APPENDIX
MKO members inside Camp Ashraf who the FOFI
delegation interviewed disputed certain statements by the witnesses
whose accounts appeared in the Human Rights Watch report. Human
Rights Watch researchers questioned the witnesses at length concerning
the allegations contained in the FOFI document. Their responses,
in the view of Human Rights Watch, confirm the credibility and
reliability of their original testimonies in No Exit.
The Human Rights Watch report contained allegations
by witnesses that two MKO members, Ghorbanali Torabi and Parviz
Ahmadi, died as a result of abuse suffered in MKO detention. The
FOFI document challenged these testimonies.
— With regard to Ghorbanali Torabi's
death, the FOFI delegation interviewed two MKO members in Camp
Ashraf who disputed these testimonies. These two MKO members,
Zahra Seraj, Torabi's wife, and Masoume Torabi, Torabi's sister,
told the FOFI delegation that he had died of a heart attack, and
not as a result of beatings at the hands of MKO officials. Neither
of them claimed to have been present when he died. According to
a communication to Human Rights Watch from Lord Avebury, who said
he had interviewed Masouma Torabi by telephone on 13 June 2005,
"Masouma saw Ghorbanali a week before he died."[18]
— Human Rights Watch again questioned
Abbas Sedeghinejad, one of Human Right Watch's original sources
on these events, about Torabi's death. Abbas Sadeghinejad confirmed
his earlier testimony, based on his experience of sharing a prison
cell with Torabi.[19]
He again told Human Rights Watch that late one night, after Torabi
had been taken out of the cell for two days, two men carried Torabi
back to the cell, threw him inside, and locked the cell again.
Torabi, Sadeghinejad said, was not breathing and his face showed
signs of severe beating. He said that other cellmates examined
Torabi more closely and believed that he had suffered broken bones.
Sadeghinejad acknowledged that Torabi may have died of a heart
attack, but maintained that the MKO had severely beaten Torabi,
apparently during interrogation.
Alireza Mir Asgari corroborated the fact of
Torabi's detention and ill-treatment at the hands of the MKO,
based on his own direct experience. Mir Asgari told Human Rights
Watch that the MKO also detained him at the time Torabi was detained.
He said that he knew Torabi well as a child in Iran, and that
Torabi had recruited him in Tehran at the age of 17 to join the
MKO ranks in Iraq. Mir Asgari told Human Rights Watch that during
his detention in 1995, he encountered Torabi face-to-face during
an interrogation session. He said that the interrogators questioned
them both about Torabi's motivation for recruiting Mir Asgari
to the MKO camps in Iraq and accused them of working for the Iranian
government. Mir Asgari said that when he met Torabi during this
interrogation, Torabi's body showed signs of beatings and physical
abuse.[20]
Mir Asgari told Human Rights Watch that when he raised the subject
of Torabi's death with MKO leader Massoud Rajavi, Rajavi alternately
responded that Torabi had committed suicide and that Mir Asgari
and other prisoners had themselves killed Torabi because they
suspected him of being an informant. He said Rajavi at no point
claimed that Torabi had died from a heart attack.
— Concerning the death of Parviz Ahmadi,
the FOFI delegation reported that Hossein Roboubi, an MKO member,
told them that Ahmadi died during a military operation inside
Iran.[21]
In its report, Human Rights Watch cited the MKO's claim that Ahmadi
was killed by Iranian agents.[22]
Human Rights Watch also presented the testimony of three witnesses,
Abbas Sadeghinejad, Ali Ghashghavi, and Alireza Mir Asgari, who
said that they had shared a prison cell with Ahmadi and saw him
die inside the prison after prison guards returned him from an
interrogation session. During Human Rights Watch's face-to-face
interviews in October 2005, each of these witnesses gave separate,
detailed, and consistent accounts of their recollection regarding
Ahmadi's death. These testimonies were consistent with their earlier
statements as published in the No Exit report.[23]
— The FOFI document contains an interview
with Hassan Ezati in Camp Ashraf. Hassan Ezati is the father of
Yasser Ezati one of the witnesses quoted in the Human Rights Watch
report. Hassan Ezati reportedly told the FOFI delegation that
"Yasser having left Camp Ashraf went directly to the Iranian
Embassy in Baghdad." [24]When
asked about this statement, Yasser Ezati strongly denied it. He
said that he first went to the German Embassy in Baghdad because
he had lived in Germany before moving to Iraq. He told Human Rights
Watch that because the German Embassy was closed at the time,
his only options were either to return to Camp Ashraf or to go
to Iran. He said he was desperate not to return to Camp Ashraf
because he had waited for so many years to find the opportunity
to leave. He decided to risk returning to Iran for lack of any
alternative. He told Human Rights Watch that he went to the Iranian
border on his own. Yasser Ezati said that during his stay in Iran,
the Iranian local police arrested him three times for "moral
offenses." Yasser decided that because he had never lived
in Iran previously he could not stay there and left for Germany.
