Dr. Ali Al-Dabbagh, Spokesman for the Government of Iraq (GOI), announced today that Iraq will remove residents of Camp Ashraf in Diyala province to buildings in Baghdad.
Since January 2009 the GOI has tried through negotiations with all interested parties, including the leaders of the MKO terrorist cult, to find a humanitarian outcome to the problem of closing Camp Ashraf and expelling its residents from Iraq.
Since no western country has been willing to take any of the MKO members, Iraq has looked inside its own borders for a solution. Several locations have been proposed and rejected by the local councils and officials for the same reasons as stated by western officials. The Americans have been trying to keep the group in Iraq, but according to advice from Iran-Interlink, the transfer of the MKO members from one closed camp to another will not provide a viable solution.
Instead, Iran-Interlink welcomes the dismantlement of the MKO’s Camp Ashraf garrison and the removal of its residents to the city of Baghdad. The residents of Camp Ashraf, many of whom have not left its confines for two decades, will now be able to return to normal society – albeit not their own.
Returning these reclusive, enslaved individuals back to live among ordinary people will allow them to reconnect with normality and begin to think for themselves. The spell of cult manipulation will be broken and they will be able to make contact again with their families, with one another and with the present. They can then have the freedom to decide for themselves when offered whatever choices there are for their futures.
The transfer of Camp Ashraf residents to buildings in Baghdad represents a significant step forward in finding an eventual humanitarian solution to the necessary expulsion of the MKO from Iraq.
In this light, any violent resistance –as happened in July – will be the responsibility of the cult leaders and their western backers. The death toll of 14 US soldiers, 11 MKO members and 2 Iraqi police is already on their account.
Reported by AFP, December 10, 2009:
Iraq to transfer Iranian dissident group to Baghdad
Iraq will move exiled Iranian dissidents based at a camp close to the border between the two countries to Baghdad, a government spokesman said on Thursday.
"We will move residents of Camp Ashraf to buildings in Baghdad on Tuesday," he said, without giving details.
The members of the People’s Mujahedeen have lived at Camp Ashraf, a refugee base in Diyala province north of the Iraqi capital, for more than 20 years.
Iraqi security forces launched an operation to take over the camp in July.
The group was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran and subsequently fought the clerical regime that ousted him in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
About 3,500 Mujahedeen and their families have lived in Ashraf since former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein allowed the Iranian opposition to set up bases on his territory during his 1980-88 war with Tehran.
Following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, American forces disarmed the Mujahedeen in Ashraf and placed the residents under protection.
Iraq’s increasingly independent government has moved to take charge of the site.