The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has been trying to arrange to interview the more than 3,000 residents to determine who among them qualifies for refugee status and thus resettlement, but Iraq has yet to allow this…Iraq had proposed that the interviews take place at a Baghdad hotel. Talks were also under way on the possibility of housing those not immediately relocated to third countries at a former U.S. base near Baghdad
The official said the Iraqi government was studying the new U.S. plan, which would now be presented to the leaders of Camp Ashraf, the base of the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran which the United States, Iraq and Iran consider a terrorist organization. ..The group, seeking the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic government, mounted attacks on Iran from Iraq before Saddam Hussein’s 2003 downfall. In the 1970s, it led a guerrilla campaign against the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, including attacks on U.S. targets.
..Iraq’s defence ministry said on Tuesday it would probe claims that 34 residents of an Iranian dissident[MKO/MEK/PMOI] camp[Ashraf] died during an Iraqi military operation last week and suggested some may have been killed before troops moved in… Iraqi authorities have said three people were killed at Camp Ashraf on Friday when security forces responded to rock-throwing and threats by residents during an operation to reclaim land from the camp and return it to farmers. ..
In a letter by Massoud Khodabandeh (Iran-Interlink.org), to the Government of Iraq, former members of Iranian terrorist group Mojahedin-e Khalq backed”a large and peaceful gathering of citizens, Council representatives from the Diyala Province and NGOs from all over Iraq, calling for the removal of foreign terrorist group Mojahedin-e Khalq aka MKO/MEK/PMOI from their country.”
The State Department said PMOI”has not shown that the relevant circumstances are sufficiently different”to warrant a change. Material that was declassified in the autumn of 2009 contained allegations that PMOI aka MKO/MEK trained women in Iraq to be suicide bombers, had not ended military operations and that much of its information about Iran’s nuclear program was wrong.
…”An arrest warrant has been issued against 39 leaders and members of the organisation including the PMOI’s head Massoud Rajavi, due to evidence that confirms they committed crimes against humanity,”said Judge Mohammed Abdul-Sahib, a spokesman of the Iraqi High Tribunal. Rajavi’s wife Maryam, leader of the French-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the PMOI’s (MKO/MEK) political wing, was also included in the warrant, Abdul Sahib added …
Iran said on Tuesday it had arrested members of an exiled opposition group who had planned terrorist attacks in Tehran on the first anniversary of a disputed presidential election, state television reported. The report said members of the Mujahideen Khalq Organisation (MKO/MEK/PMOI) were arrested by the Intelligence Ministry before they could detonate bombs in”a few squares in Tehran”.
Iraq plans to uproot an Iranian exile group that has become a headache for the Baghdad government and move the activists to a remote southern area until it can expel them, the prime minister said this week. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to oust members of the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), an Iranian opposition movement that the United States considers a terrorist organisation, from a camp northeast of Baghdad where they have been living for two decades.
… The MKO is currently demanding that U.S. Army or the U.N. take control of Camp Ashraf from the GOI. Following publication of the RAND Report it should be the duty of the U.S. Army to help and facilitate in any way possible the immediate closure of Camp Ashraf and the removal of the MKO personnel from Iraq. The more help given by the U.S. to achieve this, the more … although the MKO has been de-proscribed, at its own behest, as a terrorist group in Europe, no western country is willing to offer asylum to the individuals — even though 1015 MKO members have a passport or residence permit
The United States expects to keep to its plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within a year despite a spate of bomb attacks, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday.”During this year we’ll ensure that our troops are withdrawn on schedule, by the president’s timetable,”U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In their place would be a”strong healthy relationship between the U.S. and Iraq,”he said…President Barack Obama has set a deadline of August 2010 for the removal of U.S. combat forces..