And at the end, he was pulled along the ground by a car driven by one of the MKO. This is not surprising as Rajavi had done this before; giving Mojahedin dissidents to the Iraqis to punish them in Abu Ghraib prison.

Rajavi’s hoodlums did not leave any family alone to meet their family members and everyone was accompanied by at least five of the Mojahedin’s intelligence agents. In answer to one of the mothers’ complaints (Mother Lotfi) they injured four of her fingers with a knife. And then they accused this mother of trying to perform an operation against the Mojahedin.

In another place, Mr Sha’abani, who wanted to release his brother from Rajavi’s forces, and this brother were beaten severely by Rajavi’s watchdogs.

…

According to Massoud Rajavi it is obvious that the families who have ‘worked against Rajavi’, and instead of supporting him have come to take their children away, deserved this treatment and in fact deserved more than this, so that this would be a lesson to others and for everyone to know that anybody’s will except that of the cult’s leader Rajavi is doomed to shot down and destroyed.

Finally, Nejat Association, while it condemns the anti-democratic and anti-human things that the MKO cult did to the families in Fort Ashraf, urges all humanitarian bodies and personalities worldwide to help these families to put pressure on Rajavi’s cult to allow them to see and free their loved ones who are prisoners of the cult, and who, in the meetings with their families used any possible means which arose to make signals. They all had the same message, that of asking for help to free them from Rajavi’s cult where they are being held against their will.

Nejat Association, on behalf of the families, is asking all international humanitarian societies, in particular the International Committee of the Red Cross, to arrange meetings for these families with their children in a secure and calm atmosphere without the presence of the agents of Rajavi’s cult.

Help us in this humanitarian work.

Nejat Association.

Thursday 24 July 2003

 Notes by Iran-Interlink: