In a hearing of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee held in October 2013 concerning Iran’s nuclear program, more than one or two dozen men and women dressed in yellow rain jackets were sitting on seats with wooden panels. Their presence had created a yellow environment in the midst of the black suits commonly worn by Washington politicians. It was not raining on that day. Those people were supporters of the exiled opposition group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq [MEK]. For many Iranians, they are known as the Munafiqin (the hypocrites). These people distribute all sorts of yellow things in their demonstrations, including: yellow hats, bulletins, flags, plastic potholders and above all, yellow rain jackets portraying pictures of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi – their leaders. These products have become like invitation cards in the ceremonies of the Mujahedin.
The first signs of this group’s formation dates back to 1965 when a small group of students from the middle class with revolutionary and religious backgrounds created an Islamic-Marxist ideology which led to the creation of the MEK.
Between the years 1973 and 1976, the Mujahedin assassinated six Americans in Iran: three military officers, three civilian contractors who were working in the large company “Rockwell International.”[1] In one report from the United States Department of State published in 1994,[2] it was written, “The Mujahedin, known in Tehran as the agents behind the attack, assumed responsibility for these killings in their own publications.”[3]
The Iranian people are one of the biggest groups of victims of this terrorist group. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, from the years 1358 through 1377 AH – that is to say, in the space of 19 years – about 15 terrorist operations were carried out by the Mujahedin with the aim of eliminating Iranian officials. This included the assassination of Dr. Beheshti – the head of the judiciary branch – and 72 other people. This was done by planting a bomb in the Islamic Revolution party headquarters (Tir 7, 1360 AH). Another was the assassination of Ali Rajai, the president at that time, on Shahrivar 8, 1360 AH. There was also the assassination of Prime Minister Muhammad Javad Bahonar on the same day. Later on, they also assassinated Brigadier-General Sayyad Shirazi on Farvardin 1, 1378 AH and many other Iranian officials. Defenseless, civilian people were targeted by them in other terrorist operations. More than 17,000 civilians and Iranian officials have been the victims of terrorist operations carried out by anti-Iranian groups, and 12,000 of them were martyred by the MEK headed by Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.
France was the first country Massoud Rajavi resided in after fleeing Iran in the summer of 1360 AH. In that country, he developed contacts with the intelligence and security heads of the Ba’athist regime of Iraq. These tight relations prepared the ground for the official cooperation between the Munafiqin and Saddam Hussein during the imposed war against Iran.
In 1986, Rajavi forged another alliance with Saddam. He went to Iraq and formed an army out of his 7,000 followers. Saddam provided them with heavy weaponry and land, including a military base in the desert which was known as “the Ashraf base.” This group joined the bloody war that Iraq’s dictator was waging against Iran and this provoked the Iranians’ hatred of them.
The only goal of this isolated group in the deserts of Iraq was to overthrow the Islamic Republic and to install Massoud and Maryam as the leaders of Iran.
In the meantime, the discriminatory and hypocritical behavior of this group became more pronounced. While Massoud and Maryam were announcing their marriage,[4] they ruled that their soldiers must get divorced or stay celibate. After the first Persian Gulf War, Saddam used the Mujahedin as a semi-military group in order to suppress denominational and tribal uprisings. This brought the displeasure of many Iraqis with that group. As the New York Times wrote, “During those invasions, Maryam Rajavi told her followers, ‘Crush the Kurds with your tanks, but save your bullets for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.’”[5]
Then, the Mujahedin began their attack on the Iranian government both inside and outside of Iran. One of the reports published by the United States Department of State reads, “In 1992, the Mujahedin launched attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries.”[6] Research on the relationship between terrorism and the Munafiqin in Western sources describes this group as being one of the main shareholders in the bank of terrorism. In a comprehensive research project conducted by Maryland University on terrorist attacks in different parts of the world between the years 1970 to 2010 AD, 49 terrorist attacks were recorded that were carried out by the Munafiqin. Out of these, 42 attacks were carried out in different cities in Iran, three attacks in Beirut, one in Madrid, one in Oslo, one in Washington and one in Hamburg. Following the US attack on Iraq in 2003 AD, in order to claim that Saddam had housed terrorists, the White House cited the presence of the Munafiqin as an example of this.[7]
In 1997, the Munafiqin were officially introduced as a terrorist group by the United States. Since then, the Munafiqin and their allies have spent millions of dollars to enhance their reputation, and they have created an influential lobby in the US Congress. The supporters of the Mujahedin use a covert network comprised of Iranian-American social organizations to circumvent anti-terrorist laws in order to find supporters in parts of Washington. It did not take long for them to turn the tables.
A November 2007 court ruling by the UK's Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission (POAC) ordered the British government to remove the People's Mujahedin of Iran - known to the U.S. government as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) - from its list of terrorist organizations. This decision was made along with a similar decision made by the European Court of First Instance (which is a level below the European Court of Justice).[8]
In 2009, the Prime Ministers from 27 countries embarked on removing the Munafiqin from the black list of terrorist organizations registered in the European Union.[9] This took place in a conference in Brussels and it was in stark contrast with their claim to fight terrorism. The interesting point is that France was the first country to announce its willingness to grant political asylum to the members of the Munafiqin from the Ashraf Base.[10] This announcement showed that the so-called center of freedom and human rights would forever embrace its terrorist children.
