"Join Sahar Family Foundation in Iraq"

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SFF, Baghdad, February 07, 2010

Translated by Iran Interlink

New regulation of “no questions” forced inside the Mojahedin Khalq (Ashraf) camp in Iraq

Following the report of December 24, 2009 entitled “New wave of dissatisfaction and disarray in Camp Ashraf”, in which information from within camp Ashraf was given to the families of the victims of the Rajavi cult, we would like to announce that a significant and growing number of the forces inside Ashraf Garrison are now dissatisfied. They have serious doubts and questions about the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) and its leadership. They do not have complete trust in the organization anymore. This has resulted in the creation of a widening gap between the leadership and the body of the organization inside the camp. The growing unrest can be seen from the rapidly growing number of slogans being written clandestinely on the walls in public places inside the camp against the Mojahedin Organization and its leadership.

Members now ask questions about their doubts over the past years of practices of the Mojahedin organization and its leadership. The unlimited questions cover many aspects of the past practices which of course are all left unanswered and no commander is ready to even tackle any of them.

This has resulted in many members effectively leaving the organization, but the Leaders and the commanders do not allow them get out of the camp and have in fact imprisoned them inside the camp. The organization of course has a history of refusing its members to even leave the camp for a few hours in order to meet and visit their families.

Rajavi has recently been trying to calm the members by diverting their attention with a series of messages and propaganda tapes. The messages clearly forbid any questioning in any field by any member. Alongside this, members are now forced to do hard physical labor including agricultural, production and services for unlimited hours. This is believed to be affecting the mental judgment of the members as the creation of exhausting fatigue renders them unable to think about their problems and questions. According to reports coming out of the camp this practice of exhaustion is even more useful in the case of the known members who have been identified as disaffected.

Sahar Family Foundation in Baghdad is urging the international community, human rights organizations as well as the authorities in the Iraqi Government and Western governments to look at the situation of Ashraf Garrison and stop the dangers posed by the leaders of the group against the people residing there. Sahar Family Foundation is announcing as it has always announced before its willingness to help and cooperate with Iraqi and International bodies in this humanitarian mission.

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Sahar Family Foundation,

Baghdad, December 19, 2009

Translated by Iran Interlink

New wave of dissatisfaction and disarray in Camp Ashraf

According to credible reports received by SFF from inside Camp Ashraf (where over 3500 victims of Mojahedin Khalq terrorist cult are kept as bargaining chips by the leader Massoud Rajavi), after the arrest and the subsequent release of 36 of the members by the Iraqi security forces last summer, Massoud Rajavi and his deputy Mojgan Parsai have been forcing everyone to attend brainwashing meetings with the aim of getting some control over the forces there. According to the news now coming out, these new sessions have not been effective any more and the unrest and demonstrations are increasing rapidly.

In some instances, the forces of Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO) inside sections 13 and 15 of this camp have been distributing written leaflets entitled “death to Rajavi” and “Rajavi lies”.

The leaders of the Rajavi cult has reacted with panic and have confiscated all computers, printers, copy machines etc from these sections.

News suggests that given an alternative place to go, 70 to 80 percent of the stranded people will leave the camp and distance themselves from Rajavi. The leaders of the cult are desperately trying to keep the people isolated and away from any outside contact in a bid to stop the news coming out.

Sahar Family Foundation warns about yet another attempt by the leaders of the MKO to divert attention by creating yet another massacre similar to that which they created last summer.

Sahar Family Foundation asks all relevant Iraqi and international bodies, in particular those in a position of influence in western countries, to intervene to stop yet another disaster committed against the people who are trapped by the MKO leaders in this camp, by opening the doors and letting them have free access to the outside world.

We will be giving more news about this as soon as possible.

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - a précis of parts 27-28

Human shield in defense of Ashraf

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

October 12, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, if you will, let’s have a discussion on the issue of human shield and mass suicides and what necessitated its application. What are the parameters that influence the operations and to what degree and under what circumstances they extend?

 
Batul Soltani: At the threshold of the US invasion against Iraq and when threats were nearing the action, Rajavi was sensitive on two things; defending Ashraf against external threats including closing the camp and expulsion from Iraq and second, adopting an appropriate means to defend Ashraf and resist. He specifically reiterated that Ashraf had to be defended tooth and nail. But the premise developed into more objective form of defense when Saddam collapsed and the suggestion of human shield turned to be a serious option on the agenda of Rajavi. Of course, at the time the organization was busy preparing passports for high ranking members including the members of the Leadership Council to relocate when the right time came.

 
The option was first brought to attention in a session where Massoud Rajavi addressed the audience through a satellite broadcasted videoconference. Of the subjects he focused on were Ashraf and Auvers, stating that Auvers and Maryam were believed to be the brain of the organization while Camp Ashraf was the beating heart of the resistance against Iran. For sure the brain kept working until the heart beat. Ashraf was the heart that pumped the blood to brain and had to be protected by any means; the two were interconnected and one failed to operate without the other. It was what he talked about from a theoretical point of view.

Following the incidents of the June 17, it was broached that the members of the Leadership Council had to be prepared to protect Ashraf. It was the first time the human shield tactic was implicitly touched on in general. In one of his messages to Mozhgan (Parsai) Rajavi recapitulated that we would stay, die and bury here in Ashraf but never move. It was a question of resisting or dying if the Iraqis decided to repatriate members to Iran or evict from Ashraf to another location. Of course, repatriation to Iran was out of question because of the internationally guaranteed IDs issued for the members under the article four of the Geneva Convention. To tell the truth, it was not at all important for the organization to make any attempt for the safety of the members; all it cared about was survival of the organization and preserving Camp Ashraf and protect it against external threats. Then, the focal point was to think of means to accomplish the end.

 
The human shield was one of the opted options; mass suicides could effectively frustrate any effort that aimed at dismantling the integrity of Ashraf. It included any other threat like forced entry of American or coalition forces to temporarily close or deactivate the camp. Our first choice to resist against intruders had to be using non-firing weapons; needless to say that the organization actually made no resistance against the American forces and succeeded to take the control and hegemony of the camp in its own hands.

 
However, the human shield tactic was temporally removed from the agenda since Ashraf continued to be under the organization’s control and there was no need to make use of the ploy. As Rajavi stated, he preferred the ‘arms carriers’, meaning the disarmed members, to the arms themselves; an incorporated armless army could be much functional and appropriate than the arms. The question of suicide operations and human shield were all directed at safeguarding the entity of the organization and its hierarchical order; it was the red line that could not be crossed and all members had to preserve. It was the policy adopted until 2006 when I left the organization. The deployment of the American forces at Ashraf made no change in the organizational structure and it took the liberty of acting according to its ironbound disciplinary. The regular commute of individuals into Ashraf followed its routine and they brought anybody into the camp under the cover of the visiting families and they were even present when American forces inspected visitors at the check points.

There is a statement issued by the National Council of Resistance that specifically warns against the outbreak of what the organization refers to as human tragedy in the case of any possible attack against the camp by the IR forces or missile attack. It is what the organization expresses for the outsiders but its real definition for the insiders is the use of human shield to thwart any threat of eviction or expulsion enforced by the Iraqi government. The statement explicitly clarifies the responsibility of members in defense of Ashraf; any member has to become a human shield to impede disintegration of Mojahedin’s main bastion and heart. I remember a time when there came the news of Badr’s 9th army and groups of local Shi’its nearing the gates of Ashraf. The organization announced full alert and all the members of the Leadership Council began preparations for mass suicide. Some brought arms and cyanides were checked and distributed. So serious were they in carrying out their mission that two members of the council, Marzieh Ali-Ahmadi and Darz Beigi, committed suicide when in their returning to camp they got an impression of being challenged.

SFF: What were the more highlighted factors about mass suicides, the manners, conditions or their reflection in the media?

 
BS: They were much sensitive to record the scenes of the immolations for immediate and widespread media coverage. In fact, the priority was having the control of media and resources in hands. To air first hand reports, the organization had positioned equips of photography in the vicinity of the scenes of operations.

SFF: How the suicides were planned to be launched and what conditions caused their materialization?

 
BS: the suicides had to be carried out first individually and one by one. In the next stage, if threatening forces behind the gates of Ashraf were resolute to break into the camp, the members had the order of committing suicides in groups. In the case of a widespread military intrusion that could lead to the fall of camp, all the members were to commit a mass suicide. The Leadership Council had clearly delineated anything to counter threats against the heart of the organization and to coerce a line of human shield before Ashraf.

 
To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 26

Neda had been tutored from the childhood

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

October 09, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, you know better that the organization had highly invested on Neda who was hardly of any weight and importance within and without the organization until she was burned to death, an anonymous girl who had suddenly become the focal attention of the media in a week. I believe she achieved preeminence in public and it can be said that she had great impact on the whole situation. Of course, that was exactly what the organization expected. As Neda’s case is sensitive, let’s talk about her and her life and struggle background and I will pose further question if necessary.
Batul Soltani: You are right. Neda was not a preeminent among the members before her immolation. It was possible that in the higher echelons they had given her some attention but nothing amongst the rank and file. Her popularity is considered to be for a variety of reasons especially her age. To talk of my acquaintance with her, we were once on the same team-work in Camp Ashraf before the US invasion of Iraq and when Maryam (Rajavi) was still in Ashraf. However, Neda left for the Europe simultaneous with Maryam’s relocation to France. Of course, Neda had been raised and living in Europe and came to Ashraf after she was graduated.

SFF: Pardon me, Ms. Soltani, I prefer to pose questions on the spot. Was Neda an active member of the organization abroad?

BS: Not from the very beginning. The organization first worked on Neda’s family and they became sympathizers through participation in rallies and protest meetings. Gradually, the organization succeeded to recruit Neda and her brother to transfer them to Ashraf. The family, however, remained just sympathizers. You know, it is one of the approaches through which the organization recruits members. There are countless instances of the families that ceased their support for the organization while their children are still enthusiastic cadres who gainsay their own families. There are also instances of the parents detached from the organization while their children are active members or vice-versa; a real tragedy that has been going on all these years within the organization.

SFF: There is a photo of Neda in her seven or eight busy fundraising for the organization. Have you seen the photo?

BS: Yes, I have seen. The very same year Neda set herself on fire; it was one of the many photos they publicized in a biography of her. It is an indication of the organization’s impact on her family to have convinced them to let their daughter to engage in fundraising activities because of her low age. So she was somehow a sympathizer from the childhood. She was naive and emotionally sensitive and could be easily impressed. I think such photos talk enough to condemn the organization of abusing the sympathizer’s children.

SFF: Were Neda’s family political refugees?

BS: I do not know. But it was typical of the organization to establish contacts particularly with the political refugees since a cause of sympathy could easily convince them to cooperate with the organization especially when the families were on the fence or were facing problems. Because of its influence abroad, the organization could attract some of these families under its umbrella to exploit them for its political aims. Noteworthy, many of these families that had been granted political asylum through mediation of the organization faced troubles after they announced their detachment.

SFF: Was Neda born in Europe?

BS: I do not know, but I know she was raised in abroad.

SFF: What about her education?

BS: I have no exact information but I have seen a videotaped celebration of her graduation as well as her photos.

SFF: I think there is something ambiguous about her academic education because of her age. How old was she when she committed suicide?

BS: I think she was twenty-one.

SFF: Naturally, she could not have possibly been a university graduate. Beside her age, she was on a continuous process of moving and relocation.

BS: I may have seen a videotaped party of her becoming a high school graduate. So she must have been nineteen when she came to Ashraf. (Here Ms. Soltany pressed some keys on the laptop at her hands to make sure) Yes, it is here, she was nineteen. However, she was in Ashraf for a year and then left for the Europe accompanying Maryam; she came in 2001 and left in 2002.

SFF: How did she behave in Ashraf?

BS: She was a kind of friendly, I mean, she was warm and intimate and very active.

SFF: What organizational rank did she carry?

BS: She was a K2, the lowest organizational rank. But she caught their attention because of her active potentiality and they were satisfied with her activeness. At the time, they hardly sent anybody abroad and they were sensitive to select one if one had to be sent to Europe. But they selected Neda to send abroad and she was one of the few who accompanied Maryam.

SFF: Did not it raise question when they decided to send someone in her eighteens abroad especially after she had just arrived at Ashraf?

BS: She was too close to organizational standards and was well melted in the relations. These parameters were influentially decisive.

SFF: How is it possible that a young, europeanized girl who had just detached from a common, bourgeoisie world to join a remote camp and whose only distinctiveness was to have been recruited from a sympathizer family could so fast become the main focus of the organization’s attention. Could she in a one-year span reach a practically ideological maturity?

BS: You know, a great drawback that disputed sending members abroad was a risk of sticking to the tastes of the bourgeoisie life there. In contrast to what you think, the age and struggle background were not the fixed canons to pick a member for a mission abroad. There were members with a forty-year record of struggle who the organization never consented to send abroad because they could be easily enticed by the threats of the bourgeoisie life. Nasrin Asadi, for example, was a real expert in accounting who had long lived in abroad. Then, she could be a suitable choice to be sent abroad since she was well acquainted with the social atmosphere there to play an influential role but they opposed her dispatch. Even I, who had been already sent to England for some time to receive computer trainings, had failed to win their trust since there was a possibility of making contacts with my family and children. In general, they never selected exhausted, questionable members to dispatch to abroad where they could be probably magnetized by the bourgeoisie life. It was of great importance for the organization to learn that the selected members had truly despised the bourgeoisie life and abhorred returning to it in the same way that they loathed the imperialism and the regime.

SFF: How is it logically acceptable that a girl in Neda’s age had reached a point to despise such a life? Of course by logic I mean the very logic that rules within the organization. Possibly that is because the organization had worked on Neda from her childhood when values deeply form in man. It can be said that Neda received her ideological trainings from the very childhood which precisely differentiated her with the adults who received their trainings in their young and mid-ages. Besides, Neda voluntarily came to Ashraf while the organization insisted her stay in Europe. She had reiterated many times that she preferred a militia life to political activities and she was absolutely opposed to her transfer to Europe and even cried and begged to stay in Ashraf while others like Laleh Tariqi and Zelal Habibi who had been picked to be sent abroad submitted to orders with pocketed pleasure. I want to know how Neda could overcome the threats of being melted in bourgeoisie life while the more experienced, old members had failed.

BS: Neda was selected for abroad because she felt no attraction for the bourgeoisie life. There was no doubt and the organization had been convinced. She had no craving to return to the world she had divorced. As a rule, the organization dispatched recruits to Ashraf to caulk their bourgeoisie appeals and to obviate threats of returning to it. Talking about Neda, it is different. She was young and standing at the beginning of a long path full of costs and threats and she lacked the organizational maturity to understand these facts in a theoretic, political and ideological framework. Her sympathy for the organization was the result of her childhood enthusiast and the information the organization had instilled into her in a one way relation. Above all, she was so young to face any challenge and adversary.

She was different with those who had been tied in with the organization at least from its post-revolution phase and had long been witnessing repeated losses and Rajavi’s promises that never came true. They had surmounted a tortuous path that had raised further doubts in each step; they had been broken many times but remodeled through Rajavi’s justifications and promises. They know how Rajavi dealt with the dissidents and they were well aware of the costs they had to pay to defect; they have long been engaged in a never-ceasing battle with the past and future and the organization has to devise approaches to monitor them and to discover what passes in their mind. How busy is the young mind of Neda to know anything of these wrestling?

Unlike Neda, these members have lost a precious life with no hope to refurbish. At least they try to take advantage of any possible opportunity to rebuild the remaining days of an unsecure future, let them call it threats of reunion with the bourgeoisie life or anything, for them it is closeness to freedom. They have long been filled with promises but nothing has ever changed. That is the reason why the young Neda is selected while the old veterans are kept behind the closed doors.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 25

Defining an organizational jargon

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

October 07, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, one of the intriguing subjects to talk about is the organization’s use of an internal jargon on which one can collect a book. You have repeatedly used such jargons in the course of you interviews and that may be because you have failed to find equivalents for them or you are used to using them. One of these jargons is the term ‘pardakhtgar’. If you please, start by explaining about this jargon.

Batul Soltani: Frankly speaking, you are right and one can compile a terminology of jargons used in the organization’s internal relations. More interesting is when you listen to an inter-organizational debate and for sure you need a jargon expert to interpret so you may understand what they mean. To talk about the stated jargon of ‘pardakhtgar’, the organization always insisted that in contrast to rumors outside that the members displayed no sign of emotion towards their children, families and relatives and denounced them just as heartless people devoid of love and amity would, we do value emotions and are sentimental beyond ordinary people. To prove, the organization gave examples to show that much of the affection and friendliness dominating the society are conditional, superficial and shows of formality; a trademark only to secure interests. It reasoned that as soon as people felt their interests were threatened, all love and friendly passions would vanish and brothers tried to cheat and tear each other to protect their interests.

It holds the persuasion that unlike the world outside, a member of Mojahedin has established a relation of ‘pardakhtgar’ with the family and associates. To have a better understanding of the term, they would say a member of Mojahedin establishes his relations with his family and associates according to the prevalent social norms but he never engages in an interest-rated relation to turn his back on them for personal interests. A member of Mojahedin, they would say, is a clear-sighted revolutionary highly appreciating feelings and sentiments and who intends to purge them of the filth of caste and exploitation. It is only possible through cleansing the society and people’s living milieu, or as they would say, to purify the oxygen they intake. In a purged society, motivations transcended worldly interests and feeling were no more means to trick and hoax the intimates and people. In that case, no class system and personal interest could possibly blur the feelings with illusions of materialism and unconditional and true love would find its real value with no relative bond to define it.

Then, they raised the question that the most appreciated love and affection was the unconditional kind the organization was after and it was impossible to achieve unless the society could be purged. As the revolutionary elements undertaking the responsibility to implement the cause, Mojahedin saw no other way but to temporary sacrifice whoever they loved. Here the term ‘pardakhtgar’ can be defined; that is to say, a member of the organization sacrifices his love and affection for the family and associates so they may transcend the limits of the material world and achieve the sphere of an unconditional love and affection that could include not only the beloved around them but the humanity in general. His struggle and immolation is to stop people paying for the attention and affection they receive and to purify the atmosphere and set up a utopia wherein the unconditional love will reign.

This is a one-way demonstration of love and feeling and only a Mojahed is believed to fully discern the meaning of love and passion for the close and the humanity. He curbs all his feelings and deprives himself of a common give and take interest-rated love for a permanently stable tender and unconditional love. To achieve the goal, one side has to sacrifice and he is a Mojahed.

SFF: Ms. Soltani, the fact is that such claims are much alluring and idealistic. But a question to ask, were they really truthful in what they claimed or it was another abused means to achieve organizational ends? Was Rajavi after creating the claimed utopia or he was channeling the feelings towards a milieu of highly committed relationship?

BS: To tell the truth, Rajavi is a real, ingenious sophist. I have reiterated many times that when you look at the organization from the inside, you see an integrated order wherein everything looks to be at its own place. But the problem begins when you look at it from the outside and try to discern the encountered ambiguities and paradoxes according to the existing system before you, nothing is at its place and you are left in the middle of complete disarray. It is the very same matter with the term ‘pardakhtgar’. In contrast to its internal interpretation, it is meant be spent for and direct all love and affection to the leadership alone and to force all in his obedience. Of course, you will notice a flagrant contradiction in Rajavi’s claims. I think even a revolutionary struggling for a certain cause has to secure an emotional bond first with his own family and relatives before trying to universalize it.

Those who easily turn their back on their children, parents and any beloved one are in fact practicing to cut all attachments with the outside world. When Rajavi states that all love and devotion has to be directed to him, he means to be replaced with all the sources of attachments; he must be the sole entity without whom the promised utopia could not possibly be established. Such a theory works for a variety of abusive purposes. A member devoid of familial attachments, for instance, can easily carry out a mission of purging a member of his own family just because the victim is claimed to be an agent of the regime. Thus, I believe such rhetoric is mainly aimed for personal interests to guarantee Rajavi’s egocentric dominance over the organization.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 24

The members were coerced into dedicating themselves to Massoud and Maryam

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

October 05, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, in our last session, you pointed to instances of the organization’s persuasive approaches in its contact with the victims’ families with particular emphasis on Neda’s family. Did not such dual behavior raise any suspicion when the family saw that on the one hand the organization eulogized Neda as a holy martyr but on the other hand claimed her immolation as an impulsive and willful act? Did the organization or Maryam have any other scenario to justify the dual deal?

 
Batul Soltani: it is a good point. In General, the organization had adopted a dual position concerning the immolations. You could easily make out two images of the victims; an image was to demonstrate them as holy individuals to fuel its propaganda machine and encourage others to take the same line, and the other, to put the responsibility of immolations on the victim themselves to dodge any charges against the organization. But, as you pointed out, the organization is clever enough not to err and prepares an exact scenario before stepping into action. To make Neda’s family to believe, for example, the organization forged a journal that it claimed belonged to Neda. It contained some personal photos and some recollections from her family and friends and especially notes indicating her enthusiastic devotion and commitment to Maryam. Neda’s parents were simple people who could simply believe as if their daughter’s life was tied to Maryam and finally, they appeared to be convinced to show no reaction even if they could not believe it all at the bottom of their hearts.

 
At the end, they came to be persuaded that their daughter had committed suicide and they could change nothing for her loss. Then, the organization put two choices before them; to move in parallel with the organization’s scenario in glorification of their daughter’s death or take an opposite side and spoil everything and sully their daughter’s name. Facing such a dilemma, of course they preferred to consent to the organization’s will and follow its scenario. Thus, in spite of the fact that they might have discerned the contradiction in the organization’s manner, they faced the bitter truth that they could in no way change anything. Of course, I am not sure if Neda’s parents or other victims’ families had ever become aware of such contradiction. In any case, the organization had thought of a plan to ward off any criticism or charge. The first priority was to make them reconcile themselves to the organization through a variety of offers, threatening, deception and smearing the reputation. Each can be a different subject to talk about.

 
SFF: In relation to the approaches you pointed out, what could have been the reaction of the organization if Neda’s family took a different turn against it?

 
BS: Naturally, the organization would face a rocky road to ride but not impossible. It always had a trick up its sleeve and the best working one would be to classify them as the opponents. Everything would be clear then and the organization did to the family whatever it would do vis-à-vis its opponents. To mention, remember Reza Asadi the father of Zohreh Asdi. The father separated from the organization while his daughter is still a member. Or the case of Somayeh Muhammadi whose father strives to get his daughter out of Camp Ashraf. The least charge against them is that the organization has labeled them the agents of IR regime. The organization does everything to spoil their characters and indicting them for a variety of baseless charges of theft, immorality and the like.

 
Imagine a defector in its worst become the agent of the regime, it might be possible. But being so scoundrel an individual was impossible especially when he had served the organization for some time and they had disclosed nothing about such a rogue. Anything for the organization is either black or white, nothing in the middle. You have to be either on its side or the opposite against whom it has adopted an antagonist attitude to the end. Even if a defector had once been exalted as a hero, nothing can save him from the wrath of the organization by joining the opposite side.

 
I mean to say that it could be the same thing with the families if they failed to compromise with the organization. Only if it happened that Neda’s family had taken an antagonistic route against the organization, the first person who stood against the family would be their own son living in Ashraf. And only God knows what charge would be posed against them and they would be accused of what untold scandals; and it was enough to mobilize the sympathizers against them to disturb and annoy them and turn their life into a real hell. The organization had always a coin with two sides at hand; a brilliant, alluring side and a hell of a bad side and I have seen the bad side abroad when it decided to treat the opponents. The simplest approach was to instigate hatred among the sympathizers and the opponents; there was nothing more to do but to sit and watch them finish the job themselves. For sure, the organization had shown the other side of the coin to Neda’s family and what it was capable of doing to change things completely; they could choose to become wretched, dejected people who could not even dare to visit their daughter’s tomb.

 
It is a tactic for the organization not to open a war front at the first stage and to arrive at a compromise through other approaches and promises. That is because it may inflict much cost on the organization and a longer process to follow if it shows an antagonistic attitude from the very beginning. Of course, there is a red line nobody should ever transgress; the sanctity of leadership, Maryam and organizational principles should never be violated. Now imagine Neda’s family had taken a different path and had fallen with the organization; their very first move to make preparation for their daughter’s burial and mourning would turn as a backlash against themselves and they would face accusations of being provisioned and provided for by Iranian regime and more.

 
An odd but common approach was to coerce members to endorse in their own handwriting that they had entrusted whatever they had to Massoud and Maryam, as I did myself. We put it in writing to announce we were possessions of the two and had willingly chosen our path of struggle and devotion. We also stated that our emotional communion with family and relatives was not a superficially common and limited but relatively ‘pardakhtgar’ (an organizational jargon meaning sacrificing all love and emotion for a greater cause). Our real love and devotion all had to be spent for the accomplishment of higher and dearer causes and for Massoud and Maryam; they were the central integrity of all love and devotion and all families had to be grateful of entrusting the life of their children into the hands of the two. I am sure Neda too had signed such papers before committing immolation and had conceded her life and love to Maryam which could be used as a winning card before her family.

 
To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 23

Neda’s family feeling obligated to the organization

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

October 01, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Remarkable in the immolation’s observation is the subject of the organization’s establishment of relation with the family of the victims. First, it is of significance to learn from what angle the organization does look at the families. Second, how it opens relations with them; third, is the family background ever important to select the suicide, and forth, what deterrent role this family backgrounds plays to affect selection of the victims? And last, elucidate the impact of the 17 June self-burnings on families as you have witnessed.

Batul Soltani: Your questions although they all focus on a single issue, they can be discussed from a variety of aspects concerning the organization’s furthering relations with families. Let’s begin with some introductory details and I will further explain if needed. The organization keeps a confidential file for members with whatever ranking and organizational background in which there is certain sub-file containing information about the members’ family; the individual statistics of any family member, social class, job status, political inclinations and where they live, that is to say, inside or outside of Iran. The latter information is highly important for the organization and it cares about the families’ dwelling in foreign countries. All supervisors were sensitive to find out if the members under their command had any member of their family residing in any foreign country.

It was much because the presence of a family member in a foreign country could be challenging and would cost the organization a lot. From a political-security point of view, they could possibly infiltrate the organization under any pretext to get it into trouble. As a result, members whose family or some member of their families lived abroad were suspected to be bonded with an infiltrator. I will explain how they could cause trouble. The organization became hypersensitive to families especially in the case of occurring suspicious deaths, suicide operations, missing of members and imprisonments and the like. When, for instance, a member like Soheil Khata died of a suspicious cause, the organization cared not the least because he had nobody abroad. Nobody knew he died of suicide or was murdered. His death was no cause of trouble because he had nobody abroad to question the organization, but it could be different if he had.

Now compare the organization’s indifference to Khata’s death and its manner and conduct with Neda’s family before and after her suicide operation. That is because Neda’s family lived abroad since long and they could push the organization into real crisis if they wanted and reacted against her death. So the organization mobilized all its power to bring her family under its control and, I believe, the organization had been in close contact with her family even before her self-immolation. It is even of magnitude to work first on her father or mother and I am sure they worked according to a scenario as I know that is how they act.

Here is the evidence to prove my claim. Following the immolations, Mozhgan Parsai stated that the immolations had inflicted heavy responsibility on the organization abroad. She meant Neda’s immolation with regard to her family’s living abroad could get the organization into big trouble and that calculated steps had to be taken when dealing with her family. It was not important in the case of Marzieh Babakhani because she had nobody living abroad. Mozhgan insisted that all had to be mobilized to concentrate on Neda’s family and especially on her brother who was in Camp Ashraf. She issued additional orders to watch him directly and closely and to establish specific contact with him to further and justifiably clarify the issues. They in the organization know the right time for the right action through the proper means.

It is also of great concern in what country the families live, in England, France, Germany or any other European or non-European country. That is because the juridical systems in these countries could influentially affect the results of any lawsuit by the families against the organization. Remarkable in the organization’s ploy was Maryam’s showy behavior with Neda Hassani’s family. From the very beginning, Maryam started with a ceremoniously emotional demeanor and would weep tears in their presence to show her grief over her death. She wept for her and, at the same time, praised her spontaneous act in a show of her ultimate commitment to repudiate responsibility of her death and avert any lawsuit by her family. The organization had even purchased gifts and presents to give her family on occasions. It moved just according to a preplanned scenario. Noteworthy in this entire affair was that all these factitious manners were filmed and photographed for widespread propaganda shows that were heavily reflected in the media.

SFF: Sorry to interrupt Ms. Soltani. Let’s continue the subject corroborated with your evidences in the next session. What were other issues the organization explicitly stressed on in relation to Neda’s family? Did they merely intend to gratify the family or implicitly made threatening to deter the family from engaging in any lawsuit against the organization?

BS: As I said, the organization mainly tried to persuade them that Nada’s immolation was not an organizationally persuaded action but impulsive. Of course all was implicitly stated otherwise it could imply organizational disobedience and Maryam was reluctant to use such terms directly. She rather meant to persuade the family that Neda’s death was the outcome of her great devotion and commitment to her leader and thus, on the one hand Neda would be the sole responsible for her own death and on the other hand, it would be Maryam who pocketed the merit of her action. Of course, Maryam showed so distraught with grief for Neda’s death that her parents who, impressed by Maryam’s performance, forgot about their own grieves and began to condole her on their own daughter’s death. Although it might be hard to believe and digest, but it really happened and the organization acted much cunningly in its role playing; to send an innocent to her death and then to sit weeping along with her family and then, not only escape trial on charges of her death but to make the family feel indebted to the murderer.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 22

17 June immolations, orchestrated or willful acts

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 29, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, significantly noticed in the course of the self-burnings was the TV coverage of the incidents; I mean the footages shot by the organization itself. It can be analyzed from different aspects especially when the organization claims immolations as willful and self-initiated acts. The very originally filmed scenes of the immolations prove that anything had been orchestrated beforehand. Will you give a further explanation of the outlook?

 
Batul Soltani: First I have to point out that I was not in the Europe at the time and saw noting directly. Whatever I impart is personal inferences. Concerning your question, it is explicit that the footages of the immolations were all filmed by the agents of the organization itself. The fact was accentuated in the internal meetings held in Camp Ashraf that it had been all filmed by the organization and distributed to a variety of foreign TV networks. Even they displayed the footages of Marzieh Babakhani and Mohsen Sharifi’s self-burnings and underlined it had all been filmed by the equipped agents of the organization. But they never said a word about it for the outsiders and claimed the footages were random TV reports filmed by other networks. Although they had done their best not to err, you could clearly identify the members in the frame of the camera.

Besides, there are other evidences to prove the footages were the work of the organization itself. Footages are usually licensed for a certain network and any second coverage carries the original licensed logo attached to it. It is natural, since there exists a competition among the Western networks and agencies to have the leading role in an incident and to own the copyright on the footage; the footages of the self-burnings all lacked the licensed logo which proves the leading role of the organization in recording all scenes. As soon as a member sets himself/herself on fire, the camera starts recording and it is exactly positioned where it had to. The big mistake made by the organization is that the scenes are all filmed by professional hand recorders rather than ordinary cameras or mobiles, which reduces the possibility of any random record.

 
The used sophisticated equipments proved that it was also a simultaneously orchestrated operation. It is strange to see someone walk to gas station to procure gasoline and then march to a certain location where he sets himself on fire; nobody ever think of it as a random shot, it is a film making. How people may come to believe the claims of the organization that the immolations were unplanned but self-initiated is too amazing. No doubt, they were exactly pre-planned and followed a written scenario. Another point to notice is the reflection of these operations outside of the organization. After her release, Maryam Rajavi claimed the French police had prevented distribution of a prepared videotaped message in which she had asked members to cease self-burnings. The claim seems to be true since termination of an action is possible when you have issued orders for its commence. No member dared to engage in any act unless authorized and approved by the leader but no outsider had a clear image of internal affairs; they had to be kept in dark about the plans to prevent further negative costs and consequences. As you saw, in the course of some held trials in European courts, they could convince the court about the voluntariness of decisions.

 
There are other evidences that support the idea of organizationally schemed operations. To enumerate them, the first is the widespread TV coverage of the incidents; the authentic record of events is clear and widely distributed while each is filmed in a certain part of the Europe. The second is the vast propaganda blitz they staged following the operations, and second, and the most important, is Rajavi’s message mainly focusing on the operations and referring to the victims by names. Last but not the least, there are evidences of the organization’s past threats. I remember Massoud and Maryam once threatened the French government of staging self-burning operations which was endorsed by many members who volunteered in the letters of the ideological revolution. They would read these letters to us in the course of training classes. As Rajavi stated in one of his speeches, the identical aspect in all these letters was volunteering for self-immolation. Thus, there remains no doubt that the operations were all organizationally orchestrated and aimed to achieve certain goals.

 
SFF: A question to ask, had all these self-burnings been planned to kill or the priority was laid on the propaganda and political aspects of the operations? Is it possibly justifiable that the organization had already promised members that it would interrupt to survive them immediately as soon as they had staged the operations?

BS: I know nothing of these details in particular. If they had resolved on such a policy, it would have been worked out in councils out of Auvers-sur-Oise. I cannot exactly impart anything.

SFF: Well. In your opinion, is it of any significance for the organization to focus on the political aspects and convince the members that it never lets anybody get harmed but betrays them in practice and sends them to their death?

 
BS: I do not think it is a proper angle to look from since there is actually no need for the organization to make such preparations. When members volunteer to risk their life, it means they have given their final acquiescence to die. There is no need to trick them and nobody hesitates to set himself on fire when the command is issued. It is possible that the organization decides to limit the killings to one or two but there might come times when the span of propagation borders no limitation and the circumstances require further continuation of the operations. The momentous approach the organization utilizes to overcome its crises is directly risking the life of the members.

As a result, it has the upper hand in having a particular situation in its own control by sending multitudes of victims to their death. If ever it discriminates in favor of a ranking member and makes an attempt to save him/her that is because of his/her organizational status and has nothing to do ever with caring for the humane attitudes and the victim’s individual values. Still, the organization regretted the attempts made for the survived. Marzieh Babakhani was badly burned when they smothered the fire and she was a pitiful creature to look at with all those burns that had damaged her face and hands. She was badly deformed and suffered a lot and it was disputed why she had been allowed to live and they openly wished she had died.

SFF: Have you seen the photos of these operations’ victims?

 
BS: Neither themselves nor their photos. They said the doctors had failed to treat them well and from the bulk of their propaganda it could be discerned that the victims had made a great impression. Once Mozhgan (Parsai) applauded Marzieh saying she was a living martyr of the organization. She would say Neda and Sediqeh had passed away once for ever but Marzieh was suffering and dying in any moment. It is easy to picture how emotionally they impressed the members and alleviate the psychological and physical agonies of the victims.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 21

17 June immolations and the test of commitment

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 26, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: What impact did immolations have on the relations within Camp Ashraf, and what objectives did the organization aim to achieve in particular?

Batul Soltani: The impact was widespread and it can be studied from a variety of angles. One was to promulgate and propagate the incident through a variety of means like video-clips, music, plays and TV programs. To impress the members, they had collected many old, impressive and devotionally themed music and songs and made new compositions that were then mixed with self-burning clips that were repeatedly displayed in dining halls and canteens. The ends they strived for were to provoke and encourage members to identify with the models, to eulogize victims as heroes and heroines, to create a sense of self-criticism for failing to fully fulfill obligations, to coerce them to increase their frequent attendances of weekly hold sessions of ablution and confession to outpour what passed inside them, and above all, to frustrate formation of and doubt and question concerning the operations themselves.

In such an emotively moving atmosphere nobody dared to propound any question or utter any raised doubt; any logic and challenge had to be stifled and critics had no choice but to act in accordance with the whole climate. One interesting point to mention, the members were indirectly encouraged to register as volunteers for suicide operations and apply to burn themselves to death. They also arranged especial sessions to carry out a survey of opinions to have an assessment of the percentage of the volunteers for the operations at the time of Maryam’s arrest. It was important for the organization to have an exact assessment of members’ allegiance whether to the organization or other external factors. The sessions were organized so cleverly that the attendants unconsciously uttered their internal reflections. To be a volunteer of suicide operations motivated in any form defined a high parameter for organizational promotion, but of further importance was the degree of organizational loyalty and commitment.

As the prerequisite for membership following the so-called ideological revolution was preparedness for death and suicide; to volunteer for operations worked only as a gauge of ideological, political and organizational commitment. The decrees of organization were the laws everybody was obliged to obey with no question; it was the first organizational principle. In the case of the June 17, it was a test of members’ loyalty and commitment. I remember members who insisted to set themselves on fire at the time but the organization somehow convinced them that their deed was of no use. However, some were displeased of the antagonistic attitude and sought to execute their willingness. If they succeeded, it would question the organizational principle. Of the greater priority was obedience and the one who set himself on fire when unauthorized by the organization would be assessed a defiant.

Regardless of the nature of the defiance, the organization was concerned about its generalization which could cost it irreparable damage. In fact, all was a test of a critical article of the ideological revolution to assess its degree of reliability in the face of any similar crisis. We have already talked about the articles of the ideological revolution and Rajavi’s stabilized status as an ideological leader whose commands had to be consciously and unquestionably obeyed.

The volunteers of self-burning first had to request permission of Massoud and Maryam for the act, a signification of absolute submission to leadership. Any form of disobedience, even unauthorized suicide and sacrifice, was condemned since it could be a possible challenge against organizational principle and had to be strongly confronted. A practical, regular and invisible assessment of members’ obedience, chiefly at such critical junctures, well identified the potentiality of overcoming a crisis in the future. In fact, it was not the multitudes of volunteers for sacrifice or the passive but the level and amount of obedience. Of course, nobody was aware of the real intention behind all these, otherwise the plan failed altogether.

SFF: What was the main source to break the news of immolations? I mean, was it important for them to be the sole breakers of the news or quote it from other news agencies?

BS: The first channel of information was the Resistance TV but the organization did not mind if other known news agencies covered the news. But the problem was that all information channeled to Ashraf were biased and direct access to original sources of information was prohibited and was highly controlled. It was mostly because the organization behaved in anomalous way with some media and believed they were the mouthpiece of imperialism and the enemies in shadow. However, some of these agencies were known to be the sole reliable source of information and the organization could not neglect their role in global information exchange. Wherever there were concordance between its own news and that of the agencies, the organization did not hesitate to blow them up to get desired results. However, they received the least attention if their information failed to side with the organization. BBC, for instance, was and is one of those news agencies the organization has despised above all, and that is why you hardly encounter any of the agency’s news and information quoted and reflected by the organization.

Its open hostility towards BBC is based mainly on a once description of the agency by Shamloo that has continued so far, and the organization is really desperate what to do when the agency releases news when it is preciously to its advantage. Suppose, BBC covers one of Maryam’s political visits and meeting while taking an impartial stand and no further analysis. It is an ample opportunity to grab at and to exert the propaganda impact, but the organization shows no direct excitement and quotes the news along with vituperative attacks directed at BBC. In many cases, the organization applied a clever propaganda technique and aired its own distributed information quoted from well-known news agencies and TV networks for greater impact and desired propaganda advantages. On the one hand, the organization could convince the insiders of Ashraf that it was the center of global political and media attention and on the other hand, it took advantage of exposing its capacity as an alternative. In fact, apart from its attempts to repel the French government, the organization had entirely aimed to be the focus of the global media and to influence the news headlines for some time.

It appeared that domination of the mass media was more serious than Maryam’s release; it is a fact that can be well understood by the amount of the reports and news reflected by the media throughout the world. A look at the organization’s own media at that time and later reveals that it had designated a big bulk of its propaganda space, both cyber and non-cyber, for the reflection of the relevant issues and news and did not spare to stick even at the trifles. The origin of these news was often the organization itself and most often used them quoted from other news agencies; as it benefited the effect of media coverage on the incidents of 17 June immolations.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Parts nineteen & twenty

Abuse of Neda and Sedigheh’s death

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 23, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Maryam’s release was the cause for the celebrations held in Auvers and Ashraf and we observed a variety of programs aired by Mojahedin’s TV. The programs noticeably purported to introduce new spirit and concepts, the performance of new dances including a mystical dance in particular. Or magnification of signs and patterns that significantly denoted concepts of the ideological revolution, like that of sacrifice and devotion. What is your idea about these programs and what ends had the organization aimed to achieve?

Batul Soltani: I saw the programs you mentioned. To answer your question, I have to begin with a retrospect. Although it may seem irrelevant to the issue of self-immolations, it may explain origination and introduction of these innovations in the organization. I remember the first performance of Marzieh, an old Iranian diva, in Camp Ashraf. It was really an unexpected shock. Until then, talking about any form of music, concert and singer was a taboo. Besides, nobody would ever think that in such an atmosphere of militarism overwhelmed by the smell of blood, powder and gun music could be of any use and effect. Marzieh’s presence and performance in the camp changed the mind-set and the organization began to look at it as a working instrument. It happened at a time when the organization had been disarmed and members had a lot of free time since there were no arms and, consequently, no heavy maintenance demands on them. Here, the organization resolved to replace new vehicles to keep the very same struggle morale among the forces. Art, an especially music, showed an appropriately working instrument for the purpose.

 
On the other hand, the organization strived to display a different profile for the West and that it had undergone a modernized change within and without. In fact, the organization keeps a tenacious hold on art and music to serve it for ideological instructions and to fulfill its purpose in the very same way it utilized arms and other means of violenve. The incidents of 17 June, self-immolations and the subsequent death of Neda and Sediqeh was the best granted opportunity to render the whole operation and the dead a legend through art and particularly focuses on the mystical dance. To make saints out of the two, art worked better and beyond any direct, long preach and ideological lecture. Of course, these mystical programs were exclusively performed in Camp Ashraf because of the dominant ideological atmosphere there. Unlike Camp Ashraf, in Auvers-sur-Oise it was the common, modern music and songs sung by Iranian Los Angelino singers that prevailed. In France and in the midst of the modern, world mystical dances could communicate no effect; it was all western dances, Rock, Pop, Hard and similar music.

 
The Ashraf residents were the scapegoats ready to be sacrificed and they had to be kept ideologically ready and prepared for suicide operations. Those in the Europe were either spear carriers, who had to be appeased, or leading rankings who, naturally, had the responsibility of setting up the background for the victims. The art in Ashraf was a means to enhance the sense of devotion and sacrifice and you can explicitly notice the implied concepts in the style of the dances, the rhythm, decoration and design. Hardly can anybody come out without the performance having made a heavy impression on him. In many cases, the members wished they had been in the place of Neda and Sediqeh in self-burnings. Such an impressive climate could not be created in any other way but through art and music and it was the force of music to meet organizational objectives that enticed Rajavi to change his mind, notwithstanding he cared not in the least for the art that serves the art itself. As at the present you are mainly focusing on the issue of immolation, I think the given details suffice.

 
SFF: you restated the death of Neda and Sediqeh. Will you please talk about the impact of their operations on the organization from any angle you look at it?

BS: To look at it from the best angle, it was the attempt to mythicize their death and consecrate them as saints and legendry heroines. Multitudes of poems, elegies and songs as well as the already mentioned mystical dances were composed and manipulated to justify the wounded and the dead of the immolation operations and to fashion archetypes for others to follow. Here the aesthetics of art no further served to glorify the beauties of life but death in its most ugly and abominable form, self-burning. The function of art was converted here; to die for the ideals is evaluated a fair, worthy death, but to die for an egoist who believes in no humanistic ideal value but absolute autocracy is to become the victim of a cruel and unfair hoax.

 
How they infuse these teachings into the organization is a different discussion. In Camp Ashraf, for example, the first to enshrine them as legendry heroines was Mozhgan Parsai. Of course, before she began the show off, Massoud had called to eulogize them as devotees who had proved their ideological truthfulness. Although he believed that members had shirked their organizational responsibilities towards Maryam, he began to extol Neda and Sediqeh and other hospitalized members as heroes who had transcended human limits. They had reached, he stated, the summit of selflessness where they could easily engage themselves in feats that was hard or impossible for others to do. The people enslaved by their selves with no bond to a secure source of attachment would end to a wasteland while people like Neda and Sediqeh who depended on a safe and reliable guide like Maryam could easily brave any struggle and risk. For someone disenchanted self-burning is a deprecated suicide while for someone attached to a source of solace it is a spiritual act leading to salvation. One dissolved in the leadership did everything, even risked his life, to protect and save his/her life through any means. Rajavi’s moralizations all came after the immolation incidents through cassettes in which he acknowledged ten other members who had set themselves on fire one by one. Then it was Mozhgan’s turn to comment on Rajavi’s statements and suggested to build a monument for the two martyred inside the camp. Thus, trough a clever pattern of conspiracy, they produced iconic archetypes and models; they named buildings and streets after them, made symbolic monuments, mounted their pictures on the walls everywhere and so forth.

 
Sahar Family Foundation: The consequences of the 17 June incidents were each causes for further arguments. But, let’s first ask how long did Maryam Rajavi’s detention by the French police last?

 
Batul Soltani: I cannot tell exactly, but I think nearly twenty days altogether. But it seems one year when you consider about what ensued from her detention. I think she was released on July 2, 8 in the morning.

 
SFF: Well, after her release, what message did she specifically deliver?

 
BS: She claimed that while in detention, she had prepared a few messaged that they had prevented to be sent out, including a videotaped message addressed to members in Europe and Ashraf residents to cease self-immolations. It was what she said in her first delivered speech after her release. Another consequent event was a held celebration for freedom in Auvers in which the members of the Leadership Council and a number of local residents of Auvers-sur-Oise took part. She distributed flowers and made a speech and many boys and girls chanted and danced on the street outside. We saw all these on the TV but we had also our celebration simultaneously inside Ashraf with the difference that the celebrations in Auvers displayed a modern, happy and joyful performance while in Ashraf it was more similar to a mystical-style ritual.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part eighteen

Rajavi: "self-burnings were not enough, you should have sacrificed more"

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 21, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Soon after the arrest of Maryam Rajavi, Rajavi is said to have delivered a videotaped message to Camp Ashraf. What was the message about?

 
Batul Soltani: in fact, it was neither a message nor videotaped; it was a phone call. It was directed at the self-burnings remarking that whatever we had done through an individual or organizational endeavor, that is, by setting ourselves on fire and sacrificing lives at any cost, failed to be enough for the freedom of Maryam. Interestingly, he used the expression ‘dilly-dally’ meaning that the members had dilly-dallied in June 17 self-burnings and we had to, and have to if necessary, sacrificed much more. He was accusing members of dawdling while more than twenty members had set themselves on fire throughout the Europe and some were in serious condition in hospital. His words denoted that self-burnings had to continue until Maryam would be released but at the same time judged that the very same dilly-dally hade greatly affected the French judicial system. Actually, he was calling for intensification of self-burnings to achieve desired result.

 
I have to point out that the organization was facing serious restrictions following Maryam’s detention; there were heavily imposed controlling measures and further mass arrests loomed. In fact, part of these self-burnings was considered countermeasure activities to stop losing momentum or dismantling of the organization in France. I mean to say that although all self-burnings were directed for the freedom of Maryam, the organization was concerned about the aftermath that posed a threat and irreversible damage against the organization in France. It was much disappointing that all rankings present in Auvers-sur-Oise were arrested. Rajavi knew all these and his stress on extension of self-burnings justifiably warranted the survival of the organization. Thus, rather than appreciating the self-burning operations, he encouraged advent of more similar efforts. It was all about his phone call which made a profound impact on all. Although at the time they strongly prohibited committing these suicide operations in Camp Ashraf, Rajavi was encouraging a morality in members and preparing them not to hesitate to engage in such activities within Camp Ashraf whenever necessary. His call instigated a widespread excitement among different ranks in the camp and many volunteered for the self-burning operations. However, they were rejected since self-burnings in the camp were of no use and they had to be carried out just in France and before the eyes of the western media.

SFF: What happened in Camp Ashraf after Maryam was released? I mean how they reacted and what was its impact on the camp?

 
BS: Massoud made more contacts after her release, with high rankings of the Leadership Council in particular. The first message was mainly centered on congratulation for the achieved victory which he said was the consequent of the members’ sacrifice. But he showed his double face by complaining that Maryam’s confinement could have been made shorter if we had escalated the operations in full-scale. It seemed as if all were, and had to be, indebted to the organization and had to make more sacrifice when commanded. I remember him saying we should not have hesitated one hour to release Maryam and that we could have played a more influential role in her freedom. I believe if we had access to his phone messages to have a reevaluation, we would find out many things that we, the separated members, had hardly noticed at the time but can reconsider more realistically at the present. That how can one, under any title, allow himself to risk many lives to defy the legal measures of a country that is investigating someone for presumably founded allegations?

When inside the organization, we looked at these as values that had been violated; but now in an open world where we can freely reconsider the past, we see, alas, we had long appraised big lies as values and had deified people who had nothing of extraordinary. It is not at all justifiable even for great leaders of the world to become the object of worship let alone the leader of a group whose members never exceeded four thousand at the time. I believe Rajavi acted so cleverly in respect to Maryam’s arrest because if the legal actions had not been ceased by intimidating reactions for sure the surfaced facts would lead to disbandment of the organization in France or expulsion of all its leading ranks. That is the reason Rajavi restructured members for prolongation of Maryam’s detention. Less has been talked about the destiny of the organization if Maryam’s detention continued its routine, legal process. All know well that French police and the judiciary, because of political, human rights, social and individual freedom causes under the constitution, hardly ventures in such sensitive cases.

 
Rajavi is well aware the unfounded claims that the whole case was the product of a political compromise between Iran and France and he knew there were enough evidences to prove the allegations and posed charges. The organization’s appalling reaction did shocked and paralyzed the French police and, as it felt a responsibility to prevent further bruise of public emotions, made it to withdraw. The authorities had been convinced that the immolation would continue for a year-long if they kept Maryam in custody; the awful impress on public opinion was not something the state could tolerate. The sole solution to end the social crisis was then to temporally set Maryam free. You may remember the widespread hunger strikes of the sympathizers on the banks of Auvers-sur-Oise with many strikers collapsed here and there. Such scenes were too loathsome for the culturally tender French to tolerate. Of course, at the time I was not in the Europe but watched the scenes on Mojahedin TV; I think neither in the past had France experienced such scenes nor it will in future unless re-erected by Mojahedin there or any other European country. The incident opened a new chapter for the West to develop a new understanding of an organization that could so easily violate the social and human principles by setting themselves on fire before the eyes of the public. People could not believe that a group warranted itself the right to breach adopted social rules for the mere claims that could be dealt with through the legal system.

 
SFF: Of course, the incident granted some Western researchers and reporters to an opportunity to conduct some research. Antoine Gessler’s Autopsy of an Ideological Drift and or Alain Chevalerias’s Brulé Vif (Burned Alive) for instance. Interestingly enough, as it is typical of the organization when reacting against the opponents, it denounced the two authors and accused them of a give and take with the IR regime. You may have come across these accusations in web sites.

BS: unfortunately, not yet. But I will be grateful if you could help me have access to. It can help to fathom the aspects of the tragedy and how they may analyze such incidents. When you come across such human tragedies, possibly you can look back at the backgrounds that led to the instigation of disasters that seemed impossible to occur at the first look. But, unfortunately, we see how easily and fast all those analyses and theories happen to be materialized in a way that bewilders you.

 
SFF: You touched the point. Can you now speculate about the extent and potentiality of such operations that the organization may put into action when facing similar circumstances anywhere in the world?

BS: To tell the truth, I have been convinced that nothing can surprise me anymore. I do not intend to state that the organization has demonstrated its ultimate potentialities, it is the nature of the demonstrated objection, self-burning, that looks appalling and pathetic in general. Hardly can you stay long beside the bed of a burned man in a hospital while you may spend hours at the bed of any other patient. Now imagine what may happen if you see people spilling gasoline over themselves to become human torches burning before the public.

 
And all for claimed rights that can be easily solved trough legal procedures. Now imagine the extent of tragedy if the demands necessarily fail to be legally settled and go against any logic and impossible to grant. So, I have learned that anything is possible in this organization and nothing may hit as unexpected. Above all, the members have already been briefed theoretically and ideologically on any unexpected circumstance and the only left option is to push them into action to create a human tragedy in Camp Ashraf or any other place.

SFF: To what degree you think it is possible that they will prompt a human tragedy?

BS: It is really possible. You may not believe, but once Rajavi propound the possibility and enforced it a duty for all and even prepared the instruments to carry it out. The Camp Ashraf residents, for instance, are equipped with cyanide capsules and there are as plenty as gasoline and other inflammable liquids at hand. The human tragedy was an option the organization had adopted even in the reign of Saddam. Rajavi’s excuse is that if disclosure of Ashraf might lead to our annihilation, then, it is better for us to die all here inside Ashraf. His logic is that at least our death here is for the defense of something, the organization, without which we are the walking dead outside. Then let’s die in its defense with a brave death. It was all stated in a meeting before the fall of Saddam.

SFF: Thank you. There are more questions concerning Maryam’s release, but I prefer to continue in the next session, adieu.

 
To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part seventeen 

Rajavi: "the operations have higher potentialities to utilize"

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 14, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, the June 17 operations, however, has recorded achievements for the organization. They can be summed up from two aspects. One is the negative outside consequences and another is the internal achievements the organization thought it had achieved. It is the latter aspect that I mean you explain exclusively from Rajavi’s point of view.

Batul Soltani: The achievements were specifically summed up by Rajavi in one of his messages addressed to the members of the Leadership Council. One significant point to mention here is that Rajavi critically evaluated self-immolations as ‘dilly-dally’ meaning that the members had dwindled in June 17 self-burnings which had diminished the expected resultant outcomes. Then he began to enumerate the achievements of the very same ‘dilly-dally’. The first resultant he stated to be the French police’s pullback. But I think he meant recession of the whole judiciary of France.

I have already made clear that Rajavi’s insistence on Maryam’s release was mainly because of the probable challenging consequences of the case. If the case pursued a routine, legal course, the outcome could be absolutely different. But he was clever enough not to mention the odds and probabilities and briefly alluded to police’s back off. In spite of the fact that efforts were directed at releasing Maryam, Rajavi referred to it as the second achievement. Here he paused to say that further goals had been achieved had the volunteers been much sincere in carrying out their operations.

SFF: Sorry for interruption. What did he mean by sincere?

BS: To tell the truth, I fail to make out an exact connotation for the term. Maybe he wanted to say self-immolations were deficient in number of volunteers and operations. But he would always say that by self-burnings he intended those episodes that would not be necessarily marginalized as pyrrhic victories and carried with them the needed push and effect. Rajavi would say that they knew that even multitudes of self-burnings inside Camp Ashraf fell short of imposing needed effectiveness to score a victory; all depended on a decision in due time and place. It was Mozhgan (Parsai) to make decisions in Ashraf as it was Maryam in Auvers and all senior rankings stationed in the organization’s offices throughout the world. In fact, he was stressing on the efficiency of actions if any responsible ranking would adopt in the sphere of his responsibility. In general, he was not satisfied with the immediate outcomes and believed that if the organization had less dawdled, the existing potentials and effectiveness would have caused the immediate release of Maryam.

 
SFF: Sorry again Ms. Soltani. If self-burnings were committed all on organizational command, then, what Rajavi really meant by the members’ dwindling that had caused deceleration of outcome?

BS: It seems that you did not consider my points. The organization has adopted a double behavior policy vis-à-vis the outsiders and insiders …

SFF: I got the point but I mean if 25 have committed self-immolation on organizational command, then, the cease of the 26th means the compliance with the same very order. If it is true, then what does this ‘dilly-dally’ mean? Does it mean that you have been remiss in your responsibility or anything else?

 
BS: He mainly implied that a member of the Leadership Council that was fully briefed on the strategy of self-immolation had to rush to the first police station to set himself on fire immediately after hearing the news of Maryam’s arrest. Instead, he/she had abandoned what had to do and had put it off for the next day. Self-burnings had to be executed immediately while they had been postponed for a later time after arrangements. Maryam should not have stayed so long in the prison. Rajavi was very sensitive about the due time and place and believed that any delay contributed to loss of a remarkable percentage of effectiveness and all efforts proved to have been in vain. You see, although self-burnings were organizationally arranged and ordered, there existed still factors so Rajavi could be critical of the members and berate them for negligence in the accomplishment of their duties. In reference to your bringing up the number of self-burnings and that the 26th was ceased by organizational command, I have to say that it is not as you think. It is not at all an issue of the numbers and quantity; they are only instruments to reach the desired outcome. Maybe that is why Rajavi criticizes members’ hesitation to start off self-burnings. You see, the initiation of operations share similar origin but the pace of process and other factors influence the acceleration and deceleration in achieving the final objectives.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part sixteen

Rajavi; you were derelict in performance of your duty to save Maryam

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 10, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: your explanations concerning the approach to carry out the June 17 immolations may indicate that ranking members like Sediqeh, Mozhgan, Beheshteh and more have undertaken the role of an intermediary to have the objectives of the leadership and the organization fulfilled. That is, they provoke others and then withdraw into the shadow or even they may directly engage themselves in the action and sacrifice. In fact, they may either be instigators or professional activists who engender people like Neda Hassani to be victimized.

 
Batul Soltani: Somehow it can be said that they play a dual role. Some are stopped just before the attempt according to a schematic plan and some other continue to carry out the orders to the end and entice others to follow. Furthermore, these intermediaries, as you call them, have a crucial role to play for the media. Much of the success relies on the spectacular achievements of propaganda and whatever the media are to air or release for the public concerning an incident; anything is already articulated and the interviewee selected. It is not so as you think that anybody at random happens to be interviewed by the reporters. Among the members who have set themselves on fire, for instance, Marzieh Babakhani had been selected to talk for the media, as she did with Algeria News Agency. Why did not they choose Hamid Orafa for the job? Because he was not fully briefed on the whole issue and he could make things worse. Besides, Marzieh’s deformed profile could move people and cultivate in them what best helped organization to take advantage of the situation. She had been selected to be the spokeswoman for the organization and the leadership.

On the other hand, the organization had to first adopt a clear position vis-à-vis the victims, like Neda, and their families to fully figure things out to serve organizational interests. Second, the victim families’ position had to be a show of acquiescence of what their children had done for the organization. Neda family’s attitude had to be indicative of an unforced and arbitrary self-burning by their daughter as a display of her commitment to the leadership and the organization; of course, nobody could consequently condemn the organization and fill a complaint against it. No doubt, the family had to be fully protected financially, emotionally and through encouraging media coverage to optimistically demonstrate its sympathy for the organization. A good model generated of its own vicious cunning, the protection provided for the family, the money spent, the blood and life of a beloved consumed, all serve to glorify the organization and the leader.

 
SFF: Does not it raise any question in the minds of the members where the Nada’s family has been to suddenly become the center of so much organizational attention?

 
BS: It is of no importance for the organization and Rajavi at all. I was in England for four years and Neda’s family were also there. There was no connection between the organization and the family in all these years and it all happened unexpectedly. Following Neda’s self-burning, the organization exerted much energy to establish close contact with her family and have control over it to persuade it act in behalf of the organization before the camera. The founded intimacy with her parents was more a precautionary measure to avert any unexpected decision against the organization that could mess things up.

 
SFF: On the one hand the organization, as you say, tries to demonstrate Neda’s death as the outcome of an arbitrary act of immolation, but on the other hand seeks to glorify it within the organization and for the media as a sacred act calling Neda a martyr. How the contradiction is dealt with inside and outside of the organization?

 
BS: I was an insider and know well that the organization acclaimed Neda’s feat as it was organizationally decreed. The organization’s acknowledgment of her self-immolation bordered on idolatry because the feat was not self-induced but done in compliance with organizational order. It made no difference what they outside would say; the insiders were well aware of the truth.

 
SFF: Naturally enough, it is evident that the organization tries to justify her feat through an appeal to appraisal of her deed. And, of course, the insiders all know that it was organizationally enjoined. But it is hard for the outsiders to believe the paradox. On the one hand, Maryam claimed that self-immolations were self-imposed and arbitrary and even accused the French police of preventing her messages to reach outside to stop self-burnings. But she is the first to pay tribute to her tomb to christen her a martyr. And Massoud is the first to deliver a message to glorify self-immolations and Neda’s act. Mojahedi’s TV broadcasts programs and ceremonies inside Camp Ashraf to celebrate the feats. How, then, can the organization disavow its role in these actions? These are all evidences that approve the organization’s pivotal role. I mean, does the organization think that it can easily make the paradoxes acceptable for the outsiders, as it does concerning the members?

 
BS: Frankly speaking, the organization is not at all concerned about the prevalence of such contradictions outside let alone a convincing answer. The contradictions you refer to are absolutely natural. That is to say, if you are opposed to such actions, then, of what use are all these propaganda? When you idolize Neda, willingly or unwillingly, you are creating an archetype for others to follow to overcome organizational crisis as well as showing a way to salvation. What is of importance for the organization is the immediate interests and advantages it gains from these all. This is only one aspect of the issue. It is completely different inside of the organization. Rajavi is frank and has no fear to unveil intended achievements behind the immolations. In answer to the question why people like Neda have to burn themselves for Maryam, Rajavi said when thousands of people were ready to kill themselves for (Abdullah) Ojalan, for Maryam all the organization had to. He compared Maryam with Ojalan in a videotaped message displayed exclusively for the members in the level of Leadership Council. He said nobody condemned neither the organizers and instigators of the mass suicide for Ojalan or Ojalan himself. In his message, Rajavi referred to at least 25 cases of immolations; he was displeased as he believed the members were indebted to Maryam and had not done all they had to.

 
He would say we had failed to do billionth of what we should have done for Maryam and that, it was Maryam who had suffered and shouldered all hardships. That is how they behave inside the organization. For the outside, it is not necessary to be privy of the details of the inside and the routine is to arrange a pattern not to embroil itself in any row or court case. The responsibility is thoroughly laid on the self-burners themselves.

 
SFF: forgive my interruption Ms. Soltani, are your explanations excerpts from the very Rajavi’s message delivered from the hideout?

 
BS: Yes, they are. They are parts of his message delivered for the Leadership Council from his hideout.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part fifteen

The manipulated approach to spur immolations

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 07, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, you averred that the reaction of the members of the Leadership Council to Maryam’s arrest was a histrionic rather than genuine; a mixture of pretense, sincerity, and the agitated atmosphere that made quite an impression on the audience. Then, it becomes clear that in spite of the created flutter following the news of Maryam’s arrest, the shown sentiments lacked the needed depth and most were imitating and role playing feelings. In such an abrupt outpour of emotions, it won’t be surprising to see a senior member, excited and impressed by the atmosphere, set himself on fire. Imagine what would have been the effect on the lower ranks.

Now my question is what process had it to follow to convince and instigate others to practically engage in self-immolations, peoples like Neda, Marzieh and many others. Of course, even Rajavi himself knew well that there was no rationale for such practices and maybe laughed at the simplicity of the suicide. The question is what were the factors that forced these emotionally grounded outbursts into action and what role did the organization play as the motivator? And how these ostensibly arbitrary actions could be tallied with their concretely orchestrated nature as a show of strong commitment?

 
Batul Soltani: It is a little hard to analyze the case. I mean, we cannot precisely decide about the motives and their classification. In one point, it is a matter of strong commitment among the high ranking members, that is, their step by step education to reach a point where you may call it transmutation, I call it commitment, but in organizational teachings they call it ‘unification point’ or identification of within and without. We have already talked about the sophisticated psychological techniques cults manipulate for coercive persuasion or thought reform of the insiders. There are so many cults that have professionalized their approaches and techniques of persuasion as you can well trace in Al-Qaeda. But I think it is much more complicated when we talk about the organization since it utilizes a combination of techniques just in the same way that its ideology is eclectic.

However, the organizational preparedness of volunteers cannot be disregarded. They are people who can be said to have reached a point of selflessness. They have been trained to do whatever they have been imbued with. Some of them may have reached top echelons through a cunning role playing but the majority has succeeded to convince seniors about their truthfulness of actions and intentions. Some are really nasty with repulsive behavior; they may even pass over their most beloved to prove their loyalty and commitment. These are the main actors of the case we are talking about and, consequently, the lower ranks are mostly impressed by the ideas they impregnate them with. Let’s return to concrete aspects of your question.

I assure you that if what happened in France was to happen inside Camp Ashraf. Mozhgan (Parsai) would be the first to take a gallon of gasoline to run towards Americans. Have no doubts that even me, who was skeptical of the whole issue, would follow her with another gal. Logically enough, other chief rankings would catch her to avert her act of immolation. But the story would not end here because her move had already agitated some in hot pursuit whom nobody came to stop and you could soon see human torches running around. It is a general formula within the organization and it makes no difference where the scenario is to be put into practice, in Ashraf, Auvers, or any other part of the world.

I have no doubt that in Paris’s immolations seven or eight seniors like Mozhgan had rushed to set themselves on fire. These are professional starters whose main role, as I explained, is to provoke others to follow. The members who set themselves on fire, like Marzieh Babakhani, Sediqeh Mojaveri and Muhammad Sani, were ranking members who had followed the professional starters who in turn had been stopped mid-way while the others went on to finish the job. None of these people, including those I named, immolated on arbitrary decisions and I am sure they had been fully briefed on the operations they had been chosen to carry out in the headquarters of Paris and London; they dad been fully crosschecked in a process of mood-altering program and relevant ideological commitment to leadership to avert any antagonistic attitude that might cause them to shrink from fulfilling the mission. To tell the truth, I closely knew Marzieh Babakhani; she was, I beg your pardon for using such terms, a real charlatan and quarrelsome who indeed played a key role to provoke others and charge the atmosphere with sentiments that could easily be a trigger for action.

 
Indeed, she played the very same role as Mozhgan, or Beheshteh Shadroo and other similar rankings under Rajavi’s direct command could have in the Camp Ashraf. I have no doubt that one or two of these seniors rushed into the street towards the Police with gallons of gasoline in hand; naturally sub-rankings like Neda (Hassani) and others dashed after them. On the way, the forerunner ranking, suppose she was Beheshteh Shadroo, received a message ordering her to return since she had no right to set herself on fire. It is a general process within the organization with numerous examples to spotlight. The scenario might be planned to be played either for immolations or other disciplinary cases.

For instance, one had to be rebuked and scolded before other members in a general meeting. While he was speaking, one like Abbas Davary, who had already been assigned for the purpose, started to assail him and yell at him. A few other members automatically stood to join Davary as assailants. Here, Davari’s mission was over and he would sit down to let others continue. Most of the time, those who got involved in the assail had no real reason for what they were doing; the only thing they knew was that they had to enthusiastically continue along with the others in the raised fuss. In such an agitated climate, all tried to conform and hardly anyone opted to remain passive. It is the same scenario put into practice in the pattern of self-immolations; one senior starts and sub-rankings hurry after to take their opportunity of displaying commitment. They are the real victims who may be unaware of the good reason for what they are doing.

 
The organization sees no reason to brief victims on what they have to be sacrificed for. Only the seniors and those who are the leading starters receive the appropriate trainings and instructions concerning safeguarding the interests of the organization and leadership. They are trained how to start and provoke others to continue with the mentality of injustice imposed on the organization and a due responsibility to stand up for restoration of justice. The members never receive similar trainings in the organization. Marzieh Babakhani and I were both in offices in London and members of the Leadership Council but with different ranking status; there was a body called the Leadership Council but with a variety of hierarchical levels and what promoted members was the degree of their devotion and commitment to the leadership. Sediqeh Husseini and I were simultaneously announced as the members of the Leadership Council but soon she was promoted to first secretary while I had made no advance to upper organizational ranking as I failed to follow her in growing the sense of commitment. They know on whom they invest for the critical situation as she did set herself on fire when the time came.

 
This is through such approaches that the organization prepares to counteract impending crisis. The death of Neda Hassani as a result of her self-immolation was the outcome of an abrupt emotional burst to rush after a catalyst who was never intended to commit the suicide. Look at Neda’s age, education and depth of her political background. She fails to be qualified and experienced enough to be included in the circle of senior rankings; she belongs to the class of the victims who was stirred into action just in the middle of an agitated climate to display her so-called commitment to the leadership.

 
It is in total contrast with what the organization usually advertizes for the public outside to boast about the rank and file and sub-rankings as the main body whose decision runs the main policy of the organization and affects the leadership’s decision makings. As Rajavi rudely put the responsibility of his egocentrically initiated armed phase on the members and claimed that it was the members who convinced the leader to adopt an inevitable decision. Or when they referred to Ahmad Rezai’s suicide operation whenever talking for the rank and file, they intended to instill into them he was a leading ranking who had committed suicide to become an archetype for lower ranks to follow. The adopted approach has undergone a qualitative change through the years but the mindset of sacrificing for the survival of the organization and safeguarding the interests of the leadership have been increasingly fortified.

 
To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part fourteen

Rajavi said: self-immolations forces French authorities to withdraw

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad,

September 04, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, we intend to have a discourse on the issue of self-immolations in June 17, 2003. My first question is under what motives and ends were these incidents broached within the organization?

Batul Soltani: I was not present in the Europe at this phase, but the question was that the members’ main responsibility to repel the direct threat posed against the leadership’s interests was to make sacrifice in any possible way and degree.

SFF: I mean, through what clear process did the organization conduct such feats and what were the targets it directly aimed at?

BS: The main objective was to release Maryam Rajavi as fast as possible but hardly had they thought of possible controversial consequences of such operations. In the higher echelons there might have been a different analysis and conjectures concerning the incidents but in our membership level the stress was on the acceleration of Maryam’s release.

SFF: Maybe I have failed to properly phrase my purpose. So I phrase it anew with an explanation. The motives behind these self-immolations are a matter of dispute. It can be looked upon as a reaction against the leadership’s sacrilege. Or it can be a matter of infringing regulations, that is to say, if Maryam Rajavi’s case was to follow a legal process, especially with concern to the charges against her, she had to face legal trials and the consequent verdicts of punishments. Looking it from this aspect, could these anti-social deeds be challenging and charging Maryam Azodanloo with further allegations and their irreparable consequences? If you remember, prior to this session, you had a reference to Rajavi’s best position taking concerning Maryam’s arrest and explained that her arrest could have serious legal outcomes for her and the headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise. Your reference to these deeds was from a precautionary point of view. The motives behind these self-immolations were only a reaction against the sacrilege to the leadership or coverage for allegations such as laundry, plot against the opponents and other charges of her case? Will you explain if in their inter-organizational analysis the issue was discussed from this aspect?

BS: What they mainly focused on in the organization was the very aspect of the leadership’s sacredness and that we had to do our best to force French judiciary into withdrawing or at least baffle their attempts to take serious decisions. Thus, it can be concluded that their principal objective was aftereffects of the arrest. If you may ask for the cause, the organization has already an experience of Rajavi’s expulsion from France. It happened at a time when Rajavi had resolved to join hands with Saddam and make an alliance. That is, the organization had prepared a de facto background to settle if expelled from France. Of course, there is also a possibility that France’s decision to expel Rajavi was in line of his own volition to leave France. That is why he showed the slightest resistance with the excuse that Iran and France had reached a compromise on his expulsion.

Naturally, when the expulsion by itself helped to actualize general objectives of the organization, it was in no way rational to show reactions like that of the 17 June immolations. Of course, such operations were on the agenda at that time but Rajavi had resolved on a willing decision to leave. But in the case of Maryam it was totally different; Camp Ashraf was no more a stable bastion to settle and her chance of relocation to Iraq had sank to zero. Furthermore, the strategy of the organization was to keep her in the Auvers and to fortify the new bastion there with her as the leader of a pro-democratic and counter-fundamentalist opposition. Naturally, accomplishment of such objectives required a timely decision and reaction. Just as the organization thought France was cozy up to her settlement there she was arrested on many charges that not only seemed to be a violation of the leadership’s sacredness but also could in itself lead to unpredicted consequences; she could even be possibly tried and expelled from France. There had to be taken a calculated risk since the organization lacked a brain at the top; one leader was absent and the other was arrested.

