August 18, 2022 / 19:36
Mujahideen based in Albania staged a protest in Durrës as the summer book festival was opening.
They objected to the presence of the Asila association at this fair, which is under investigation by SPAK.
Calling them terrorists of the Iranian regime, the MEK mujahedin demanded their removal from the stand reserved for them.
During the protest, there were moments of tension where there was no shortage of escorts from the Police.
Asila is an association created by Iranian citizen Hasan Heyrani, former member of the MEK.
SPAK only a few months ago conducted an investigative operation against her.
According to him, ASILA was preparing an agency network, the purpose of which was to obtain information about the livelihood of mujahedin living in the camp in Mzezez.
What does MEK represent?
If you need to know what the MEK represents as an organization, you should be careful who you ask.
Some may tell you they are surrogates of the Iranian Government in exile and others will tell you they are a terrorist cult.
The Iranian People’s Mujahideen Organization was established in Iran in 1965 by a group of radical students who combined Marxism and Islam.
The founders are three students: Mohammad Hanifnejad, Said Mohsen and Ali Asghar Badizadegan. Massoud Rajavi became the leader of the movement years later and would remain so until 2003, the year when he lost all traces of him, leaving behind the mystery.
MEK members were among the first to wage armed war against the Shah and the many Americans present at the time in the country. They widely supported the attack on the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and strongly opposed the decision to release the hostages in 1981.
Between 1980 and 1981, immediately after the revolution, they attracted considerable public support and emerged as opposition to the new theocratic regime.
In 1981 Iran experienced a political season of real terror, marked both by the purges of the fledgling regime and by the targeted attacks and assassinations of Iran by the Mujahideen.
That same year, a MEK attack wipes out the leaders of the Islamic Republic: 70 officers were killed, including then-Iranian President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar.
In 1986, President Mitterrand’s France expels Rajavi and the MEK, who then take refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
From there, the Mujahideen would take part in the Iran-Iraq War (1981-1988) on the side of Saddam Hussein. This will be one of the strongest reasons for the Iranian population’s loss of sympathy for the group.
They helped the Iraqi regime identify Iranian targets to strike and also by organizing actual attacks across the border.
The MEK remained in Iraq as guests of Saddam, who provided them with money, weapons and military equipment until 2003.
This year coincides with the fall of the regime.
It was precisely in 2003 that the debate about the Mujahideen was rekindled in Washington.
After the regime change in Baghdad, many lawmakers in the Bush administration were calling for the same treatment for the regimes in Tehran and Damascus.
On the political level, there was growing talk of removing the MEK from the US list of terrorist organizations, where they had been placed in 1997 by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
One goal, that of being removed from the list of terrorist organizations, which the MEK managed to achieve only in 2012 after an intense lobbying effort by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of Masoud Rajav.
Born with a Marxist-Islamist ideology, the MEK remains in fact a sect even though today it publicly declares that it agrees with the values of secularism and democracy.
Their aim, after the overthrow of the Iranian regime, is to establish an interim government headed by Maryam Rajavi, followed by free elections.
But regarding their influence or perspective inside Iran, Rafat says “That the Mujahideen do not have followers, that is, they do not have significant influence inside the country, it is a fact. The first because they declare themselves Islamic and the Iranians would never want to replace a theocratic regime with Islamists of another kind and, second because in the Iran-Iraq war they joined the Iraqis.
It should also be noted that MEK’s modus operandi remains deeply authoritarian: members of the group have no access to newspapers, radio or television, no one can criticize Rajavi. Celibacy is also compulsory.
Organizations such as Human Rights Watch have extensively documented human rights abuses within the group.