UK Parliament Website, 4 Nov 2013 – The all-party British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom continues to actively follow the human rights situation in Iran and the plight of several thousand members of the main Iranian opposition movement currently facing human rights abuses at Camps Ashraf and Liberty in Iraq. Our Committee has urged the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to bring Iran’s appalling human rights record before the United Nations Security Council for punitive sanctions against Iranian officials and organs of state terror. Our Committee has also recommended to the FCO to support the relocation of 3,100 Iranian dissidents under harsh conditions and continuous threat of missile attacks in Camp Liberty to Camp Ashraf where they would be better protected from aerial attacks.
Situation of Human Rights in Iran
IRAN’S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD AT A GLANCE
120,000 political prisoners killed under the current regime.
30,000 political prisoners massacred within a few months in 1988.
Hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned and tortured on political grounds.
700 people executed in 2012 by the end of November (354 cases were officially announced and 346 went in secret).
48% of those executed were between 20 and 30 years of age. Minors formed 6% of those executed.
70 people arrested every hour, many on “morality” and political charges.
174 types of torture used against political prisoners.
What has been done so far?
Human rights violations in Iran have been systematically recorded and reported to UN Special Rapporteurs, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International and other international human rights organisations by the main opposition group PMOI and the NCRI coalition in the past three decades. Rights abuses have been brought to the attention of the UN Human Rights Council in every Council session. There have been 59 UN General Assembly resolutions, the latest in December 2012, condemning the Iranian regime for its human rights abuses. International human rights organisations have issued statements and urgent appeals. In August 2011, the UN Human Rights Council appointed a Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran but he has been denied a visa to go to Iran.
What needs to be done to stop executions and rights abuse?
The international community ought to make all trade relations with Iran contingent upon a halt to executions and human rights violations. The FCO must refer Iran’s human rights dossier to the UN Security Council and it must push for the perpetrators of human rights crimes in Iran to be brought before the International Criminal Court.
RECENT INCIDENTS
In May 2013, more than 2,000 inmates of Ghezel-Hessar Prison went on hunger strike in protest to the use of group executions and the squalid conditions in the prison.
Giti Marami, 34—a mother of one—was lashed 100 times and then hanged at Varamin Gharechak prison on 21 May 2013. Her husband is also on death row after spending 13 years in prison.
Six prisoners were hanged between 18–21 May. Between 13–16 May, Iranian authorities hanged 11 prisoners in the cities of Rasht, Noshahr and Karaj, according to the website of the Gilan Province Judiciary in May. Between 8–9 May, fifteen prisoners were executed in Qezelhessar prison in Karaj, Shahroud and Semnan. From 10–28 April, 40 prisoners, including two women, were hanged. The regime executed 82 prisoners, some in public, from 19 February to 3 March 2013. This is while information on many executions never leaks out of prisons.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, described the savage and unabated trend of arbitrary executions as testimony to the regime’s feebleness and distress and its fear of heightening popular uprisings. She added that mass executions in recent days upon Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s order are organised crimes that are carried out to suffocate the political atmosphere. She said, “The ruling mullahs are benefitting from the UN’s silence, appeasement by Western governments, particularly from repeated U.S. requests for direct negotiations, to intensify these murders. Instead of such shameful positions, the UN and western counties should refer Iran’s human rights dossier to the Security Council and prosecute Khamenei for repeatedly committing crimes against humanity.”
The Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested a leader of the Assemblies of God Church in Tehran on 21 May. According to reports, MOIS agents took Pastor Robert Assarian to an undisclosed location and closed down the church. Meanwhile, prison authorities in Gohardasht prison have refused to provide medical care to imprisoned pastor Behnam Irani, who has serious health conditions. In Evin Prison in Tehran, Pastor Saeed Abedini, 36, who was taken to the hospital in April after his condition deteriorated, has been returned to ward 350. Reports indicate that he was returned to the prison without minimum medical care. He was arrested in October 2012 for setting up house churches and sentenced to an 8-year prison term on the charge of “acting against national security”.
In Shiraz, imprisoned Christians in Adel-Abad prison suffer from diseases and poor prison conditions. Christian prisoner Vahid Hakany, needs immediate surgery due to gastrointestinal bleeding, but prison guards and the Judiciary in Fars province refuse to provide him with medical services. Vahid Hakany and three other Christians were imprisoned in February 2011 on the charges of participation in in-house meetings, promoting Christianity, communicating with Christian organisations outside Iran, propaganda against the regime and disrupting national security.
On 2 March, a 28-year-old man who had tried to kill himself the previous night after suffering years of abuse in prison was hanged by prison authorities despite being in critical condition due to the suicide attempt.
IRAN STEPS UP ARRESTS, TORTURE, EXECUTIONS: U.N.
Iran has stepped up executions of prisoners including juveniles as well as arrests of dissidents who are often tortured in jail, sometimes to death, the United Nations reported on 28 February 2013.
In twin reports issued in Geneva, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the U.N. special investigator on human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, voiced concern at what they called an apparent rise in the frequency and gravity of abuses in Iran.
“The Secretary-General remains deeply troubled by reports of increasing numbers of executions, including of juvenile offenders and in public; continuing amputations and flogging; arbitrary arrest and detention; unfair trials, torture and ill-treatment; and severe restrictions targeting media professionals, human rights defenders, lawyers and opposition activities, as well as religious minorities,” Ban reported.
The Islamic Republic, which is under economic sanctions for its disputed nuclear program, has failed to investigate “widespread, systemic and systematic violations of human rights”, Shaheed’s report said.
He called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of detained human rights advocates, journalists and lawyers.
Dozens of journalists, bloggers and activists have been arrested in the past few months, Shaheed said. Lawyers defending such figures had been targeted, including Abdolfatah Soltani who was arrested in 2011 and is now serving a 13-year sentence.
In a case that stirred international outrage, blogger Sattar Beheshti was arrested last October after receiving death threats and died some days later in prison. Shaheed said:
“An informed source communicated that Mr. Beheshti was tortured for the purpose of retrieving his Facebook user name and password, that he was repeatedly threatened with death during his interrogation and that he was beaten in the face and torso with a baton.”
Torture by blunt instruments, including truncheons, and rapes and electric shocks have been reported in Iran, he added. Iranian authorities should stop imposing the death penalty on juveniles, banned under international law, both reports said. “There has been a dramatic spike in public executions in Iran,” Ban said. Most took place at dawn in front of crowds.
IRANIAN REGIME DENIES POLITICAL PRISONER URGENT HOSPITAL TREATMENT FOR CANCER
17 March: A political prisoner suffering from cancer has been refused medical treatment in hospital by officials in the city of Tabriz, north west Iran. Mohammed Jarahi—who is serving five years for “anti-regime” activities—needs urgent treatment for a highly aggressive thyroid cancer. Mr Jarahi was arrested along with other student activists in 2012 in Tabriz.
POLITICAL PRISONER PRESSURED TO DISMISS HIS LAWYER
13 March: Authorities in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison have received orders from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security to put pressure on political prisoner Abdulreza Ghanbari who is on death row to dismiss his lawyer. Ghanbari, a teacher, was arrested during the 27 December 2009 protests in Tehran.
WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF SLAIN POLITICAL PRISONER ARRESTED
3 March: Agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security arrested the wife and daughter of slain political prisoner Mansour Radpour and transferred them to an MOIS branch in Karaj on 26 February. Mansour Radpour, a PMOI activist, 44, father of two, was slain on 21 May 2012 in Gohardasht prison, after enduring five years detention and standing up against all sorts of tortures and pressures in order to make forced confessions. In 2007, a few months after travelling to Camp Ashraf, Mr Radpour was arrested for filming a workers’ protest in Iran.