The immolations were the sole option to overcome the crisis, call it a reaction against violation of Maryam’s sanctity or anything else. What the organization needed at that critical moment was to strip members of their capacity for rational activity because it could not preach for them about the legal adverse consequences of Maryam’s apprehension. Then, what had to be done? It is already instilled into them to react whenever the leadership’s sanctity happens to come under direct violation regardless of any regulations they have to submit in the country wherein they are living. The sole goal becomes to release Maryam and they have nothing to do with the legal and illegal aspects of her arrest. The immolations were blind operation that could either aggravate the crisis or temporally tone it down.

It was all outside reflections. As soon as Maryam was arrested, Mozhgan Parsai held an extraordinary meeting in Camp Ashraf and announced that Massoud had delivered a message to inform the arrest of Maryam and a number of other rankings in France. The squall among the members of the Leadership Council disturbed the meeting but Mozhgan continued reading Massoud’s message saying he had insisted that for the release of Maryam, even one hour sooner, all the interests of the organization throughout the world, all its possessions and all the members failed to be enough to be set on fire. It was the reflection of her arrest inside Camp Ashraf. That is why I insist that the organization tried to keep the sacredness of the leadership infringed since it could easily stir the emotions if the sanctity was proclaimed to have been violated. As it was a question of the survival of the organization, leadership and ideology, Mozhgan persisted on emotional aspects of the issue to be magnified for the rank and file. She ended the meeting by saying we were all in our organizational preparedness.

SFF: What did she mean by organizational preparedness?

BS: Nothing in particular. It was only an emphasis on the normalization of the relations among the present members of the Leadership Council and that, all had to behave normally when encountering the lower ranks to pretend nothing serious had occurred. The mixed up appearance of the rankings, swollen red eyes and disorderly hair, could disturb and lower the rank and file’s morale.

SFF: How sincere do you think were the ranks in their emotional reactions?

BS: For Me, it was not sincerely at all. At that moment I had my own doubts. Among the members of the Leadership Council were those who had volunteered to set themselves on fire before Americans, but I believe it was nothing more than a histrionic behavior and there is no clear evidence to say if they were truthful in what they showed. In some cases, it was genuine emotions mixed with insincerity that had their impact on the others to create a homogeneous unity.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part thirteen

Rajavi’s interpretation of the holy and foul suicide

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, August 23, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms. Soltani, in our last session, you mainly focused on theoretic and tenable aspects of suicide operations. Your explanations were nice but it would be much better if you elucidate the practical instances of suicides and self-immolations you have personally witnessed. There are reports of some cases committed for a variety of reasons. I mean how Rajavi reacted to these acts and analyzed them. Your explanations will shed light on ambiguities especially if the names of the victims are mentioned.

Batul Soltani: Well, many of these cases can be found happened within the organization. In many cases Rajavi exclusively referred to some instances as proofs when trying to inoculate his mentalities. Of course, as I have already pointed out, such discourses were held only in the meetings of the Leadership Council and never leaked out. Bear it in mind that he never intended to compare anything with the opponent side or infer anything from these instances of suicide when referring to them. It was an issue discussed within the organizational sphere and, of course, deductions were generally related to internal relations. The main focus was differentiating between the holy and sinful kinds of suicide with the emphasis on romanticizing the suicide and describing it as a noble act which Rajavi theorized according to his interpretations.

I have to point out that some of these suicides were committed just following these meetings like the suicide done by Mehri Moussavi just as some had been recorded before. Of the significance was his skill in presenting examples that could well help to differentiate between the two, that is to say, the presented standards and motivations, which the ranking members were well aware of, behind these suicides could well help to identify whether it was esteemed a holy suicide for the cause of the leader and interests of the organization or despised a sinful suicide for individual weaknesses, flaws and ambitions. Of the suicides that offended Rajavi and made him erupt furiously to hold consequent lengthy meeting with the members of the Leadership Council was the suicide committed by Kamal Haddadi long after the beginning of these discourses. He was a ranking member of the Central Council and that was the cause for Rajavi to be sensitive about the incident.

A look at the list of the members of the Central Council at the time, dissolved after the initiation of the ideological revolution, indicate that he was a ranking commander deposed of his responsibility after the ideological revolution. The emphasis on him as an officer of high ranking is to know how Rajavi degraded such people when treating them for organizational concerns. Kamal was reported to have established a relation with a woman under his command. The relation could be any organizationally unauthorized relation regardless of being ideological, emotional, moral or even a love affair. They said it was a love affair and the case was sent to Rajavi and Maryam to be dealt with. At the time Rajavi was stationed in Camp Parsian. Before transferring Kamal to Camp Parsian, Mahvash Sepehri began further investigation of the case and put Kamal in a prison cell called ‘Bangal’, an isolated, solitary confinement where they kept the culpable to be judged. She pressed him with recriminations and accused him of immoral relations with the woman. So harsh and disdainfully she treated Kamal that he could easily anticipate what awaited him before Rajavi. He could tolerate no more and committed suicide in his cell.

At the time, I was a ranking deputy in the Leadership Council and was present in the meetings particularly dealing with such cases. I remember the first words stated by Rajavi concerning Kamal’s suicide. He was much enraged by Kamal’s act and said he threw his corpse on the leadership’s table. I have to point out that Kamal’s suicide was never mentioned among the rank and file who thought he had died of a natural death. But all the members of the Leadership Council knew that he had died of psychological pressures impressed by Sepehri. In the very same meeting, Rajavi appreciated Sepehri and said Kamal deserved to be treated so contemptibly and unworthy way to commit suicide. Rajavi never mentioned anything about ideological deviation that could have affected Kamal because it could raise questions. Kamal was shown to have no ideological problem and that he had chosen his path rightfully; his death had to be looked and analyzed from a different angle to preserve the good image of the organization.

What Rajavi depicted was so easy to perceive. Among the members are those who set themselves on fire for the sake of the organization and leader’s interests; in contrast, some others commit suicide for deviant, immoral causes and threw their corpses on the table before the leader. Then he compared the different motivations behind the two acts. Those who committed suicide for selfish causes not only committed sin but also led the organization to the midst of a big problem hard to deal with. The former suicides solved a problem in the course of accomplishing a holy cause while the latter suicides burdened problems on the shoulder of the leader. People from each group lose their lives on their own but it is the contradictory motives that decides who is blessed or condemned; the former has succeeded to release himself of his own self to become selfless and attach to an ideological source without; the latter is a slave of his own self and is reluctant to discharge introspections in the arranged weekly ablution sessions to clean his inside.

Taking opportunity of Kamal’s case to illustrate intended motives of suicide, Rajavi presupposed that following the US invasion, the destiny of Mojahedin would be vague. We would be dispersed and sent to different parts of the world; a group to Iran, another to France, America or any other place. In that case, could we possibly carry the potentiality of being a mobile bomb ready to detonate to safeguard the interests of the leadership? To ideologically justify the suicide operations, he again referred to Kamal’s case and other similar cases of suicide for personal motivations; one killing himself for sexual impulses, another disappointed, flawed and depressed, and Kamal Haddadi who was in contradiction with himself and failed to appear before other members to confess his sins and purge him. None of them, he said, had committed suicide for the sake of leader and their attachment to him. No status and value could be so noble as compared to that of setting oneself on fire for the leadership and Maryam.

Although motives for suicide varied, what differentiated between the individual and ideological motives, the former described as a sin in the Quran and the latter romanticized and glorified for organizational causes, was the pivotal point where one’s self met and attached itself with that of the leader who well directed the act onto the right path. It was no more suicide but martyrdom and even exceeded it in value. To give further explanation, he said; consider in this very moment something suddenly threatens my life as your leader. One of you may imagine that the threat is removed if you set yourself on fire. In his opinion, the suicide had committed a sin in risking his life to save the leader because the act was non-ideological and performed under no command by the leader; the suicide was now a foul corpse cast before the leader.

It was one of the instances Rajavi delineated and formulated the ideological suicide that differentiated it with a foul and sinful one; the holy suicide has to be performed only and purely by the permission and the command of the leader, otherwise it will be considered a big sin the ideological motives have spurred it. Thus, it can be concluded that the 17 June self-immolations, in contrast to Maryam Rajavi’s rejection to be instigated by the organization, were organizationally planned and orchestrated and approved by the leadership. None of the volunteers set themselves on fire entirely of their own volition; their acts to be esteemed holy, they had to follow the decree and command of the leadership. Does it mean anything else when they glorified the acts of Neda (Hassani) and Marzeh (Mojaveri), both died of the burning injuries, as holy feats? Their self-immolation before anything indicated the degree of their loyalty and submission to the leadership. These instances along with Rajavi’s ideological interpretation as well as his reference to the Quran as a subterfuge to justify his egocentric ambitions may lead us to the bottom of truth.

To be continued

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Memoirs of Ms. Batul Soltani – Final Part

Rajavi's passion for women and his ambition for leadership

By: Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by: Nejat Society

September 02 2009

When the so called detachment between women and Rajavi was removed, they were completely comfortable to speak about any sort of problem in the meetings. In fact, the ease in the relationships was the outcome of those arguments made by Maryam about “traditional woman “or “woman in quotation marks”. Massoud Rajavi never limited himself to present any sort of problem. Even before marrying every woman in the leadership council, he was always relaxed to ask his questions or to convey his arguments in a manner he desired.

Even where there were some reports on immoral relationships in various levels of the organization, he simply asked detailed questions to know what he needed to know. He asked our opinion and what we knew about that immoral relationship. He never felt shameful among the members in every level of MKO to seek the details. He was totally open in his relations and behaviors.

 
Among the members, there were some people who left meetings after such cases were presented. It is worth knowing that Massoud’s reaction was so humiliating. He called them "peasants" or “mullahs”. Maryam also accused them of being superficial or reactionary.

Despite these reactions there were others who stood up and asked why they are saying so and that was not their problem. Thus they faced the case from a superior position. After some time gradually those so called "peasants" became relaxed in the meetings due to the process the leaders used in order to despise them.

As a matter of fact, those justification meetings lasted for around a hundred hours in order to achieve the desired result. The problem cannot be solved in a short-term meeting.

During the meetings some of the members protest, they leave the hall to think outside, and then they get back saying that they were wrong. They explain their reaction towards that case. The leader asks them what their problem is. They confess that they got angry regarding the discussed case.

To justify their reaction, Rajavi says that these thoughts are the remaining of the reactionary traditional thoughts of Mullahs. He relates the protests to different things and finally accuses the person of being under the influence of her ex-husband and then he concludes that “she hasn’t actually divorced her husband; her divorce is not a real one! She is basically problematic and that is why she doesn’t attend the meeting. She has to start from the beginning.” Such arguments sometimes last for up to one to two hundred hours.

I think Rajavi stands on two virtual legs: One is his passion for women and the other is his ambition for leadership. These traits lead him to a totalitarian, power seeking personality.

 
I think he is able to achieve his ambitions using these two aspects of his personality. He is definitely capable of using them. I’ve already explained that he cannot bear the presence of a man among his so called leadership council. This certifies that he has a psychological problem. In a wide echelon (the leadership council) he gathers his passion for women with his ambition for leadership to accomplish what he wants.

 
Rajavi believes that a woman works more obediently than a man. He thinks that when he orders a man to do a job, he may ask why, but a woman never asks questions about the demands, she would immediately execute the order. And that’s exactly what Rajavi wants. This is the potential that he cannot see in his male members. What matters to him is that who the best to achieve his goals is. Comparing men with women, Rajavi believes that women are different phenomena whom he can invest on.

I think this approach has a very basic role and makes good tools to achieve further objectives.

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Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 22

Massoud asked arrogantly: "Does anyone claim to have a husband other than me?"

By: Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by: Nejat Society

August 25 2009

The members of the Leadership Council were convinced to marry the leader with the reasoning and logics that Maryam and Massoud gave them. They may simply be convinced due to the way Maryam viewed them. She had already spoken to the members in a humiliating manner in order to make sure that they would be persuaded that “ideological marriages are superior to normal marriages”!

 
This reasoning recalls Surdell’s dialectic that says:” to escape from humbleness, the individuals have to shelter before the one who humiliates them. Therefore, the relationship between leaders and members was managed in a way that the justifications were easily accepted. I would like to note some justifications Maryam and Massoud made to convince us.

In order to convince us to marry him, Massoud Rajavi said in a meeting: “if the peak of sexual marriage is 10, then the peak of ideological marriage will be one thousand. Imagine that you are in a hall with a very high ceiling, if you are under a table, the top side of the table will be the peak of an ordinary marriage which signifies a wife-husband relationship, but the ceiling of the hall will be the peak of an ideological ideal relationship. Your mind is filled with old thoughts; you think that I am stranger to you, so you are not comfortable with me. Now that we want to remove this obstacle and we want to remove the quotation marks from the women, we use this scheme.” According to the leaders of MKO, “Women in quotation marks” (cult jargon) signifies women who have grown up in an ordinary society with normal regulations ruling it. They meant the traditional weak women.

Maryam Rajavi tried to degrade the traditional women who “are always owned by their husband.” She insisted that we were still in that situation and we didn’t pass over those old thoughts.

Naturally, we tried to remove that humiliating view from ourselves. The leaders looked dawn on us so we accepted everything they said. They always tried to make us doubt our individuality. If we were not able to present a case about one of our minor colleagues, Maryam would punish us. She accused us of distancing ourselves from Massoud. Then she concluded that the problem comes from our thinking. I could never convince myself to accept their justification from the bottom of my heart.

 
Maryam accused us of having a reactionary mind that motivated us to feel a distance between Massoud and ourselves. Then she concluded that in order to remove this distance, we should marry him. She made us believe that we never had the right to have another husband. Then in the meeting Massoud asked us arrogantly: "Does anyone claim to have a husband other than me?"

Then he added “if anyone feels she belongs to her ex-husband for the least part, she should get out of the room.”

In fact, with his reasoning, Massoud convinced the members that he sacrificed himself to release the women from the old, traditional, reactionary thoughts that always exploited women in the history.

 
In MEK, the leaders try to make you believe that Massoud Rajavi is the only one who is always ready for change and revolution; the only one who scarifies himself to solve others’ contradictions; he is the only one who accepts every responsibility. Therefore he is not an ordinary man! This is what the organization makes us to believe.

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An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part twelve
 

Weekly sessions, a process to secure obedience to Rajavi

By: Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

August 24 2009

Sahar Family Foundation: Ms, Soltani, you pointed out something interesting concerning the mechanism of suicide operations and self-immolations, that is, how easily one can carry out these organizationally inculcated operations just by making a liaison with a point out of one’s own self. That is, one overruns his individuality and will for a greater cause crystallized in another person called leader. The logic, regardless of its justifiably luring virtue, does not end here because any thought and attitude can easily justify itself through such a logic. That is true about many adherents of cults who do anything for the guru, preaching right or wrong notwithstanding. Following such logic, any group can claim to be rightfully on the right path and it has nothing to do at all with the nature of the source of liaison. There were people on the side of Yazid (a reference to a historical event when the army of Yazid massacred all forces on the side of Imam Hussein, the third Shi’it imam) who had accepted the leadership of Yazid and fought against Imam Hussein with a gesture of goodwill and for the sake of God. Is it right to say that liaison with a source of leadership justifies a truth? If so, there are many antitheses to discuss. Was there any opportunity to discuss these discrepancies and what were Rajavi’s responses?

Batool Soltani: Indeed there were many controversies and, of course, Rajavi insisted that the members of the Leadership Council take their time to solve any ambiguity and raised question. But his answer to these ambiguities was that first it had to be discovered why people had joined the side of the wrong. He insisted on recognition of what had motivated them to join. There was no question if they had joined for worldly and ambitious causes but it was different if they were fighting on the wrong front for the cause of truth. Then it turned to be a matter of the ideologically polluted system of the opposite front. He mainly focused on the polluted ideology of the followers of the opposite front. He gave example of the operation Eternal Light saying that we would call our killed forces martyrs as did the Islamic Republic and strongly contradicted its claims to be on the right path; he believed that the IR had deceived and misled who had come to confront the rightful Mojahedin’s forces. The IR forces had not erred in attaching themselves to the IR leadership but it was the wrong ideology that had misled them.

 
SFF: Then it was not totally a matter of ambitions since they too fought for ideological causes and had attached themselves to someone out of their own self.

BS: That is why he would say they had ideologically been misled and anybody following Khomein’s ideology failed to be accounted as our forces who could never be ideologically affiliated with the regime. None of the either sides could possibly agree on the oriented ideology of the opponent, but there were those who walked a middle path and dodged seeing their interests in danger. He would call them compromisers who never walked in a fixed front and changed their position whenever sensed danger from any side. Thos who shunned, for example, committing suicide or self-immolation when it was necessary belonged to this very same group. They are people of ambitions and opportunists who are enslaved by their whims and avarice and infiltrate into both sides to fill their pack and have nothing to do at all with the ideology and the leadership. In fact, he believed, they were attached to nobody but themselves while the real forces adherent to either ideology resisted to the end and never changed their positions.

 
Those who stood on Rajavi’s side were known to be the true believers of a right ideology while the others on the opposite front were perverted and aberrant. He would adduced the Quran as his proof for his theory and would say the Quran classifies people into four groups; the righteous, the martyrs, the faithful and the prophets. Nothing was to be told about the last group that was an exception. One way to recognize the sincere who assented to commit suicide operations was to see his frequent attendances of weekly hold sessions of ablution and confession*. It was the recognized boundary between the true ideological believers and the opportunists. It was Rajavi’s instructions preached in the meetings of the members of the Leadership Council and insisted that those who refused and dodged to attend weekly sessions of cleansing and confession would certainly stop midway in the path of struggle while others, who attended sessions, continued to the end.

 
These instructions were all included in the especial book prepared by himself for the members of the Leadership Council who had to attend weekly sessions as well to prove their sincerity. He would call the weekly ablutions a ‘great crusade’ through which one could unite his within with without and dared to outpour all counter-values that hindered when the time came to sacrifice to defend the leader and his interests. These were the faithful who had even outstripped the martyrs, that is what he believed in. There were sympathizers who came to take part in the demonstrations and would donate sums of money to help but never risked their life in practical struggle. They were the righteous but still lagged far behind the martyrs. Unlike them, the faithful risked their life anywhere in the world just to defend and safeguard the interests of the leadership by setting themselves on fire. They outshined the martyrs.

Now, what was the touchstone to distinguish them? They could be recognized in the frequency of taking part in the weekly sessions of ablution and who cleaned their selves by pouring out what was passing within them; their personal penchants, lust, insincere tendencies, and whatever hindered them to be unified with Rajavi. The ones that merged with Rajavi made no attempt to conceal anything from him and if they had to, it was a matter of submission to his order. Nothing could come between them and the leader and they had fused into one. No doubt, such devoted people never disappointed their leader when the time came to commit suicide and set themselves on fire. Thus, this is an answer to existing contradiction within Rajavi’s system. But I can give more details to resolve these contradictions. I think Rajavi followed a model that he had theorized in its most extreme form.

 
At times in inter-organizational relations and meetings, Rajavi would decry the idea of being touched by Khomeini. He meant that we should not do things to be afraid of being condemned of following the models and ideological guidelines of Ayatollah Khomeini. But then it changed. Rajavi resolved that his relation with the members and sympathizers had to be set on such pattern that was further explained in a speech by Mehdi Abrishamchi. What he said in general was that the organization should have no reluctance in abandoning fears of condemnation and following a pattern in its struggle to topple the regime. The best pattern at hand he recommended to adhere to and practice within the organization was Ayatollah Khomein’s relation with his followers, mainly founded on people’s compliance with him. Of course, they disregarded his charismatic influence on his followers that goes far beyond ordinary logic or self-interest and since Rajavi failed to understand and explain such devotional relationship, he tried to interpret it within the terms like detachment from the self and attaching to a source without; that is, the members have to be completely devoted to their leader and prepared to do anything he commands- even kill others, or themselves.

The more the time passed, the more he was obsessed with plans to become a magnet to draw devoted members and insisted to exactly, even if forcibly, accomplish the pattern he was holding onto. He was merging the principle of guidance with its authoritative aspects and opportunism to create a holy man of himself called the ideological leader. He dissolved all those assemblies and bodies whose role was to supervise the leadership and became the egocentric leader and center of all decision makings and identical to nobody in the modern world; a morally, ideologically and politically infallible leader who was even exceeding the pattern he had chosen. Thus, he became a leader from whom even the ideology drew its legitimacy.

 
To be continued

* According to a recently published official report by RAND, the MeK holds daily, weekly, and monthly “sessions” that involve forced public confessions aimed at expelling deviant thoughts and behaviors that are believed to undermine group coherence. MeK members are required to keep daily records of their thoughts and nighttime dreams, particularly sexual thoughts and desires (which are, of course, forbidden), as well as observations about their fellow members. They must submit their journals to their supervisors. During large meetings, members often are forced to read their reports aloud and to make self-critical statements. MeK members are often required to admit to sexual thoughts.

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An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part eleven
 

Rajavi’s leadership, the criterion to legitimize the ideology

By: Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

August 22 2009

Sahar Family Foundation: We continue with the question, in all aspects of the discussed suicide operations, what were the ideological foundations and historical backgrounds that theorized and justified application of such operations? Were there any reliable historical facts to refer to or Rajavi relied only on his own inferences to justify such deeds? As Rajavi usually theorizes anything before putting it into action, it has to be necessarily true in this case as well. I believe these are key issues, hardly discussed in detail, to help develop a better understanding of such reprehensibly ideological mannerism. So I think you can better disclose untold aspects since you have been so close to the nucleus of decision makings.

Batool Soltani: Naturally, as they stated, anything was founded on and done according to a series of presented justifications. That is to say, any resolution had to be justifiably fitted in an ideological apparatus to be practically conceivable. I myself believe that we cannot possibly develop an understanding of the mechanisms that are products of an egocentric will, and in many cases self-instigated, unless we can well analyze fundamental principles. Concerning your question, I will give some details of what I have observed in the different levels and in the level of the Leadership Council in particular.

Regardless of many subjects already discussed, once in 2002 we had a long discourse on the subject you broached. I have to point out that there was a especial book of the Leadership Council wherein you could find the questions, duties and responsibilities of the members of the Leadership Council. Particularly, an article exclusively concerned the subject. Of course, the book was only circulating among the members of the Leadership Council and none of the lower ranks were permitted to touch it. It was exclusively edited for the members of the Leadership Council and would be also referred to as “the Book of Guidance”. The book contained extended degrees of responsibilities as well as the limitations and whatever was considered to be an act of sin. In one of the meetings of the Leadership Council it was enthusiastically debated about the mentioned subject and the historical backgrounds of the suicide operation. In his speech Rajavi underlined that the act of suicide in itself was a big sin and homicide in Islamic teachings. He would say if according to Quran suicide was known to be a big sin then, why we were stressing on suicide and related operations as a working approach. Of course, it was before the widespread self-immolations of June 17.

 
He would continue focusing on the point that while it was a big sin then, why we took advantage of it for organizational interests and to defend Ashraf. In answer to his own raised question some stood to justify that the suicides were ideologically rooted and done for organizational and revolutionary interests that eventually benefitted masses. He taunted them all about whatever they thought to be serious remarks. He explained that it was all beyond our understanding since we lacked the sound political-ideological capacity needed to reach the accurate answer. The rationalized answer to his own posed question was that in all the wars and battles to which the prophets and imams dispatched their disciples to and also the armed struggle the organization was engaged in some people were inevitably killed. Then, was there any difference between the former warriors called martyrs and the latter combatants killed in the course of suicide operations? Both of the groups he explained to be of help to their leaders to carry out their responsibilities to affect their societies and the revolution they led. He meant that there was no difference between the two groups since both were killed in a battlefront to which they had been dispatched by the order of leaders who intended to accomplish the same cause.

 
Giving further explanations, he focused on Ahmed Rezai’s suicide act as a sacred feat beyond any regular suicide operation saying his act was sacred and distinguished because he, as the suicide-man, had reached a point where he had detached from his own self and had attached himself to a source without. Any act in any form, being suicide, self-immolation or else, done when the suicide detaches himself from his within and relies on a pivot without not only distances himself from any territory of sin but also transcends himself to a status even above the martyrs. He would interpret that the Quran regards suicide an act of sin because the perpetrator does it in the sphere of observing only his own self and as a result of failing to satiate his own personal will and whim. Then, it would be considered no sin if committed far from selfish tendencies and for a sacred causes to achieve some social and historical ends.

