... A large number of families of Camp Ashraf residents gathered in front of the Camp, this morning, reported Nejat Society representative. Families of Ashraf prisoners chanted slogans to once more announce their call to visit their loved ones. Local and foreign reporters are present in there in order to broadcast the news of the region. As it was also reported 100 residents of Camp Ashraf are relocated in Camp liberty, a site near Baghdad international airport, today. Families are hopeful to see or at least get news of their children --after years of no news about them-- while they are transferred from Ashraf to Baghdad ...
A large number of families of Camp Ashraf residents gathered in front of the Camp, this morning, reported Nejat Society representative.
Families of Ashraf prisoners chanted slogans to once more announce their call to visit their loved ones.
Local and foreign reporters are present in there in order to broadcast the news of the region.
As it was also reported 100 residents of Camp Ashraf are relocated in Camp liberty, a site near Baghdad international airport, today.
Families are hopeful to see or at least get news of their children --after years of no news about them-- while they are transferred from Ashraf to Baghdad.
Ten escape from Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation - take refuge in police station north of Baquba
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... A security source in Diyala province said on Friday that 10 members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization of Iran (PMOI) had managed to escape from the camp and take refuge in a police station north of Baquba, indicating that the escape was due to their exposure to the "tyranny and injustice" of the leaders of the organization. The source said in an interview for Alsumaria News, "Ten members of the MEK of Iran based in Camp Ashraf or what is known currently as Camp New Iraq... (55 km north of Baquba), escaped today from the camp and took refuge in a police station close by" ...
A security source in Diyala province said on Friday that 10 members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization of Iran (PMOI) had managed to escape from the camp and take refuge in a police station north of Baquba, indicating that the escape was due to their exposure to the "tyranny and injustice" of the leaders of the organization.
The source said in an interview for Alsumaria News, "Ten members of the MEK of Iran based in Camp Ashraf or what is known currently as Camp New Iraq... (55 km north of Baquba), escaped today from the camp and took refuge in a police station close by".
The source, who preferred anonymity, said that "the reason for their escape is they were exposed to tyranny and injustice by the leaders of the organization," noting that "the fugitives demanded the central government transferred to the outside," without giving further details...
... During recent clashes with Iraqi forces, they made us get involved in clashes with Iraqis. They told that the Iraqi soldiers had come there to arrest us and hand us to Iran where we would be certainly tortured and executed. Therefore we thought that we had to fight with Iraqi forces at any cost even our death. Families’ presence in front of the Camp, created hope of a new life in our hearts and the fear of leaving the group and fear of Iraqi forces lowered in our heart. We were relatively assured that outside Ashraf there would be another life. The loudspeakers through which families called their children were our only hope in that prison ...
As it was previously reported, three residents of Camp Ashraf fled the camp on Friday December 2nd,2011 and joined families picketing in front of the Camp.
The following is the statement issued by the three to declare their separation from the MKO:
We, declare our separation from the terrorist cult of Mujahedin Khalq, noting that we were deceived and recruited by Massoud Rajavi and his agents who took us to camp Ashraf Iraq, under the pretext of giving us membership in an employment agency and sending us to Europe.
Once we found out what their real intention was, we tried to return but they threatened us to be handed to Iraqi Baath government that then would imprison us in Abu Quraib and from there we would be sent to Iran where we would allegedly be executed as the MKO members.
Thus, we were forced to spend the best part of our life in Camp Ashraf, imprisoned under daily psychological pressure. Self-criticism sessions and psychological torture were going on every day.
During recent clashes with Iraqi forces, they made us get involved in clashes with Iraqis. They told that the Iraqi soldiers had come there to arrest us and hand us to Iran where we would be certainly tortured and executed. Therefore we thought that we had to fight with Iraqi forces at any cost even our death.
Families’ presence in front of the Camp, created hope of a new life in our hearts and the fear of leaving the group and fear of Iraqi forces lowered in our heart. We were relatively assured that outside Ashraf there would be another life.
The loudspeakers through which families called their children were our only hope in that prison.
We hope that until the day the last resident is released, the presence of families and the sound of their loudspeakers not be ended.
Ultimately, we risked our lives and tried to release ourselves. We had worked on our plan for escape for several months.
We are thankful to the God that helped us escape the horrifying castle and join Iraqi forces.
During our presence in the MKO, we witnessed the atrocities the leaders committed against us and other members. This is our right to campaign against them in Iraqi judicial community as well as the international community for the years MKO leaders deprived us from our basic human rights that are respected by any dictator in any detainment.