In February many families of PMOI supporters and Camp Liberty residents were arrested by the MOIS including Mrs. Akram Sanjari and her 15 year old son, Milad Misagh nejad, Mrs. Dina Karami and her 16 year old son, Hanif, Hassan Sadeghi, his wife Fatemeh Mossana and her 17 year old son, Nima, Asef Rezaian, 19, son of Teymour Rezaian, a political prisoner of the 1980’s.
POLITICAL PRISONER BOYCOTTS REGIME’S COURTS
8 March: Political prisoner Ali Moezzi, father of two Camp Liberty residents, who is presently in Evin Prison, declared that he will not attend any of the regime’s sham courts and will not request a re-trial. Moezi—a political prisoner from the 1980’s and suffering from kidney disease—is currently in prison for visiting his two children in Camp Ashraf in Iraq.
A PRISONER KILLED UNDER TORTURE
1 February: The regime’s henchmen tortured to death Amir Mousaei, 38, in prison in the southern city of Borazjan on 1 February. Mousaei, a father and a respected athlete, was being chased for a long time by agents of the MOIS and Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
IRAN BRANDED ONE OF THE WORLD’S TOP ENEMIES OF THE INTERNET
12 March: Iran under the mullahs is one of the world’s five “state enemies of the Internet” for conducting online surveillance that results in arrests and human rights violations, a new report has revealed. The mullahs’ paranoid regime was named alongside countries like Syria and China as a nation that monitors the Internet to target dissidents and critics, the scathing study by Reporters Without Borders said. In the case of Iran, the dictatorship had taken surveillance “to a whole new level” by developing its own internal national Internet, according to the report published to mark World Day Against Cyber-Censorship on 12 March.
MAJORITY OF BRITISH MPS ANNOUNCE SUPPORT FOR IRANIAN RESISTANCE
3 June 2013: A majority of British MPs and members of the House of Lords have announced their support for the Iranian Resistance coalition NCRI and called on the United Nations to guarantee the security of 3,200 Iranian dissidents in Camps Liberty and Ashraf in Iraq.
A cross-party “statement on Iran” was signed by the Parliamentarians ahead of a major gathering of Iranians in Paris on 22 June calling for democratic change in Iran. The event, “Onward to Freedom”, will be attended by several hundred dignitaries and lawmakers from around the world, including a delegation from the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.
The MPs and Peers said: “We strongly support the 10-point plan proposed by Mrs Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and urge our government to do so.”
“We condemn the systematic violation of human rights in Iran and are strongly disturbed by the regime’s secret nuclear programme and its terrorist involvements in the region and the world.
“We call on our government and the UN Secretary General to refer Iran’s human right dossier to the Security Council and call for prosecution of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Iran,” the statement said, adding that Iranian people and the international community desire democratic change in Iran in 2013.
The MPs and Peers expressed deep concern at the security of the Iranian refugees at Camp Liberty, members of the main Iranian opposition.
On 9 February 2013 the camp was attacked with 40 missiles which resulted in the death of 8 people including a woman and injuries to over 100.
“The most urgent issue is the security of the residents in Camp Liberty who could face similar tragedies at any moment.
“We urge the UNHCR to immediately return them to Camp Ashraf, their home of 26 years, which is much more secure against such attacks, being 80 times larger than Liberty prison, from where they can be transferred to third countries,” the statement added.
Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan Platform for Future Iran:
1.In our view, the ballot box is the only criterion for legitimacy. Accordingly, we seek a republic based on universal suffrage.
2.We want a pluralist system, freedom of parties and assembly. We respect all individual freedoms. We underscore complete freedom of expression and of the media and unconditional access by all to the internet.
3.We support and are committed to the abolition of death penalty.
4.We are committed to the separation of Church and State. Any form of discrimination against the followers of any religion and denomination will be prohibited.
5.We believe in complete gender equality in political, social and economic arenas. We are also committed to equal participation of women in political leadership. Any form of discrimination against women will be abolished. They will enjoy the right to freely choose their clothing. They are free in marriage, divorce, education and employment.
6.We believe in the rule of law and justice. We want to set up a modern legal system based on the principles of presumption of innocence, the right to defense, effective judicial protection and the right to be tried in a public court. We also seek the total independence of judges. The mullahs’ Sharia law will be abolished.
7.We are committed to the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights, and international covenants and conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture, and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
8.We recognise private property, private investment and the market economy. All Iranian people must enjoy equal opportunity in employment and in business ventures. We will protect and revitalise the environment.
9.Our foreign policy will be based on peaceful coexistence, international and regional peace and cooperation, as well as respect for the United Nations Charter.
10.We want a non-nuclear Iran, free of weapons of mass destruction.
An update on the situation in Camp Liberty and Camp Ashraf in Iraq
MISSILE ATTACKS AGAINST CAMP LIBERTY
On 9 February 2013, Camp Liberty was attacked with rockets and missiles, leaving 8 residents, including a woman, dead and 100 people injured. Aid ambulances were not available in the early hours of the attack. The electricity generator of the Iraqi medical clinic in the camp was also hit. Iraq’s prime ministry ordered Iraqi forces to prevent the transfer of the injured to hospitals with the few vehicles the residents had brought to Liberty from Camp Ashraf.
In the past year, despite the residents’ insistence and frequent approaches to US and UN officials, the government of Iraq cruelly prevented the transfer of the residents’ medical equipment from Ashraf to Liberty.
Camp Liberty is located at the heart of a military zone and is not accessible to anyone without the agreement of the Iraqi government. The missile attack took place from within the military zone. Eight convoys of the residents which were transferred from Ashraf to Liberty in 2012 were stopped at 7 checkpoints and carefully searched with equipment and trained police dogs.
On 15 April, at least 5 explosions took place in the surroundings of Camp Liberty. According to reports from news agencies, the explosions took place near Baghdad Airport, in an area just near Camp Liberty. Due to the explosions, a group of residents and patients who were on their way to hospital, and among them patients with severe cancer cases, were forced to return to the camp. Multiple blasts also shock Camp Liberty on the evening of 10 April. On 29 April, 20 more rockets hit Camp Liberty but fortunately resulted in no casualties.
The explosions show that the residents are easy targets for rocket attacks and are based in an unsafe area facing non-stop assaults and explosions.
The Government of Iraq (GoI) does not allow the residents to leave the camp, nor does it allow their relatives, lawyers, MPs and journalists from entering the camp. UNAMI chief Mr. Martin Kobler has failed to publicly press Iraq to grant freedom of movement to the residents and international access to the camp. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has twice in the past year described the camp as a “prison”.
On April 18, the National Council of Resistance of Iran revealed in statement that “The Minister of Justice of the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki has traveled to Tehran on April 17 to receive orders from the Iranian regime to target members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in Ashraf and Camp Liberty, as well as orders against Iraqi dissidents. The day before leaving for Tehran, Hassan al-Shemeri, announced in Baghdad the execution of 21 Iraqi political prisoners and added that the executions would continue even if it made Iraq becomes the world’s number one country in terms of executions … On the same day, the IRGC affiliated Fars news agency quoted the Iranian regime’s justice minister, telling Shemeri: “We are most thankful to Iraq for its measures against the PMOI and their eviction. If the Iranian people loath American behavior, one of the reasons is the double standards of that country’s leaders vis-à-vis terrorist grouplets, particularly the PMOI(MEK).” Moslehi, explaining the aims of his visit, said on April 2: “The following up the PMOI expulsion from Iraq will be specifically be addressed on the trip. We insist that this group be removed from Iraq as soon as possible. And with coordination already in place, God willing, this group will be soon removed from Iraq.” (Iranian regime state-run TV- April 2)”
“RETURN US TO ASHRAF”, IRANIANS IN CAMP LIBERTY TELL BAN KI-MOON
15 March: In a joint letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, over 3,000 Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty, Iraq, said: “More than one month after the missile attack, we have repeated time and again that our most urgent issue is immediate provision of security.”
“Continuation of interviews in Liberty… hides the truth and portrays a wrong image of business as usual and as if matters are being pursued in the right path. None of us accept this dishonorable attitude that leaves the lives of other residents in danger.”
The residents said: “The only solution is our immediate return to Ashraf which is relatively safer as it is eighty times larger than Liberty with concrete buildings as well as equipped bunkers that we built ourselves. Liberty’s polluted environment and extremely unsanitary conditions due to a broken down sewage system and overflow of sewage tanks, outbreak of infectious diseases, and the medical siege and crisis doubles the need to transfer residents to Ashraf.”
On 13 March, Hamid Rabi, who was wounded in the 9 February rocket attack on Camp Liberty, died in a hospital in Baghdad after suffering for 33 days. He was the 8th resident to lose his life in the attack. Mr Rabi was a political refugee in Germany and a permanent resident of that country. German officials had also interviewed him on 11 December 2012.
Following his injury, the residents’ representatives requested his immediate transfer to Germany. Moreover, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, in writing assumed all expenses for his transfer, residence and medical treatment in Germany. This could be done if only the German Embassy in Baghdad extended his passport or gave him a permit to enter Germany.
Failure to transfer a critically wounded resident, who had both a refugee passport and permanent residence status in Germany, vividly shows that while 2,000 residents have been interviewed by the UN, it is seriously dangerous to keep the residents in the Liberty killing field on the pretext of continuing with the interviews and transfer process to third countries. This only paves the way for further slaughters. This is a trap laid for the residents, United Nations and the international community one and a half years ago by Martin Kobler in a plot to implement the wishes of the Iranian regime and Government of Iraq.
On 10 April, Liberty residents wrote a joint letter (with 3,087 signatures) to the UN Secretary General and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees stating: “We officially request that you prohibit Martin Kobler from interfering in any aspect of our affairs. There is ample evidence that he is cooperating with the dictatorship in Iran on our file. We have no trust in him.”
Months after the missile attack on Camp Liberty and while threats by the Iranian regime and its proxies in Iraq for future attacks on Liberty continue, the Iraqi government stonewalls the least protective measures in the camp, including returning the protective T-walls. It does not allow a single T-wall into the camp. UNAMI military experts have explicitly stated that since residents are stationed in trailers, the only thing that may reduce potential casualties caused by rocket or mortar attacks are T-walls. With the entry of residents to Liberty in February 2012 and in subsequent weeks, Iraqi forces expeditiously removed 17,500 T-walls from Camp Liberty despite the residents’ protests and thereby intentionally left the containers vulnerable to any attack.
Months after the missile attack, Iraq has not yet permitted the residents to bring their protective helmets and vests from Ashraf. At the time that Ashraf was protected by U.S. forces, in the framework of defence and protection arrangements agreed to by the Americans, the residents had this gear. The residents have not even been allowed to bring picks, shovels and sandbags to Liberty to build rudimentary trenches.
THE MEDICAL CONDITION AT CAMP LIBERTY
Mr. Reza Nasiri, 46, a resident of Camp Liberty, passed away in a hospital in Baghdad on 24 April due to lack of access to medical services, delay in his transfer to hospital and obstructions created in his treatment.