 
The Quran condemns suicide when motivated by individual urges and the suicide sees no obligation to follow the orders of a leader who intends to alleviate social problems and solve social controversies. It is no more a sin as it relies on and is guided by a pivotal element without who controls deflection when attached to. In fact, Rajavi was commenting on the application of one of the articles of his forced ideological revolution referred to as article F, Fardiyat (individual). The article in particular asserts the relation between the individuals and the leader meaning that it is the leader who legitimizes anything said or done by the individuals. He is the pivot on whom the individuals have to relay and attach themselves for interpretation of anything that happens to be practical and the criterion to assess the accuracy and soundness of thoughts.

 
SFF: What did Rajavi actually mean, attachment to leadership or ideology? Since it is the ideology, however, that crystallizes the values than the leader whose main role is to interpret and foster them. What did he really mean?

BS: He exactly intended attachment to leadership himself. There were controversies at the beginning on the ideological aspect and some would say that suicide draw its legitimacy from the ideology while Rajavi had a different opinion stressing on the leader as the matrix to which the individual had to secure a liaison. Although it may generally be considered the very same ideology, Rajavi believes that it is the leader who is the spirit without whom anything lacks legitimacy. It is main cause of his strife with the Islamic Republic regime. Attachment to ideology in his opinion is a general perception that actualizes by attaching to the leadership. Then, the matrix one attaches himself to far from his own self is the leader rather than the ideology since from the very beginning the leader has crystallized the ideology itself. As a matter of fact, both are regarded identical with the priority of the former over the latter to justify suicide tantamount to a de facto recognition of a sacred act wherever and whenever the leader wills. Looking it from the angle of Rajavi’s interpretation, the leader is the criterion and the grounds to judge what is lawful, permissible, prohibited and ideologically acceptable. That is where one’s suicide turns to be a big and unforgivable sin if it is unauthorized by the leader regardless of him being directly or indirectly attached.

SFF: What do you mean by directly or indirectly?

BS: By directly I mean a reaction against any direct attempt on the leader’s life when an individual risks his life to save the leader. Any reaction to protect the interests of the leader anywhere on the earth by risking one’s life is an indication of indirect attachment, a responsibility the individuals claim to defend the leadership, his security and interests. In both cases, whether the leader is exposed to direct attempts of assassination or indirect character assassination, one has to protect and defend the leadership and sacrifice himself. To actualize his justifications, he did not even shrink from identifying himself with the prophets and imams. He would say the one who sacrificed himself to protect the Prophet against the harms of the adversaries was identical with the same faithful follower who committed suicide or self-immolation away in the distance to defend his status and interests. Again the criterion was the leadership and his unlimited protection directly or indirectly.

 
I believe that Rajavi intended to completely remove the doubts formed in the minds of the members of the Leadership Council that suicide was in no way an act of sin and even sacred and glorified if it was committed under the command of the leadership in any form. The suicide who sacrificed himself for the cause of the leadership and his interests anywhere in the world would be rewarded far beyond that of a martyr who had been killed under the command of the Prophet or the leader of the organization.

SFF: At the first look, it seems that the priority is first to guarantee maintenance of the leadership’s interests and then survival of the organization. Can it be the basis for all justifications?

BS: Of course, in one aspect that is to guarantee the interests of both leadership and the organization. But there is one important point to notice, that is, the two are intermingled and inseparable with the priority of the former. The organizational interests can never be discussed separately unless accredited to the leader just as it is with the ideology that draws its legitimacy from the leadership.

 
To be continued

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Memoirs of Batoul Soltani –Part 21

No member of Leadership council dares to tell his personal problems

By Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by Nejat Society

August 19 2009

The affairs of the Leadership Council including marrying Masud are never revealed to lower ranks, due to the fact that Maryam and Masud believe:”the lower ranks will not understand it because the pupils of their eyes are sexual.”

“Pupils of the eyes are sexual” is a jargon expression in the organization which is used for those who allegedly judge the affairs sexually. In their opinion the case of such marriages is something that the others are not able to realize.

I don’t think that anyone in lower ranks know about the marriage agreement announced for women of the Leadership Council and Masud Rajavi. As a high ranking member who was responsible for meetings of lower ranks,

 
I don’t remember (at least as far as I was involved) the case of marriages was presented. Maryam and Masud insist that there is no need to present such a case in lower ranking meetings and also they do not have the capacity to realize it. They said:” we set such an arrangement to solve a historical problem. For me and other members of the Leadership Council, everything presented by Rajavi was acceptable. We had to discuss the most detailed problems of our minor members for Rajavi, For example we talked about their health problems or other problems, based on the content of reports of weekly cleansing meetings (cult jargon) for male members. The reports included their sexual problems or many other problems that no one dare to propose.

Of course, the men’s problems were never presented in front of us (as female members). Their contradictions were not told directly to us. At first, they were presented in men’s meetings, under particular regulations because these contradictions shouldn’t be presented in public meetings unless it was a public case. If the contradiction was sexual, it should be written to the male superior. The latter would add the names. The name had to be written on a separate paper and attached to the report [The name of the female member whom he had emotional or sexual feelings for]. If a man wrote the name of a woman in his report, he would be punished.

 
At the end of the day, the male superior handed the reports to the female in charge and ultimately the reports were handed over to the highest ranking member in the highest level. There, the reports were investigated and the names were read. Then they immediately changed the position of that female member and moved her to another unit. So, even the lowest ranking members could guess that she had some problem.

Sometimes the problem had happen between two male members. Then the superiors organized both to change their positions. After the changes were done, the two men became subjects of a series of meetings. They had to deal with a project with its specific outcomes.

 
There is no female member under the supervision of a male member. All women of course were only under the supervision of a single man, Massoud Rajavi. Before the evolutions in the leadership Council, the meetings were held with the presence of both men and women, but later Rajavi said that he didn’t want any female member to be under the responsibility of a male member. He believed that men’s hegemony upon women would definitely end in sexual problems. The relations were managed in a way that all reports were presented and discussed with Rajavi in daily meetings. For example the members reported that such and such person had emotional and sexual thoughts about such and such person.

 
Before marrying Massoud, none of the female members had the nerve to present such cases in the meetings with Massoud or Maryam. Therefore marrying Massoud was proposed. They told us:”You are all Massoud’s wives, so you could easily speak of everything to get the solution.” If someone didn’t accept the marriage, she would automatically drop from that level.

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An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part ten

Execution, the approach to repel dissenters

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, August 15, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin WS

Sahar Family Foundation: since the deployment of the American forces in the region and even before that the serious agenda before the organization has been the resistance of Camp Ashraf. That is why it is of such significance for the organization and that is another issue to deal with. But the question here is implementation of the means, explicitly suicide operations, to defend Ashraf as the strategic bastion. That is the fact we have already talked about when referring to human tragedy and human shield, the members’ risking their life in defense of Ashraf. Rajavi has reiterated that ‘if Ashraf resist, the whole world resist’, in fact, such mottos show clear dispositions of the leadership and other rankings towards Ashraf for its strategic importance. Will you give further details on anything untold concerning this issue and even what approaches did Rajavi take to deal with those members who would resist against plotted suicides in defense of Ashraf?

 
Batool Soltani: well, here are a nexus of issues that can be discussed separately. One is the vow to defend Ashraf through any possible means. First it was resolved to fight in defense of Ashraf tooth and nail but circumstances proved to be more serious and they had to think of a different approach to resist, that is to say, human shield. Once they resolved on urgent transfer of the cadres of the Leadership Council from Iraq to France and they even provided passports for high rankings to get them out of Iraq. In 2003, Massoud Rajavi, the beating heart of the organization, made a call insisting that Auvers-sur-Oise, Maryam’s residence, was the brain of the organization while Ashraf was naturally the heart; the brain would naturally collapse if the heart’s beating declined, and it is a question of how the brain and heart interrelate.

You know, after the fall of Saddam, the organization concentrated all its propaganda capacity on Auvers-sur-Oise to present it, along with Maryam, as the organization’s headquarters of the political leadership in the West. They began to maneuver on Maryam as a political engine there just after experiencing the failed tactic of electing her as the president-elect. Just after her sham election, she was sent to France to play her role there but it proved to be a big failure and she was returned to Camp Ashraf to be conveyed back right before the fall of Saddam. A new round of propagation began since they were of the opinion that now, after the political fluctuations in the region, the West would have a differently positive opinion of Mojahedin. They targeted two aims simultaneously; to stabilize their political bastion in the West by attracting attentions to Auvers-sur-Oise, and second, to continue an increasing protection in favor of Camp Ashraf for two reasons. First, it has been regarded the organization’s ideological receptacle that has the potentiality of rendering members’ ideological readiness. Second, it is observed to be a potential armed force just within the reach of the coalition forces to be used against Iran if they had any plan. The organization’s analysis of the regional crises had convinced it that American’s military interference against Iran was decisively inevitable and was planning to fan the fire to accelerate what it imagined had to happen sooner or later. Thus it was all conditioned on the preservation of Ashraf as a future lever for America against Iran that could possibly lead to Mojahedin’s seizing of power, the key issue on the back burner that required the organization to be disarmed but remain under the protection of a second patron and to unwillingly consent to the wills of the Iraqi government until the due time came. So Ashraf had to be preserved to invest the organization with a promising future. After the 17 June tragic incidents, Massoud Rajavi insisted on a new role play for the Leadership Council, the human shield to defend Ashraf. It was just coincident with Rajavi’s two-year pledge that ended with Bush’s presidency.

Rajavi knew well that out of Iraq would be the end of road for the organization and insisted on staying in Iraq at any cost in hope of a miracle that could open the gate to drive through into Iran. In an earlier analysis he had stated that the organization’s permanent stay in Iraq meant destruction of the organization in whole; it was only a short stay to move to Iran. But now there was another analysis that contradicted the previous; to leave Iraq was equal to complete annihilation. The sole solution was to preserve Ashraf; they could either wait to fish in the troubled waters of intensified crises in the region or all would be buried in Camp Ashraf. The approach for the latter choice was a mass suicide. But then they conjectured that there could be other solutions as well. On was based on the promise that because of the Geneva’s fourth article they could not be forcefully repatriated. Then they draw a picture that they would fight tooth and nail if there was any plan to relocate them forcefully. The last proposed resolution was a mass suicide; two deaths were the outcome of this decision. A number of members dispersed after the invasion of the coalition forces were returning to the camp when en route they were informed of the camp’s siege by American forces. Two members the Leadership Council, Marzieh Ali-ahmadi and Nazhat Arzbeigi, immediately set themselves on fire to execute their organizational duty. In fact, they carried out the mission Rajavi had assigned members to do in case American forces occupied the camp. On two conditions members were told to commit mass suicide; the incursion of either Americans or Iraqi Shi’its into the camp. Just when Americans were behind the wall of Ashraf, many members the Leadership Council were preparing to commit suicide. Rajavi had even issued an ultimate for the disobedient who refrained to commit suicide, it was revolutionary execution. No doubt, no outsider could draw any distinction between a voluntary suicide and revolutionary execution following a mass suicide. Rajavi has thought of slightest details concerning his mass suicide program at Ashraf; nobody has to be survived, the willing and the unwilling have to be burn together.

 
Notably, there were other deterrent decrees issued by Rajavi in private and in a meeting of higher echelons; the lower echelons were unaware of the decrees. The escapees had to be targeted and executed by others; it was the same fate that befell the disloyal and betrayers. The deserters for the opposite front would also face the same destiny. Interestingly, if anybody failed to commit suicide, others had the responsibility to help him/her accomplish the job. Thus, the human tragedy in defense of Ashraf is a program that has to be possibly brought into actuality and there are a variety of approaches that will act to remove deterrents.

To be continued

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Memoirs of Batoul Soltani – Part 20

Masud Rajavi Married every woman of the Leadership Council

By: Sahar Family Foundation

SFF – Translated by Nejat Society

August 08 2009

As I explained previously about Masud and Maryam’s Marriage, it was a solution to remove the last obstacle between the leader and Maryam since no obstacle is accepted in this relationship. In the case of the leadership Council of which the members are all women, there was also the same legal, moral and religious contradiction that has to be removed.

Any woman who wants to enter the Leadership Council should obey the article B of the Ideological Revolution, which was actually related to “Joining the leader”. In this article the women are told to marry Masud Rajavi as soon as they are accepted in the Leadership Council.

 
As a matter of fact this article is mentioned just after the person has become a member of the Leadership Council. I remember Maryam discussing the argument for us saying: ”Now you are exclusively considered as Msaud’s wives”. Therefore the contradiction was removed. And only Masud could hold meetings for women of the Leadership Council since in his opinion when a woman is a member of the Leadership Council her relationship with the leader is totally different from the other members.

 
Thus, through a series of long-term meetings, the members of the Leadership council are convinced that the extent of their relation with the leader has changed due to their presence in the Leadership Council. Distinctively after that Masud is their husband. Then, he introduced a marriage certificate for each member of the Council.

 
It is worth informing that there were official ceremonies specifically held for the above mentioned marriages and I was present in one of them. Before the start of the ceremony, Maryam explained the article B again discussing its differences for a man and for a woman.

They presented some arguments on the issue but unfortunately I don’t remember them in details since they are related back to 1999. In fact the bottom line of those arguments was as Maryam said: ”you are not a divorced or abandoned woman any more … You are Msaud’s ideological wives”. She meant that this type of marriage is not ordinary but it is spiritual.

 
About the formation of the ceremony, Maryam herself was the one who hold the meeting. The scenario was like this “At the beginning Maryam asked Masud to enter the meeting and Masud refused at first and pretended that he was forced to come in. Apparently, Masud wasn’t willing to attend the meeting and Maryam insisted him to do so.

 
Even Maryam told the members of the Leadership Council that she was doing so to remove their contradictions. She said: ”Your minds are still bounded with legal and traditional restrictions and this might cause problems in the future”. She emphasized that marrying Masud would close their minds to any other man. Finally Masud got into the meeting and he himself announced the marriage agreement and each member said “I do”.

For the ceremony, after Masud went into the meeting, he gave a break. Then everyone made wudhu (ablution) and came back, Masud himself announced the agreement and the women said “I do” one by one. Apparently, they were not forced to say so.

 
It was a routine ceremony which was held for each group of the leadership Council members who were replaced. I myself attended the forth ceremony.

 
Before the ceremony, the meetings were completely different; members didn’t talk about anything; but after the marriage ceremony, the atmosphere was so different that the women could talk about their most personal and sexual problems.

 
Once, I remember a woman who didn’t say “I do” in the marriage ceremony. Then I saw that she was automatically excluded from our meetings. We never saw her in the meetings in that level anymore.

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An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 9

Rajavi; set your body on fire to defend Ashraf

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, August 06, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin WS

Sahar Family Foundation: In our last talk you pointed out that the prerequisite for membership in the organization is to volunteer for self-immolation. Does it mean that the organization reacts against the reluctant and how does it deal with such instances?

 
Batool Soltani: The organization takes no clear position to directly confront in such instances. To answer the question, we need to conduct a deep analysis of a whole organizational reaction against already confronted cases. There was a female colleague who had refused to volunteer for self-immolation but the organization showed no antagonistic attitude towards her before others. It was not the end of the story and the organization commanded me to watch her closely since they believed that she was in trouble with herself and cared not the least for the organization. They would justify that now even ten days after the detention of Maryam in France, she had refrained to be an abstentious volunteer. In fact, the organization avoided to tackle with these members just before the eyes of others and pretended to overlook them. In this way, many others would be impressed to join the side of majority since the impartiality proved to be a working propaganda to attract more than to repel. Furthermore, nobody could accuse the organization of coercing members into acts of suicide and the acts would be propagated as personal outbursts of passion and consequent of strong devotion to the ideology, Maryam and Massoud. The process of indirect control of the disobedient would continue until through an excuse they would be seriously censured. There were some among the rankings of the Leadership Council who refused to volunteer for suicide operations but after a while were suddenly evanesced from the council. In my opinion, the use of clever mechanisms of control to undermine the dissidents functioned much better than exploiting levers of pressure and coercion. And so far it has succeeded to expand glorification of suicide operation as a token of devotion among the insiders.

 

SFF: You have already stated that self-immolation as a kind of suicide operation has been innovated by the organization. Can you say exactly when the organization selected it as a working lever, and who was the first to suggest it and for what reason?

 

BS: Well, I have already explained that the suicide operation is not new but was innate in organization from its very formation.

 
SFF: I mean in its novel form of self-immolation.

 
BS: Well, it was first conducted to be committed in 17 June operations. We have never witnessed it before.

 
SFF: To make it more clear, when it was first suggested as a solution and by whom?

BS: It returns to Massoud Rajavi’s last meeting in Camp Ahraf before the fall of Saddam. It was a well known meeting called ‘the meeting of flag’. Of course, the issue was not explicitly mentioned there but it was later discussed in a meeting of the Leadership Council that what should have to be done to defend if Saddam collapsed and Camp Ashraf came under unexpected threat from the outside. For the first time Massoud suggested self-burning as a defensive advantage to safeguard Ashraf. He frankly stated that to repel any threat intended to dismantle Camp Ashraf all had to sacrifice and set themselves on fire. Of course, at the time the organization was not suffering the deteriorating condition of being disarmed and it was still equipped with a variety of heavy and light weapons that could defend itself to some extent. But it seemed that Rajavi was anticipating a near future of invasion that could seriously challenge the organization before it could use its arms. So the best defensive measure was resolved by Rajavi to be suicide through self-immolation. We never saw Massoud again till the manifestation of his novel suggestion in the incidents of 17 June.

 
SFF: To remind you, I have to point out that the issue of self-immolation emerged for the first time in the letters of the members who wrote them to Massoud Rajavi following his ideological revolution as an indication of devotion to him and his revolution. I remember a letter in Jafarzadeh’s handwriting published by a website in which he had volunteered to commit self-immolation to show his loyalty. These letters date back to 1985 and I mean to say that the issue was first proposed at that time as the letters indicate. Furthermore, even when France was expelling some members to Gabon, Maryam Rajavi is quoted to have said Massoud Rajavi had stopped remonstrant self-immolations as a raised objection against the decision taken by France. Your reference to the meeting dates back to 2002, then, can you remember any earlier occasion when the issue came under notice?

 
BS: To correct, I was not in the organization at the time you are referring to. I joined in mid 1980s and I have seen none of the things you say in the sources published by the organization.

SFF: All of the instances I stated you can find in the publications of the organization if you have access to them.

 
BS: It seems that my information as a member of the organization fails to surpass that of yours. I would be grateful if you could give me the address to these sources.

 

To be continued

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Mass grave found in Ashraf garrison (MKO base) in Iraq

Sunday August 2, 2009

According to confirmed reports reflected in the Iraqi media, a mass grave containing victims of Saddam Hussein's regime during the war against Kuwait in 1991 was found in Ashraf garrison, the base of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization, in the Diyala province in Iraq.

Iraqi media reports also reflected the joy of the inhabitants of the Diyala province that the Iraqi government has imposed its rule over what was described as the "camp housing the terrorist MKO".

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An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part 8

Human tragedy in prospect; Mojgan Parsai the first volunteer

By: Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

July 22 2009                                                                  

Sahar Family Foundation: In our last session we talked about the possibility of a human tragedy. You said that all volunteers had signed a written pledge for self-immolation. The question is to what degree the organization can exploit these signed pledges to stage a human tragedy?

Batool Soltani: This is an issue of high potentiality. In fact, these letters helped the organization have an effective evaluation to plot its future scenarios. They are substructures on which the organization will lay the groundwork for its political strategies. But regardless of these potential means and developing a true assessment of the devoted on whom it can relay, it shows the organization’s own fascination in such activities that are some true aspects of cultic relations. Admittedly, most cults behave according to pre-planned scenarios in their relations with the outside world. It is also the same with Mojahedin.

When a member like Sedigheh Mojaveri commits self-immolation, for sure her feat has been already discussed in detail in higher echelons of the organization. It fails to be an arbitrary decision, not even one percent, to step into the street and set oneself on fire; any instance of unbridled passion is absolutely rejected by the organization and fails to be accounted as an organizationally directed objective.

Frankly speaking, no member of the organization with whatever ranking, being in charge of any post or else, hardly takes a step uncontrolled and uncoordinated by the organization. In a hierarchical order within an organization with tight discipline and very limited internal democracy, the responsible ranks have to be aware of the slightest overt and covert things about the members under their authority and there is nothing kept secret about the members in respect to their status.

For example, I was in England for four years and my massul (the one in charge) was aware of the single moments of my stay there; it was the same with the members under my authority. Hardly can you find an organization with so strong sense of cohesion and tight internal discipline. Consequently, no decision of self-immolation remains concealed from the ranks in charge and nobody ever dares to disobey the organization to engage in any self-motivated act of suicide.

SFF: From what layer of the organization were specifically the first volunteers of self-immolation in Camp Ashraf? Can you, for instance, name the first volunteer?

BS: You know, anything in an organization emerges from the top layers and gradually, through a well orchestrated mechanism, is spread to lower layers. It is done so skillfully that after a while those in the top can hardly believe that what is so easily embraced and theorized among the lower ranks is a magnified reflex of what had been originated in the top.

 
SFF: Now, can you name the first volunteer for self-immolation in Camp Ashraf when it was resolved on the act?

BS: In the department I was, Mojgan Parsai was the first who broached the subject and she was also the first volunteer. Her first sentence to begin was ‘It is worthwhile to set on fire whatever we have in Camp Ashraf for Maryam’s freedom’. Of course, what she said was another interpretation of Massoud Rajavi’s message stating that we had to make use of all our facilities and potentialities wherever we were to set Maryam free. He would say any Mojahed breathing on this planet had to be ready to sincerely sacrifice and set on fire whatever he had for the sake of Maryam. Thus, it all began in the echelon of the Leadership Council and the enthusiast slid down to the lower layers. It is also the same with other issues. Consider, for instance, they want to elect a first secretary.

The candidate would be elected in the first layers of the Leadership Council but remained secret. Idiomatically they would say ‘let the string of anything loose and it will unwind to the lowest layers’. They meant that whatever they decided on would be indirectly conveyed to the lesser ranks down to the bottom where it again quickly and energetically bounces back to the top layers as something new. Now it was our time to galvanize them into action and arrange a formal meeting to elect the one we had already decided on. None of the members present at the meeting knew what was really going on and how they had been inculcated to vote for Mojgan Parsai or Sedigheh Hussaini for example. Anything would end happily. On the one hand the top layers had picked up their favorite one and on the other hand, it would be propagated that a candidate had been elected through a totally democratic process. Everyone thought that his/her has been respectfully accomplished. Now suppose that somebody from the top layers had decided to commit self-immolation.

 The decision had to be discussed in detail in all three layers of the Leadership Council before being approved by the first secretary and the leadership. I mean to say again that nobody with whatever ranking and organizational status, even if a proxy for the leadership, could take a perverse and decisive action or decision for whatever personal and organizational objective. Only those familiar with the layers of the Leadership Council can understand what I mean.

 Systematically, when one from the top volunteers for self-immolation, as I did, it denotes that the person has grabbed at the loosed string whether he accedes to it or not. When I myself unwillingly volunteered for the act, in fact, I was sizing the string Mojgan Parsai had let down to let it pass to lower levels. It was only a reaction to what the organization tried to instill into the members. When I saw how devoted Mojgan was when she announced her readiness to burn herself for the sake of Maryam, although I did not know how sincere she was in what she claimed, naturally it could impress me to be the second to volunteer. Of course the sincerity is not at all a matter of any significance but the enthusiast and incitement such an atmosphere created among others.

 
Now the question is how the incitement could provoke the human tragedy you mentioned. Through the same mechanism of the idea being passed down from the top to the down, the crystallized ideas in the lesser layers very easily generate actions and the created enthusiast erupt into actions that may lead to human tragedy. It is much expected among the lower layer than the top since the rank and file are more emotive and impulses from the top easily impress themselves on them. Of course, you may notice that the top layers never fail to show off their emotions but for sure they are rational and reasonable when they have to act.

