The Activities of Edalat Association
In a December 2007 session of the Edalat Association, when giving a report about the association’s activities for the previous 6 months, Zahra Sobhani stated, “In this period, we have had 20 meetings with European delegations who have visited Iran. Some of these include:
• Meeting with a British parliamentary delegation led by Mike Gapes, Chairman of the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. At the meeting, 13 Lords along with the British Ambassador in Tehran were present. We provided some information and asked that the British government stop supporting these kinds of grouplets.
• Meeting with European parliamentary delegation led by Angelika Beer and Emma Nicholson.
• Meeting with a French judge and a French lawyer in Tehran. Since the main base of the PMOI is in France, in this meeting, we explained to them that as an NGO, our activities revolve around exposing the PMOI and their terrorist operations.”
In December 2007, Zahra Sobhani also said that part of the association’s future agenda includes traveling to Geneva and conducting meetings at the UN office and also meeting with international organizations. Following this announcement, in September 2008, they traveled to Geneva.
Sobhani has indicated that the association’s other activities include keeping in contact with MOIS agents who work under the guise of “former PMOI members” and coordinating with Nejat Association against the PMOI.
Methods and Tactics
During a talk at the Edalat Association’s office, Sobhani alluded to the following about the methods and tactics of the association:
• We will begin with the family issue (deprived from having a father), and then provide explanations about the PMOI’s activities against human rights.
• We will provide the English publications of the US Department of State against the PMOI.
• During meetings with UN delegations in Tehran, whatever they have said against the PMOI, we will document and present to whomever we meet in the future.
• We will then express as our goal, which is that we want to create a world in which its children would not grow up without fathers like we did.
• At the meetings, we will stress that our role is not political or governmental, but more humanitarian, non-governmental and concerned with human rights matters.
Sample Reports about the Activities of the Edalat Association
Meeting of Some British MPs with Edalat Association in November 2007:
1. On November 15th, a British delegation met with a daughter of two of those killed in 1981, Sobhani and Sepehri, introduced as Edalat Association members, on the fifth floor of a building located in front of Saee Park in Tehran. Reports of the meeting, after being edited by the MOIS, were later dispatched on November 21st through the mullahs’ official new agency, IRNA.
2. Sobhani, who was the main spokesperson at the meeting, expressed the following about the talks with the delegation:
• “We met with 13 people who formed the British parliamentary delegation, and provided them with some information, and told them that the British government should refrain from supporting the PMOI.”
• “We started the meeting with a discussion on families, and then talked about the PMOI’s human rights abuses, and provided them with some of the statements released by the US State Department against the PMOI in English.”
• “We also translated the reports of UN delegations who had visited Tehran, and who had researched about and condemned the PMOI, and presented these reports to the delegation.”
• “The delegation also confirmed these. Then, as victims of this grouplet, we introduced our families, and stressed that we are looking to create a world in which other children would not group up without fathers as we did; Or, a world in which other children, unlike our kids, would be able to see their grandfathers and grandmothers. When we were young we hoped to see our fathers, but this never came true. So, we want a world in which other kids would not be like us. In effect, we wanted to show to the British delegation that our work was not political, and had a more humanitarian and human rights overtone. In other words, we tried to somehow show that this is not a government initiative, and instead we wanted to make them feel like it is a people’s initiative. So, this was the path we followed with the British.”
• “In the documents we translated and provided to the delegation, these points were all highlighted. Our primary goal was to make European countries aware, since the US is now in Iraq and the PMOI is at Camp Ashraf and disarmed, so that European governments refrain from accepting the PMOI. Right now Europe is showing signs that it is moving to remove the PMOI from the terrorist list.”
3. A reporter from IRNA, who was invited to the meeting of the British Delegation with Edalat Association, mentioned the following:
• On this issue, we coordinated with the MOIS, and it was asked that we avoid reporting on the individuals, the location, and the agenda. In the end, on the basis of the agreement we had with the MOIS, we also submitted our report for review, and after it was approved by the MOIS, we dispatched the report. Haj Mohseni, the Director of Public Relations at the MOIS, was our main point of contact on this issue.
• The British delegation meeting took place on November 15th, but the report on it was wired on November 21st, after the MOIS approved it.
• In order to produce the report, we went to two locations belonging to the Victims of Terrorism and Edalat Association. I did not go to Edalat Association proper. In fact, it was the MOIS that added the part about the Edalat Association to my report. The main location was introduced as Victims of Terrorism Association. But, in the report they used the title “Edalat Association,” which in reality was the same as Victims of Terrorism Association.
The Edalat Association’s Participation at the Human Rights Summit in Geneva
In September 2008, a delegation consisting of four individuals (two men and two women) from the Edalat Association (families of victims of terrorism), under the guise of an Iranian NGO, traveled to Geneva to participate at the UN Human Rights Summit in Geneva. Following their trip, in interviews conducted with state-run media outlets, members of this association claimed that in Geneva they had a “message of justice for humanity” in cooperation with human rights organizations, and presented documents regarding the “terrorist activities” of the PMOI to diplomatic delegations in Geneva.
The delegation’s members were:
1. Esmat Sepehri, the association’s Spokesperson
2. Zahra Sobhani, the association’s Director
3. Two men, one identified as Rezai, and the other, Alimi, who was a POW during the war with Iraq for 9 years.
The meetings and activities of the delegation in Geneva included:
In Geneva, in accordance with what was planned at the MOIS during the previous winter, the delegation conducted a large number of meetings with officials from human rights organizations, including representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and the UN Human Rights Commission.
Following these meetings, and in accordance with a previously planned agenda, these individuals visited European embassies and some embassies of Asian countries, and while adhering to pre-determined scripts, which were crafted in Tehran, they talked with the officials about the so-called terrorist activities of the PMOI during the 1980’s.
Depending on the evaluation of these individuals at the scene, if the circumstances were deemed ripe for follow up meetings, they conducted second and third sessions to present fabricated documents against the PMOI.
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Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime's Intelligence networks, both in Iran and abroad. He has done extensive research on Iranian Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) also known as VEVAK, Intelligence Office of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Qods Force among others. Currently he is a contributor to NCRI website.