Ali Qezel Qarshi entered the MKO in 1992
Sadeq Khavari entered the MKO in 2000
Mohammmad Khavari Golshirmiri entered the MKO in 2000
... they are standing beside the grave of their former torturer. Both men were sent to Abu Ghraib political prison by Massoud Rajavi after extensive imprisonment, isolation and torture inside the MEK’s own prisons failed to force them to submit to Rajavi. Rafi’ee Nejad frequently visited them even when they were in Abu Ghraib. They were released during the fall of Saddam in 2003. There were over 50 registered ex-MEK prisoners in Abu Ghraib at that time labelled as a group as ”Mojahedin Deposits”. Remembering the brutality of Rajavi’s torturers and prisons, both victims of Rajavi and Saddam prayed for forgiveness for their torturer ...
The MEK cemetery was previously inaccessible as it lay inside the former boundaries of Camp Ashraf. Following the Iraqi military operation to reclaim illegally held land from the MEK in April 2011, the cemetery is now open to view and to independent investigation.
Families and former MEK members arriving at the cemetery led by Mr Hassan Azizi a veteran former member. He spent years struggling to get himself and his children out. Still later his wife also managed to escape. The family now live in the Netherlands. Mr. Azizi was part of the European delegation recently visiting Iraq and the Camp.
This is a memorial to the MEK who died in the MEK’s Operation Pearl in Iraqi Kurdistan in which Rajavi took orders from Saddam to massacre Kurdish villagers. Maryam Rajavi famously ordered her forces to run over the victims with their tanks so as not to waste bullets unnecessarily. The MEK, acting as Saddam’s Private Army, were used to viciously quell the Kurdish uprisings in the north.
In the south in 1991 the MEK were also used to suppress Shiite uprisings. This picture is a memorial to three of the top MEK commanders killed by the people of Karbala during the Shiite uprising when they took over Saddam’s Secret services HQ in the province. The bodies were never recovered. The three central graves are flanked by the graves of Neda Hassani and Sediqeh Mojaveri who died as a result of self-immolation ordered by Maryam Rajavi to protest her arrest by French anti-terrorism police at Auvers-sur-Oise in 2003.
Before the Iraqis gained control of the cemetery Rajavi had ordered that the pictures of the graves in the whole graveyard be mixed up so they do not correspond to the names on the graves. Perhaps only Rajavi can explain his motive for such a bizarre act.
The Iraqis have reported however that some of the graves have been found to contain more bodies than the single named person indicated on the headstones. Ex members identified many graves of people who have been killed in the hands of the leaders of the organisation.
Among the graves they also found the grave of Nader Rafi’ee Nejad
The grave of Nader Rafi’ee Nejad
Nader Rafi'ee Nejad acted as a torturer for the Mojahedin-e Khalq leader Massoud Rajavi. He was a veteran member of the MEK who, along with Reza Khaksar (later killed during an armed clash in 1981) and Hassan Mohassel (a former police officer and later a guard in the MEK’s prisons in Iraq), served with the Revolutionary Court in Evin prison after the Iranian revolution.
Rafi’ee Nejad interrogated and tortured former officials of the ousted regime of Shah. Due to the MEK's pursuit of its own radical policies after 1980, Rafi'ee Nejad, Mohassel and Khaksar were later dismissed from the Revolutionary Court by the government of the Islamic Republic at that time.
After the armed struggle began in 1981, Rafi'ee Nejad fled to Europe and was appointed to the MEK’s foreign relations department. In 1985, he was introduced as a leading member and in 1991 as deputy to an executive board in the MEK. In 1990, he shed his ‘diplomatic’ suit and donned the uniform for jailors of the MEK in Iraq.
In that year, he attended a course with Iraq's intelligence and security service to undergo classic training by Iraqi interrogators.
He was involved in torturing Mohammed Hussein Sobhani and also the killing of Parviz Ahmadi who died under torture.
In recent years after the fall of Saddam, Nader Rafi’ee Nejad frequently appeared on the clandestine satellite TV station of the organisation pretending to be a legal expert, promoting the punishment of the ex-members wherever they could be found. He always referred to the cult leader’s fatwa that ‘the people who have managed to run away from the cult have to be killed…’
Two of the victims who have been directly tortured by Nader Rafi’ee Nejad are Mohammad Hussein Sobhani and Ali Ghashghavi. In the picture above, they are standing beside the grave of their former torturer. Both men were sent to Abu Ghraib political prison by Massoud Rajavi after extensive imprisonment, isolation and torture inside the MEK’s own prisons failed to force them to submit to Rajavi. Rafi’ee Nejad frequently visited them even when they were in Abu Ghraib. They were released during the fall of Saddam in 2003. There were over 50 registered ex-MEK prisoners in Abu Ghraib at that time labelled as a group as ”Mojahedin Deposits”.