 
That is why they are the first to volunteer but hardly the last to put the words into action; unlike them, the lesser layers are resolute not only to do what they volunteer themselves for but also enter a compete and try to outstrip each other. That is how it may end to a human tragedy in its worst form. When I see that a ranking member like Mojgan Parsai volunteers for self-immolation, what do you expect of me as a subordinate! To be sure, as I have been already notified, I will not be the one to set myself on fire when the time comes because I know they will never let me harm myself as one belonging to the higher echelon. However, the occurrence of a human tragedy inside Camp Ashraf depends on Massoud Rajavi’s will and a number of other factors well identified by him to trigger the disaster. And it is all because of the strategically decisive role Camp Ashraf plays in Mojahedin’s existence and survival. So important an issue it is for Mojahedin that it requires a long discourse.

 
To be continued

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Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani (Part 19)

Rajavi and the Leadership Council

By: Sahar Family Foundation

Translated by Nejat Society

July 19 2009

As I described in previous parts of my memoirs, I felt that Rajavi liked the women to be around him and he couldn’t bear the presence of even one man in his surroundings. But there were apparently other factors to select these women for the leadership council. There were some individuals who were so devoted to the ideas of the leadership and they were so eager to work hard but they didn’t succeed to be a member of the Council due to the lack of some factors. There were too many arguments on these cases. For example they said: ”Although, she (a particular person) has ideologically reached an acceptance level, she cannot be a member of the leadership council because she doesn’t have the skills to take responsibility to carry out the organizational tasks, she cannot manage well or she cannot speak fluently.”

Being a good speaker or having executive skills was prior to ideological competence of the member. I remember when they selected Sediqe Husseini, they always told her: ”we assign you as a member of the leadership council but you have to increase your knowledge and correct your mistakes [remove your negative points] .

I don’t think that appearance is a factor but there are some examples that raise the doubt that personal appearance matters in selection of some female members. For instance in the case of Maryam Rajavi when she was selected as the first secretary of the organization she was actually the most beautiful woman among high-ranking members. Or, about Fahime Arvani who was at that time the prettiest woman in the organization. She was really beautiful. So her selection caused too many accusations and protests. Members were implicitly complaining to the authorities: ”You select the beautiful ones.” This was a question in member’s minds that they stated it indirectly, for example they stated it as if it was an accusation against Rajavi or Mojahedin from outside the organization.

 
Even Rajavi tried to answer the question saying “we are accused of such affairs”. He emphasized that the selections were not based on beauty or appearance. Then he made some examples including Mozhgan “that she was selected although she was not beautiful.” He tried to prove that sections were just based on organizational rules and regulations. Actually he made the most use of these accusations to condemn the dissidents and he had also his own expression: ”our job is to close corrupt businesses” he meant that people who made such accusations have opened corrupt businesses.

 
Another accusation was that they select educated people. Rajavi tried to justify it by saying “for example Nasrin was not educated but she was selected as the first secretary of the organization. So these examples challenged the claims. But I think these people were just selected to remove such label inside or outside the organization. Therefore, I can say that at least the selection of Maryam Rajavi and Fahimeh Arvani was based on their beauty. Maybe, when they elected a person who was not so beautiful among 4 or 5 people who were the most devotees to the leadership, they wanted to remove such a label.

About the relationship between Rajavi and women of the leadership Council, I would say that it was so friendly and comfortable that if a stranger came in their meetings, he thought that this guy was all these women’s husband. I mean that the meetings in the level of the Leadership Council, was completely different from regular meetings that were held in the public hall.

Within the Leadership Council, Rajavi talked about the most personal affairs with the women trying to use his sense of humor. He apparently showed a lot of respect for these women and gave them compliments like:”You are all my hopes”,”I only rely on you”. These compliments made the members to become self-centered. The relations in the Leadership Council were totally different. As I said the relation between Rajavi and women of the Leadership Council was so comfortable that the women told him words like: ”we love you, we are your devotees..” such words basically showed the close relationship.

 
Rajavi sent presents for these women. I remember a few times that he specifically sent some presents for women, they tried their best to get closer to him and tell him that they are in love with him. I remember a woman of the Leadership Council who justified such relations by saying “I have read in a lot of books that the women at prophet Mohammad‘s (peace be upon him) era, in order to draw prophet Mohammad’s attention to themselves, tried to show off in his way or even they tried to marry him in order to wipe out their sins. All prophets' wives tried to get a better position before him.” In fact, by the comparison that they made between Masud Rajavi and Prophet Mohammad, they wanted to justify their strange relationship with Rajavi. Also through these arguments, they tried to heighten Rajavi’s position to the level of a prophet.

On the other hand, Rajavi’s reaction to the compliments was arranged in a way that no opposition was stated. I remember an example of his reaction to the compliments: Dr. Yahya [Hussein Forsat] who was a dentist, in a meeting flattered Masud Rajavi by saying that: ”what you are saying is beyond our time and the world would see its result in the future” and then he concluded that “You [Rajavi] are Imam Zaman” (Shiite’s absent twelfth Imam). Now look at Rajavi’s response to such a compliment, he said: ”Yahya what do you say? I will pull out your teeth”. So he indirectly encouraged him to continue his compliments. Sometime, he took a special gesture and pretended to disconnect the person's microphone.

Indeed he was really happy with the situation. They had succeeded to manipulate the members in order to put them into this illusion. When the members started their compliments, Maryam and Masud Rajavi waited for their words to be listened completely and the atmosphere of the hall be influenced by the compliments. Then they apparently complained that they were not glad with such a compliment. Sometimes some fanatic members interrupted the discussion by saying “You are Imam Zaman yourself; the messiah of our time!”

 

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Interview with Ms Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part seven

Suicide operation, a lever to defend Camp Ashraf

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, July 15, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin WS, July 18, 2009

Sahar Family Foundation: If you will, Mrs. Soltani, let’s have a talk over claimed challenges that presses the organization to react by suicide operations. I mean, what are the threats that concern the organization to prescribe suicide operation to confront? Is there actually any objective worth of concern or claims are merely grounded on propagation or a falsely intensified atmosphere?

Batool Soltani: It can be argued from many angles; one, the actual and objective backgrounds that lead to the possible perpetration of operations and second, operations merely planned to keep members in a status of readiness and to isolate them from passivity. Members have to be always kept busy doing something while raising in them a high morale of obedience and submission. Members in Camp Ashraf are on alert of committing mass suicide on the grounds that there are many blind spots round the camp through which outsiders might easily infiltrate to either kidnap the members of the Leadership Council and use them as hostages or kill them. The possible reaction to these threats could be a mass suicide of the insiders.

SFF: Were there just conjectures or there were some truth in what they claimed?

BS: Both of them. In some cases there were well grounded reasons but sometimes they fabricated things. Once, I remember, they distributed cyanides among the members of the Leadership Council after they had collected them all. No clear reason was presented but soon we came to know the cause. One of the members who had left for the American-run camps had informed that the organization had built secret jails just where our base was situated. So, one night American forces entered the camp in an attempt to discover the secret place. Of course, the report was one of many dubious ones already reported to Americans. But the organization had smelled a threat, a warning to something that could hit unexpectedly and thus, it distributed the cyanides to react immediately if needed.

 
SFF: You mean any entrance to Camp Ashraf for whatever reason is looked on as a threat against which the sole solution is suicide?

 
BS: Exactly. That is what, for instance, they mean by referring to the human tragedy in the issue of their expulsion from the Camp Ashraf and Iraq. By human tragedy they mean a mass protest through a mass-immolation. They are so resolute that they will deliberately set the reluctant ones on fire on pretence of willing actions since the dead never speak. What Rajavi stresses on as human tragedy should have broader dimensions but the least they can do and will impose on others can be nothing but the working means of a mass suicide.

 
That is what they exclusively argued on in the level of the Leadership Council. Among the rank and file it was deeply instilled that defense of Ashraf was a matter of life and death and all members had to become human shield to defend it. The issue of human shield was discussed with the members one by one in 2006. The protest against general relocation could be shown either by individual self-immolation or mass suicide. The question was first put forward by Rajavi himself that how members would react were the Iraqis to transfer Camp Ashraf altogether. The presented solution was human shield as a defensive measure since all knew about the Iraqis’ felt hatred towards Mojahedin because of their collaboration with Saddam and their effective role as his private army. Mojahedin were present wherever Saddam needed them to suppress his dissidents. Therefore, Mojahedin have no other way but to think of a working means to confront any posed threat against their bastion by the Iraqi new government’s resolutions. The Fall of Saddam has led them to a dire situation with no authoritative protector and they have to think of a defensive vehicle for themselves. They even devised an organizational hierarchy entitled the organizational pyramid to protect Camp Ashraf. However, the foremost priority was to protect the members of the Leadership Council since it is the pivotal issue for Rajavi, that is to say, protection of the members of the Leadership Council equals to protection of Camp Ashraf. Here again, as you see, anything revolves round a strategic axis contrived by Rajavi and whatever he conjures is somehow entwined with this organizationally devised Leadership Council.

 
SFF: Then, Rajavi believes that protection of Camp Ashraf is strategically possible through suicide operation and human shield. Will you explain to what degree such lever can actually work as a protecting means?

 
BS: to understand to what extent it is working, we have to refer to already occurred instances. Following Maryam Rajavi’s arrest the organization proved its seriousness and persistence in carrying out such operations. So far it has proved that it can persuade or coerce insiders, willingly or unwillingly, into committing whatever it deems necessary to achieve its ends and the insiders’ will has actually no effect in the accomplishment of the organization’s demands. The sole way to avoid being an accomplice in the organization’s plots is to take your courage to escape by a well drawn plan, as I did. Now with the withdrawal of the American forces, the sole hope of easy escape to the TIPF has actually vanished and hardly members find an easy way out. Even in the time of Saddam it was impossible and, if anybody insisted, cost members a lot to get themselves out of the organization; it was only through the notorious Abo-Ghorib prison and other places that someone could manage to detach. That is why I insist on saying that members have no other choice but to consent to whatever the organization demands them to do and under no condition they follow a will of their own.

 
SFF: Then, you believe that any attempt by Iraq to expel or relocate Mojahedin will lead to such activities (suicide operation).

BS: Certainly.

SFF: What factors can you exclusively refer to now talking over human shield and tragedy?

 
BS: You know, following the incident of 17 June, we received piles of letters by rank and file volunteering for suicide. The act was later hallmarked as an indicative of devotion and they began to closely examine to see who among the ranks had dodged devotion. I was among those who had not volunteered for suicide but they reproached me as a ranking member and I volunteered reluctantly; otherwise I would be suspected to be at odds with the organization. However, the organization insisted that none of these volunteers had to engage in self-instigated suicides since no individual had the right to spill a drop of his/her blood unless approved by the organization. Any form of suicide or self-immolation uncoordinated by the organization is considered to be a useless, unproductive act. So sensitive is the organization about these suicide acts that they say commission of any suicide legitimizes only after we organize them and issue orders. So it becomes clear that self-immolations in France were all organized as a political lever. To make sure, I had an argument with Mojgan Parsai (in Camp Ashraf). I told her as I had volunteered for suicide; I wanted to set myself on fire before the American’s base there. Of course, it was only to see what her reaction could be. She took me to her office and talked to me for two hours saying that it was a useless act there while Sedigheh (Mojaveri) and Neda Hassani’s acts of self-immolation were politically worthwhile in France. She said if I committed suicide in the camp nothing changed but the organization lost a member of the Leadership Council, not even a slight report of my suicide would be published in the local papers let alone being mentioned in an international scale. The act could be exploited to the maximum degree for political and propaganda purposes in France or England. That is why I emphasis that Mojahedin encounter no obstacle in creating a human tragedy as it has already displayed its potentiality following the arrest of Maryam Rajavi; the organization has many volunteers who have signed to commit suicide whenever and wherever commanded.

 
To be continued

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Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 18

MKO key Formula:

Why Maryam … Because Masud

By: SFF

Translated by Nejat Society

July 15 2009

Supposedly Rajavi has always tried to manage his behaviors and relations like the ones of Imam Ali (the first Imam of Shiites and the fourth Caliph of Sunnis). He didn’t declare this claim orally, but implicitly it was obvious he acted in a way that his tendency was to represent such a personality.

He led the affairs in such a direction that his followers or Maryam were made to emphasize on this aspect of his personality.

 
Rajavi smartly showed off these distinct aspects of his personality through main arguments in the group. He tried to represent the patterns as theoretical and instructional while he was actually leading the audience to view him as the real example of those patterns or personalities [like Imam Ali]. For example, in case of his marriage with Maryam, he arranged the scene so skillfully that everyone believed he was the main person who accepted all the heavy accusation of the marriage due to ideological and political necessities. He or Mehdi Abrishamchi set the table very well that we couldn’t see behind the scene. Finally people like Abrishamchi or Davari (Pins of MKO) arranged a scenario implying that they were inspired Masud was the only one to bear all charges against him after Maryam Rajavi divorced Abrishamchi.

 
They tried to confirm that such devotion needs an extraordinary super-natural capacity. For instance, when Rajavi spoke of Spiritual Struggle [Jihad Akbar] he said: ”once fighting and martyrdom was the highest level of faith in the struggle, but today honesty and devotion are higher than martyrdom. He categorized them as holy warriors and revolutionary people. He said that Imams were pious men and prophets were sincere men. In fact he wanted to categorize himself in the group of Imams and prophets which are in a higher level than martyrs stand.

 
Following his interpretations, others were supposed to evaluate his ranking based on what they received from his words. The pins (like Maryam Rajavi) had the responsibility to introduce Masud Rajavi according to the interpretations he gave from Quran. Therefore, gradually they could give him the position of Imam Ali or Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him).

 
When he wanted to form the leadership Council consisting of female members, he stated viewpoints on woman claiming that these are of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) that he couldn’t perform them at his era due to the ignorance ruling his time, and now he [Rajavi] is accomplishing the Prophet's task.

 
He claimed that one of the ideas of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) and Imam Ali was that all political and administrative systems be based on women but they couldn’t actualize it. And now he is fulfilling their wish.

 
To choose the members of the leadership Council, the main criterion for Rajavi was how much they are devoted. There is a formula in MKO discussions: They ask: "why Maryam” and then they answer: “because Masud”. It means that Maryam is the first woman linked with Masud.

 
Maryam, herself asked: ”why Maryam?” and then she answered herself: ”because I love Masud more than anyone else does, because I was the first person who melted into Masud, I was unified in Masud, and I was just for Masud.”

In our ideological discussions, we tried to step forward after Maryam (following Maryam’s path) and talk about this kind of relationships. Every man or woman had to follow the same way to be melted into the leadership.

 
Following this argument, she said that we should love Masud instead of our husbands. If the members could have the same emotions and feelings for Masud as they have for their spouses, they could be true revolutionary fighters. This showed the extent of your devotion to Masud. Naturally, they chose the members of the leadership council according to this criterion.

About my own selection as a member of the leadership council, Maryam asked me: ”Do you know why you are selected despite the fact that you have recently entered the organization? Why we didn’t choose other people who have a longer period of membership?”

 
She made too many arguments and reasoning to prove that they have chosen me because I could comprehend the essence of revolution very well. She meant that I was totally melted into the leader’s ideas, because I could pass over my husband and children. The best criterion for MKO leaders was that a member could solve his problems and obstacles and could reach Maryam and Masud.

 
Any selection in MKO is based on the fact that how you have solved your contradictions: this measures your absolute devotion to the leaders.

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On MKO’s Ideological Revolution

Memoirs of Batoul Soltani – Part 17

By: SFF

July 02 2009

Translated by Nejat Society

As a high ranking member of the leadership Council, I was in charge of a series of meetings, and I received special trainings from Maryam Rajavi on how to deal with the contradictions arising from ideological divorce which forced a woman to leave her husband in order to stay loyal to the organization’s ideas.

 
Besides, Masud managed the meetings of the ideological revolution himself saying: "suppose that you have brought an Iranian youth to the organization and you want to explain and justify the ideological revolution to him. You should clarify it to him that he cannot be married and be a fighter at the same time. You should explain that one cannot think of sexual or emotional problems while one is struggling.

 
Then you should ask this question that whether one wants to be in the path of struggle and liberty or in the path of a normal life. So, this was the way we encountered the newcomers explaining that they would fail to succeed in their struggle to the extent that they are involved in external problems. For example, when we argued with an unmarried girl, we told her:”in the core of your personal relations and emotions, there is a symbol which is the idol of the society”. Then we asked her: "what's your symbol and idol, as a girl in the society?” and then we answered the question ourselves:”a good husband according to your ideals.”

 
Also for a married woman, there has always been a person in the heart of her emotions. I remember the example that Rajavi always used to use:”what does a revolutionary person have to give as the price of his revolution? You have left your homes, your families, your spouses, and your children, so what do you offer to your revolution now?” Then he added “But I’d say that you have a lot to give for the revolution and that is your emotions.” They dealt with the center of emotions in individuals because it is the origin of motives and interests. Thus, they analyzed the members’ internal motives to remove all other motives from the members’ minds except the motive of struggle. On the other hand, we tried to suppress the alleged anti-revolutionary motives of the members saying that: “all your motives have to be for the organization and according to the desires of the leaders.”

If an individual has a problem with understanding such a mechanism, he will be likely to leave the group someday.” Then the officials try to guess in which phase that individual will have problems with the internal ideological revolution so they recognize if the person is an appropriate recruit or not. In fact, for Mojahedin, recruitment means total devotion to the organizational relations. They try to reach their goals by using these anti-human levers.

 
About the marriage of Masud and Maryam, they make some examples: they believe that Maryam’s efficiency has become much higher than the time she was Abrishamchi’s wife and when she removed the obstacle of her ex-husband and linked herself to Masud, she raised her abilities to the level of the first authority of MKO while before her ideological marriage with Masud she was just in charge of a single unit! Then they make it a practical fact in the routine life of members. They try to convince members that the only way to promote your abilities is to link yourself with Masud by abandoning your spouses, your families, and your children… For instance, they asked Maryam:”could you do your current tasks before your divorce and marriage with Masud?” she replied:”No, I was unable to do so, I was weak. I could not even manage two persons. Then my energy was liberated, my abilities flourished. I could rely on another point which was Masud Rajavi so I could accept higher responsibilities.” This has become a proof for their arguments.

 
I believe that Masud Rajavi has a very poor relationship with men. This aspect of his personality is very clear within his regular relations. I remember that he seriously disagreed with men to film his internal meetings. So he ordered that all leadership Council meetings should be filmed by women only. He planned a time schedule for some women to learn how to work with a camera. He hysterically opposed the men. Now, when I look back, I see the roots of this characteristic in his sensuality and jealousy. Maybe, it is natural that when a man is among a number of women, he would not like another man to be there. This is my internal feeling. That’s why Rajavi tried to choose women for all needed forces related to him. I think he couldn’t tolerate a camera man in front of himself.

He tried hard to remove the members of the political office since they were all men. Apparently he believes that women work very hard so he was always fond of women. When a new woman entered the organization, he was fascinated by her. He welcomed her by joking and having fun. In the high ranks of the hierarchy of the group he was all the time seeking to remove a man from the high ranks and replace him with a woman. Due to this personal tendency he filled up his leadership Council with a selection of female members.

 

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Interview with Batoul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part six

The red-line discriminating between word and action in suicide operation

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, July 08, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Will you please specifically recount instances of what can be defined as classified information?

Batul Soltani: Well, what can be specifically referred to are those information that supply details on the locations of headquarters within Auvers-sur-Oise and Camp Ashraf. That is to say, any geographical, security detail about these and other camps mostly concerning the compounds of the leadership. There is much more related information; the extent of security measures for the entrance and the control of inter-organizational affairs, the whereabouts of cadres situated inside the camps and their hierarchical relations, and information about those organizationally permitted to pass in or out of these places. Regular and irregular visits of these places by the leadership, the setting plan of the buildings and the sections in the camps and the people positioned in them, how the security systems work to control the cadres’ shifts and what are the defensive measures, human or mechanically controlled, to reduce or counter threats from the outside are all instances of classified information. Of other instances to name are the existing differences within the Auvers-sur-Oise and Camp Ashraf, the security check-points to ensure safe passage in and out, internal offices that verify the validity of the passports and visas, the rankings in the charge of controlling and issuing ID cards for individuals to enter the camps or the cadres who leave on missions. Anybody entering Mojahedin’s enclave is regarded to have passed over the red-line of a highly secretive boundary that is totally concealed from the outside world.

SFF: We will talk on the issue further later on. But now let’s have a look on the issue that any suicide operation inevitably has its own consequences. The aggressive kind, for example, will willingly or unwillingly lead to the death of some innocents in the vicinity. For instance, when the organization plotted suicide operations to assassin the leaders of Friday-Prayer, many other innocent crowds were perished along with the main target. I want to know how does the organization justify such deeds and who are in charge of deciding to stop or carry out these operations. Better to say, where lays the drawn red-line that justifies such operations?

BS: Your question can be answered from many angles. First, we have to ascertain how the organization and Rajavi in particular draw the red-line between the word and theory for carrying out these operations. Second, we have to see to what extent the words are actually practical, and third, what is the position of the leadership concerning what should not have actually happened and how he has treated with the disobedient. They are all related to understand the question and its different aspects. First of all, the red-line and instances are drawn just by the leadership and all operational ranks have to submit to it. Nobody dispatched for an operation can defy Rajavi’s drawn red-line and any operation team knows well that accomplishment of mission eclipses any other priority. Now, it is important to distinguish between Rajavi’s red-line of word and action. The red-line in Rajavi’s word is taking heed of protecting the life and property of the public who have no role in the operations as well as public buildings and passages. Interestingly, no saboteur is permitted to desist from the plotted operation just because he/she is overstepping the red-line. The only person with the authority to halt the operations is Masoud Rajavi himself. Now, the question is, and only Rajavi can give a proper answer, how it is possible exactly to stop crossing the red-line in the course of an operation that has to be unquestionably performed and which only Rajavi himself can order to be halted. The context and setting of some of these operations invariably requires sacrifice of innocent people in the vicinity. Once, for example, when a terror team was sent to assassin Asadollah Lajevardi in Tehran’s bazaar, the role of crowds in the bazaar can never be underestimated since they play the role of a deterrent factor both while targeting the victim and when escaping from the scene; there are always people in the scene who may in an automatic reaction interfere or hinder and the assassins see no other way but to shoot at them to open the way or one may come between the assassin and the target. Naturally, there are two options; either you have to abandon the operation and escape or accomplish the mission regardless of violating the red-line with whatever casualty. The latter requires that you have to be serious in completely obliterating any obstacle on the way. And Rajavi himself knows all these truths that it is impossible to carry out an operation of assassination without harming other innocents. It is the same case with suicide operations with the difference that the agent knows he/she hardly returns alive which greatly helps to violate the red-lines. But in the former, a hope fosters in the assassin that he/she may escape the scene with the aid of people, a hope instilled into him/her by the organization itself. As a result, the assassin tries to tie his/her destiny to a little of overstepping the red-line since the organization had falsely ensured him/her that people would create a protecting shield for a member of the organization to escape safely. But it differs in a suicide operation; here the accomplishment of the operation is of the higher significance than the number of the casualties present at the scene. Besides, the suicide is no more alive to be counted responsible for the innocent killed. Thus, this kind of operation is excluded from our issue of discourse and remains the kind after which the team has to necessarily return to its base after the operation.

When Rajavi plotted assassination of people like Lajevardi or the army commander Sayyad Shirazi, he knew well that killing was an inseparable part of a planned operation which could never be fulfilled unless through homicide. Then, it is absolutely absurd if he maneuvers and insists on vocalized principles of his drawn red-line since the nature of these operations necessitate killing and blood-shed. Consequently, the assassin is not the authority to decide to stop or continue, he/she is only executing a killing plan drawn by somebody else watching the operation from many hundred kilometers away. It is really in absolute contradiction to Rajavi’s stated red-line and out of the control of the operatives. At the end, we see that there is nobody to be held responsible for violation of the red-line that has caused many innocent deaths; in fact, it is one of those Rajavi’s adopted childish tactics.

Now let’s see what are Rajavi and the organization’s reaction against operation teams that may have inadvertently violated the red-lines in the course of the operation. Here, the operatives may have been killed, arrested or returned. But, in any case, they are not the ones to be held responsible but their commander in charge of the operation. Rajavi severely reprimands them for the killings that are considered a violation of the stated red-lines. Of course, he is well aware of the fact that he is the sole one to be held responsible for the crime, but that is how he deals with the fallout and condemns others calling them inefficient and else. But nothing more happens and nobody is punished and all ends in a room in an outburst of humiliating words and sever reprimand because all know that Rajavi himself had practically a better understanding of what might happen and which he had implicitly given his seal of approval to cross his own drawn red-lines. But somebody has to be held responsible for mere formality who, of course, fails to be the leadership. I have to add that such a performance of formality runs only when the organization is disclosed by undeniable facts that tie it to the incident which it must be held accountable for. However, in many other cases, the success of the operation never lets anything else take a back seat and overshadows anything that more often fails to be ever mentioned and is of marginal interest to the organization.

To be continued

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Interview with Batul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part five

Suicide, the ideal means to safeguard information

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, July 05, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Mrs. Soltani, let’s talk a little about defensive suicide operation, that is to say, when someone commits suicide only because of carrying sensitive or secrete information. Particularly, of what kind are these information and what are the means through which the individuals have to annihilate themselves when the time comes?

Batul Soltani: information can be divided in two. The first are those we carried when going from a place to another which mostly happened in Iraq. There were times when we drove from a base like Camp Ashraf to a second destination to meet leadership. We had also trips to France and other European countries from Iraq or even moved about in the Europe. In all these missions, protection of information had the highest priority. The second are the concentrated ones as we are settled in a place and there is a threat from without. It might be a regular inspecting measure done by the US forces in Ashraf for instance or by the Iraqi police for whatever security objective; all these were considered a threat against our community from outsiders. Or it happened that we were strolling about and police would simply suspect us which could lead to further problems. It had turned to be a big concern especially after the 9/11 terrorist attack when counter-terrorist police had a free hand to arrest and interrogate whoever they came to suspect. It was really a hinder for members traveling in Europe. All the information stated were of the nature a member of the organization had instructions to deface before engaging in self-destroying. I intend to explain more for it is a matter of obscurity for people out of the organization.

I give an example of the year 2001 when the members of the Leadership Council were called to have a meeting with leadership in Parsian (where Rajavi held the meetings). Although it may seem a simple drive from Ashraf to the place, it required really complicated security measures. The main focus was on how to destroy the documents we carried if any challenge hit us en route. There was a general process to follow for destruction of documents before departure. There was a head-responsible in charge of the security-check of information who at the time was Mohsen Niknami. He had other assistants who were in charge of smaller groups of cadres. Mohsen was the one who questioned me to ensure about my plans of destroying personal information now that I was included in the group about to set off for Parsian. According to already received instructions, I had to use a can of ethanol that I carried in forewarned circumstances like hearing gun-shots, tracking downs, sensing a siege and any fake accident or any other form that could be regarded a challenge to destroy my own documents and that of other members of the Leadership Council. That how these members were transported to the meeting place is another story. The members had to be divided into small groups and drove on different buses at non-fixed intervals that sometimes took two hours. When the first bus left, the next waited to make sure its safe arrival which was the given green light for its own leave. It was the case with other waiting buses and all had to follow the rules. There were also strict rules for the group on each bus. There was one in charge of destroying the bus in the event of any portentous sign of danger. Besides, one in any group of three was charged with the task of destroying his/her comrades’ documents that he/she was well aware of their hidden places. In spite of all these measures, we were individually responsible to destroy our documents and information as well as that of the one next to us if anything happened to our rankings in charge. The means to destroy them, as I pointed out, was the can of ethanol we all carried. The emphasis was on the destruction of the information before self-destruction. Now a question may form in your mind that of what significance were these documents and information that required such high precautionary measures to safeguard or destroy them before anyone could have access to them? First of all, I have to point out that these documents contained none of the contents of the highly valued book of the Leadership Council. Nobody had the permission to have a record of its details in his/her notebook and all members had to read and memorize the contents while at the meeting. They distributed it in the course of the sessions and then it would be collected and thus, all information was in our mind and nothing on the paper to fear others lay hands on it. Neither did we carry any classified information. There Then, you may ask what all these security measures were for? All was done because of the private notebooks the members had with them in which they had noted down their daily affaires, the noted dates merely to do a task, a recorded detail of a task done, some verses of the Holy Quran and other ordinary and personal notes. It also happened that we had written some notes while in a session, although it was absolutely forbidden, and they, with a member called Gity in the charge, would carefully explore our notebooks and personal belongings when we were about to leave the hall. But sometimes it happened that we managed to stealthy take the notes out; however, none of these notes could be considered classified information in its real concept. What they called secrete and classified information was absolutely different with its own special means of convey that we hardly knew anything about. Whatever means of transfer they used, for sure it was not by bus or other regular vehicles as they used for our transfer.

SFF: In fact, all these security measures that at end may lead to the destruction of a cadre and his/her information are due to these personal notebooks?

BS: Yes, they are. The contents of these notebooks, as I said, were nothing more than a few notes, dates, necessary phone numbers, or the date of a given pledge. I remember once in the Leadership Council I signed a paper that started with a verse from the Holy Quran which I noted down to memorize. Or details of a meeting that were of importance. The documents to be destroyed were all theses trivial notebooks containing worthless information. It was the same case even in the European countries when we were moving about and we had some written information with us. The information could be some phone number we had to contact if necessary. In our meetings there and when we were being transferred to a certain destination, it was forbidden to carry any paper or notebook that would indicate our membership in the organization or any relation with the people in our company. The only thing we had permission to carry was some money and a phone number for an urgent call which all other companions knew where it was to destroy it if necessary. A phone number in a member’s pocket meant giving the police the opportunity to hook the first clue that well identified the connecting bridges. To thwart any attempt by police to obtain the very single phone number, we were instructed to tear it into small pieces or swallow it. It is how we destroyed information when out of Iraq. I mean to say that we were much cautious out of Iraq since at least in Iraq we had support of Saddam’s Estekhbarat (Intelligent and Information System) while we had restrictions in European countries especially after al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks that had made police to become more sensitized to terrorist threats and consequently they intensified security measures. As a result, we had to follow strict precautionary measures to protect information and relations. However, the last solution was suicide according to organizational instructions.

SFF: Undoubtedly, there should have been real reasons under these practical circumspect.

BS: Yes, to some extents they had reasons to be cautious. Once, for instance, a member called Parviz Yaqubi escaped and surrendered himself to French police and informed on inter-organizational relations. He had asked to be granted asylum reasoning that his life was in danger. Of course, he returned to the organization and later separated again and now lives in total isolation. But his act of going and reporting to police had really frustrated Masoud Rajavi. It was in 1993 or 1994 I think and it cost the organization and Rajavi a lot. Consequently, it was decided that nobody in his/her travels out of Iraq had to carry passports and fake IDs cards and on the members’ arrival in the airport all their documents were collected and kept by the organization. Well, we thought it was well decided and, from then on, any member regardless of his/her rank had to hand over his/her passport on arrival to Europe.

To be continued

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Interview with Batoul Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part four

Suicide operation, an ultimate solution to security dilemma

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, July 04, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Can you elaborate on classified information in the organization, as it may have different definition in terms of use?

Batul Soltani: It is the kind and degree of information that every member of the organization carries concerning himself, his responsibility and his relation with other cells. More specifically, there were other ranks who, because of their organizational responsibilities, knew the residence of the leadership and his/her visiting locations. Of course, this classified information vary in terms of sensitiveness and secrecy according to the responsibility of the members and their contact with higher rankings but the importance lies on the concentration of the information in the hands of the members who form the linking ring between others. The operation teams who came to Iran for armed operation, for instance, carried some related information, or it was the same with members residing in other European countries out of the headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise. They knew details about the location of the camps, the members and their responsibilities and even information about the launched operations or those at hand. As a result, the organization emphatically required the teams about to embark on operations to swallow their cyanide capsules as soon as they felt a risk of arrest. The emphasis got stronger especially after the 9/11 terrorist incident when the traffic in European countries were under heavy surveillance and there was a high possibility of arrest that could lead to extraction of information under investigations. We had strict order, especially the members of the Leadership Council who carried a high volume of information, to commit suicide if anyone came to be a suspect in confrontation with Interpol. The rankings traveling between Iraq and the Europe or between Auvers-sur-Oise and other countries had strict instruction for self-annihilation. It can be said that the most secure and safest measure of protecting information devised by the organization was suicide. The important point to consider here is the cheap value of man within the organization.

SFF: Will further explain the responsibilities of the members of the Leadership Council concerning the classified information?

BS: The information that the members of the Leadership Council carried were classified as secrete. It was because of their relation with the leadership which was systematically regarded very important. It meant that they had to take the ultimate precautionary measures to protect themselves not because of their own life but as they carried foremost organizational information which made them suicide vanguards. They had always a guard accompanying them who had the responsibility of finishing the job if he/she refrained to commit suicide or possibly thought of a mischief or escape. A member of Leadership Council had to have a ready scheme of suicide being it with cyanide, gun or any other way. But the priority was always laid on the destroying of the carried documents before doing away with yourself. The means depended on the circumstance and how you could prepare them as easy as possible. There was a time when the organization possessed no gun and cyanide was the best choice, but the time came when it was vice-versa. I was one of those who always carried a gun when in Camp Ashraf or whenever I had a trip to Baghdad. We had strict orders to shot ourselves when sensing the minimal danger of being attacked or arrested. Once I was in England and although I was not yet a member of the Leadership Council, I had instruction of committing suicide since I had second hand but sensitive information like the location of headquarters where the Rajavis lived or moved and the security measures concerning them. It was the same with the information about the headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise and in possibly in other countries. Of course, some information were declassified within the organization as they happened to lose their secrecy and importance, but they remained classified for the outsiders. In some occasions when the carried information were of a very high secrecy, the members carried a mixed means of suicide, that is to say, both gun and cyanide because in some cases the cyanide had failed to act. Later it was decided to carry two cyanide capsules to ensure that one at least would work. That is how they emphasized on measures of protecting information and were sensitive about them. All this complicated, systematic deeds happened in an atmosphere as if they were living in a different planet. That is why far from any rationale and logic, to guarantee the protection of the information, the organization grabs at a most secure way, suicide and self-annihilation.

SFF: You said in some cases the cyanide had failed to act. Can you explain about them?

BS: As far as I can remember it record in the related report, it was the time when Arash Sametipour had been sent to Iran for operation. He broke his cyanide when he was on the verge of arrest but the capsule failed to work and he went into a coma only to revive after a while. It had critical aftermath for the organization. Unaware of the arrest of Marjan Malek, for example, the organization first announced her martyrdom in the course of her operation and even Rajavi himself appreciated her as a heroine but later, when it was revealed that she had failed suicide and was in custody inside Iran, anything changed overnight and she was declared to be an agent of the Islamic Republic. The failure of suicides was thus very crucial and cost the organization a lot; it was commitment to these suicides that decided the organizational identity and the status of the individuals in the organization. Noteworthy, following the reported cases of failure, there established a section whose responsibility was to check over the vehicles of suicide to ensure its efficacy. There were two kinds of check up, routinely done or case related. The former was done in a frequent period of a few months while the latter was a test of an operative’s cyanides before his dispatch to the mission. Once in Camp Ashraf, before the presence of Americans and when they had no limitation, they exclusively provided two cyanides for each member of the Leadership Council. But then everything changed and there came a time when cyanides and guns were not as abundant as before; the cyanides were all collected from among those who once had to carry them. Instead, they innovated a new way of controlling members with sensitive and secrete information and members of the Leadership Council in particular. Now there was a special division with the responsibility of constant monitoring and surveillance of the members with highly classified information; they had the responsibility of helping them through any available means to eliminate themselves in case of facing any risk of arrest or else; the means could be a gun, cyanide, petrol, ethanol or anything else.

To be continued

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SFF interview with Ms Batul Soltani regarding MKO and suicide operations (part 3):

No suicide operation done unless commanded by the organization

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, July 01, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Will you explain when for the first time you came to know about the suicide operation in the organization and how did they justify it and give trainings?

Batool Soltani: The first time I was notified about the sacrosanct suicide operation was when I was under political-ideological trainings to be accepted within, to be exact, when I was a trainee member studying the history of the organization. In the course of the discourses it happened to talk about Reza Rezai, as the first martyr of the organization and the first reverent suicide. The organization highly termed it the sacrosanct suicide operation and tried to inspire us with it. They explained that when Reza was ringed by police, he detonated a hand grenade killing himself along with a number of SAVAK agents. Then they began to give reasons for his daring act saying not only he eluded being arrested alive but also destroyed his arms, information and his body to frustrate the agents’ attempt to have access to them. He was presented as an organizational archetype for the members to follow, a hero whose adherents could never be hindered to accomplish organizational ends. In fact, by the story they intended to mark some points. First, the aspiring members had to bear in mind that a devoted Mojahed disappointed the enemy even in obtaining access to his body. Second, it was a daring act that needed ultimate bravery one could ever achieve; in the course of trainings, recruits thought it was the last stage a combatant could make it through the stages of the struggle and thus, the trainings seemed much valuable and we tried to comprehend and learn them as fully as we could. In many occasion, for instance, Massoud Rajavi reiterated that Reza deprived the enemy of accessing his information and even his arms and body. Of course, his words were much influential to create a sacramental atmosphere to halo the act and Reza, in this particular phase of trainings, became the sole archetype that could well inspire the trainees with courage, and he did indeed.

SFF: what was specific in Rezai that they made an archetype out of him?

BS: As I pointed out, he was displayed a paragon in some manners especially in his confrontation with police and an example of one with many potentialities that could be followed as a model. Maybe they had anticipated that they could successfully meet organizational ends through these suicide operations and the forces had to be prepared psychologically to carry out the mission. Besides, any training requires a certain model and there was no better match in the organization than Rezai to exemplify for others. Another point about him was his mental potentiality as well as his physical. He was illustrated to be much active in his clashes but he was also mentally competent in analytical and theoretical issues. Perhaps they meant that a combatant had to attain a high versatility but easily sacrifice himself. That is to say, even the mental potentialities of a formidably intellect member hat to in no way interfere with the commitment to the suicide act. These were all aspects of the illustrated archetype that could practically influence the trainees.

SFF: In what level of background did they arrange for this discourse?

BS: Everyone in the organization has to necessarily undergo these instructions, even if some had already passed them. It made no difference; any recruit had to pass through these discourses which the suicide operation was an inseparable part. Even I, a ranking member of the leadership Council, was constantly exposed to these discourses. It was an issue of high priority on the agenda before the leadership when the organization reached a critical stalemate. In the process of dispatching operation teams across the Iranian borders to carry out operations inside Iran, the prerequisite was a proclaimed preparedness for committing suicide. They were thoroughly checked and approved by higher ranks before they were assigned for the mission. The responsible ranks tested them to make sure they would break and swallow their cyanide capsules or did other self-annihilation actions when sensing danger. The interesting point in all these was that a second fellow had to give a pledge that his comrade committed self-annihilation and promised that his comrade would certainly destroy himself in face of danger and in any possible way.

In general, it is a responsibility all have to assume in the organization. Before the invasion of the US against Iraq, for instance, all members took the responsibility of committing suicide by chewing their cyanide capsules if Camp Ashraf would be invaded by the US forces or any threat of arrest, security inspection or else would foreshadow the camp. We had also preplanned arrangements for committing suicide by Cyanide and spilling petrol or ethanol over bodies. We were told to kill or set ourselves on fire if the US forces ventured to enter the camp to start a house by house inspection. Even later and in course of the US’s deployment of forces in the region, we were routinely checked to make sure we were in the state of readiness. Even among the cadres of the Leadership Council they were making a firm stand on self-annihilation if any threat would be posed against the camp by any forces being them Iraqis, Americans, Iranians and Kurds. It was discussed in details how to perpetrate the deed when the right time came: the members had taken the responsibility of reciprocally setting each other on fire by the means of petrol, ethanol and other flammable substances.

In the Leadership Council we were frequently notified that anybody had to be prepared for being killed or suicide. It has always been a key point in varying phases of the organization. In the phase of venture operations, the operatives’ priority was to commit suicide by chewing the carried cyanides, a commitment that the members had to be again checked for its performance in the phase of the US invasion. It was exactly what happened in the case of the 17 June self-immolations; everything was already provided for the operations and the volunteers were only ready for the signal to begin.

SFF: How they assessed and discussed the suicide operations in the Leadership Council? In how many possible ways could they be committed and under what literature they could be justified?

BS: There was a certain book in which an article especially focused on the suicide operation and definitely on the issue of arbitrary suicides. It mainly argued that an act of suicide could be appraised worthwhile and valuable only if committed under some organizational instruction and command; otherwise it was worthless and liable to criticism and belittled by the organization. It was even worse if it was a suicide done in objection to the organization; the perished body was then nothing but a corpse on the hands of the organization. Even the bodies of these opponent suicides were buried in a different graveyard outside far from Camp Ashraf. The suicides had to be justified according to organizational line of ideology and principles as stated earlier and the cadres of the Leadership Council were not exceptional but on the front-line with the priority of using guns and cyanides. Soon after guns and cyanides were collected and confiscated, petrol and ethanol were replaced as the alternate means. None of the self-burnings done in France were arbitrary but justified organizationally; otherwise they failed to be glorified as they did. In one case, inside Camp Ashraf, a member called Rasoul, blinded in one of military operations, set himself on fire in protest against one of the articles of the ideological revolution called ”article D” (it was about superiority of women over men in all levels of organizational relations and activities). His commission infuriated Rajavi who stated that his act done in opposition to such an issue was denigrated and did not qualify a devoted member to be buried in Ashraf graveyard where the martyrs had been buried. The news of his suicide was heavily censored and they belittled it as a contemptuous act in the organization.

SFF: When they began to collect cyanides?

BS: Once Marjan Akbari snitched the cyanide belonging to her responsible rank and killed herself. Her suicide was masqueraded and reported to be a heart attack but all cadres of the Leadership Council knew the truth about her death and from then on they collected all cyanides. In one occasion, the American forces got suspicious of existing cyanides in Camp Ashraf and began to search for them but they had all been already collected and hidden in a secure place. Of course, at the same time all cadres of the Leadership Council carried capsules.

SFF: Did not Americans know that the organization had cyanides?

BS: It seems that at first they did not, but later on they began to suspect and search for them. As a result, all cyanides were collected and delivered to Zohreh Akhyani and the members were told to seek for alternative working means of suicide. However, it was resolved that in case of any threat against Camp Ashraf, the cyanides had to be distributed among the cadres of the Leadership Council.

SFF: What was the substitute for the cyanides?

BS: Both petrol and ethanol. There were even some places where they distributed the flammable liquids for the purpose of suicide.

To be continued

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Masud Rajavi's Marriages

Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 16

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, June 23, 2009

Translated by Nejat Society

Before my involvement with MKO I had no indication of Masud's marriages. I just knew that Rajavi had fled from Iran but I didn’t have any idea of what had happened after he left Iran along with Banisadr. I had no idea about the "ideological marriage"! In 1981, when the office of MKO in Iran was shutdown, I was studying at school and I was completely unaware of activities of the organization. At high school I expressed some sort of opposition. For Example I complained about inspecting students’ bags at schools or why they forced the students to take part in group prayers. These were my challenges against the regime. In fact, I didn’t have enough knowledge about MKO in the way that I could arrange my activities along with their goals. Basically, all the information I could get about MKO, Masud and Maryam Rajavi, and the Ideological Revolution was in 1985 and 1986 when I arrived into the organization. When I entered into the group, I started knowing about the elevations in their movements.

During the training process that I passed after I entered into MKO, they never dealt with Masud’s marriage with Firouzeh Banisadr in open organizational arguments. Later on, it was discussed in the higher levels of the Leadership Council. In 1994, we had a meeting in which the arguments about the MKO’s second founders were presented and Masud pointed out his marriage with Firouzeh. I don’t think the issue was transmitted to the meetings in lower levels of the group. Masud said that he was forced to marry her due to political affairs and this was the cost he had to pay to maintain the existence of the National Council of Resistance and Abul Hassan Banisadr as an ally in NCRI. Actually he claimed that he was not willing to marry her but he did it for political interests only. As he said, he wanted to make a family relationship with Banisadr in order to prevent him getting close to the Islamic Republic. He claimed that Banisadr’s position against the Islamic Republic was not clear and he was likely to return back to it. In fact, Rajavi wanted to say that his marriage was supposed to be an obstacle to stop Banisadr tending towards the Iranian Regime. He only spoke of such an issue in private meetings of the Leadership Council and never presented it in lower ranks.

When I entered into the organization, the members were not able to think of these questions at all, since the superiors assigned so many duties for the members that they never found time to think about such questions. They even were sensitive about what members were reading or were thinking about. I don’t remember that I made any questions on this issue during broader meetings. But since I left the organization, I have thought on it and I believe that they didn’t talk about it because they wanted to hide Rajavi’s immoral or sensual desires.

When I got to knew it for the first time, it was long after my involvement with MKO; I asked myself why they avoided talking about it while they discussed a lot of other unimportant cases for a long time. Deep in my mind, I guessed that it was to cover Rajavi’s sensuality. They had nothing to say about that marriage. On the other hand, they always voiced Masud’s marriage with Maryam Qajar Azdanlu discussing its outcome. ”This marriage is the path that leads you to be dissolved in the leadership. Members should abandon their spouses " they asserted. So how could they justify or theorize the marriage of Masud Rajavi with Firouzeh Banisadr. I suppose that they didn’t mention it because of the sensual motives behind that marriage.

Until four years after my involvement with MKO I had no idea of that marriage at all. Nothing could be found in the archive or media of the organization. You should find no news or analysis on this second marriage in MKO’s resources.

I even think that a large number of forces have no idea about it.

When I was aware of such a marriage, I wanted to learn more about her but I never asked a question. I remember a meeting where a woman stood up and asked: ”what was Firouzeh’s case?” Maryam immediately replied but she didn’t make it clear, she just said: ”Firouzeh is still in love with Masud and she’s not married since her divorce from Masud”. Actually, Maryam wanted to promote Masud’s personality. Also she noted that their marriage was in result of a public suggestion and due to an organizational decision so she explained that the marriage, as well as the divorce, was imposed to Masud Rajavi. She meant that Masud didn’t want to divorce Firouzeh because he didn’t find it moral but the public opinion forced him to do so.

It is worth knowing that she used the same justification for her own marriage with Masud. She clearly said:”I imposed myself to Masud and caused him to go under accusations but I wanted to put away all obstacles and to belong to the leader, not to any other man. I just wanted to walk along the leader.’ She said the fact that she didn’t want to be owned by another man is opposed to leadership’s ideal. She discussed it for both men and women inside the group.

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An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations - Part two

Suicide operation; a solution or sidestepping it

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, June 21, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

Sahar Family Foundation: Our greetings Mrs. Soltani. We are ready to continue the issue of suicide operation if you will. I will pose the first question unless you have some preliminary remarks to add.

Batool Soltani: before we continue with your question, I deem it necessary to add explanations on the previous session’s discourse. First, what motivates an operator to commit suicide when he happens to come face to face with the security forces and the police? Does it mean that there is absolutely no other way? Is it not really possible for a militiaman to strengthen himself physically and psychologically to bear pressures of probable tortures, prison and investigations instead of committing suicide as the last solution? It might be the easiest way to protect some information but for sure it fails to be equal to the value of a man’s life. Another point is that it may be regarded an act of bravery in itself, but can it not be considered an act of the ultimate weakness and a sense of inferiority? These questions may seem illogical in an obsessive atmosphere where anything is routinely scrutinized from a security point of view that may threaten the existence of the organization. But it does not mean that in no condition there is a logical and rational solution to any issue. Although a conjecture, I think it can be confirmed if discussed in detail with the wise and elite.

