Background
Rajavi was raised in Tehran as the daughter of a middle-class civil servant descended from a member of the Qajar dynasty.
Rajavi was raised in Tehran as the daughter of a middle-class civil servant descended from a member of the Qajar dynasty.
She attended the Sharif University of Technology in Iran, earning a Bachelor of Surgery in Metallurgy.
Her organization is supported primarily among the exiled Iranian communities in Europe and numerous American political officials such as former New York City Mayor and Presidential Contender Rudy Giuliani. Rajavi served as an organizer of the anti-Shah student movement in the 1970s and in 1979, became an official of the social section of the PMOI/MEK, where she served until 1981. During that time, Rajavi was a parliamentary candidate in 1980.
In 1985, she became Joint-Leader of the PMOI and served in that capacity until 1989 when she became the Secretary General until 1993.
In 1982, Rajavi was transferred to Paris, where the political headquarters of the Mojahedin was located, the principal opposition movement at that time. In 2003, Rajavi"s offices were raided by French police.
She was placed under arrest and the assets of the NCRI were frozen by the French government. Rajavi"s supporters protested her arrest by demonstration until her release.
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Rajavi congratulated Zohreh Akhyani"s election as the new Secretary General of the PMOI on 7 September 2011.
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom reiterated Rajavi"s travel ban on 12 November 2014. Originally put in place in 1997, Rajavi is not excluded from any other European country and engages regularly with parliamentarians in the European Parliament.
Then she became a member of the People"s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK), "an Iranian organization founded in 1965 by a small group of intellectuals led by Muhammad Hanifnejad.".