When he was transferred to hospital last December, Iraqi secret police under the command of the office of the Iraqi Prime Minister caused obstructions in his treatments. In a letter to Gyorgy Busztin, Martin Kobler’s deputy, on 12 December, he wrote: “I, Reza Nassiri Taymour. I suffer from acute kidney problem but in the months I have been in this camp I am facing a shortage of my medicine. Finally yesterday, I went to Baghdad. I should say first that from the outset we faced a wave of ill treatment, insult, humiliation, and barbaric behaviour. The agent accompanying us from the intelligence… He obstructed my tests at the hospital under the pretext that it is 12:30 and administrative working hours is over. In particular he told a nurse that “don’t attend to them”… he refused to let us go to the office of the head of the hospital to resolve any problems with him.”
He wrote on 13 December 2012 to the UNAMI Human Rights Officer and the UNHCR representative: “as a patient in camp Liberty my sole desire is to enjoy adequate medical services within the framework of international human rights laws, and we should have free access to medical services not treated as prisoners and I believe that you as humanitarian organisation can change this situation that Iraqis have created.”
On 13 April 2013, Camp Liberty resident Mohammad Hossein Barzmehri died in the Iraqi clinic in the camp. Mr. Barzmehri suddenly fainted at 7:45 am (Baghdad local time). He was immediately taken by his friends to the Iraqi clinic in the camp. But the clinic was not at all prepared at the time. The clinic generator was not on, and none of the electrical facilities were in operation. The residents quickly turned on the generator and took the patient to the emergency room. But there was no Ambu bag, Airway, Electric Shock and Suction devices and others facilities needed. The residents transferred electric shock and suction devices from the ambulance in the clinic to the emergency room, but they did not work either. Finally, the patient died before minimum medical procedures being performed on him. The Iraqi clinic physician has stated stroke as the cause of death. Despite repeated requests made by the residents to the Iraqi government, the UN and the US, the residents’ medical facilities in Ashraf have not been transferred to Camp Liberty.
The residents are suffering from a lack of medical services and the Iraqi clinic, made up of three worn-out trailers, lacks basic medical equipment and even minimum facilities of a village clinic. Iraq prevents the residents from transferring their own medical equipment from Camp Ashraf to Liberty, and yet, the Iraqi clinic in Liberty lacks rudimentary equipment needed to deal with emergency cases, and the residents have no free access to medical services. This clinic does not have suction apparatus, airway tube, laryngoscope set and end tracheal tube, D.C shock device, Adrenalin and Zantac injection, IVG-tube, CV Linen set and many other equipment and services that could be found in any small clinic.
There has been an outbreak of dangerous diseases in Liberty such as haemorrhage fever and infectious meningitis, which according to specialist doctors, is due to the unsanitary conditions of the camp worsened by the effects of the rocket attacks which have upset the ecological balance at Liberty. The latest case was the death of Mansour Koufei on 12 March at the Iraqi clinic in Liberty. Liberty residents have repeatedly warned U.S. and UN officials, especially the World Health Organization, about the unacceptable hygienic conditions of Liberty as well as the lack of medical equipment in the camp.
The goal of the Iranian regime and the Government of Iraq is to inflict further casualties on the residents in later attacks. General James Jones, President Obama’s former National Security Advisor, reiterated that the situation at Camp Liberty is worse than Guantanamo prison. (CNN, 11 March 2013)
Since the missile attack, the NCRI has repeated time and again that the most urgent issue is immediate provision of security for the residents. Continuation of interviews in Liberty and the very slow method of resettlement which is consistent with the Iranian regime’s will is not the solution to the vital issue of the residents’ collective security, and in fact it increases the dangers for the greater majority that will remain in Liberty for a long period.
Therefore, since 9 February, the residents and the Resistance have been pressing for two options; collective transfer of all residents to the United States, albeit temporarily, or a return to Ashraf and the continuation of RSD (The Refugee Status Determination) and gradual resettlement from there. The Resistance and the residents would offer maximum cooperation with the UNHCR in implementation of either of these options.
The US government had signed an agreement with each and every resident and took responsibility for their protection until their final disposition. In its statement of 29 August 2012, the US State Department reiterated the US government’s commitment on “the safety and security of the residents throughout the process of their relocation outside of Iraq.”
