Library: Recollections of a Former Terrorist

Founded in 1965 by a group of leftist Iranian college students as an Islamic political movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK and NCRI) was mainly devoted to opposing the western-backed Shah. In its first five years, the group primarily engaged in ideological work, their interpretation of Islam and economic and political ideas.

The MKO preached a combination of Marxism and Islamism. Failed to gain acceptance and popularity among Iranian nation after the Islamic Revolution, MKO resorted to terrorist crimes and announced officially an armed conflict against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its compatriots on June 20, 1981. On this day, Masoud Rajavi orchestrated a cruel and savage military show and ordered the armed contingents and members of his cult to rush onto the streets and begin the terrorist phase of their struggle against the government of Iran. Via this movement, they erroneously expected to spark a general uprising.

On 28 June 1981, MKO’s operative, Mohammad Reza Kolahi, detonated a bomb at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party. Around 70 high-ranking officials, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, cabinet members, and members of parliament were killed. Two months later on August 30, 1981, Iran was rocked by its worst-ever terrorist bombing when another explosion ripped through the headquarters of Prime Minister in Tehran, where Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar and President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei along with some other officials were meeting at the time. The perpetrator, Masoud Kashmiri, again was a member of the terrorist MKO group, who infiltrated into the Prime Minister’s Office.

Masoud Rajavi, the MKO leader fled to France after killing thousands of innocent civilians in Iran. While in France, he proclaimed that Maryam Azdanlu, the wife of his close associate and senior member of MKO Mehdi Abrishamchi, would assume the position of MEK co- leader. Rajavi divorced his second wife, the daughter of former Iranian president, Abolhassan Banisadr, and married Maryam. Expelled by France in 1986 and during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, MKO moved its headquarters to Iraq, near the Iranian border. According to the US Department of State, MKO received all of its military support and most of its financial assistance from Saddam’s government until the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

The terrorist group is widely loathed in Iran as it aligned itself with former executed dictator Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. They are known in Iran as Monafeqin meaning hypocrites. In the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, several thousand members of MKO at Camp Ashraf became unwanted guests of the new Iraqi government, and the US government started supporting the group-let as a potential weapon against the Islamic Republic of Iran.