Self-Sacrifice (29 page)

The report stressed that the Iranian regime’s MOIS uses all means at its disposal to protect the Islamic Revolution of Iran, utilising such methods as infiltrating internal opposition groups, monitoring domestic threats and expatriate dissent, arresting alleged spies and
dissidents, exposing conspiracies deemed threatening and maintaining liaison with other foreign intelligence agencies, as well as with organisations that protect the Islamic Republic’s interests around the world.

It continued:

The report also identified two MOIS agents operating from abroad, and explained how they were recruited and trained by the MOIS in Tehran to run a demonisation campaign, including launching a PMOI-defamatory website,
iran-interlink.org
.

The recruitment of a British subject, Anne Singleton, and her Iranian husband, Massoud Khodabandeh, provides a relevant example of how MOIS coerces non-Iranians to cooperate. She worked with the MEK in the late 1980s. Massoud Khodabandeh and his brother Ibrahim were both members of the MEK at the time. In 1996 Massoud Khodabandeh decided to leave the organisation. Later, he married Anne Singleton. Soon after their marriage, MOIS forced them to cooperate by threatening to confiscate Khodabandeh’s mother’s extensive property in Tehran. Singleton and Khodabandeh then agreed to work for MOIS and spy on the MEK. In 2002 Singleton met in Tehran with MOIS agents who were interested in her background. She agreed to cooperate with MOIS to save her brother-in-law’s life – he was still a member of the MEK at the time. During her stay in Tehran, she received training from the MOIS. After her return to England, she launched the
iran-interlink.org
website in the winter of 2002. After she made many trips to Iran and Singapore – the country where the agency contacts its foreign agents – the MEK became doubtful of Singleton and Khodabandeh’s loyalty to the organisation. In 2004 Singleton finally met her brother-in-law, Ibrahim, who was sent from Syria to Iran after the Syrians arrested him (it appears that Syrians closely cooperate with the MOIS). Eventually, the MOIS forced him to cooperate as well.

The Pentagon report proved immediately that the claim that the PMOI/MEK was an irrelevant group or had no support within Iran was clearly a myth. It demonstrated that the PMOI had always been and remained the most serious threat to the Iranian regime, and therefore the suppression of the PMOI had always been and remained a priority for the Iranian intelligence services. The report also underlined what we already knew, that the Iranian regime was the source of all disinformation against the PMOI. Indeed by actually naming Anne Singleton and her Iranian husband, Massoud Khodabandeh, as trained MOIS agents, it reinforced the findings of the British courts years earlier when they demanded the delisting of the PMOI, claiming that their blacklisting based on supposedly classified evidence supplied by these two spies as ‘perverse’. Sadly, it was this self-same classified evidence which had been passed to the US State Department by the UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and
which had been used to justify the continued terror listing of the PMOI in America.

Alarmingly, the Pentagon report also showed that Iran’s known agents had enjoyed freedom of activity in Europe for years. The report made it clear that the Qods Force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, together with the MOIS who control their activities, were involved in conspiracies to murder citizens and residents of the EU. It was perfectly possible that Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Paulo Casaca and myself were targets for ‘extraterritorial operations such as sabotage, assassinations, and espionage.’

Similar reports have been made by some European intelligence services. The German Interior Ministry’s Annual Report in 2013 on the Protection of the Constitution stated:

And the intelligence services of the Netherlands, AIVD, 2012 report,
page 37
, states:

1.
The Iranian Green Movement was a political movement that arose following the fraudulent 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office. Green was initially used as the symbol of Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh’s campaign, but after the election it became the symbol of unity and hope for those demanding the annulment of the election result.

36

Interviews with PMOI Refugees in Camp Liberty, September 2014

Hassan Nezam

‘My name is Hassan Nezam. I was born in Tehran in 1954 to a middle-class family. My father was a businessman. In 1972, upon completing my high school in Alawi School, I enrolled at the University of Tehran school of economics. I finished my studies, but before graduating I was arrested and taken to prison. When I was studying at the University of Tehran, I used to teach in schools in the southern and eastern parts of Tehran and at the same time I used to help my father with his business.

At Alawi High School the atmosphere was anti-Shah and some of the teachers were associated with the PMOI; that is where I was exposed to politics. When I enrolled in university in 1972, I continued my activities at the Students’ Association where I established contacts with the PMOI for the first time. I was in contact with the PMOI from the beginning of my activities in 1972 till 1976, when I was arrested. My activities included distributing leaflets and taking part in anti-Shah demonstrations. At that time, the Shah’s regime was regarded as an “island of stability”, and through the use and intimidation of his secret police, “SAVAK”, no one dared to oppose him publicly. This is where the student associations came in and tried to organise protests from the universities. For example, one of these demonstrations that was organised by the student association in 1978 turned into a widespread protest, and set the stage for the Shah’s downfall. These demonstrations organized by the PMOI had started in 1975; it was the first time the slogan, “Death to the Shah” was taken up by the masses. In 1975, during the Ramadan celebrations in Tehran’s Bazar, Tehran University students started chanting anti-regime slogans. Subsequently, other demonstrations on the campus occurred that spilled over onto the streets and marked the prelude to mass demonstrations and nationwide unrest.

