Mr Martin Kobler
Special Representative of the UN General Secretary for Iraq and
Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI),
Around three months ago, immediately after walking out of Camp Liberty, I met you and Mr. Nicola, head of the UNAMI human rights delegation in Baghdad. Two months ago I wrote my first letter to you.
In our meeting I described the suppression and repression and the cultic behavior and relationships inside Ashraf and Liberty, and how the members are kept unaware about the outside world and about their families. I defined how the followers of the Rajavi cult are forced to divorce their spouses and abandon their children and suppress all feelings but those towards the leadership. I emphasized that all means of contact and communication with the outside world including internet, mobile phone, telephone, radio, television, newspaper, and etc. are forbidden. Even reading books is considered out of the question by the leaders of the MKO. Both in our meeting and in my first letter I declared that the cult has killed all normal human feelings inside the mind and soul of the members. Any kind of contact with the outside world, particularly with family and friends is forbidden. One must not even think about family relations inside the cult and any such thoughts must be reported as ‘mal thinking’.
I informed you that even inside Camp Ashraf they prevented me from visiting my daughter who is also a member of the organization and residing in the same camp. In previous years we were able to meet once a year on the Persian New Year for about one or two hours, a meeting which was under the total supervision of the superiors. But this year they announced there would be no family visits inside the camp. It is almost one and a half years that I have not seen my daughter Zeinab.
When I was being transferred to Camp Liberty in the fourth group, I was told that my daughter would be sent soon after me. But I learned from the Iraqi officials that she is still in Camp Ashraf. In fact they have kept my daughter as a hostage to make me keep quiet. They also do not wish my daughter to learn that I have left the organization.
My daughter is registered on the list of UNHCR asylum seekers, the number is 350 and my registration number is 920. We were both granted French travel documents in 1988 following our arrival in France in 1986. My daughter called her younger sister in Iran at the request of the organization around 6 years ago and never called again.
I am worried about her since no one, even in a prison, would reject family contacts. These people are deprived of any sort of outside communication. I am sure that there is a lot of pressure on my daughter and that they will not let her go to Camp Liberty and I should say that her life is really in danger.
Therefore I urge you to put pressure on the officials of the MKO in Camp Ashraf and persuade them to allow me and my younger daughter to meet with my 34 year old daughter Zeinab.
Dear Sir,
The leader of the MKO has turned the organization into a destructive mind control cult and has no aim but saving himself by sacrificing the innocent people who are his captives in Ashraf and in Liberty. He intends to provoke clashes with the Iraqi government and forces and this is the reason behind creating obstacles in the process of transition and creating unreasonable conditions. He aims to buy time and is waiting for some delusional political conditions in his favor which will enable him to stay in Iraq. This is why he does not wish to leave Ashraf and give it away. He knows full well that by leaving Ashraf the pressure on his cult will be enormous and this could result in his cult being dissolved. Rajavi has even rejected Iraq’s humane proposal of moving the residents of Ashraf into hotels, a proposal which you backed. This exposed the real aim of the leaders of the cult; that all they are intending is to keep the cultic relationship and save the cult intact. The MKO in its statement called Iraq’s proposal gruesome and a plot against the organization and your dirty souvenir from Tehran. The MKO leaders have insulted you on many occasions in its propaganda since you did not accept all their unjust demands. Everyone knows about your humanitarian efforts to solve the problem and praise your exertions but Rajavi is not happy with the problem being solved peacefully and has asked for a UN representative appointed for Ashraf. They are playing the same game they played against Mr Butler, the former representative of the USA in the negotiations with the MKO to move the residents of Ashraf elsewhere. When Mr Butler finally announced that the leaders of the MKO do not intend to solve the problem peacefully they denounced him, but finally they had to accept leaving Ashraf.
All conditions announced by the MKO would be achieved by transferring the residents to hotels except conditions such as creating a green environment and manual work which are intended only to create conditions to remain in Iraq and not be transferred to a third country. They became so angered by this proposal from the Iraqi government that they wanted to leave the meeting. This clearly shows that moving into a hotel means that the hostages and the victims would have a chance to free themselves from this inhuman cult. This rejection shows how the leaders of the cult are afraid of their Stalinist organization being dismantled. The reason is that in a hotel they would not be able to force the members to perform hard labor and they would not be able to keep the members inside the boundaries of control and systematically brainwash them. In this case they would not be able to use the members as human shields to protect the leaders.
