Swiss Daily 24heures
By Olivier Bot
10/30/2015
Who fired rockets at Camp Liberty, a former US base near Baghdad, which houses hundreds of members of the Iranian opposition People’s Mujahideen (PMOI), killing 23 people according to them? For the organization headed by Maryam Rajavi, there’s no doubt, the Katyusha and Falaq rockets were produced in Iran. Eighty rockets were fired in the worst attack ever suffered by the opposition in exile, already attacked in the past by commandos in the pay of the regime in Tehran, in the Shiite majority Iraq whose ties with Iran have warmed.
US Secretary of State John Kerry strongly condemned the attack, ensuring that the US remains committed to assist the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to transfer the camp residents to a safe and permanent place outside Iraq. “This is a most deplorable act,” commented António Guterres, head of the UNHCR. Iraqi security forces announced that they had opened an investigation. According to Baghdad, the camp was not necessarily the target of the attack, and two members of the Iraqi security forces were injured. The number of fatalities has not been confirmed.
While Iran sat down for the first time at the negotiating table on Syria and the nuclear deal will restore commercial relations between Tehran and Western powers, the People’s Mojahedin are appalled by the realpolitik of Americans and Europeans, which “ignores the crimes of the mullahs’ regime.” The testimonies of their members, recently jailed in Iran, contradict the image of the current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, described as more moderate than his predecessors.
Farzad Madadzadeh, 30, was jailed in Iran between 2009 and 2014. He was arrested in February 2009 before the Green revolution, and severely repressed in Iran following the post-election uprising. This activist of the PMOI, who was released last year and secretly left the country for exile in Europe, was contacted by 24heures. Two of his siblings were killed in 2011 during an attack on Camp Ashraf, where the Iranian dissidents were before moving to Camp Liberty.
Rouhani, the ‘purple fox’, is a dictator
“I was totally isolated in a cell measuring 2 x 1.5 meters, with nothing more than a simple carpet. From the first day of my incarceration in Evin Prison in Tehran, I was told that the next night would be the last before my execution. I was blindfolded during interrogations that lasted all day. I was beaten and psychologically tortured by intelligence agents. My torturers also wanted to force me to testify on television against demonstrators while I had been arrested before. One day, their leader told me, you will be sentenced to five years in prison. This is exactly what happened. Talking about an independent judiciary in Iran is a joke,” he recounted.
During the first nine months of Rouhani’s Presidency, Farzad was still in prison. “The conditions have worsened under Rouhani. In the Karaj Prison, where I was transferred, the prisoners could see a doctor if they had health concerns. After his election, it was no longer possible. And in the last two years, more activists have been arrested and the pace of executions has accelerated. In Iran, people call Rouhani a purple fox, that’s to say a dictator,” he concludes.
“No news of my parents’ arrest”
Shaqayeq Azimi is 22 years old. Since October 2014 she became a refugee in Finland. She and her older sister Niloufar are members of the PMOI. They were both in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty. In October 2011, their parents were arrested in their homes by agents of Iranian intelligence. Her mother, Fatemeh Ziaei, has spent eight years in prison, and was arrested for a third time in 2009 after visiting her family in Camp Ashraf.
Her father was arrested in 2011 when he went to film a ceremony in homage to his niece in Camp Ashraf, who was killed in an attack on the camp by Iraqi forces. “I have no news of them since October 2011. I do not even know where they are. I am very worried for my mother who is very sick. I wrote letters to the [international] authorities to find out what has come about to my parents. Without answer. I demand their release and that of all political prisoners,” said the young woman. She also does not understand why Europeans negotiate with a murderous regime and not condemn more strongly the violations of human rights by the mullahs’ regime. (24heures)
This article has been translated from French to English by the NCRI.org