Remembering the brutality of Rajavi’s torturers and prisons, both victims of Rajavi and Saddam prayed for forgiveness for their torturer.
Families representing Camp Ashraf residents want fast and peaceful resolution
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... While nobody expected the MEK leaders to welcome the families with open arms, and nobody expected the MEK's callous and cynical owners to care for the individual welfare of their gladiators and slaves, it is shocking that even internationally renowned human rights organisations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UNHRC have not uttered a word about this situation. These protectors of human rights may as well have been paid by the Rajavis for their spurious appeals to the Iraqis to 'protect the human rights' the camp's residents. Not one single word of criticism has been said against the Rajavi's blatant and cruel denials of these families' just demands ...
Anne Singleton, Middle East Strategy Consultants, December 22 2011 http://mesconsult.com
Anne Singleton is the author of the books "Saddam's Private Army" and "Camp Ashraf" http://camp-ashraf.com
The most unhelpful aspect of the negotiations to close Camp Ashraf and remove the residents from Iraq is that the Western agents continue to act on the myth that the people inside the camp are somehow a single, discrete entity with no connection to the outside world and no say in their own treatment. Thus it is reported without context, analysis or explanation that the Mojahedin-e Khalq will need to be transferred to a separate facility - specifically the former U.S. military base Camp Liberty. Once there they will need to be interviewed by the UNHCR for decisions to be made on their refugee status, with UNAMI overseeing Iraqi conduct at the new camp. And out of this process their futures will be determined.
But even this, 'the desired outcome', is being promoted without the actual cooperation of the MEK leader. This proposed mass movement of the camp's residents can only give rise to a pseudo angst-ridden hand-wringing which at one time fears mass suicide, at another their mass deportation to Iran where they will be tortured and executed, it fears they are labelled as terrorists and will not be 'allowed' to come to the West, and then fears that they will come to the West and pose a security threat. Underpinning the whole Washington-led negotiation process is the basic principle 'how do we conserve the MEK'.
Behind the naive and unhelpful scenario of convincing Massoud Rajavi to agree the mass relocation of his captives to an open camp over which he has no control lies a blatant violation of fundamental human rights which is taking place before everybody's eyes but which nobody apparently wants to acknowledge. This is because focusing on this situation would remove any legitimacy from the negotiations. It would expose the reality behind the myth; Massoud Rajavi is nobody's representative. It would mean acknowledging that Rajavi has falsely imprisoned over three thousand individuals and is daily violating their basic human rights and it would mean moving forward on that basis.
There are currently around 400 families at the gates of the camp. They have come determined to rescue their loved ones and protect them from harm. These are the true representatives of their captured relatives in the camp. Why do they still have no voice? Why do international agencies ignore them and pretend they have no stake in the negotiations and outcome.
Over the past eight years family after family has tried to assert their basic right - to meet with their closest relatives in a secure and private atmosphere outside the control of the MEK. The demand pre-dates the decision to close Camp Ashraf, and will certainly post-date any moves at the camp. Indeed, the biggest scandal is that this demand has nothing to do with the Iraqi determination to close the camp before the end of 2011, but it is still being ignored.
While nobody expected the MEK leaders to welcome the families with open arms, and nobody expected the MEK's callous and cynical owners to care for the individual welfare of their gladiators and slaves, it is shocking that even internationally renowned human rights organisations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UNHRC have not uttered a word about this situation. These protectors of human rights may as well have been paid by the Rajavis for their spurious appeals to the Iraqis to 'protect the human rights' the camp's residents. Not one single word of criticism has been said against the Rajavi's blatant and cruel denials of these families' just demands. Not one word of criticism has been levelled against the Rajavis' daily abuse of human rights inside the camp in spite of the on-going testimonies of both past and recent escapees.
It is the urgent obligation of every humanitarian agency involved to prefix the mythical negotiations with the unequivocal demand that Rajavi immediately and peacefully open the gate of Camp Ashraf and allow the people inside to have contact with their families. There can be no legal or moral obstacle or objection to such a course of action.
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A security source in Diyala province said on Friday that 10 members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization of Iran (PMOI) had managed to escape from the camp and take refuge in a police station north of Baquba, indicating that the escape was due to their exposure to the "tyranny and injustice" of the leaders of the organization. 
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