In the summer of 1976 I was arrested by the SAVAK. I was tortured for three months and then was given a fifteen-year prison sentence. I spent my time in Qasr and Evin prisons. I was released after the popular uprisings in 1979. I was in contact with the PMOI and started my activities in the Azerbaijan region. During the political phase after the revolution, the thugs and hoodlums associated with the Islamic Republic party used to attack our centres and newsstands in the universities. To continue our political activities we were forced to pay a price on a daily basis by enduring violent attacks. This went on till 20 June 1981, when the PMOI’s peaceful demonstrations were suppressed violently by the mullah regime’s forces. This was a turning-point, and from this point on we had to continue our struggle in a clandestine manner.

In September 1982 I travelled to the Kurdistan region of Iran and stayed in Kurdistan till 1983. From Kurdistan I travelled to Iraq and joined the PMOI there. When Camp Ashraf was established I moved to Ashraf. When I was in Iran I was in contact with some of the resistance cells that were active in Iran. Upon arriving in Ashraf I kept up contact with these cells. Our activities focused on exposing the Khomeini regime’s warmongering policies and supporting the patriotic personnel in the armed forces. During the Iran-Iraq war, through propaganda, the Khomeini regime used to send hundreds of thousands of students to their deaths in the front lines. They used to put a key around the students’ necks and tell them that this is the key to heaven. Continuing the war was the best cover for the ongoing suppression inside Iran. Our goal was to put a stop to this war at any price. Many of the military personnel who were in contact with us were arrested, tortured and executed. Many others managed to come to Iraq and join the National Liberation Army, and some others managed to leave Iran and expose the warmongering policies of the regime internationally. These activities, along with the blows dealt to the regime by the National Liberation Army, forced Khomeini’s regime to accept a ceasefire.

I lost most of my hearing during a terrorist attack by the regime’s agents in Iraq and on top of that I witnessed the massacre of 52 of my friends at Camp Ashraf on 1 September 2013. Over a 10-year period I have witnessed the Iranian regime’s terrorist operations in
Iraq against the PMOI. In 1999 an explosion ripped into a bus carrying PMOI members that resulted in 6 deaths and 21 wounded. In another incident in Habib Camp in Basra, a truck that was loaded with 1½ tons of TNT exploded, killing 6 and wounding 54 PMOI members. Three of our brothers were killed on Mohammed Ghassem Street in Baghdad in July 1995. I have had many interviews about the role of the Iranian intelligence forces under the direction of the Iranian regime’s National Security Council.’

37

Dr Tariq al-Hashemi

I had been in touch with the deposed former Vice President of Iraq, Dr Tariq al-Hashemi for many months. He had fled to Turkey after his thirteen bodyguards had been arrested and tortured, one of them dying under torture. On the basis of bogus confessions made under duress, the twelve surviving bodyguards had each been sentenced to death and Dr al-Hashemi, the most senior Sunni in Iraqi political circles, had entered the
Guinness Book of Records
for having no fewer than five death sentences imposed upon him
in absentia
, allegedly for terrorist offences, which was Maliki’s preferred charge for Sunnis he wanted to get rid of.

Shiia militias affiliated to the Iranian regime and Maliki’s government had assassinated two of his brothers and one sister. He was perhaps the first and only senior Iraqi official to reveal the barbaric tortures that were taking place in Iraqi prisons. He visited the prisons and then showed films of the torture victims, which infuriated Maliki. He was also a strong supporter of the rights of Ashraf residents and had repeatedly said that they were refugees and Protected Persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention and their rights had to be respected.

I decided that the truth of Maliki’s vicious repression of the Sunnis in Iraq could be best described in person by Dr al-Hashemi, and I invited him to address a special conference in the European Parliament in Brussels on 16 October 2013. The fact that Dr al-Hashemi was on Iraq’s ‘Most Wanted’ list was of course a concern. Nevertheless we checked with Interpol and were assured that, as a political figure, he was not on their Red List, which would have meant instant detention and deportation back to Iraq, where he would have been executed within hours.

It was obviously a huge personal risk for Dr al-Hashemi to fly to Europe. He negotiated a visa with the Belgian authorities, which
issued it based on the fact that he had received a formal invitation from me to address a meeting in the European Parliament. We organised a large attendance of leading ex-pat Iraqis and key political figures from the Middle East. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, the Vice President of the European Parliament, arranged with the Parliament’s protocol services for a VIP greeting for Dr al-Hashemi when he arrived in the early afternoon of 16 October.

In fact, I was walking towards the VIP entrance to prepare to meet Dr al-Hashemi when my mobile phone rang. It was a senior official from the office of the Parliament’s President, Martin Schulz. I immediately asked that my thanks should be conveyed to President Schulz for agreeing to the VIP reception for Dr al-Hashemi. ‘In fact that is the very reason I have been asked to call you by President Schulz,’ said the official. ‘The President has decided that Dr al-Hashemi should not be allowed to enter the premises of the European Parliament and he has informed security to stop him from entering the building.’