Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, July 10, 2020—The Iranian regime’s Judiciary and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has begun a new wave of arrest and issuing prison sentences for the supporters and families of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), according to a statement by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on Thursday, July 9.
The mullahs’ regime Judiciary is headed by Ebrahim Raisi, known for his pivotal role in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, mostly members of the MEK. Raisi is also caretaker of the Astan-e-Quds-e-Razavi charity foundation and a member of the Assembly of Experts.
“Zahra Akbari, the wife of political prisoner Abolghasem Fooladvand, Dr. Hani Yazarlou, and his son, Hood, Ms. Sedigheh Moradi, Mehdi Khawas Sefat, and Mohammad Wali Gholamnejad are among those who received prison sentences. They had been arrested last year and released,” according to NCRI statement.
Dr. Hani Yazarlu was among the political prisoners in the 1980s. Mohammad Wali Gholamnejad had been imprisoned from 2008 to 2011.
Ms. Farangis Mazloom is also reported to have been sentenced to six years in prison but has not been officially notified yet. She was imprisoned for three months last year on the charge of acting against the ruling regime and underwent heart surgery. Ms. Farangis is the mother of political prisoner Soheil Arabi, one of the signatories of the statement of political prisoners in the Greater Tehran Prison, also called Fashafuyeh.
These desperate efforts comes after regime’s failure in a demonization campaign against the MEK in recent weeks and months and a fake petition signed by 8,000 so-called families of the MEK members and at the doorsteps of the Iranian Resistance’s Free Iran Global Summit in solidarity with the Iranian people’s uprising.
On June 28, 2020, the Security and Counter-Terrorism Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran issued a statement in which announced that following the publication of a statement by political prisoners exposing a clerical regime’s intelligence agent, several signatories of the statement and their families had been pressured, harassed and intimidated. The goal was to break the prisoners and force them to express remorse and denounce the MEK and the Iranian resistance.
Reacting to the new wave of arrests of MEK’s supporters and families, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of NCRI, called on the United Nations Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to send an international delegation to visit the regime’s prisons and meet with prisoners and their families.
With the new wave of arrests & prison sentences in #Iran, the PMOI/MEK families & supporters are being pressured, intimidated & harassed. I urge the UN Sec. Gen., the High Commissioner for Human Rights to send a delegation to visit the prisons, prisoners and their families.
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) July 9, 2020
This is not the first time the regime arrests the family members of the MEK. In the past Ali Saremi, Mohammad Ali Haj Aghai, and Jafar Kazemi were among the MEK family members who were arrested and later executed by the regime. Their crime was visiting their relative in Camp Ashraf, where MEK members resided, and holding memorials for MEK martyrs.
Ali Saremi was a prominent political prisoner in Iran. Mr. Saremi, who was 63, had spent 24 years in the prisons of the Shah’s regime and under the mullahs’ rule in Iran.
He was arrested for the last time during a ceremony marking the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran, which he played an active role to organize.
Jafar Kazemi and Mohammad Ali Hajaghai were executed on January 24, 2011, for “enmity against God” and having visited their loved once in Camp Ashraf in Iraq in 2009.
The regime treats anyone who is in relation with the MEK harshly and with the most severe punishments. In 2014, the regime executed Gholamreza Khosravani, an MEK supporter, for having provided financial aid to the national television channel of the Iranian resistance.
