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I have covered MEK across my shows, interviews, and Substack from multiple perspectives. But today, it is time to show just a glimpse of what they do to their own “people.”

The Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization, also known as MEK, MKO, PMOI, NCR, or NCRI, was founded as an armed opposition movement and later rebranded itself as a democratic alternative to Iran’s regime. What Human Rights Watch documented, based on direct testimony and corroborated by U.S. military records, tells a very different story. Inside MEK camps in Iraq, particularly Camp Ashraf, the organization imprisoned, tortured, and psychologically destroyed its own members for years, especially those who questioned leadership or attempted to leave.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Camp Ashraf functioned as a sealed internal prison system. Former members described a structured hierarchy of punishment. Some were placed in so-called guest houses and cut off from all contact. Others were confined in solitary trailers known as bangals. The most serious cases were sent to secret internal prisons operated by MEK operatives. Interrogations were brutal. Beatings were routine. At least two dissidents, Parviz Ahmadi and Ghorbanali Torabi, died after being taken for interrogation. In both cases, witnesses described their bodies being returned to shared cells, broken and lifeless. MEK later listed them as martyrs killed by the Iranian regime.

Dissent was met with escalating punishment. Mohammad Hussein Sobhani, a senior member of the organization, was imprisoned after criticizing the leadership’s strategy in the wake of military failures. He spent five and a half years in solitary confinement, followed by a period of house arrest at another MEK camp, before being returned to prison and ultimately handed over to Iraqi authorities. Farhad Javaheri Yar spent five years in solitary confinement, including weeks locked inside a bathroom. Alireza Mir Asgari joined MEK at seventeen. He was beaten, forced to sign false confessions claiming he was a regime agent, imprisoned repeatedly, and eventually abandoned at the Iran-Iraq border.

Abuse inside the camps was not limited to physical torture. Beginning in the mid-1980s, MEK leadership imposed what it termed an ideological revolution. All married members were ordered to divorce. Emotional attachments were declared ideological weaknesses. Members were required to renounce spouses and suppress familial bonds. Children were separated from their parents and moved across countries under MEK control. Yasser Ezati, the son of an MEK interrogator, was taken from his family as a child, moved between households in Canada and Europe, then brought back at seventeen for military training. When he tried to leave, he was subjected to psychological coercion and public loyalty rituals.

Those who continued to resist were often transferred to Iraqi custody. Multiple former MEK members testified that the organization handed dissidents to Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services, resulting in imprisonment at Abu Ghraib. Five of the twelve Human Rights Watch witnesses ended up there after being turned over by MEK itself.

In April 2003, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, U.S. forces disarmed MEK but allowed the organization to remain intact at Camp Ashraf. The U.S. military designated MEK members as protected persons under the Geneva Conventions. At the same time, U.S. military records show that Camp Ashraf became part of America’s detention network in Iraq. According to Human Rights Watch, Ashraf was listed alongside Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, and other major facilities. MEK was operating a detention site holding Iraqi nationals accused of serious crimes under U.S. authority. A group with a documented record of internal torture was now running a prison node inside the American system, while MEK was still officially listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States.

Despite this, MEK intensified its Western lobbying. In 2003, after French authorities arrested Maryam Rajavi on terrorism related suspicions, MEK members self-immolated across Europe. Two died.

In 2005, Human Rights Watch published its report No Exit, documenting abuses inside MEK camps from 1991 through early 2003. In response, a group calling itself Friends of a Free Iran, composed of European parliamentarians who had visited Camp Ashraf, issued a rebuttal. They accused the witnesses of lying and alleged that former members were Iranian intelligence agents. They interviewed only current MEK members still inside the camp and did not speak to any of the defectors.

Human Rights Watch re-investigated every claim. Researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with all twelve witnesses in Europe. Each reaffirmed their testimony. Only one factual clarification emerged regarding the exact conditions of Sobhani’s confinement. The abuse itself was fully confirmed. None of the allegations of fabrication held up.

Friends of a Free Iran claimed Torabi died of a heart attack. Witnesses who shared his cell testified that he was beaten severely before dying. They claimed Ahmadi died during an operation. Three former prisoners described watching him die in their cell after interrogation. Family members still inside MEK disputed the confiscation of passports. Human Rights Watch verified travel records and birth certificates proving otherwise. Every challenge relied on testimony from individuals still under MEK control. None discredited the original findings.

In February 2005, a group of retired U.S. military officers, intelligence analysts, diplomats, and political operatives formed the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) to advocate a new U.S. approach to Iran, centered on empowering the opposition, particularly the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Just two months later, on April 27, 2005, Rep. Bob Filner entered the IPC’s founding white paper into the Congressional Record under the title “U.S. Policy Options for Iran.” The report argued that continuing to label MEK a Foreign Terrorist Organization “assures Tehran that regime change is off the table,” and recommended removing the designation as a strategic signal to both the Iranian regime and the Iranian people. The IPC’s executive director, Clare Lopez, is a former CIA operations officer turned pro-MEK policy advocate. Its co-chairs included Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, Col. Bill Cowan, Ambassador James Akins, Bruce McColm, Dr. Neil Livingstone, Prof. Raymond Tanter, and others, many of whom later appeared in the media advocating for the delisting of the MEK and legitimizing its political wing.

The Congressional entry marked a turning point: MEK was still listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, yet Washington insiders were already mainstreaming it as a partner in regime change.

Over the following years, that effort gained traction. The documented prison camps, forced divorces, solitary confinement, beatings, deaths, child separations, and transfers to Abu Ghraib were buried under branding. MEK was reintroduced to policymakers as Iran’s democratic future, and enough people in power were willing to accept it.

In 2012, the U.S. government formally removed MEK from the terrorist list. This happened despite thousands of pages of documentation, survivor testimonies, human rights reports, and eyewitness accounts. None of it was disproven. It was simply ignored.

Now they say everyone got MEK wrong, but the record is clear.

This organization built prisons for its own members long before it was handed one by the United States. It punished dissent with torture. It demanded loyalty through isolation and fear. It silenced defectors by branding them traitors, the exact methods the Islamic regime has used for 47 years. But if you do it with the right allies in Washington, it becomes a symbol of freedom.

U.S. Holding Detainees at Ten Major Facilities across Iraq

No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the Mojahedin Khalq Camps

Exiled Armed Group Abuses Dissident Members

Statement on Responses to Human Rights Watch Report on Abuses by the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization