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http://www.rappler.com/world/regions/middle-east/37973-un-iraq-probe-deaths-iran-exiles

UN, Iraq probe deaths of 52 Iran exiles at camp

AFP, September 03, 2013 by Ammar Karim BAGHDAD, Iraq A UN team visited a camp housing Iranian exiles north of the Iraqi capital on Monday, September 2, as investigators tried to establish how 52 members of the anti-Tehran group died over the weekend. The deaths of the members of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI), confirmed by a senior Iraqi security officer, were met with international condemnation. But the UN and Western governments have been careful not to assign blame amid wildly conflicting narratives. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki set up an inquiry in the aftermath of the deaths, with findings due in the coming days, and a UN team visited the camp in Diyala province near the border with Iran to try to establish what happened. "This morning, we entered Ashraf and found 52 bodies in one place," a senior police officer who was part of the Iraqi premier's investigating committee told Agence France-Presse. The officer, who did not want to be identified discussing the inquiry, said investigators found a "huge amount of TNT and explosive materiel inside cars, houses and heavy machinery". He said 42 members of the PMOI were still alive, but accused them of not cooperating with investigators by refusing to hand over corpses and moving bodies from their original locations. The officer claimed the deaths were probably caused by infighting within Ashraf. His account is sharply contested by the PMOI, however, which charges that Iraqi forces entered Ashraf, killed 52 of its members and set fire to the group's property and goods. It said Iraqi forces had carried out a "massacre" and the group's members at Liberty, another camp near Baghdad, began a hunger strike on Monday, a spokesman said. "The residents will continue their hunger strike until the full cessation of killings in Ashraf and the release of all hostages, and until the resolution of the issue of security for the residents of Ashraf and Liberty," a PMOI statement said. Iraqi officials insisted that no soldiers entered Ashraf, and said explosions were triggered by mortar fire or the detonation of a barrel of oil or gas.
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http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Sep/03/un-urges-safety-for-iranian-exiles-after-52-killed/?#article-copy

UN urges safety for Iranian exiles after 52 killed

Associated Press, September 03, 2013 By Adam Shreck BAGHDAD The United Nations called on the Iraqi government Tuesday to do all it can to protect the dozens of Iranian exiles left in a camp north of Baghdad after confirming that 52 people were killed there earlier this week. Iraq's government, which is dominated by Shiites hostile to the former regime who have been bolstering ties with neighboring Shiite powerhouse Iran, wants to shut the facility known as Camp Ashraf and transfer thousands of Iranian exiles living there and in another camp out of the country. It considers their presence in Iraq illegal, and it is growing impatient with a slow-moving U.N.-coordinated effort to resettle them abroad. Some 3,000 camp residents reluctantly moved to a former U.S. military base on Baghdad's outskirts last year. That new facility, known as Camp Liberty, is meant to be a temporary way station while the U.N. works to resettle the exiles abroad. It has been repeatedly targeted by militants in deadly rocket attacks. The presence of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, which opposes Iran's clerical regime, has long been an irritant for the Iraqi government and posed an obstacle in U.S.-Iraqi relations for years after the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, who had granted the exiles refuge. The U.S. military guarded the camp after the invasion under an agreement that made its 3,400 residents "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions, and the exiles long worried they would be increasingly targeted as the Americans withdrew from the country. The last U.S. troops, except for a small number of personnel attached to the American Embassy, left in December 2011. The dilemma shot to the fore again on Sunday when MEK supporters say Iraqi forces attacked the Saddam Husseinera facility and killed 52 residents. Iraqi officials denied the country's forces were involved, saying the killings were the result of an internal dispute. Before Sunday, only about 100 MEK followers remained in Camp Ashraf to protect and sell property that had been accumulated by the residents over the years. Previous Iraqi raids on the compound, including one in April 2011, claimed dozens of residents' lives. Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the MEK's parent organization, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, alleged Tuesday that Iraqi forces were preparing to attack the remaining residents and that they had posted Humvees and armed personnel at all of the camp gates. MEK representatives say another seven people cannot be found and are believed to have been kidnapped. The police chief of Diyala province, where the camp is located, denied any siege of Camp Ashraf. Iraqi forensic teams had tried to enter the camp to carry out an investigation but residents refused to allow them in and so they withdrew, said the official, Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Shimmari. The U.N. said members of a delegation that traveled to the compound, 95 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of the Iraqi capital, on Monday saw the bodies of 52 victims with apparent gunshot wounds, confirming death tolls provided by backers of the exiles and an Iraqi official. The U.N., U.S. and European countries have condemned the bloodshed and called for an investigation, though they have not ascribed blame for the killings. The U.N.'s Iraq mission said in a statement Tuesday that the camp "does not provide an adequate level of security for its residents." "Until the camp's residents are relocated to safety, all measures must be taken to protect their lives," said Gyorgy Busztin, the deputy U.N. envoy to Iraq. A spokeswoman said the U.N. had nothing to report on the MEK's allegations of another pending attack. "We are constantly in contact with the Iraqi government on their responsibility in providing safety and security to the residents," U.N. spokeswoman Eliana Nabaa said. Ali al-Moussawi, the spokesman for Iraq's prime minister, said Camp Ashraf's size and location make it difficult to secure fully. He rejected the idea of sending more forces to

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protect the site, saying that Iraq needs its security forces to protect the country's cities, which are being hit by frequent terrorist attacks. On Tuesday, a wave of coordinated car bombings and other attacks in Baghdad and other cities killed more than 60 people, according to authorities. The MEK carried out a series of bombings and assassinations inside Iran in the 1980s and fought alongside Iraqi forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Saddam granted several thousand of its members sanctuary inside Iraq. The group says it renounced violence in 2001 and camp residents were disarmed by U.S. troops after the invasion. The U.S. considered the MEK a terrorist group until last year, and cooperation in leaving Camp Ashraf was a key factor in reversing that designation. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has announced the formation of a special committee to investigate what happened at the camp. MEK supporters say they have no faith that probe will produce any impartial findings. Efforts to resettle the exiles have been slow because the U.N. has had difficulty securing commitments from member states to accept the exiles and because some of them are reluctant to be separated from their comrades. A total of 198 former residents of the two camps have been resettled abroad so far, most to Albania. --Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed reporting.

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The UN team that visited the camp was due back in Baghdad later on Monday, but mission spokeswoman Eliana Nabaa said no further information was likely to be released until later in the week. "There was a mission that went (to Ashraf) a little bit earlier to see what they can do there," Eliana Nabaa, spokeswoman for the United Nations mission in Iraq, told Agence France-Presse. "They will try to determine the facts." The violence was condemned by the UN's refugee agency, which is charged with relocating the group's members outside Iraq, and the US State Department, but neither assigned blame for the unrest. London-based Amnesty International, meanwhile, noted that the events were "disputed", and called for an impartial inquiry. "The authorities must ensure that an inquiry into yesterday's (Sunday's) violence is promptly carried out and that it is independent, transparent and in full conformity with international standards," it said. Sunday's events follow two mortar attacks earlier this year on another camp housing the group, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), in which at least eight people were killed. Around 3,000 MEK members were moved from Ashraf last year to Camp Liberty, on a former US military base on the outskirts of Baghdad, but about 100 stayed on at the old camp to deal with remaining property and goods. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein allowed the rebel MEK to set up the camp during his war with Iran in the 1980s. The MEK was founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran, and after the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted him it took up arms against Iran's clerical rulers. It says it has now laid down its arms and is working to overthrow the Islamic regime in Iran by peaceful means.

In this file photograph taken on Friday, Feb. 17, 2012, a woman waits by the main gate of Camp Ashraf in Khalis, north of Baghdad, Iraq. The United Nations called on the Iraqi government Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013 to step up protection of the dozens of Iranian exiles left in a camp north of Baghdad after confirming that over 50 people were killed there earlier this week. (AP Photo/Hadi

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http://www.canada.com/news/Senior+official+Iraq+urges+countries+accept+Iranian+dissidents+after/8908572/story.html

UN envoy in Iraq urges countries to accept Iranian dissidents after Camp Ashraf killings
Associated Press, September 13, 2013 By Adam Shreck BAGHDAD - The killing of dozens of members of an Iranian dissident group that the Iraqi government wants out of the country should be "a wake-up call" to the international community, the acting U.N. envoy to Iraq said Friday as he pressed countries to do more to find them homes abroad. Members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, which is strongly opposed to Iran's clerical regime, were welcomed into Iraq by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s during the brutal war with neighbouring Iran. Their fortunes turned sharply with the Iraqi dictator's toppling in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Iraq's current Shiite-led Iraqi government, which has strengthened ties with Tehran, considers their presence in the country illegal. A disputed Sept. 1 shooting at their longtime home in Camp Ashraf killed 52 MEK members roughly half of the camp's remaining population. The dissidents accuse Iraqi security forces of carrying out the killings. Baghdad denies involvement, with officials saying an internal dispute was to blame. It has promised to carry out an investigation. United Nations representatives travelled to the camp a day after the killing. Although the U.N. has not determined who was responsible, acting U.N. envoy Gyorgy Busztin said the bloodshed highlights the need to protect the residents. "What has happened at Camp Ashraf on the first of September is a game changer. It should be a wake-up call to all countries who are in a position to help to come forward," he told The Associated Press. "Resettlement is the ultimate guarantee of their security." The U.N. this week helped facilitate the transfer of the last 42 Camp Ashraf residents to a different camp near Baghdad airport where more than 2,800 of their comrades are staying. That compound is meant to provide temporary shelter while the U.N. works to resettle them abroad. Busztin said the Baghdad camp, a former U.S. military base known as Camp Liberty, should offer them better security than Camp Ashraf, which is 95 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of Baghdad. It is also physically closer to U.N. offices in the Iraqi capital, making it easier to monitor, he said. The MEK carried out a series of bombings and assassinations inside Iran in the 1980s and fought alongside Iraqi forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. It says it renounced violence in 2001. The U.S. considered the MEK a terrorist group until last year. Leaving Camp Ashraf was a key factor in reversing that designation. Busztin urged U.N. member states to do more to relocate the residents safely abroad. The Baghdad camp where MEK members are now all staying has itself been hit by deadly rocket attacks claimed by Iranian-backed Shiite militants. "These are human beings. Whatever the government of Iraq says about their past, these are people in need of protection, and we take that very seriously," Busztin said. The resettlement process has moved slowly because the U.N. is struggling to find countries willing to take them. U.N. officials also say that many residents have been uncooperative with the process, complicating the relocation effort. A total of 210 residents have left to other countries so far, according to figures provided by the U.N. refugee agency. Most of them went to Albania, which has offered to take 210 in total. Germany has said it would accept about 100. A small number of residents have been resettled elsewhere. The dissidents do not want to return to Iran because they fear persecution there. Seven former Camp Ashraf members are unaccounted for following this month's violence, according to the MEK. The group claims they are being held by Iraqi forces and will soon be turned over to Iran against their will.

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Iraqi Human Rights Minister Mohammed Shiyaa al-Sudani and Georges Bakoos, who oversees the MEK issue for the Iraqi government, both denied Friday that the seven said to be missing are in Iraqi custody. Busztin, the U.N. official, had no information on their whereabouts. The U.N. refugee agency expressed concern for the seven reported missing, saying in a statement that they are all known to be asylum-seekers. It called on the Iraqi government to find them and ensure their safety, as well as prevent them from being returned to Iran against their will. As for the rest of the exiles, Busztin said it is difficult to say how soon they could be resettled. "I'm optimistic more countries will come forward and the numbers in the camps will be gradually reduced. But for the length of the process, I cannot give you a reasonable estimate," he said. "What we request from the government of Iraq is to extend them adequate protection until the last one leaves," he added. ___ Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report

http://iraq.usembassy.gov/pr_9162013.html

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk visits Camp Hurriya

Iraq.usambassy.gov, September 16, 2013 Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk visited Camp Hurriya in Baghdad, September 16, accompanied by Gyorgy Busztin, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). DAS McGurk met with senior representatives from the Mujahedine-e-Khalq (MEK), as well as officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). He expressed his condolences to the survivors of the recent Camp Ashraf attack and emphasized the priority of the U.S. Government to ensure the safety and security of the residents of Camp Hurriya. He praised the efforts of UNAMI, and Mr. Busztin personally, to ensure the safe and secure relocation of the survivors from Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya last week. He also discussed issues related to the safe, permanent, and secure relocation of the camps residents outside of Iraq, and affirmed the U.S. policy to take active measures in support of such relocation to third countries as soon as possible. DAS McGurk encouraged the residents to cooperate fully with the UNHCR process to facilitate their safe and permanent relocation outside of Iraq. Finally, he thanked UNAMI and UNHCR for their tireless efforts in Iraq and ensured the ongoing cooperation and support for their efforts by the United States.

In this photo taken on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013, members of Iranian exile group People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran leave Camp Ashraf in Khalis, north of Baghdad, Iraq. The remaining 42 residents of the Iranian dissident camp that was the scene of a disputed outbreak of violence last week left the compound Wednesday to join their comrades at another camp near Baghdad airport, according to Iraqi officials and representatives for the exiles. (AP Photo)

Brett McGurk Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iraq and Iran

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http://inserbia.info/news/2013/09/around-70-mujahedin-e-khalq -organization-terrorists-defect-after-arriving-in-albania-al-alam/

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/22/us-says-noamerican-delegation-has-visited-7-allegedly-missing-iranian/

Around 70 Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization members defect after arriving in Albania alAlam
Inserbia.info, September 18, 2013 Seventy members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) have parted ways with the group after being transferred from Iraq to Albania, Iranian al-Alam reported. According to an official at the Iraqi prime ministers office on Friday, out of over 159 MKO terrorists granted asylum by the Albanian government, some seventy members have announced their departure from the group. The unnamed Iraqi official revealed that these MKO members had been transferred from Camp Liberty, a former US military base in Baghdad. The Albanian government has housed these seventy defectors in a number of apartments, al-Alam reported. The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and it has committed numerous terrorist acts against Iranians and Iraqis. The group fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it received the support of Iraqs exe-

US says no American delegation has visited 7 allegedly missing Iranian dissidents inside Iraq
Associated Press, September 22, 2013 BAGHDAD The U.S. Embassy in Iraq says it has no information on the whereabouts of seven Iranian dissidents allegedly missing following a deadly shooting on their compound north of Baghdad this month. The parent organization of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq dissident group says it has information that an American delegation has met the seven people held by Iraqi forces near Baghdad airport. U.S. Embassy spokesman Rodney Ford told The Associated Press by email Sunday that the claim of an American visit is "categorically untrue." He says no one from the U.S. government has seen or visited those said to be missing. Iraq on Friday denied that it is holding the seven former residents of Camp Ashraf said to be missing. A disputed shooting on the compound Sept. 1 left 52 MEK members dead.

cuted dictator Saddam Hussein and it set up a terror camp known as Camp Ashraf in Diyala Province near the Iranian border. In December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq (former Camp Ashraf) to Camp Liberty. On March 16, Albanias Prime Minister Sali Berisha announced in a statement that the Albanian government is ready to accommodate 210 members of the MKO group in Tirana for humanitarian reasons. Political experts, however, warn that Albanias decision to grant asylum to the MKO members has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns, and will give the terrorists a safe haven where they can work with former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), al-Alam reported. The KLA is notorious as a murderous group of drug traffickers and terrorists who receive training from NATO and the United States for operations around the world, al-Alam concluded. q

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continued from page 8 - Former US ...

niumwhich is protected under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treatywas respected. But those words were likely to do little to persuade hardline former U.S. officials who attended the pro-MEK rally. He ought to be thrown out of the UN, Rep. Kennedy said of Rouhani. President Rouhani and his mullahsare waging a war not only against the Iranian people, but the Syrian people. Kennedy and other speakers decried the killings of 52 people in Camp Ashraf. On September 1, Iraqi security forces reportedly opened fire at the camp, where members of the Iranian group have been based since the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein supported them while they launched attacks against Iran. The majority of MEK members have moved to a different area in Iraq in anticipation of being resettled abroad. Kennedy, along with Bolton, Giuliani and Steele have all received handsome speaking fees in the past from MEKaffiliated organizations. They were among a gaggle of former U.S. officials who lobbied the U.S. hard in recent years to take the MEK off the State Department terrorist list. The lobbying effort bore fruit last year when the State Department did just that, despite the MEKs past involvement in violent attacks. The MEK had been trained by the U.S. in Nevada in 2005 and received U.S. intelligence that the group used to carry out the assassinations of Iranian scientists, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In February 2012, NBC News Richard Engel and Robert Windrem reported that the MEK colluded with Israel to kill Iranian nuclear scientists. The scene at the UN rally was standard for events put on by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political branch of the MEK. It was a well-orchestrated affair, and the group seems flush with cash. There were security barriers and guards preventing people from moving towards the front, where a row of yellow-hatted MEK supporters and members sat listening to former U.S. officials give speeches. There was free water and food, and large television monitors showing the speeches in the front set up throughout the plaza. Balloons at back of the rally were fashioned to spell out, Viva Rajavi, a reference to Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the MEK who spoke via video link at the protest. Rajavi has been criticized for running the MEK like a cult; Elizbeth Rubin, a New York Times contributor, described the camp in Iraq where the MEK was based as a fictional world of female worker bees where acolytes of

Rajavi lived. But the cultish aspects of the MEKor their violent attacks on Americans and Iranianshave not deterred former U.S. officials from supporting them in the hopes of fomenting regime change, despite the fact that most Iranians dislike the group. At the rally, Giuliani warned of the U.S. falling under the spell of the mullahs and the catastrophe of allowing nuclear armed Iran to exist. After denouncing the attacks at Camp Ashraf, the former GOP presidential candidate launched into blasting any chance of diplomacy with Rouhani. Giuliani also repeated a charge aired by neoconservative groups that Rouhani was linked to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina that killed 85 people. Rouhaniwas certainly aware of it, certainly involved. Their blood is on their hands, and just wishing people Happy Rosh Hashanah doesnt wipe away the blood of these Jewish martyrs from Irans hand or Rouhani, said Giuliani. But while Iran has been implicated in the attack, Rouhani himself did not participate in the meeting that approved the bombing, according to the Argentine prosecutor of the case. Other former U.S. officials echoed Giulianis dismissal of diplomacy with the new Iranian leader. I do not understand and I do not accept the president meeting with the leader of a terrorist state, said former Senator Robert Torricelli. While chances of an Obama-Rouhani meeting faded by days end, Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif will get together Thursday as part of negotiations over Irans nuclear energy program.

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http://mondoweiss.net/2013/09/officials-diplomacy-outside.html

Former U.S. officials blast diplomacy with Rouhani at MEK rally outside UN
mondoweiss.com, September 24, 2013 By Alex Kane Former U.S. officials joined an Iranian expatriate group in a rally outside the United Nations Tuesday to blast any diplomatic opening between the Obama administration and Iran. Thousands of Iranian-American supporters of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran) transformed Manhattans Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, right outside the UN building where the General Assembly was taking place, into a sea of MEK flags and pictures of MEK leaders Maryam and Massoud Rajavi. Their ranks were bolstered by some Syrian-American supporters of the Syrian opposition and others who were bussed-in from around the country. Other participants included Americans from around the countrysome of whom didnt have a clue what it was all about, in the words of one attendeewho had their tickets, food and hotel paid for by the organizers of the rally.

Thousands of supporters of the MEK rallied outside the UN Tuesday. (Photo: Alex Kane)

One protester who joined the rally, 53-year-old Iranian-American Amir Rezaian, said that he wanted the U.S. to stop the appeasement and let the Iranian people overthrow the government. While the Iranian expatriates, some of whom fled the country in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, chanted for the downfall of the Iranian regime, former U.S. officials spoke on stage. The stars of the rally included former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; former Rhode Island Democratic Representative Patrick Kennedy; and former chairman of the Republican National National Committee Michael Steele. They had one uniform message: stop Iraq from cracking down on MEK members and halt the Obama administration from carrying out talks with the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani. The rally was held immediately after President Obama addressed the UNwhere he hinted that negotiations over Irans nuclear energy program might be pursued by the U.Sand just hours before Rouhani spoke. The new Iranian president said that he was open to nuclear negotiations as long as Irans right to enrich uracontinues on page 7...

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