NCRI – A series of articles published by Stewart Bell in the Canadian daily National Post against the Iranian Resistance and its sheer lies about the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) is anything but fair and professional journalism. The lies printed in the paper have no credibility for anyone with the slightest modesty and knowledge of the mullahs’ regime and its opposition. It is necessary to note the following points:
1. The National Post has not bothered to ask the PMOI or the NCRI, of which the PMOI is a member organization, of the veracity of the claims in its slanderous articles. Nor has the National Post felt a need to ask Ms. Somayeh Mohammadi about the veracity of the fabrications and irrelevant allegations about her. This breech of professional journalism is only reminiscent of material that appears in state-run media in Iran under the mullahs’ dark dictatorial rule which serve as instruments of suppression of basic rights such as freedom of speech.
2. The purpose of publishing series of articles full of lies is quite evident to everyone. Camp Ashraf is home to members of the PMOI, which is the main source of worry for the mullahs in Tehran. The regime considers the PMOI to be the most serious threat to its existence. The mullahs are trying incessantly to eradicate Ashraf and its residents. Widespread international support as well as support by the people of Iraq for the PMOI has neutralized this plot by the mullahs’ regime. Demonizing the PMOI and misrepresenting Camp Ashraf as a prison and torture chamber, as the National Post has done in order to mislead readers, is clearly a laying of the political groundwork for this plot to be carried out. This ridiculous mini-series was published simultaneously with the Iranian regime’s campaign to have the Iraqi government expel PMOI members from that country. The Post’s articles come at a time when the mullahs’ regime is engaging in terrorist attacks against Ashraf, such as blowing up its main water pipeline and the bus commuting to there.
3. Another purpose is to cover up the regime’s crimes against political prisoners, especially those affiliated to the PMOI. Several weeks ago, Mr. Valiollah Feiz-Mahdavi, a 28-year old PMOI member, was murdered by the clerical regime’s henchmen inside Gohar-Dasht Prison. In February, Mr. Hojjat Zamani, a 31-year-old PMOI member, was hanged inside Evin Prison. Both had been imprisoned for more than five years. In July, another political prisoner by the name of Mr. Akbar Mohammadi died in custody. These state murders were reminiscent of the brutal murder of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, which came as a shock to all Iranians and Canadians. The best way to whitewash the regime’s crimes is to accuse its opposition of violating human rights – a task which the National Post has duly taken up at a time when the United Nations General Assembly is to take up a resolution condemning human rights violations in Iran. The resolution has in previous years been tabled by Canada.
4. The materials in the Post’s articles are absolute false and prepared by the MOIS and its agents abroad. Despite the fact that in 2003 the PMOI voluntarily consolidated all its weapons in the hands of the coalition forces and has been unarmed since then, never has any individual under the age of 18 been recruited or given arms to bear by the PMOI. The claim that a National Post investigation had found the PMOI recruited teens in Canada and sent them abroad to overthrow the Iranian government by force has been concocted by the MOIS and its creators are MOIS agents such as Mustafa Mohammadi who was recruited by the Iranian Gestapo in recent years. The PMOI has never recruited anyone from abroad. PMOI members are volunteers who eagerly want to serve their people and country.
5. The absurd claim that no one is permitted to leave Ashraf or the ranks of the PMOI is a ridiculous lie considering the fact that since the collapse of the former Iraqi government three and a half years ago all matters relating to Ashraf have been under the watchful eye of U.S. forces. In accordance with its longtime principles, membership in the ranks of the PMOI is a voluntary act based on free choice, and anyone could at any time choose to leave the organization’s ranks. The leader of the Iranian Resistance Mr. Massoud Rajavi has repeatedly declared that anyone who feels unable to continue the struggle against the regime can freely leave the organization and go about their own lives. In his last meeting with the people of Ashraf several weeks prior to the start of hostilities in Iraq, Mr. Rajavi once again declared that the PMOI was about to enter a difficult period with many challenges ahead and that anyone who wished to leave was free to do so without any reservations.
6. The contents of the article about Ms. Somayeh Mohammadi – daughter of Mustafa Mohammadi – whom the author tries desperately to portray as a prisoner of the PMOI in Ashraf, are nothing but a carbon copy of the mullahs’ misogynistic attitude against the free choice of a woman to liberate her country. Ms. Mohammadi, like all other Ashraf residents, had been screened at least seven times by U.S. forces and had rejected their offer that she leaves the PMOI. She had also been interviewed in private by the Canadian embassy in Iraq as well as representatives of the Canadian government, and each time she stressed that she wanted to remain in the ranks of the PMOI. If the author had the slightest intention to find the facts, he could have posed a question in this regard to Canada’s Foreign Ministry. Had he done so, his entire article would have been pointless.
7. Since February 2003, Mustafa Mohammadi has traveled to Ashraf seven times in order to convince Somayeh and her younger brother Mohammad to leave. In 2003, he spent three months in Ashraf and finally with the help of U.S. forces took his son Mohammad back to Canada. Somayeh, however, insisted on remaining in Ashraf during private conversations with U.S. officers trying to convince her to go back to Canada. She repeated her refusal to leave following subsequent insistence by her father that she leave. In April 2005, U.S. officers asked Mustafa Mohammadi to leave Ashraf due to the civil disturbance he caused and his use of irregular methods to impose his demands on his daughter. In April 2006, representatives of Canada’s immigration service directly interviewed Ms. Somayeh Mohammadi in the presence of U.S. officials.
8. To justify his allegations against the PMOI, the author has resorted to a threadbare Human Rights Watch report dating back to a year and half ago. This biased politically-oriented report is in contradiction with HRW’s own standards in similar cases. It was hastily put together based on telephone interviews in April 2005 with 12 agents of the MOIS claiming to be former PMOI members. This report which was meant to give the impression that no one was permitted to leave the PMOI and that the organization imprisoned, tortured and murdered dissidents in its ranks swiftly discredited HRW. Independent investigations subsequently proved that none of the HRW allegations were true.
Following the publication of HRW’s report, a delegation from the European Parliament and a separate delegation from the Norwegian Parliament as well as a number of jurists visited Camp Ashraf where they interviewed hundreds of people to examine the validity of HRW’s allegations. At the same time, delegations from the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress interviewed the people who had previously resided in Ashraf and published separate reports. The European Parliament’s delegation published its findings in a book printed in various languages. The EP report clearly states that not even a single allegation by HRW against the PMOI was true. The other reports also reached similar conclusions.
Some 500 people who had been with the PMOI in Iraq in previous years and left the organization for personal reasons testified that based on their own experiences the testimonies in HWR’s report were entirely false and had no credibility. A U.S. commander who had been in Ashraf in 2004 wrote to HRW stating that he considered the report to be an insult to his professional capacity since he had investigated the same issues throughout his one year mission in Ashraf and realized that the allegations were propaganda by the Iranian regime.
9. The allegations that Mohammad Mohammadi had difficulties visiting his sister Somayeh and that several PMOI members were watching him is absurd. Both Mohammad and Somayeh joined the ranks of the Resistance on their own free will.
10. The baseless allegation that in April 1992 the PMOI organized an attack on the Iranian regime’s embassies including the embassy in Canada is another lie which can be pursued in the Canadian judicial system. The judge who presided in the case of those individuals who had been accused of attacking the regime’s embassy in Canada clarified that there was no evidence that the PMOI was involved in organizing or leading the attacks.
11. Mustafa Mohammadi falsely claims that the PMOI had ordered him to do something in protest to the June 17, 2003 events in Paris or else his children’s lives would be in danger. He claims that individuals had set themselves on fire on the orders of PMOI officials and that he had concluded on his own that he should do the same solely for his children’s sake. What Mohammadi has claimed is identical to material against the PMOI which appears in state-run media and websites in Iran.
12. In order to better sell his article, the author has added all kinds of sensational bits and pieces. He writes that the individual who had gone to Canada to recruit Somayeh had convinced her to cross the border and travel to Pirayesh, the PMOI’s “secret base in Sleepy Hollow, Va.” The building in Virginia, named after martyred PMOI member Vahideh Pirayesh, was for two decades the well-known and public center of the Resistance’s supporters and had been visited on numerous occasions by local officials, reporters and members of Congress.
The series of articles published by the National Post is an insult to freedom of speech, as well as an insult to public conscience and awakening and to the honorable profession of journalism. The Iranian Resistance calls on all honorable and freedom-loving journalists, defenders of freedom of speech and Canadians who respect human dignity to condemn this hostile action and the violation of the basic rights of Iranian opposition activists.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
September 27, 2006