[25]
— The FOFI document contains an interview
with Leila Ghanbari, an MKO member in Camp Ashraf who disputed
the testimonies of Habib Khorrami, Tahereh Eskandari, and Mohammad
Reza Eskandari in Human Rights Watch's report. Tahereh Eskandari
and Habib Khorrami are sister and brother. Tahereh and Mohammad
Reza Eskandari are married. Leila Ghanbari is the former wife
of Habib Khorrami and had left Iran for Iraq with Khorrami and
Tahereh Eskandari in 1988. The Human Rights Watch report quoted
the Eskandaris as saying: "The organization had taken our
passports and identification documents upon our arrival in the
[MKO] camp [in Iraq]. When we expressed our intention to leave,
they never returned our documents. We were held in detention centers
in Iskan as well as other locations." Leila Ghanbari
disputed this statement, telling the FOFI delegation: "In
one place they say my passport was taken from me. Let me tell
you that I laughed at this claim . . . What passport? They were
escapees!" [26]The
FOFI authors state that MKO officials "said both Mohammad
Reza Eskandari and Tahereh Eskandari crossed the border from Iran
to Iraq and they never had passports to begin with." [27]
Human Rights Watch questioned Mohammad Reza
Eskandari, Tahereh Eskandari, and Habib Khorrami separately regarding
these allegations by Leila Ghanbari and the unnamed MKO officials.
The Eskandaris and Khorrami separately told Human Rights Watch
that Tahereh Eskandari, Habib Khorrami, and Leila Ghanbari left
Iran together in March 1988 to go to Iraq, crossing the Turkish
border and using their passports to do so. They said the MKO confiscated
their passports and never returned them. Mohammad Reza Eskandari
was the only member of this family who escaped Iran without a
passport across the Iraqi border. All three also noted in separate
individual interviews that Leila Ghanbari was pregnant when she
left Iran for Turkey, and that her and Habib Khorrami's son was
born in Turkey. Habib Khorrami, Ghanbari's former husband and
the boy's father, showed Human Rights Watch a copy of their son's
birth certificate issued in Istanbul in April 1994 and stating
the date of birth as 13 June 1988.
Leila Ghanbari also disputed the statements
by these witnesses that the MKO had confined them in various MKO
detention centers. Mohammad Reza Eskandari, Tahereh Eskandari,
and Habib Khorrami, in separate face-to-face interviews again
provided Human Rights Watch with detailed and consistent accounts
of their confinement in various MKO detention centers. [28]
18 Lord Avebury email to Human Rights Watch, 15 June
2005. Back
19
Human Rights Watch interview with Abbas Sedeghinejad, Germany,
2 October 2005. Back
20
Human Rights Watch interview with Alireza Mir Asgari, Germany,
2 October 2005. Back
21
FOFI document, pgs 60-62. Back
22
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/iran0505/4.htm_Toc103593132:
: ". . . the MKO's publication Mojahed of 2 March
1998, lists Parviz Ahmadi as an MKO "martyr" killed
by Iranian intelligence agents." Back
23
Human Rights Watch interview with Abbas Sedeghinejad, Germany,
2 October 2005. Human Rights Watch interview with Alireza Mir
Asgari, Germany, 2 October 2005. Human Rights Watch interview
with Ali Ghashghavi, Germany, 3 October 2005. Their testimonies
regarding Ahmadi's death appeared in No Exit, Pgs 16-17. Back
24
FOFI document, p 69. Back
25
Human Rights Watch interview with Yasser Ezati, Germany, 3 October
2005. Back
26
FOFI document, p 78. Back
27
FOFI document, p 78. Back
28
Human Rights Watch interview with Tahereh Eskandari, The Netherlands,
6 October 2005. Human Rights Watch interview with Mohammad Reza
eskandari, The Netherlands, 6 October 2005. Human Rights Watch
interview with Habib Khorrami, The Netherlands, 6 October 2005. Back
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