But how the organization justifies the suicide operation as the first and the last solution? What are its good reasons for exchanging such an easiest and simple way for a man’s life? Within the organization they say the capacity of enduring interrogational torture varies from person to person. I think I have read things in the organization’s sources about the applied inconceivable measures to assess the members’ resistance and response to the tortures by exposing them to a diversity of physical pressures like flogging, depriving them of sleeping, suspending them handcuffed from the ceiling in a variety of conditions and the like. Then they would conclude that in spite of varying degrees of resistance, it could be measured but the exact degree would always remain a matter of obscurity. In fact, nobody could stand the tortures that could continue to no definite degree. Of course, they knew that not all members would be put under the same tortures; it depended on the ranks and the extent of the information they held. Thus, an arrested key element and cadre to whom the survival of the organization depended would break in some point under the tortures, so suicide would be much more guaranteed than making a risk. It is instilled into him that suffering and torture are inevitably awaiting him and nothing is known to what degree he can hold out the arbitrary tortures that warrant the agents’ access to the concealed information. This is the angle of the organization’s look at the issue that needs to be studied in depth in itself.

As I pointed out earlier, the organization’s standards are absolutely different. The organization unrelentingly persisted that the ultimate solution to any problem was to offer a sacrifice. Somebody had to be sacrificed for the cause of the organization, which has been regarded more precious than the life of a militiaman, through suicide, self-harming operations or other similar acts. In one instance, as I remember, Rajavi in justification of the failure of the Operation Eternal Light stated that he had known from the very beginning that it was a futile operation from a military viewpoint, but he did it as it was tied to the survival of the organization that required so many lives. So worthless are evaluated the lives of the members that he sends them to their death in swarms to prove that the organization and the Rajavis are still breathing.

In a message he stated that if anybody set himself on fire in Camp Ashraf, it would be a cost paid to minimize the limitations imposed on the camp by the US forces. I mean the suicide case by Yaser Askari who was said to have committed suicide because of the imposed pressures on Camp Ashraf. The act is no more a countermeasure to protect the organization against any threat of annihilation but rather a means to further certain organizational, and even personal, ambitious objectives. Here the intention is no more measuring a member’s resistance degree in case of undergoing torture, rather suicide turns to be an imposed means to serve the survival of the organization, a purpose he, the member, has been destined from the very beginning to sacrifice himself for. I mean to say that the organization’s innovated self-burnings like that of 17 June and that of Yaser Askari in Camp Ashraf have been the easiest chosen solutions to overcome the crises. Even beyond that, the act is sanctified and glorified as a model for others to follow fervently instead of criticizing its exploitation for vague and hollow purposes. And as an alternative, the organization looks for belligerently innovated means that devour more sacrifices; crushed, scorched, crumbled bodies with no identity.

To be continued

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Part one: A definition of suicide operations

An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, June 19, 2009

Translated by Mojahedin.ws

In the course of many separations, for the most part during the past two years, Mrs. Batool Soltani is known to be the highest ranking cadre detached from Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO). She was a member of the leadership council and the closest to the organization’s power hegemony and, consequently, she can be regarded the most reliable source of information compared to other separated rank and file. The best evidence is the statements and disclosures she has made, and is still making, on multitudes of issues concerning the organization.

However, with respect to the complex, interlocking body of the organization’s cultic relations and techniques, it does not seem that what she is uncovering for the public is all she knows and can reveal. But her immediate and close contact with the Rajavis as well as her high potentiality for precise analysis that puts forward new discussions based on her personal observations can possibly open a new window for a further analysis and study of the untold about the organization. To accomplish the goal, we decided to take a new turn just along the currently running interviews, that is, to focus on specific issues of the importance. The themes of the priority have been classified which we prefer not to mention in whole at the present since they will be prepared and released according to the circumstances and particular incidents. The first of these themed interviews is on the issue of organizational self-immolations as we are on the threshold of the June 17 anniversary, when, following the detention of Maryam Rajavi by the French police, a number of members set themselves on fire.

It has to be pointed out that these statements contain some dramatic, first-hand details so far disclosed by a ranking member of the leadership council. The interview starts with a prefatory emphasis on the history of suicidal operations and continues up to the June 17 self-burnings. Of the importance in the issue at hand is the materialization of the suicidal operations as a working means in the organization, an adopted means committed in a variety of forms from the past to the present cultic form. The narrative by Mrs. Soltani presents an explicitly further account of what we have so far heard or read about the shocking incident. Looking at an issue from many different angles, her look seems to be novel in itself.

Part one: A definition of suicide operations

Sahar Family Foundation: Mrs. Soltani, our best wishes and compliments and we also thank you for accepting to continue a new series of interviews. In fact, we never thought the interviews would take for so long but it was much because of your own interest and your precise and analytical details you provided for each question and the issues in question. As a result, we came face to face with new ideas that could be well classified into different categories to be discussed in detail separately. We knew there would be problems but when you showed how interested you were, I decided that no problem could hinder. So as not to bother you with further problems, I have arranged not to prolong the interviews but to focus on themed issues besides the routinely conducted interviews. Once more I express my thanks for your remarkable endurance and we hope that your exposé will solve many problems on the way of social movements and expose an outlet for the victimized generation, still enslaved physically and psychologically, to take a sound decision for the future.

First, I need to explain about the subject before going into further details. Of the troubles and challenges the contemporary armed movements encounter with irreparable costs is a commitment to suicide operations. Of course, as you know, the phenomenon is not a working means adhered to by the Iranian guerrillas but imported into our country as the idea of the guerrilla warfare itself. I have to point out that the main motive behind all this is the detention of Maryam Rajavi in June 2003 and the consequent self-burnings, but I deemed it necessary to start a preliminary discussion before we involve in the main issue. I beg your pardon, but I think you got what I mean and so I demand you to feel easy to talk about the phenomenon to whatever extent you wish, that is, how you define suicide operations, what its forms are and in what circumstances they are plotted and carried out.

Batool Soltani: As I come to understand from your explanations and introductory words, the subject proves to require a lengthy discussion. I hope our discourse on the issue will be of use somewhere. Let’s first give a comprehensive definition of the term suicide operation from an organizational point of view and explain its difference with other kinds of armed operations. In every perpetrated operation possibly there are some percentages of killings and in suicide operation there is a possibility leading to the death of people. But the nature of suicide operations is totally different as defined by the current political and militia terminology. It is called suicide because here the perpetrator puts the priority on self-annihilation regardless of any consequent outcome, that is, he makes an attempt to guarantee the accomplishment of the end by his own life while in other forms of operations the death is always a fifty to fifty possibility. Suicide operations are mainly motivated under one of the two incentives, defensive or aggressive.

Before any further explanation let me point out that some people may say that it was Mojahedin Khalq who first engaged in armed and guerrilla warfare in Iran. Regardless of to what extent the claim is true but one thing is clear that the organization is the innovator of a third kind of suicide operation; sending ablaze human-torches onto the streets following the June 2003 detentions. I will give details on the operations. Now let’s see what is the difference between the two mentioned kinds of operations. I have to point that it is a personal categorization of the types and I do not know if there are such definitions in any reference and, thus, they may be prone to mistake.

The first type is the defensive one, that is to say, the main cause for this suicide operation is to safeguard the organizational secrets and information. When the operator faces a serious situation that may lead to his detention by the police or the enemy’s forces and which may consequently lead to extraction of his information he commits suicide as the organizational orders require. This is the point where one has to risk his life to safeguard and protect the information and secrets. By his life, he breaks the possibility of any access to the information that may jeopardize the life of the organization. During the past five decades of struggle in the contemporary history you may encounter many examples of such operations among both religious and non-religious, Marxist organizations and in Mojahedin particularly. Ahmad Rezai (an earlier member in Mojahedin’s central cadre) for example killed himself along with a number of SAVAK’s agent with a hand grenade to avert falling in SAVAK’s clutches alive. There are members like Mahmood Shamekhi and more others whose name I fail to remember who did the same. However, there are a few examples in Mojahedin who have committed this kind to defend the organization against the threats of the regime that had tried to uproot the militia and their movement in any possible way.

There is always a red-line in such organizations where the members have no other choice but to commit suicide. It does not mean that the self-annihilation is the first choice when a member happens to confront the enemy. The red-line means a reaction defined for certain circumstances when the arrest of a certain operator is a question of exposing the organization, information and cadres to irreparable damages. The defined parameter, however, is deliberately overlooked in the years of the organization’s strife with the Islamic Republic. A quantitative and qualitative comparison between the present forces of the organization and those active in Pahlavi’s regime indicate that such suicide operation naturally had to be more common since at that time the slightest leak of information meant a big strike against the entity of the organization and the cadres. But the amount of these operations is beyond of comparison with those of the past regime although there is a remarkable difference between the potentiality and capability of the present and the former forces. At the present when the organization dispatches its operation teams from Iraqi soil to Iran, the red-line is a mere sense of danger and possibility of arrest while neither the organization has any establishment inside Iran nor its leader reside there and it has no legitimacy there at all. The red-line becomes the sense of danger and the operator has the orders to swallow the cyanide capsule as soon as he/she feels there is a likelihood of arrestment. That is in absolute contrast with the phase of struggle in Pahlavi’s reign when 90 percent of the members and the leaders got arrested and most of them had the opportunity to commit suicide and to swallow the cyanide capsules. Even inside the prison they could but did not.

I apologize for distancing from the main issue but I feel it is necessary to give further explanation to make things clear. Of course, it is a long organizational issue developed following a gained extensive struggle experience and the members easily consent to the instructions for they are organizationally and ideologically justified. Let me also explain about the red-line out of Iran. The organization had strict instruction that if the members with secret and classified information happened to be arrested by the police in the European countries, they had to commit suicide before they could speak under the investigations. I mean the red-line is completely redefined compared to the past and the members’ life as a veteran is assessed much cheaper.

Another form of the suicide operation is the aggressive one. Here the operator’s act of self-annihilation is not a spontaneous act but preplanned. There are some fundamental characteristics distinguishing it from the former one. First, it is a preplanned operation far from being restricted to a final choice in facing unexpected circumstances. Second, it is aimed to fulfill certain end/s, political, economic, ideological, or more, motivated according to the perpetrator’s intention. It might be a part of an organizational analysis of the circumstances or in line with a tactic of struggle. The third factor is that there is a volunteer who knows well there would be no return. In some cases, it is an organizational order rather than requiring a volunteer. In either of the cases, there need to be some psychological and ideological preparation before sending the operator on the mission and if any suspicion of unpreparedness is traced, as it may inflict irreparable costs on the organization, the mission is either cancelled or another prepared alternative is substituted.

In the former kind, there always arises a doubt in the operator and he may not be prepared thoroughly when he faces an unexpected situation when he has the orders to commit suicide. To speak about the examples of the latter form in the organization, it generally happens in the second phase of its armed struggle after the victory of the Islamic Republic. They took the form of suicide terrorism to assassinate the leaders of the ritual Friday prayer. An explicit example is al-Qaeda’s attack against the Twin Towers in 9/11 terrorist operation. There are much more examples of these suicide operations against European economic and political centers all plotted by al-Qaeda and other similar terrorist groups. These were the two types of suicide operations.

There is a third kind which can be referred to as countermeasure, threatening or protesting. I think Mojahedin can be named as the innovators of this form of operation although we have its instances in other parts of the world like protests made against the war in Vietnam just in front of the UN office and the US Embassies. But what happens in Mojahedin is absolutely different and unique in its own. This form guarantees the media coverage and its effect on the public opinion is so high as the protesters of the Vietnam War did; their protest was against an anti-human, aggressive and colonial war and because they could not demonstrate their protest in any other legal form or conduct through any humanitarian body.

An analytical study of this third kind of operation in the organization and its psychological aspects indicates how exclusively it is utilized by the organization as a systematically working means. The purpose here is neither defensive nor aggressive although some aspects of the both may be embraced. To talk about the intended objective of this kind of suicide operation, we have to develop a good understanding of the outcomes in different circumstances and how beneficial and worthwhile they can be for the organization. I believe this is a tactic utilized by an armed, non-democratic organization challenging a democratic society in general. I mean utilization of a primitively violent, aggressive manner where you have the opportunity and the right of defending yourself through legal systems; but of course neither you have the potentiality of abiding by the law nor do you ever think it is to your advantage. As a result, you make an attempt to force the challenger retreat from the fulfillment of legal actions through threateningly non-democratic reactions. A look at the setting of these operations, the European countries and France in particular, and the standing of the organization there well indicate that these operations are the result of the dire situation the organization has faced there under a false pretense; naturally no other backlash can be expected of an organization with respect to its complicated internal relations, ideology and armed strategy of struggle. That is why I make the claim to say that this kind of operation is innovated by the organization and hardly can you find any parallel in other political or armed establishments in the world; it has to be recorded exclusively in the name of Mojahedin. I prefer not to explain any more until the right time when I am giving details on self-burnings that is the objective of our interview. I think I have answered your question to the extent of my information, that is, the definition and classification of suicide operation.

SFF: Sure you have done. But your answer breeds more questions which I will pose in next sessions.

BS: As you wish.

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Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – part 15

Masud Rajavi is the fixed axis of the organization

Sahar Family Foundation, Baghdad, June 18, 2009

Translated by Nejat Association

The key approach to know a political or an ideological movement is to know its leaders in the first place. Masud Rajavi, the leader of MKO is 59 years old. He was born in the city of Tabas, in the north-eastern province of Khorasan. He finished his primary school there and later he moved to Mashhad to continue his high school education. He was accepted as a law student at Tehran University where he was linked with the newly established organization founded by Hanif Nezhad, Badi’ Zadegan, Saeed Mohsen. In 1970, he was arrested along with a large number of his comrades in the group. Consequently, all MKO leaders were executed except Masud Rajavi who was released during the first days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Soon he declared his opposition to the Islamic Republic. I think he had some desires and he knew that he was not able to achieve them at that situation.

I don’t have much information about him or his political ideas as a youngster. I just know that he was born in a religious middle-class family. He had a sister named Monireh who was executed in Iran years ago. He also had two brothers, Kazem who was assassinated in Switzerland and Saleh who is living in France now. I have no idea about his other brothers and sisters. I don’t know if his parents are still alive or not.

When I joined the organization, I was not attracted by Rajavi himself since I was too young when he entered the political scene of Iran. I didn’t know much about him, so he was not a key factor for my involvement with MKO in the first place. I was actually motivated by the social and military situation I faced at that time. I felt that all the ways for my progress were closed or limited so I joined the organization. Besides, the main influential factor for my involvement with MKO was my husband since he had been recruited earlier by the group.

When I went to Pakistan and then to Iraq, I found out that Rajavi is worshipped as an idol or perhaps just like the God. In a safe house in Pakistan where I had to stay, I had enough time to think about the issue. In Iraq I received some training called HS based on the role of leadership in the organization. I gradually got curious about Rajavi’s personality. "Who is he in fact? What are his differences with other people? Why is he so respected?” I thought.

In fact, Rajavi was the core of power in the group. I tried to adapt myself with the new situation. However, I heard many things about him, his predictions, and his political and theoretical intelligence. In fact, I didn’t think about it too much but I just convinced myself. Sometimes Maryam spoke about him and his leadership. I wondered if he was really deserved so much admirations.

Masud Rajavi is the fixed axis of the organization where the leadership is very important. Every individual who enters the organization is under close observation all the time and the person's actions or reactions are watched. When the video cassettes of leaders’ speeches are played, the members’ reactions are monitored. They inspect how deep the member is listening to the tape or on the contrary he is just day dreaming. They even care about the way the members encounter the arguments. They hold meetings to get the feedbacks. Even, in the Reception period, the first question they ask after listening to the tape is that: ”well, what did you understand of it?”

Basically, all these practices are functions to find the contradictions in the members’ minds. They called it “mental contradictions” which could matter in future relations and functions of the members. I tried to adapt myself. I mean I persuaded myself with the situation rather than focusing on my contradictions. I tried to finish with it and get along with the situation.
If the majority had reached a result, I would follow them. I didn’t talk of my doubts and contradictions. But, it is very important for them to know the members’ special problems about the leadership. They want to know their positions, their reactions and their understandings towards the leadership, following the trainings they had received. They told us the reason later.

When we took positions in higher ranks of the leadership council, we were told that a member who had a very tiny doubt about being melted in the leadership would surely have problems in higher levels and the leaders’ further commands. Since these members would train their minor ranks, in turn, their “mental contradictions" should be solved soon.

As a matter of fact they want to know if the members would stay in or leave the group. Once an individual is recruited by MKO, all his abilities and qualifications are acknowledged and categorized mentally and psychologically. They even matter the quality of his motivations, emotions and interests. They have a slogan saying that “Your art as a major member is that you never neglect your minor members. It means that you shouldn’t face a member who is out of the organization’s relations regularly. Rajavi even warned that members might physically be in line but not mentally. He seriously cares about how the superior members look after their minors. He always insisted that it is crucial for the majors to know the minors under their responsibility. In a meeting where some commanders had attended, he said: ”I don’t care how many people you keep in the organization. I just care if there is a person in your relations whom you haven’t known completely.

He meant that you should have enough information about your members’ minds that you can prevent them escaping. The leaders of MKO are very severe about what’s going on in the minds and hearts of their members.

They would rather have 10 defectors who have already been known than 1 defector who had not been known before. In each unit they look for the members who are hesitant. They’d rather have only four members in a unit but four qualified ones. They say: ”quality is more important than quantity” this is the goal. This is what they base these practices on. They want to know the so-called internal or hidden moments and words of a person.

The first time I visited Masud Rajavi, I was just promoted. I was moved to the rank S from the rank H. I was shifted from being a supporter of MKO to a sympathizer. In our meeting with Rajavi, he stated some arguments about supporters and sympathizers. Then, as I was promoting to higher ranks, meetings with Rajavi were increasing as well.

It took me three months since my first days in MKO until I met Masud Rajavi for the first time. During those months, while I was getting my trainings, whenever they argued about our contradictions, they spoke of Masud and Maryam Rajavi. Masud is the unique criterion to evaluate the extent of devotion of the members. Typically, when someone from a free society attends the meetings of Maryam or Masud, they are so eager to know about the contradictions one has brought from the outside world. They recognize the problems one has in one's mind and then they arrange their relationships accordingly.

As I said, Masud is the criterion for everything. They want to know what the person’s motive for struggle according to this criterion is. Everything is evaluated to in accordance with this criterion. Everything is clarified by Masud as the core value which shows the measures of a person’s devotion to MKO.
Before the first visit, I didn’t know much about Masud .So I just wanted to listen to his words to understand what he cares about. In the first meeting, he mostly spoke of how professional the organization was. Maryam was also there. I don’t remember how I felt or I’d just say I didn’t have any particular feeling. I was mostly curious to know about his desires, his ideology and his thoughts.

Until my first visit I didn’t know that Masud had married Maryam. You may be surprised to know that I didn’t know Maryam Rajavi at all, let alone knowing that she was Mehdi Abrishamchi’s ex-wife.

After I entered the organizational relations I gradually realized that she had been Mehdi Abrishamchi’s wife before. When Mehdi spoke about divorce and marriage arguments, he said that it was not a normal divorce or marriage and this was the first time I learned about their relations. The leaders of MKO tried to make the new-comers to consider and judge the affairs in the way the leaders wanted to. They led the affairs to proceed in the direction they wanted to, and to conclude with the exact results they had planed for. So I always tried to cope with their way in order not to be punished. Even though I had problems or questions, I never exposed them; I wondered in my mind asking about the contradictions I had faced with. I wondered what important issue made Maryam divorce her husband and marry Masud Rajavi; how this phenomenon should be interpreted.

There were various storms going on in my mind. I thought about the probability of how dissolute could Rajavi be based on his marriage with Firouzeh Banisadr (the young daughter of former president Banisadr) immediately after his first wife was killed in Iran.

I wondered about the social, moral or age factors that had linked Masud Rajavi with Firouzeh Banisadr. I had a lot of ambiguity and questions in my mind and of course MKO never was willing to answer and clarify such problems. I couldn’t understand why they called Masud Rajavi’s Marriage an “Ideological” one.

It is worth knowing that I was surprised to see in the meetings that all queries in my mind were discussed. For instance the person in charge of the meeting presented the arguments around the ideological marriage. I saw that Masud Rajavi apparently tried to put himself under moral accusations to clarify the case. In fact they categorized everything that might occur to the minds of the members. I was eager to know how they answer the questions I had in my mind. I supposed that it was really an accusation, how would they defend themselves.

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Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 14

By: SFF

Translated by Nejat Society

June 09 2009

A phenomenon called the “Leadership Council”

I would like to discuss a phenomenon called the “Leadership Council” from its different aspects. After the foundation of his so called leadership Council, Rajavi found it useful.
In fact, this body had several benefits for him. The most important advantage of it was that anything Rajavi wanted to be done was accomplished as soon as possible.

 
“If this operation had to be done before the formation of the Leadership Council, I would have had too much challenge to convince Mr. Hassan Nezam to prepare a unit for the operation, but now when I explain a plan for Ms. Roqayeh Abbasi or Ms. Mahvash sepehri, I don’t have to challenge them. I just tell them to do the plan and they go and operate it." Rajavi alleged in a meeting after an armed operation.

Rajavi didn’t care if Hassan Nezam or Abbas Davari has the knowledge and skills to carry out the task. Their qualifications are much higher than the women who have just taken their positions in the organization and have no idea about the necessities of an operation. In fact, he didn’t care what the result would be; he just wanted them to say “Yes”. He also said: ”The main part of the operation is performed in my office”. Therefore, after a while, ”No” became a forbidden word in MKO.

 
Masud Rajavi said: ”if an official says “Yes, it is possible” and goes to operate it ,it will be sufficient for me”. He also asked the leadership Council to make their men work so hard that “they become so thin” saying that: ”I don’t want those who say “No, it is impossible”. The problem was that he couldn’t accept “No” as an answer.

 
Then the organization launched a propaganda campaign for their new establishment called the “Leadership Council” claiming that such a founding was the only one in the whole world where not even a single male member could be found in it, and this was a privilege for women and Masud Rajavi’s ideological revolution. They called it a masterpiece in the human history that their Leadership Council consisted of just women. This was a new pastime for the members in the Camp. They talked about their new phenomenon that was an innovation in the entire world. The pastime aspect of the leadership Council was used as a tool just inside MKO and not outside of it.

 
The other argument was about the male members who once had their own hegemony and now they had to allegedly divorce their positions and submit them to female members. Rajavi told the men that they should liberate themselves from individuality by divorcing their hegemony and giving it out to the women and they shouldn’t think of being the superior sex anymore. By these interpretations, Rajavi tried to deceive them to leave their positions. Thus every man who wrote reports confessing that he didn’t want to submit his hegemony to women was considered as a superior member by Rajavi. In his opinion such a person was more advanced within the organization and never had an untold story. Therefore, a new pastime occupation was made for male members.

 
After some time, Rajavi added new groups to his Leadership Council and began to specialize some of them. He made those people design the projects for specialization. So a group of people were busy with a new game! On the other side the passion of promotion flamed among female members. They were motivated to grow to go to the higher ranks but when they reached the higher levels there were contradictions before them and they had to allegedly solve their contradictions.

 
Every individual in any level of the organizational pyramid had to solve the contradictions around his responsibility. They have to write their Facts (how they encounter the phenomenon) so they are always busy working.

 
I remember when Maryam and Masud declared the most recent number of the Leadership Council’s members. They claimed that they wanted all women in MKO to be the members of the leadership Council. When I escaped the organization the number was over six hundred who had been tricked to become the members of the Leadership Council. Of course these people had a crucial contradiction: there are not enough responsibilities to assign all these people to. They sent a group of them to Europe along with Maryam. A group of them were specialized for certain duties. A number remained without any responsibility.

 
Therefore, even in the Leadership Council there was an irony calling the Council being shallow or formal. Some people were just tricked by Rajavi. They only attended weekly meetings to discuss the challenges in the leadership Council. He assigned Maryam Rajavi to solve the problems but she didn’t succeed. Then Faeze Mohabatkar was assumed as the official to provide hospitality and comfort for members of the council. It was too difficult to provide personal car, office, desk … for all of these numerous members. This caused the most pressure on the organization. To remove the trouble they defined “the member of Leadership Council” as a dog who barks for his owner”. During the special meetings in layers of leadership council, they manipulated the members under too much pressure to convince them to accept their definition of the leadership council.

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Memoirs of Ms. Batoul Soltani – Part 13

Why did Rajavi create his so-called Leadership Council?

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