The People's Mujahidin: Inside a secretive Iranian resistance camp
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
It is not marked on maps. Men with automatic weapons guard its border. Few outsiders have ever visited the heavily guarded enclave in rural Albania that is home to the People’s Mujahidin, or MEK.
For its supporters, MEK is the biggest and most resilient Iranian opposition group, a government-in-waiting. Others see it as a bizarre and secretive cult led by a zealot with no chance of replacing Iran's ruthless theocracy.
Sunday Times foreign correspondent Matthew Campbell goes in search of the truth – the first British journalist to be allowed inside the camp.
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Guest: Matthew Campbell, foreign correspondent, The Sunday Times.
Host: David Aaronovitch.
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Transcript
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| 0:36.4 | 15 miles outside Tirana, the capital of Albania towards the coast, there's a |
| 0:41.8 | mysterious camp and it's home, sort of, to almost 3,000 Iranian |
| 0:47.9 | dissidents. The group takes credit to a certain extent for the wave of uprisings |
| 0:52.8 | that's been going on there. Over the past few years they claim to be |
| 0:56.9 | coordinating protests inside Iran and that they have a large clandestine |
| 1:02.7 | network of quote unquote resistance units. No British reporter had previously |
| 1:09.1 | visited the camp until my colleague Matthew Campbell was granted access. |
| 1:13.8 | It was a very highly staged managed operation I have to say. This group is |
| 1:20.9 | very, very anxious about infiltration by the regime. So what is going on |
| 1:27.8 | there? How much influence does the secretive group have back home? And how did |
| 1:32.9 | they end up in Albania? You're listening to stories of our times from the |
| 1:36.9 | times and the Sunday times. I'm David Aronovich. Today with the Ayatollah's |
| 1:41.5 | enemies in Albania. |
| 1:42.8 | On the side of the road I noticed some armed guards staring at us with a rather |
| 1:53.8 | anxious look actually. Matthew Campbell is a foreign correspondent for the Sunday |
| 1:58.5 | times. He's been with the paper for over 30 years. So we pulled off the road into a |
| 2:03.9 | sort of little lay-by in front of a large white gate with iron bars and there |
| 2:09.3 | are gate houses on either side of it and through the bars I could see a road |
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