TEHRAN – A Canadian-Albanian journalist has responded to the threats he has received from the Mojahedin-e Khalgh (MEK) terrorist group’s ringleader, Maryam Rajavi, calling for an open debate with her.

“I really want to have an open debate with you,” Olsi Jazexhi, who has exposed the criminal activities of the anti-Iran terrorist group, told Rajavi in a video posted on YouTube on Monday.

“I’m very happy that you have come out with the face of your commanders to attack me,” Jazexhi said, Press TV reported.

He also said he had made the video after Rajavi dared to verbalize threats against him and Gjergji Thanasi, a similarly outspoken Albanian journalist, through two of the group’s commanders.

The covert attacks had “caused so many troubles for my life, and destroyed it economically,” he said.

Jazexhi also pledged not to keep quiet about the Albanian-based group’s activities.

“I want to tell you, Mariam Rajavi, that Albania is a democratic state, and we are a liberal democracy, where we have freedom of speech,” he said.

“We’re never going to be silenced. We’re going to investigate and expose to the international and Albanian community, the crimes and the illegal things that you’re doing in my country,” the journalist added.

The MEK was established in the 1960s to express a mixture of Marxism and Islamism. It launched bombing campaigns against the Shah, continuing after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, against the Islamic Republic. Iran accuses the group of being responsible for 17,000 deaths.

Based in Iraq at the time, MEK members were armed by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to fight against Iran during a war that lasted for 8 years in the 1980s.

In 2012, the U.S. State Department removed the MEK from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated with Saudi Arabia and other regimes opposed to Iran.

A few years ago, the MEK operatives were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former U.S. military base in Baghdad, and were later relocated to Albania.

Jazexhi has argued that Saudi Arabia is funding the MEK.

“While the U.S. government and Israel will most probably not spend their money with an ex-terrorist organization, I believe that the only state who can support it should be Saudi Arabia,” the Balkans Post quoted Jazexhi as saying back in April.

“Saudis have done such a thing with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and we should not be surprised if they pay the MEK bill as well,” he added.

MH/PA