Mahdi Abrishamchi was born in 1947, in Azerbaijan, but grew up in Tehran. He is a high-ranking member of the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran and an official of the National Council of Resistance. He is currently in charge of the Peace Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He was always considered one of the main people and right hand of Rajavi and was directly present in all the decisions of the MEK! He is the first husband of Maryam Rajavi and has a daughter named Ashraf from Maryam. Mahdi Abrishamchi was responsible for all the MEK’s relations with the Iraqi government and was called the relations officer in the MEK.
All the information about Iran during the war with Iraq was given by Mahdi Abrishamchi and the team that worked with him to Iraq and the security sectors of that country! Mahdi Abrishamchi was one of those who always theorized the so-called ideological debates of the MEK and sat in discussions for the forces of the MEK. He was a very loud and foul-mouthed person and the one who said for the first time that the family is the center of corruption and if one day we gain power we will destroy the foundation of the family.
Mahdi Abrishamchi was one of the MEK’s torturers. After 1993 and when the forced divorce debates became public in the MEK and the contradictions among even the officials of the MEK rose, the MEK implemented a plan, and that was that anyone who had a problem with the internal revolution issues of the MEK, and in general Maryam did not accept it, they branded him as an infiltrator and put him in a quarantine that the children called Khoros Abad, and subjected him to the most severe physical and mental torture, and tortured him to such an extent that the party even admitted that he was an infiltrator. And when he wrote in writing that he was an infiltrator, they beat him and tortured him more openly, so that nearly ten children in Khorosabad died under the torture of people like Mahdi Abrishamchi and were buried in the deserts of Ashraf! The name Khoros Abad (meaning Rooster Land) also came from here, as it was said that they would bring trouble on the children, that the rooster would stop announcing the morning and the chiken would stop laying eggs.
The ideological revolution, which has been one of the most important changes in the MEK, has been Mahdi Abrishamchi as the most important factor of this ideological revolution. Maryam Ghajar Azodanlou was the first wife of Mahdi Abrishamchi, who gave his wife to Massoud Rajavi in the meeting known as the ideological revolution.
Following the establishment of the MEK in France, the continuous failures of the MEK’s leadership strategies and the contradiction between the deviant and wrong-centered thinking and performance (whether ideological or strategic political organization) with the MEK’s principles, rules, and criteria, which in the failures and The closures, the necessary inefficiency of the organizational system, the growth of criticisms and protests and the withdrawal of various organizational levels were objectified, the division and collapse of the MEK in the not-so-distant future.
People like Parviz Yaqoubi, who were among the old cadres, wrote protest letters to the leadership of the MEK due to the non-observance of the MEK’s acceptable organizational principles and demanded the formation of a congress of representatives of the MEK’s members to examine the performance of the centralization. Yaqoubi writes in this context:
The two-year process of internal group struggles, the turning point of which was the congress (incomplete and insufficient), brought the contradictions to a stage where the leader of the deviant centralism had to submit to the MEK’s revolutionary principles and criteria and submit to The full and elected congress of members and officials was given and audited, and the results of that were reprimands and removal from all organizational responsibilities, due to views deviating from ideology and repeated violations of general organizational principles and wrong political positions. In the continuation of intra-group differences and increasing areas of division in the MEK, in late 1984, the leadership of the MEK, in order to stabilize itself unprincipledly and escape from accountability… under the title of summary… began to fundamentally revise the principles and rules. Organizations and ideological criteria…… under the so-called huge ideological leap and deep internal transformation and separate qualitative and evolutionary improvement.
At the end of 1984, Rajavi predicted that sooner or later the main cadres of the group would come to the conclusion that his actions, tactics, and policies had failed and heavy losses had been inflicted on the body of the MEK. The leadership of the MEK realized that the failure to achieve the strategic goals caused doubt in the policy and the correctness of the leadership tactics and would provide the introduction to the political and organizational crisis and the growth of internal conflicts. Therefore, to avoid the crisis, he tried to change the nature of the MEK and organizational relations and tried to overcome the impasse by creating a leader under the title of a new ideological revolution.
