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Born into a middle class
family in Tehran in 1956, I completed my elementary
schooling in Alborz High School, in 1974. A year
later I joined my brother,
Ebrahim Khodabandeh in the UK where he was already studying
Electrical Engineering in Newcastle University (Newcastle-upon-Tyne).
I graduated from Newcastle Polytechnic (now
Northumberland University) in Electrical and
Electronic engineering and spent another year in Leeds
(UK) to gain my Chartered Engineering Diploma,
before moving to
Loughborough University to study for a Master's
degree.
I was first introduced to politics in Iran, but
became more
interested in the various opposition groups while a student in
Newcastle. I joined groups of students opposing the
Shah's regime, and in the last years of my stay in
Newcastle became more and more interested in the so-called
'revolutionary groups', one of which was the Mojahedin-e
Khalq Organisation of Iran (MKO).
In 1978, when Ayatollah Khomeini moved from Iraq to Paris, I joined a
group of young people who went to visit him. This
had, of course, a profound effect on me. On my
return, I
started a Society for Iranian Students in Newcastle
Polytechnic, and soon
joined with another group of people who were supporting the
Mojahedin and who were in contact with them. By doing so,
I was able to establish a strong 'foothold' in our university.
In those days the Mojahedin comprised no more than a group of
martyred or imprisoned young people who were following Ayatollah Khomeini
- or at least that's what they told
people like me!
Later on I became more involved and was instrumental
in the foundation of the "Committee for the Support
of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation". The Committee was
founded and led by a known member of the
organisation, Dr. Reza Ra'eesi, who had come to London
a few years previously; a man of principle, with a wealth
of philosophical, political and organisational
skills and knowledge. (Shortly after the Revolution,
Ra'eesi
left the organisation due to his belief that the
organisation was no longer following the minimum
standards of democratic practices.)
During the course of the revolution in Iran the Committee went through
dramatic changes. The name changed to the Moslem
Iranian Students' Society, and the members, who
studied and followed the
teachings of the Mojahedin literature, became full-time
'Revolutionaries'. Demonstrations, printing and
distributing publications,
fundraising, and etc became not just part of my (and my
colleagues') life, but all of it. Individual rooms
and flats
were given up and we were now living in communal
houses, incorporating offices and dormitories. I was
soon transferred from Loughborough, where I was
studying a research course, to London, and was given
the task of heading the organisation in the north of
England.
In 1980, I and another 51 members occupied the
Iranian embassy in London for which we were sentenced to
some months of imprisonment. Dr. Ra'eesi had already
left the organisation by this time and had returned
to Iran, and we were now receiving direct orders from
the Mojahedin HQ in Tehran. I believe that the
Mojahedin ordered attacks on Iranian embassies to all of the
branches in different European and north American
countries as a last show of power before
Massoud Rajavi fled Iran following his failed coup d'etat
on June 20, 1981.
When I was released from prison, Massoud Rajavi had
already arrived in Paris. I joined him and the other
Mojahedin after a few days,
and spent a few months in the Paris base handing
over my responsibilities as head of all the
Societies outside Iran. The Moslem Iranian Students'
Society was the only asset left
for the Mojahedin outside Iran, and it was rapidly
transforming itself into the "Union of Moslem
Iranian Students' Societies" with the HQ in Paris. I was
being relieved from all my responsibilities in order
to start my
next assignment: to go to Iran for a specific mission.
I met with Mr. Saeed Shahsavandi in Germany. (Shahsavandi
was a well-known member
of the Mojahedin who had suffered in the prisons of SAVAK.
He later left the organisation due to disagreements
with Massoud Rajavi; in particular over the Internal
Revolution of Massoud and Maryam.) Shahsavandi headed a team
tasked with purchasing
a 10 Kilowatts radio transmitter as well as other
telecoms equipment - intended to connect Iran to the Paris
HQ - and other materials and to transfer them to
Iranian Kurdistan where the new Iranian Government
could not exert its power. I was appointed as technical advisor and
subsequently, the technical head of broadcasting
once the stations were
installed in Kurdistan.
Saeed and I ended up in Baghdad airport the same day
that Mousa Khiabani and Ashraf Rabiee (who had been left
in Iran after Massoud Rajavi had fled to Paris)
were killed in a gun battle with the Revolutionary
Guards in Tehran. We had with us a huge load of telecoms
and other equipment. We were working under
the protection of the Kurdish Democratic Parity (KDP)
which would allow us passage from Iraqi into Iranian
Kurdistan. The
equipment was shipped by the Iraqi military to Soleimanieh
- where the Iraqis would go no further -
and from there we were taken towards the border of
Iran by Kurdish people sympathetic to the KDP. It
was winter and it took us several months to transfer the
dismantled pieces of radio equipment into the mountains
of Sardasht (in Iran) from where the transmitter started
broadcasting the clandestine short and medium wave
'Radio Mojahed' into Iran. The transmitter (and
therefore me and my team) had to change place in the
mountains of Kurdistan more than 7 times over the next
two years in order to survive the air attacks. We
survived as a team (though of course some
individuals didn't) and continued
our broadcasting successfully.
When we first arrived in Iranian
Kurdistan, the Mojahedin base was inside the KDP
compound just outside Sardasht. But our numbers were growing rapidly. Kurdistan was becoming
the HQ for training terror teams to carry out
operations inside Iranian cities and it was the major
transit route for transferring Mojahedin executives from Iran to
France (via Turkey or Iraq/Jordan).
It took two years of military battles during the summers and
fighting with nature in the mountains of Kurdistan in
the winters before the Iranian army reached the 'Free
Zone' of Iranian Kurdistan. After a few days
of battle, we had no other choice than to abandon
everything and, crossing the border river Zab, to retreat into Iraq.
We had to blow-up everything we had in order not to let
them fall in the hands of enemy but managed to bring the
transmitter with us and even managed to get it up
and running again in only a few days to broadcast
Radio Mojahed. But now we were living alongside an Iraqi military
base with direct connection to roads, and after two
years I enjoyed the luxury of moving around with cars
instead of mules! It didn't take long before I
was given the go-ahead to return to Paris. Now that
transmission was taking place from Iraqi territory with the help of
the Iraqi Government, I was perhaps
needed more in Europe than in Iraq. So, I went back
to Paris.
With fluent English and a little French, I was
assigned to a team specifically taking care of
Rajavi's personal affairs. He was then married to Firoozeh Banisadr and my main job was partly her
protection and partly working with the Mojahedin
intelligence system which was mainly occupied with
intelligence gathering about other opposition forces
outside Iran. My boss for the specific matters
involving Firoozeh was Maryam Azodanloo (who was the
head of a team providing personal needs of Massoud
Rajavi. She later
became the 3rd wife of Massoud and co-leader of
the organisation), and for the intelligence section I
had Bijan Rahimi as my boss. When Massoud divorced Firoozeh and married Maryam (then the wife of his
friend Mehdi Abrishamchi), I was freed from my other
responsibilities to move into
the HQ of Auvers-sur-Oise to become an overt member of
the personal protection of the Leadership, which meant
Massoud and his new wife (my old boss) Maryam. My
responsibilities were mainly security, liaison with
French Security and above all, updating and
reforming the system of security according to the
available resources in Europe. Technical aspects of
the matter were my main focus. This continued until
the departure of the organisation to Iraq.
I travelled to Baghdad a few weeks before the
arrival of Massoud Rajavi from Paris. I took Maryam
with us and she prepared for his arrival.
I was now in a new environment. We were now
working in a totally different atmosphere. In Paris
everything was systematic and at the end of the day we were
a force outside the government. In Paris, security
meant a totally different thing than in Iraq. Here we
desperately
needed training in every aspect if we were going to
work and survive with the Iraqi security. But I could also see that
there were a lot of things we had brought with
us that the Iraqis hadn't known about. We were now
expected to be confident, very confident with arms.
We needed to adjust ourselves
and become a military force. We were going to be
trained to become part
of Saddam's apparatus and that's what we did.
During the years to come I never separated myself
from telecoms, IT and electronics. It was needed both for security and
for the army. I would make a few trips to Europe
every year to update myself on security and telecoms
issues. I would attend Interpol and other security
exhibitions and meetings, and of course buy and import
the necessary materials for ourselves and for the
Iraqis, from simple closed circuit cameras to metal
and explosive detectors, up to sophisticated
surveillance and counter surveillance equipment,
coders, decoders,..., . I also became the person
entrusted with arranging for the personal needs of Massoud and Maryam,
providing them with whatever was necessary for the
'Leadership'. During the years of my stay in Iraq I
participated in many joint projects and training
with the Iraqi army. These included military and
security training, special forces training specific
to the Republican Guards of Saddam Hussein, as well
as joint projects in VIP Shelter technology and infrastructural projects in
electrical and
telecommunication grids. During these years I even
escorted Maryam Rajavi on her holidays to European as
well as Arab countries across the world. And of
course, every now and then, I would be part of the
team carrying messages between Iraq and whichever country
they were destined for. I have been
responsible for the telecommunication of all the major
military operations of the MKO, sitting in the command
room connecting Rajavi and his top commanders to the field commanders
from his HQ (usually part of an Iraqi military base
near the border). Many memories from the four days of
the Forough-e Javidan operation (aka Mersad or
Eternal Light), the few months of the
First Gulf War (Kuwait), and many other
events, perhaps need more time and space. I have to bring
myself to start writing about them but not right
now.
In 1994, after two years of push and pull by
Massoud to convince a few remaining non Mojahed members of
the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to
accept Maryam as 'the President Elect'(!!), he
sent her to Europe to "create a foothold for Massoud
if
things don't go as well as they should" (maybe
he was thinking about a rainy day like today!). As usual it
was up to me to bring her to Paris. We were supposed
to take her to the USA where she could impose herself as
a refugee, but by over-estimating the connections we
had, she insisted on getting a valid visa for the US
before departure. (She of course, did not even have
valid papers for France and the French did not know that she had
again been brought to
Paris.) The visa application alerted the Americans,
and of course after they rejected her we had
to surface Maryam in Paris. That was annoying enough,
but not as annoying as the fact that she tried to put the blame
on Mohammad Mohaddessin (Rajavi's Pentagon contact
who after being arrested in Paris in 2003 and awaiting trial
alongside Maryam, has now been replaced by Alireza Jafarzadeh),
accusing him of not using his influence with the
Americans enough.
In 1995, after a period of disagreements, now
directly conducted with Maryam Rajavi, over what was going on in Iraq as
well as her increasingly un-diplomatic and un-political and in many cases inhumane conduct, the
culmination of years of disagreement was reached and I demanded to leave.
Being in Paris was of
course to my advantage. But even so, I was forcefully
kept and even injected with sleeping and other drugs
to the point that even a few days after they stopped
the injections I still could not stand up for more
than a few minutes. This was of course the minimum
just to keep me quiet. After some compromise,
agreements and accepting some of my criticisms at face
value, I was sent back to Iraq (I was told that
the VIP (anti nuclear) shelter compound in Ashraf camp
had malfunctioned, which they could not sort out and the
engineers had asked for me). In Iraq, I found out that I was being checked by Massoud himself and there
I realised that I would lose everything (including
my life!) if
I continued to insist on my criticisms. I acted
compliant for a
few weeks until I got my Iraqi and Jordanian documents
back and was allowed to get out of Iraq once more.
This time I left for London. Soon I contacted Maryam
(and later Massoud) and told them of my final
decision to have noting to do with them any more.
I
presented myself to the British authorities (and
later the French authorities) and told them about my exit from the
Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation. (In those days they had
not yet been proscribed as terrorists). In the same
year (1996) Maryam Rajavi went
back to Iraq after a totally disastrous failure in
achieving what she came for. The money Saddam had
invested was spent on dinner meetings promoting the
'Ideological Revolution' and expensive gatherings
"teaching feminism to Western women" and the
human
resource which went back to Iraq was considerably less
than what she had come out with.
Having left the Mojahedin with nothing but a few
pounds in my pocket, I went to an old student friend
of mine in the north of England for help. To his
lasting credit, he gave me
more than just financial help at a time when I needed
every help possible to stand on my feet again. Rajavi
tried a few times to get me back and even called to
convince me to go back to Iraq for a few days (we both
knew he would not let me out again!) But as soon
as he became convinced that I am no longer his man,
he started announcing that I am, and had been for
some time, working for the Iranian
Intelligence ministry, a label he has used for more
than 800 ex members and critics of the MKO among Iranian
opposition forces in Europe and America. In one way
this was good news. It meant he has accepted the
fact that
I have escaped him. Now the problems he would make for
me could not be more than some annoyance in the western security
services or the British Home Office. I had run away
safely. I was much luckier than many of my friends.
I couldn't believe it myself.
When I left the Mojahedin, I was a high ranking
commander of the National Liberation Army in charge of
the security of the leadership. I was a member of the
Executive Committee of the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation
and I was a member of the National Council of Resistance of
Iran, the so called political wing of the Mojahedin. My departure coincides with the departure of
many, many others including high profile people Dr. Massoud Banisadr, Dr. Bahman Etemad and Dr. Hedayat Matindaftary and Mrs.
Maryam Matindaftary and ... . later Rajavi even
blamed me for the departure of others!
It was not
surprising that one year after we came out, in 1997
the US government despite all their grievances with
the Iranian government, added the name of the Mojahedin
in their list of terrorist entities. In the year 2000,
Britain followed suit and announced the MKO as a
proscribed terrorist organisation. In 2002 the
European Union announced them as terrorists and in 2005, Canada officially listed the organisation. In
May of the same year, Human Rights Watch published a 40 page
report about human rights abuse inside the
Mojahedin. I always consider myself one of the
luckiest ones. Those who stayed after me have
gone through a much harsher experience, many lost
their lives, many their sanity.
After leaving the Mojahedin, it took me a few years
to retrain myself, get a proper job and stand on my
own feet.
In 1997 I met Anne Singleton whom I had seen a couple
of times before in the Mojahedin's bases. She had also left
them alongside many others outside Iraq. Later we
married and now have a son called Babak.
I started working with my friend in his factory
for a year and after retraining got back to my main
line of work, Telecoms. I have since worked for a variety of
companies in direct employment and/or subcontracting,
including Ericsson in the UK, Alcatel in Germany and
France, and a range of smaller companies outsourcing
parts of their Intercontinental Terrestrial Transmission projects.
In 2001 together with Anne we founded Iran
Interlink organisation to help the people who leave
the organisation to come to terms with their
experiences inside the organisation. Now our
organisation along with many other similar organisations
throughout the world are of themselves a noticeable
weight among the opposition forces outside Iran -
opposed to the Mojahedin and to the Islamic regime.
Many of my friends have been killed during the past
two decades, but the ones whose backs did not
break under the cruelties of Rajavi and Saddam have
now grown even
stronger.
In 2002 I joined the centre de recheche sur le
terrorisme in Paris as an analyst on terrorism, with
which I still work closely. I have widened my
circle ever since and now have very good friends
across the world from Tel Aviv to Riyadh and from
Moscow to Washington. In 2003, after the fall of
Saddam and the arrest of Maryam Rajavi I added my own
complaints against her to the court case in Paris. The
investigations are still ongoing but I certainly
hope that one day the truth about what has happened
will come out whether in a court room or elsewhere.
After the fall of Saddam many of my friends have
managed to leave Iraq and the Mojahedin; some from Abu Ghraib prison.
Their stories are horrifying. To think
that one day I was a member of such an organisation
sends shivers down my back. Now over a thousand people
have freed themselves from the cult. Some have gone
back to Iran, and some live in western countries. Of
course many have lost their lives and many are still
trapped inside - about 3500 in Iraq and about 300
outside Iraq in western countries and of course none in Iran.
Their average age
is approaching 50. You can guess about their morale yourselves. I can't
ignore the number of Iranians killed during
the Mojahedin's so called operations either. To come to
terms with these events - on whichever side you find
yourself - will certainly take a generation if not
more.
As a brief biography, I have tried my best not to
enter into specific events and/or specific
instances, each of which will need their own article
or even book.
One day I may enjoy the luxury of having the time
to write a thorough biography of my life (or even
write about the
Mojahedin), but for the
time being I see my time as more beneficially spent putting more
time in my work as a consultant, supporting my
family and raising my child Babak as best as I can,
and of course sparing all the effort possible
to help those people who joined the Mojahedin with the
sole purpose of helping bring about prosperity and
democracy to Iran, but who found themselves siding with
the enemies of their own country and with no escape.
For up to date information, news as articles
visit
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contact:
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