Minoo Fathali was killed by the MEK leaders because she did not want to sleep with the leader of the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK/ MKO/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi), Massoud Rajavi.
Minoo was a member of the MEK since her teen years. She joined the group at Camp Ashraf and soon she was elevated in the group’s hierarchy and became a member of the MEK’s Elite Council. In 1993 when Massoud Rajavi ordered Maryam Rajavi to go from Iraq to Europe, Minoo was one of the female members to accompany Maryam.
Minoo Fathali
In Europe, Minoo’s duty was to raise funds for the MEK through charity activities for the so-called orphans of Iran. She had to serve the MEK fourteen hours a day in order to raise funds from European citizens. In 1998 she was ordered to get back to the group’s headquarters in Iraq. As she was a member of the Elite Council, she was expected to attend the special meetings for nude dancing of female members of the council before the eyes of Massoud Rajavi. The meetings were named “Salvation Dance” which was first revealed by a female defector of the MEK, Batul Soltani. “Weeping tears, Minoo left the hall of Salvation Dance,” Batul writes in her testimonies. “This was the start of her dissent against the Cult of Rajavi.”
Female commanders including Giti Givechi and Faeze Mohabatkar tried to convince Minoo to get back to the hall. “Maryam Rajavi came to them too,” Batul writes. “She tried to coerce Minoo by saying ‘You should take off your clothes of infidelity and hypocrisy and dive into the pool to unite with Massoud.”
Batoul Soltani
Batul recalls that Minoo was always reluctant to join Salvation Dance meetings. Minoo told Maryam Rajavi that she hated to get naked and dance in front of Massoud but she was still under pressure by the cult authorities to take part in the meetings. She was accused of being an agent of the Iranian government. Her organizational ranking was dropped.
Batul and Minoo were friends. They used to open up to each other secretly but after Minoo started to speak out her dissent the commanders changed her unit of serving so Batul could not see her regularly until the day she saw her in Camp Bagherzadeh. “She looked very desperate and frustrated,” Batul writes. “She told me ‘They have given me a hard time. I don’t want to have sex with Massoud but they want to force me to do so’.” Batul had no way to help her except to pray for her. Batul herself was a victim; she had already been forced to sleep with Massoud.
In 2001, Minoo escaped the group with the help of one of the male members of the group. “We were suddenly summoned to a special meeting,” Batul says. “Massoud was shouting at female commanders who were crying ‘traitor should be shot dead.” The horrific meeting lasted until the next morning!
Thirty to forty patrol teams of the MEK, escorted by Iraqi forces were mobilized to find Minoo and the man. Finally, they arrested them in a park in Baghdad. Zohreh Shafai was the commander of the patrol teams. In the following meeting, she reported to Massoud Rajavi about the way they found Minoo. “You were authorized to shoot her. Why didn’t you shoot her?” Massoud asked Zohreh.
Maryam Sanjabi
Maryam Sanjabi another female defector of the Cult of Rajavi has testified about the fate of Minoo Fathali too. She states, “I remember Mahvash Sepehri [or Nasrin, a female commander of the group] in a meeting saying that Minoo should have been killed because she was one of the women of Massoud who tried to escape the group and could have revealed the secrets of the Elite Council.” Since then, Minoo was imprisoned in the jails of Camp Ashraf, called Bengal. “We did not see Minoo anymore, “Batoul says.
In 2003, the US forces invaded Iraq. The MEK announced that Minoo was killed by American bombs. “When the war was over, we were shocked to see Minoo’s grave in the cemetery of Camp Ashraf,” Batul writes.
About the MEK’s claim that the coalition forces killed Minoo, Maryam Sanjabi argues, “Camp Ashraf had not been bombarded before they announced the death of Minoo. Most of the places were evacuated at Camp Ashraf. Nobody was killed in the bombings. The dead body of Minoo was not seen by anybody. Basically, all members knew that the death penalty had been issued for Minoo by the cult’s leader.”
It is worth noting that nude dancing by female members of the Elite Council was a precondition to getting married to Massoud Rajavi. The chosen members were made to marry the cult leader altogether. They were then called to sleep with him from time to time. Massoud Rajavi practiced polygamy while all members of his cult had to divorce their spouses and engage in mandatory celibacy.