On September 28, 2012, Hilary Clinton, the former US Secretary of State, officially removed the Munafiqin group from the Department of State’s list of terrorist organizations. This took place at a time when the mysterious, occult behavior of the leaders of the Munafiqin and their conduct towards their members was a matter well known to the western press. They frequently mentioned the Munafiqin’s resort to inhumane methods, such as: eliminating the identity of their members, instilling their ideology into their members, forcing members to get divorced, separating children from their parents, preparing the ground for a cult of personality for the Rajavi couple, and bribing and threatening members as common phenomena in that organization.
Moreover, a large number of western journalists such as Scott Peterson[11] (the American journalist for the Christian Science Monitor), Scott Shane[12] (a journalist for the New York Times), Glenn Greenwald[13] (a well-known journalist and winner of the Guardian’s Pulitzer) and Joby Warrick[14] (a well-known journalist for the Washington Post) have written about the Munafiqin’s record of keeping its members in mental and social prisons, brain washing, forcing members into divorce, obliging members to be completely celibate and even cutting off their relations with friends and family, destroying their value system and ultimately, imposing their demands on members.
In the summer of 1395 AH, the Munafiqin moved from Camp Liberty in Iraq to a camp in Albania with the direct support of the US and the European Union. According to reports, the transfer of the Munafiqin to Albania took place with American planes. Elizabeth Trudeau, the US Secretary of State spokesperson at the time, acknowledged her government’s cooperation in transferring the members of the Munafiqin to Albania immediately after news broke out that they had left Iraq.[15]
After having moved to Albania with a green light from the US and the EU, the Munafiqin have resided on a land with an area of 34 hectares. It is an area that is extensively protected with security equipment, like their bases in Iraq. In the Munafiqin’s camp in Albania, extensive communication equipment and radars have been installed. These are equipment funded by Saudi dollars and supported by the US in order to wage a psychological war against the Iranian people.
Based on a report published by the Arabic network “Al Jazeera,” during the seditions staged in Dey 1396 AH, members of the Munafiqin in Albania had the duty of spreading lies about the situation in Iran by creating many false accounts in cyberspace in order to stir up more unrest. In that report, it was specified that a large volume of anti-Iranian material published through fake Twitter accounts in the midst of the seditions in Iran were not published from Tehran or from Washinton, not from Tel Aviv or even Riyadh, rather they were uploaded and published from Tirana, the Albanian capital, where the Munafiqin reside.[16]
Concerning the financial activities of the Munafiqin, the Independent wrote that since July 2017 the Munafiqin group has purchased another 140,000 square meters of land in Albania and that its leaders continue to buy land in Albania. The interesting point is that they pay their utility bills as well as their internet fees – which are heavy considering their large consumption – in cash and with new, unfolded dollar bills. In this way, they avoid going to the bank or currency exchangers in order to not leave a trace of their financial transactions.[17]
Their main leaders do not reside in Albania. Rather, they live in Paris. Despite the existence of reliable documents showing that they have played a part in assassinating thousands of Iranians, it has been many years that the French government has been supporting them directly. This may be seen by the fact that on a specific day every year, these notorious criminals hold a conference in a conference room situated in the suburbs of Paris. Many belligerent American and European figures, such as John Bolton and Rudi Giuliani, participate in this conference.[18]
Although, the Mujahedin’s supporters in the US have never been a major player in funding presidential campaigns, they have provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to influence political-electoral developments in the US. Even before the inclusion of the Mujahedin in the list of terrorist organizations, a prominent senator had interactions with them. In the 1990s, Robert Torricelli was an outspoken opponent of the Islamic Republic and an ardent supporter of the Munafiqin. He first worked as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives and later served as a New Jersey Senator, hoping that with his support, the Mujahedin would be able to deliver a fatal blow to the Islamic Republic – the United States’ enemy.[19]
Several former US politicians have spoken in the conferences held by the Mujahidin supporters. Some of them have received fairly generous sums of money (sometimes amounting to 40,000 dollars), and many of them have demanded that the Mujahidin be removed from the list of terrorist organizations. They have even gone as far as to tout that organization as a possible candidate to be “the democratic government of Iran in exile.” These figures include politicians such as Rudi Giuliani (the former mayor of New York City), Andy Card (the former head of George Bush’s assistants in the White House), Howard Dean (the former Governor of Vermont), and Patrick Kennedy (the former democratic Representative from Rhode Island[20]).