The Refugee Status Determination process, which has been covered with blood and has become impossible in Liberty, could continue in Ashraf. This meets the “UNHCR Manual on Security of Persons of Concern” that was published in 2011 and is applicable to the current situation in Camp Liberty; it specifies in Section 1.7 “If the host government is unable or unwilling to provide adequate security and cannot guarantee the safety and welfare of persons of concern, consider the merits of relocating the camp or settlement population.”
PLANS TO CONFISCATE THE ASHRAF RESIDENTS’ PROPERTY
Upon UNAMI’s proposal, Senator Robert Torricelli and Professor Steven Schneebaum, legal representatives of Ashraf residents for solving issue of Ashraf residents’ property, visited Iraq from 1–4 January 2013.
In several correspondences between the residents’ representative outside Iraq, the residents’ legal representatives, US government and UNAMI officials, the framework of this trip was agreed upon beforehand. The framework included: meetings with U.S., UNAMI and Iraqi officials; visits to Ashraf and Liberty; meeting and signing contracts with Iraqi lawyers on receiving advice on Iraqi laws; the negotiations include all movable and immovable property.
However, no Iraqi government official met with the legal representatives and they were not permitted to visit Camps Ashraf and Liberty. Senator Torricelli and Professor Schneebaum could only meet a group of seven residents from Liberty outside the Camp. They were ready to extend their stay in Iraq, had there been an opportunity to meet and discuss the issue with the Iraqi officials, but were told it would not be possible.
Before leaving the United States for Iraq, legal representatives of the residents were told that most probably they would meet Maliki’s National Security Advisor Faleh Fayad, or Maliki’s political advisor George Bakoos. But UNAMI in Baghdad said Iraqi officials would not meet with anyone who would represent the PMOI (MEK) except Iraqi lawyers. Legal representatives considered this a betrayal of the previous commitment and urged UNAMI and the U.S. government to intervene to facilitate the meeting. The Iraqi government seeks to plunder the residents’ property without paying any compensation.
Iran’s Minister of Intelligence visited the Iraqi capital Baghdad in early April for talks that included the “serious follow-up” of the expulsion of the PMOI from Iraq.
Arriving in Baghdad on 1 April, Heydar Moslehi met with Faleh Fayyaz, the national Security advisor of Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Iraq. Following the meeting, Moslehi told the Iranian regime’s state-run TV: “The serious follow-up of the expulsion of the PMOI is a particular issue that will be discussed. We are determined to expel this group from Iraq and with the co-ordination in place, we hope that this group will be expelled from Iraq. And their fate will be determined as soon as possible. … “We have 35 years experience in fighting terrorism and we are ready to provide our expertise to immediately establish full security for the people of Iraq.”
A day earlier, in a letter to Mrs Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI, Martin Kobler threatened another attack on Ashraf by Iraqi forces. Mr Kobler wrote: “The government has now decided to go ahead with the legal procedures to close Camp Ashraf. Please note that we do not in any way associate ourselves with the procedures of the government of Iraq.”
The GoI has for more than a year prevented the residents from transferring most of their communications tools, such as mobile phones, to Camp Liberty. UNAMI, under the leadership of Mr. Kobler, has failed to make any public appeal to Iraq to lift this bar.
The FCO and UN must publicly demand of Iraq to lift its restriction on MPs and journalists wanting to visit Camp Liberty.
According to Iranian state-media, Mr. Kobler has discussed the future of Liberty residents with Iranian officials in his visit to Tehran, in violation of the rights of refugees facing persecution under international law. Mr. Kobler has never publicly denied these reports.
Members of our cross-Party committee support the call on UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon to sack SRSG Martin Kobler and appoint a specialist committee to investigate his conduct. We further demand that Camp Liberty residents be urgently returned to Camp Ashraf, their original home, which is 80 times larger and where their security against rocket attacks can be better guaranteed.
10 June 2013
