Thousands of opposition supporters rallied in front of the Albanian prime minister’s office on Saturday accusing the government of Edi Rama of corruption and protesting against the high cost of…
Zarif said in a tweet, addressing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “How about looking at actual bots in (the Albanian capital of) Tirana used to prop up ‘regime change’ propaganda spewed out of (Washington) DC? #YouAreBots,” Zarif said. Twitter declined to comment when contacted by Reuters in the United States …
Under a deal brokered by the United States and the United Nations refugee agency, almost 2,000 dissident Iranians have been resettled in nearly a dozen European countries since the start of 2016. Until a few years ago, PMOI, also known by its Farsi name Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organisation (MKO), was listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union. The group sided with Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980s but …
Iraqi authorities have repeatedly denied involvement in attacks on the group. In a rare claim of responsibility for attacks on the MEK, Wathiq al-Batat, commander of the al-Mukhtar Army militia, told Reuters his group had fired 20 Katyusha rockets and mortar rounds at the camp. “We’ve asked (the government) to expel them …
He raised the possibility that there had been a dispute within the camp and some of the attackers had come from inside it. Another scenario was that the seven missing people were behind the assault, he said. MEK numbered 4,174 members in Iraq up to 2003. The U.N. has resettled some 1,000 while 1,600 have declined to meet with officials …
“Of increasing concern are the human rights abuses in Camp Hurriya itself by the camp leadership,”Kobler said.”Hundreds of daily monitoring reports suggest that the lives of Camp Hurriya members are tightly controlled.””A significant number of residents have reported to U.N. monitors that they are not free to leave the camp, to participate in the resettlement process…
U.S. officials have tentatively identified a handful of Camp Liberty residents who may be allowed to move to the United States. But they would be expected to renounce their membership in MEK, the officials told Reuters.Forty-four residents of the camp have left over the last month for Albania, which has offered to take up to 210 of them.
… are those who had formerly acquired status as asylum seekers or refugees during a previous stay in Germany. A Ministry spokesman said in Berlin on Friday … To make their recognition as a refugee or asylum status more effective, an additional requirement is that their identity is clarified. This would also apparently reduce any security concerns over their entry. The People’s Mojahedin Organization is a militant Iranian opposition movement …
Ban said so far only 31 people[MKO/MEK/PMOI] had been accepted by other countries and that it was now a matter of urgency that they be offered resettlement opportunities in other countries.”Without the strong commitment of member states to accept former residents of Camp New Iraq, no sustainable solution can be achieved,”Ban said …
Iraq on Tuesday told them they have to move or it would be free to transfer them “to where we find appropriate,” as Iraq’s National Security Advisor Falih al-Fayadh put it… Ventrell said U.S. government officials who have recently visited Camp Liberty did not find the “dire humanitarian conditions” that MEK/MKO/PMOI members had alleged…