Baghdad, 8 July 2013 – The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG), Mr. 
Martin Kobler, welcomed the relocation of a first group of seven Camp Liberty residents to Germany today.
“These are the first of the approximately 100 residents Germany has agreed to accept for relocation,” Mr. Kobler said. “I thank the Government of Germany for offering a new home to these persons in need of international protection.”
Eighteen individuals who had long been taken as hostages by the Cult of Rajavi, succeeded to escape the MKO Camp Liberty.
A number of these former MKO members who managed to run their planned escape, submitted themselves to Iraqi authorities. Some others used the opportunity to surrender to UNAMI and UNHCR officials who had come to visit the Camp. They forcefully got on UN vehicles patrolling in camp Liberty and sought refuge.
Among MKO defectors, a high ranking interpreter ,a few superior commanders and a few high ranking members are found. Their names will be released after passing legal procedures.
The recent events demonstrate failure of the Rajavis’ strategy. Following publication of open letters by several members of the MKO including Iraj Mesdaqi, Esmaiel Yaghmaiee, Karim Qasim and Mohammad Reza Rowhani who criticized the group leaders and their functions, the runaway of 18 beloved friends from the cult of Rajavi gives us the hope for salvation of our other friends.
By Mohammad Karami
The United Nations envoy to Iraq said Wednesday that residents of an Iranian dissident camp are denied freedom of movement by the exile group, and that efforts to relocate them outside Iraq are being stymied in part by lack of coope
ration from the residents themselves.
Martin Kobler made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad as he prepares to leave the country at the end of his term. The U.N. has been involved in relocating members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq dissident group to a camp on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital while it works to resettle them abroad.
The MEK is the militant wing of a Paris-based Iranian opposition movement known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran that opposes Iran’s clerical regime and has carried out assassinations and bombings there. They fear persecution if sent back to Iran.
About 3,100 MEK members live in Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad airport. The Iraqi government wants the group’s members out of the country. So do Iranian-backed Shiite militants, who have claimed responsibility for deadly rocket strikes on the camp.
Kobler acknowledged that a major problem in resettling camp residents is a shortage of countries willing to accept them. He repeated his call for U.N. member states, including the U.S., to do more.
"We do not have enough recipient countries. … There is also reluctance from the side of the Liberty residents to cooperate with the UNHCR," he said, referring to the U.N. refugee agency.
Albania has agreed to take 210 camp residents, but only 71 have made the move so far. Germany has also offered to take 100 residents.
Kobler also cited concerns about what he called "human rights abuses inside Camp Liberty done by the MEK themselves."
Residents are not free to move between different sections of the camp without approval, and some are denied Internet and mobile phone access by MEK officials, he said. Medical treatment outside is also often blocked by the group, he alleged.
"There are, of course, MEK residents who probably would like to disassociate themselves from the MEK," he said. "Everybody who wants to go out of the camp … should have the chance to do so."
The NCRI, the MEK’s affiliated Paris-based group, has repeatedly criticized Kobler. He retains the backing of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and was recently appointed the U.N. envoy and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo.
NCRI spokesman Shahin Gobadi dismissed Kobler’s comments as baseless and intended to "cover up the failure to provide minimum security provisions" at the camp.
"The only purpose they serve is they set the stage for more attacks," he said, insisting that residents cooperate with the U.N. Gobadi also charged that "Kobler has never been an impartial person and does not represent the values of the U.N."
Iraq gave foreign diplomats as well as journalists from AP and Iraq’s state-run TV a rare glimpse of the camp in September. Diplomats on the tour described conditions as acceptable.
The MEK fought alongside Saddam Hussein’s forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and several thousand of its members were given sanctuary at a facility known as Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border. The MEK renounced violence in 2001 and was removed from the U.S. terrorism list last year.
Iraq’s Shiite-led government, which has close ties to Iran, considers the MEK a terrorist group. Iraqi security forces launched two deadly raids since 2009 on Camp Ashraf, and in 2012 most residents were moved to Camp Liberty, which is meant to be a temporary way station.
Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Baghdad also has concerns that MEK leaders are preventing residents from leaving.
"There is intimidation being practiced by some MEK leaders against their fellow people," al-Moussawi said. "Some MEK members are willing to leave the country, but they are being threatened by a minority preventing them."
The exiles say their new home is unsafe, and they want to return to Camp Ashraf. Several residents were killed in a Feb. 9 rocket strike on the camp, and two others died in a similar attack this month.