In a list published by the Guardian of a group of American legislators who have received gifts from the Munafiqin terrorists, the names of the most extreme anti-Iranian figures in the US Congress and the drafters of the harshest sanctions against Iran can be seen. For example, Dana Rohrabacher, a former member of the US House of Representatives, received tens of thousands of dollars from the Munafiqin cult[21] every year according to a research study published by the Guardian. He is the same representative that supported the DAESH attacks on the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran in the year 1396 AH. Rohrabacher also called for more support for denominational-tribal wars in Iran with the purpose of breaking up that country. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time; Bob Filner, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs; Ted Poe, the Representative from Texas; and Mike Rogers, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee were other legislators mentioned by the Guardian. A search of their names with the keyword “Iran” shows that they were drafters and supporters of anti-Iranian bills.[22]
General Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Louis Freeh, former FBI director; Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States; and Ed Rendell, former Governor of Pennsylvania, received sums of money exceeding 190,000 dollars. John Bolton, former National Security Advisor; Rudi Giuliani, an advisor to Donald Trump; and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, are other politicians who have been on the list of people receiving payments from the Munafiqin. However, their names were not mentioned by the Guardian. Nonetheless, other media sources reported their names later on.[23] In a new documentary that was recently broadcast, the news channel MSNBC pointed out payments of at least 180,000 dollars made to John Bolton and other indefinite sums of money paid to Giuliani, John McCain, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.[24]
The question is, “How do the Munafiqin terrorists obtain the financial resources to fund their activities?” Despite the support given to this organization by some political currents in the West, the source of this violent, occult organization’s finances has always been a mystery.
There have been certain speculations about the role of Saudi Arabian petrodollars in funding their activities. For example, the Arab news website “Al Bawaba” stated that three tons of gold ingots and four suitcases of Rolex watches were given to the Munafiqin by the Saudis.[25] One of the members of this cult recently said in an interview with MSNBC that he had personally transferred money and gold for the Munafiqin from Iraq to Saudi Arabia.[26] Up until today, the Saudi government has funded various terrorist groups in the region, including Al-Qaida, DAESH, Al-Nusra and other Takfiri groups.
The Saudi Arabian government’s policy to overtly support the Munafiqin has been said to be surprising by many political experts in the region, in particular after Turki bin Faisal, the former Director of the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service, participated in the Munafiqin’s conference in Paris on July 9, 2016. This move drew everyone’s attention to the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the Munafiqin.[27] It showed that the Riyadh rulers prefer working with illegal, violent, terrorist groups to pursuing diplomacy and negotiations with formally recognized governments.
[1] https://apnews.com/f8cd86c1a6de470781c8b5f37ef70f5f/Trump-Cabinet-pick-paid-by-'cult-like'-Iranian-exile-group?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
[2] http://iran.org/news/1994_10-State-Dept-MEK-report.htm
[3] "Widely credited in Tehran for these attacks at the time, the Mujahedin themselves claimed responsibility for these murders in their publications."
[4] https://www.nejatngo.org/fa/posts/25997
[5] ''Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.''
[6] https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2011/aug/23/us-terrorism-report-mek-and-jundallah
[7] https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect5.html
[8] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/a-roadmap-for-the-foreign-terrorist-organizations-list
[9] https://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLQ200287
[10] https://lobelog.com/is-france-moving-against-the-mek/
[11] Scott Peterson
@peterson__scott
[12] Scott Shane https://www.nytimes.com/by/scott-shane
[13] Glenn Greenwald
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/glenn-greenwald
[14] Joby Warrick
[15] https://www.usccar.org/2016/09/state-department-on-successful-completion-of-relocation-of-mek-members-from-iraq-to-europe/
[16] https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2018/09/faking-online-debate-iran-180915121527882.html
[17] "Albanian investigative journalist Gjergi Thanasi reported that the group paid $13m (£9.9m) to buy the first 200,000 square metres of the compound, has since bought another 140,000 square metres, and it continues to buy up property while racking up significant water, electricity, and internet bills.”
They pay in cash. They buy small things in shops or even in malls. They always pay in cash. They do not use bank cards. They love to not leave a footprint.
Gjergi Thanasi, Albanian investigative journalist, reported, “They pay for everything with huge wads of cash, and sometimes with piles of local currency that they purchase through street vendors rather than banks or exchange shops, but also with ‘crisp hundred-dollar bills,’ leaving no bank trail."
[18] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIyoIGuipSI
[19] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/mek-backtalk-iranian-group-214526
[20] https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/the-mek-s-man-inside-the-white-house-1242310723567
[21] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/21/iran-mek-group-removed-us-terrorism-list
[22] Ibid
[23] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/11/15/giuliani-was-paid-advocate-for-shady-iranian-dissident-group/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/heres-the-video-of-newt-gingrich-bowing-to-the-leader-of-an-iranian-terrorist-group/259313/
[24] https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/the-mek-s-man-inside-the-white-house-1242310723567
https://apnews.com/f8cd86c1a6de470781c8b5f37ef70f5f/Trump-Cabinet-pick-paid-by-'cult-like'-Iranian-exile-group?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
[25] https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/09/20/574701/Iran-MKO-Terror
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/09/19/574556/Iran-MKO-Saudi-Arabia
[26] https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/the-mek-s-man-inside-the-white-house-1242310723567
[27] https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2016/07/10/474442/Saudi-Arabia-MKO-Iran-Massoud-Rajavi
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