On March 9, 1985, the announcement of Rajavi’s marriage to the second wife of the MEK (Abrishamchi) drew a lot of attention to this incident. In its statement, the centrality of the MEK tried to prepare the members and fans for the implementation of the new form of leadership. Apparently, it was shown that this program had been discussed and accepted by Rajavi in his surrounding circle for a long time, and had been working on its design and implementation for a long time. From the very beginning of the implementation of this plan, the cadres began to sanctify and praise, and declare submission to the new leadership on a large scale. In spite of the fact that the illegal aspect of this marriage, which was performed before the religious period between the divorce and the woman’s second marriage, was clear, in the MEK’s mass propaganda, an attempt was made to give a holy face to this act by comparing the issue to Islam and the Sunnah of the Prophet. The surprise and bewilderment caused by this incident also made the emotional and human aspects of separation between a couple with a 3-year-old child and the authoritarian takeover of a friend and colleague’s wife prominent in their minds. In the crisis in the policy booklet, the topic is presented as follows:
Sobhani, one of the defectors of the MEK, wrote the following about Mehdi Abrishamchi: It was announced that Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran, who had previously divorced his second wife, the daughter of Abolhassan Bani Sadr, married Maryam Ghajar Azodanlou, the wife of Mehdi Abrishamchi.
Abrishamchi is a central member of the MEK and responsible for foreign relations, and he divorced his wife Maryam (Ghajar Azodanlou) so that she could marry Massoud Rajavi. Rajavi and Abrishamchi described this action as a new ideological revolution of the Mujahedin at the wedding ceremony in a church in Paris.
The said marriage with that quality naturally had an unfavorable reflection among many members and fans and all those who received the news with complete amazement and surprise… People like Abrishamchi (in the upper ranks) are outstanding examples of character. Dissolved issues in the MEK are people who are empty of themselves and do not have independent will and thoughts in front of the MEK and its leader.
In the existence emptied of their humanity, Massoud and the MEK have reconciled… When Rajavi’s desire and opinion and policy and the so-called conclusion and expediency of the MEK were placed on this marriage, Abrishamchi married his wife, who also had a child with her. Without hurting his human feelings, he divorced and said a sentence whose content was: to oppose Massoud’s will is more blasphemous than to oppose God’s will…
Mehdi Abrishamchi, with the organizational names Asad and Sharif, is one of the early members of the People’s Mujahedin Organization, who was imprisoned in Mashhad and Evin prisons in Tehran during Shah’s reign.
After the revolution of February 11, 1970, Abrishamchi was considered one of the main and senior officials of the People’s Mujahedin Khalq organization, who participated in press interviews, speeches, and public meetings of the MEK. Mehdi Abrishamchi’s father was one of the factory owners of Tehran and they were in a very good economic situation. After the revolution, he married Maryam Azodanlou and had a daughter named Ashraf.
One of the interesting and historical points of the Mujahedin Organization, which should be discussed separately, is the political and military announcement of the MEK on June 18, 1981, in which the MEK declares the reason for the start of the armed struggle to be the attack of “Mercenaries” on the father’s house of Mujahed’s brother Mehdi Abrishamchi. And he states that he will defend his members armed from now on, which shows a pre-planned plan for June 20, 1981.
Of course, in the current situation, the MEK does not want the announcement of June 18, 1981, which refers to the start of armed operations, to be available to the members and supporters of the MEK. Abrishamchi and his wife Maryam Azodanlou went to Paris on June 20, 1981, and after the ideological revolution in 1985, he and Maryam Azodanlou divorced each other by order of the MEK and Massoud Rajavi.
Maryam married Massoud Rajavi and Mehdi Abrishamchi also married Mina Khayani, the younger sister of Musa Khayani [on June 5, 1985]. Mina Khabiani was 17 years younger than Mehdi Abrishamchi and it was Mina Khabiani’s first marriage. Mehdi Abrishamchi was with Rajavi when he went to Iraq, and he was present and actively participated in all the meetings of Saddam Hussein, the overthrown dictator of Iraq, with Massoud Rajavi.
In Baghdad, he became responsible for the MEK’s relations with Iraq, and all of Saddam Hussein’s financial support, supplies, and weapons to the MEK were done through him. In addition, he was the head of the Peace Commission of the National Council of Resistance, which was supposed to establish peace between Saddam Hussein and Iran. Before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Abrishamchi came to Paris with 250 to 300 officials trusted by Rajavi. On June 17, 2003, he was arrested by the French police along with Maryam Rajavi and 160 other members and officials of the MEK, and then he was released from prison on bail pending the court hearing.