"I was 14 when I learned to shoot a Kalashnikov, drive a tank, navigate a minefield and fight." That was in Iraq in 1998: Back then, Amir Vafa was a child soldier in the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq organization (MEK, or "People's Mujahedeen"). The 40-year-old, who now lives in Sweden, accuses the Iranian organization of having separated children from their families, exerted psychological pressure on them and turned them into soldiers to overthrow the Islamic regime in power in Tehran since the 1979 revolution.

It took Vafa a long time – 15 years after deserting the MEK's ranks in 2004 – to dare to speak up publicly about his experience. Among his former soldier comrades, he was the first to testify under his true identity in 2019 on the Persian-language media outlet Mihan TV. "Following this long period spent under the organization's sway, I needed to rebuild myself," he told Le Monde during a meeting in a Stockholm café. "Moreover, I was afraid of reprisals."

After renouncing armed struggle and violent action in 2001, the exiled group – also known as the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) – won its removal from the United States's and European Union's terrorist lists on which it had been featured for years.

Presenting itself as a peaceful, democratic and non-nuclear alternative to the Tehran regime, it still enjoys considerable influence in the West, particularly in the US and France. Some 2,000 members currently live in Albania.

Summary trials

"My life is stable now, and I need to tell the story of what other children and I have suffered," said Vafa, who has become the father of two little girls. Following his example, tongues began to loosen. Two other former child soldiers agreed to publicly talk to Le Monde about their personal journeys within the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. A dozen former members also gave their testimonies, some on condition of anonymity. According to them, at least several dozen children were enrolled in the organization's brigades.

When asked by Le Monde about the key points of this investigation, the MEK declined to reply. They subsequently sent an e-mail to Le Monde discrediting our witnesses in advance, whose identities they did not know, calling them "notorious agents of the mullahs' regime." On its website, the organization claims that these children joined the "liberation army" of their own free will.

Born in Paris in 1983, Vafa is the son of two People's Mujahedeen activists who fled repression in Iran. The "Islamo-Marxist" organization that emerged in the 1960s played an active role in the 1979 uprising that dethroned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Like the other opposition forces, it was negatively impacted by the irresistible rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini, who strove to eliminate them after summary trials in revolutionary courts. Mere possession of one of the group's pamphlets could lead to arrest or even death.

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