The two conditions that the MKO have put forward are having permission to sell their belongings and freedom of movement. Firstly I should say that the leader of the MKO has no rights over these so-called belongings since they are the property of the people and the government of Iraq. When I was the senior interpreter for Rajavi in the Foreign Relations Department (the part which deals with the affairs with Iraq both before and after the fall of Saddam Hussein), since the year 2000 I witnessed that at least 3 million barrels of oil a day was received from the Iraqi ministry of oil (equivalent to 90 million dollars according to the price of oil in those days), in line with the UN policy of oil for food and medicine. They used to sell this oil on the international market and have money for their necessities. In this way they were able to buy cars and other goods. Secondly I must emphasize that they want freedom of movement only for their top officials. The ordinary members have always been deprived of free movement, even inside the camps, since they are afraid they might escape. In the past both in Ashraf and in Liberty the leaders of the cult have prevented the members from moving freely even within the camps, let alone letting them leave the camps. All sorts of posts and checkpoints have been established to limit the movement of ordinary members. They did not even allow those sick and injured people about whom they had doubts about their loyalty to go outside the camp for further medical treatment. Only recently they allowed some of those with severe illness out of the camp, but only after it was too late and they only dismissed them in order to let them die outside the camp and evade the consequences. It is hypocrisy for the leaders to complain about the conditions of Camp Liberty and compare it with a prison when they have kept the members captive for more than 30 years. The one who has turned Ashraf, and now Liberty, into a prison is Massoud Rajavi. A unique prison with no right of access to their families, no letters, no telephone, no email, and of course no meetings. In any prison in any place in the world, even in the harshest dictatorships, prisoners have the right to contact their families and even have the right to go on leave to visit them. Recently the UN has issued a statement and declared that the residents of Camp Liberty have no access to the outside world and called for freedom of contact with their families.
To clarify this matter further and in order to reveal Rajavi’s aim behind such demands, I propose that the government of Iraq declares its readiness to allow MKO members to go for pilgrimage to the holy cities of Kerbela and Najaf in groups. In this case the leaders of the MKO would certainly reject the offer and as in previous cases would call it a conspiracy to destroy the “Iranian Resistance!” which means their only concern is the freedom of the captive residents and that they might escape. It would be a nightmare for Rajavi if the families would also go with them on this pilgrimage. According to the atmosphere I was witnessed inside the organization, the vast majority of the members, particularly the veterans, would leave the cult provided they find a suitable moment. I can give you the names and details of many of my colleagues inside both Ashraf and Liberty who are under severe pressure and they really wish to leave and I have informed Mr Nichola the head of the UN human rights monitoring group about them.
The leaders of the MKO prevent the members from even thinking about going to a third country and force them to give reports if they have such so-called evil thoughts and to be ready to be denounced and humiliated and be accused of betraying the struggle. Maryam Rajavi declared in her last statement in March before the move to Liberty that we must turn Liberty the most beautiful city in the world and make it just like Ashraf. Abbas Davari in a meeting inside the Americans’ church in Liberty said that ‘they say this is a transit and interim camp, I say the whole world is temporary and it is seventy years that I am in transit. We will stay here to the end of our lives’. Massoumeh Malek-Mohammadi also said in another meeting that this is not a transit camp, but another Ashraf for us. Massoud Rajavi in a call-conference for our group (the forth one) before leaving Ashraf said that ‘we wish to have two Ashraf garrisons and you will see how the Iranian regime will condemn Maleki because he was meant to get rid of us and now we have two bases’. This was followed by the crowd cheering.
If you see the MKO propaganda in Europe and in America and follow their lobbying activities you will notice that their aim is to remain in Iraq and they have no intention of leaving Iraq for another country. You rightly asked everyone to be active toward the MKO to force the leaders to cooperate with the UN to move the residents of Liberty to another country.
As far as I have been in touch with the ex-members, all are eager for a peaceful solution for the MKO in order to be moved to a safer place. They must have the right to be informed about the outside world and choose their own destiny. The excuses Rajavi invents to keep them inside Iraq for his evil purposes should be condemned.
Dear Mr Kobler
I fully back your efforts for a peaceful solution to the dilemma of the MKO in Iraq and I urge you not to be influenced by the MKO lobby which is active in the western countries and be firm in demanding the MKO leaders to allow the captives to be free. The best thing to do is to permit the families to stay nearby Camp Liberty and provide facilities for them to meet their beloved ones and negate the negative atmosphere created against the families by the MKO and stop the brainwashing of members and creating phobia inside their minds against the outside world and ensure they have full and free access to telephone and internet and radio and television and publications.
I sincerely thank you and wish you every success in your good work.
Ali Hussien-Nezhad
Baghdad