Ms. Mohammadi resides in Ashraf 3, the MEK’s headquarters in Tirana, Albania. She joined the MEK from Canada 20 years ago. Her parents, in collusion with the Iranian regime’s security and intelligence apparatus, have been following her, and telling local authorities that the MEK has been holding their daughter against her will. The parents have now come to Albania to file complaints against the MEK, claiming that their daughter is being held hostage by the Iranian opposition.
However, Ms. Mohammadi told the Scottish newspaper, “When I wanted to leave Canada and join the [PMOI] movement my parents gave me their consent to do this.” Ms. Mohammadi also says that her father used similar ruses when she was in the MEK’s camps in Iraq.
At the original Camp Ashraf, some 60 km north of Baghdad, in the early 2010s, the Iranian regime launched an extensive propaganda and psychological torture campaign against MEK members. The Iranian regime’s agents blared profanity, insults, and threats against the residents of Camp Ashraf through some 300 loudspeakers installed around the camp’s perimeter for nearly two years. They brought family members of the camp’s residents, and told them that their children were imprisoned inside the camp and had to be saved.
Ms. Mohammadi claims that her father was an active member of that campaign. “He came many times in Iraq … around camp Ashraf and installed 320 loudspeakers [through which they shouted abuse and played very loud music 24 hours a day],” Ms. Mohammadi said. “My father was one of them. They threatened to kill all of us in the camp. He was claiming that he loves me as my father but he was against what I wanted to do. What kind of father would do this to their child?”
Her father’s assistance allowed the Iranian regime to create a fake documentary that framed Ms. Mohammadi’s stay with the MEK as a hostage situation in 2013. He is now interviewing local publications and making the same claims. “He went to different media claiming I had been captured and was held hostage. All these things are to prepare the ground for terrorist attacks against PMOI,” Ms. Mohammadi said.
Recently, terrorist activity by the Iranian regime against PMOI/MEK members in Europe has increased. European and American authorities have foiled several plots by the Iranian regime against Iranian dissidents over the past year — namely against members of MEK and the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The regime regularly engages in campaigns of misinformation against dissent groups. Although the regime claims MEK family members make these trips on their own volition and out of their love for their relatives, Ms. Mohammadi says that they are being orchestrated and funded by the Iranian regime’s intelligence apparatus.
For instance, she points out, “[My father] was staying at the most expensive hotel in Tirana, the Plaza. How could he afford to stay in a hotel like this for four months when back home in Canada he was a builder, an ordinary construction worker?”
Somayeh Mohammadi continues to persist despite the pain and suffering she has endured. This is a true testament as to what the MEK represents to the Iranian people.