In another development Wednesday, Iraqi electoral officials said the Kurdish-backed al-Taakhi list won the largest single bloc of seats in provincial elections in the restive northern province of Ninevah. It claimed 11 of 39 provincial council seats up for grabs.
Ninevah borders Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region and has a sizable Kurdish minority. Many of the remaining seats went to Arab parties, with Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi’s Sunni Arab-backed United bloc coming in second, with eight seats.
Residents in Ninevah and neighboring Anbar province voted last week in local elections that were delayed due to security concerns.
Also Wednesday, Iraqi authorities said two policemen were killed in a bomb blast in the Ninevah provincial capital Mosul. Four others died in an explosion in a small cafe in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood, They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information to journalists.
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Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed reporting.
By ADAM SCHRECK
News from inside Camp Liberty – base of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in Iraq – indicates that the cult leader Massoud Rajavi was seriously relying on the Iranian presidential elections turning into a fiasco. The cult’s 
leaders had prepared the grounds for an escalation of public unrest and had told the members trapped in the camp that the cult had a bright future, hence discouraging them from fleeing the camp.
When Iran named the Iranian New Year, beginning in March, to be a ‘political epic’, one MEK official told a gathering of the members with ridicule that, “They should beware not to have a political disaster during the elections never mind an epic”.
With reference to the sayings of Massoud Rajavi, one of the MEK officials said, “We lost our chance in the past election in 2009, if we lose our chance this time the overthrow of the regime will not be possible for another 8 years”. Apparently the cult had sent some sabotage teams into Iran who were arrested before they could do anything.
In his internal analysis Rajavi had calculated that when Rafsanjani and Mashai were among those who put themselves forward as presidential candidates, the regime would be in an awkward position. Whether they are qualified according to the Guardians’ Council or not, according to Rajavi the result would be turmoil and disorder. He therefore believed the situation would be ripe for the MEK to add to the difficulties of the Islamic Republic and he could carry out his own goals.
After a calm and hassle-free election with a big voter turnout – which all media and political sources agreed was the case, except of course Rajavi who claimed insistently that nobody participated and people shouted slogans – and after the ‘most-unlikely-candidate-to-win’ according to Rajavi actually won the election, questions were raised amongst the MEK members to which the cult officials had no answer. Although they had created the grounds for these queries in the first place, they could only, as it is customary inside the cult, accuse those raising questions of repeating the regime’s nonsense.
The other matter which raised many questions inside the MEK is the recent resignation of two prominent members of the National Council of Resistance (NCR, the MEK’s western style front group), Mr Karim Ghasim and Mr Mohammad Reza Rohani, and the consequent revelations by two other members, Ismael Vafa Yaghmai and Iraj Mesdaghi. The cult leaders briefed the members by claiming that Ghasim and Rohani were supposed to have been fired six months ago but the Council had deferred it to an appropriate time before they eventually got rid of them. This is quite the opposite to the Council’s public statement that emphasized how shocked they were to learn that the two had resigned and blamed it on infiltration by the Iranian regime into the NCR.
The Rajavi cult is also trying to link the replacement of Mr Martin Kobler, the Special Representative of the UN General Secretary to Iraq, to their hostile efforts against him and show it as a victory gained by them. The truth is that Mr Kobler’s mission in Iraq came to an end and he has now been appointed to a new mission in the Congo and of course the policy of the UN will not change just because one Special Representative has moved on and another has been appointed. It should be noted that Mr Kobler will certainly thoroughly brief his successor about the cultic behavior of the MEK.
The other news is that cult officials inside Camp Liberty try to pretend that those who were sent to Albania did not wish to go and they had to force them to do so. They do this to discourage people from volunteering to leave the camp so that the leaders can pre-select the people they choose to allow to go.
UNHCR chief welcomes Albanian offer of humanitarian admission for 200 residents of Camp Hurriya, Iraq
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, on Monday welcomed an offer by the Albanian Government to grant humanitarian admission for 210 residents from Camp Hurriya in Iraq to Albania.
The camp has seen a recent deterioration of the security situation of its residents, with a mortar attack on the camp on February 9th killing eight and wounding dozens, with subsequent threats made against the residents.
Guterres expressed gratitude to the Albanian government saying “This generous offer is a demonstration of international solidarity and burden sharing for a vulnerable population”. He strongly encouraged other”countries to follow Albania’s lead and offer solutions for the camp residents that enable them to relocate outside of Iraq”.
He said “The residents of Camp Hurriya urgently need solutions to relocate out of Iraq”. And he expressed the hope that they”welcome the offer and cooperate to ensure the departure of this important number of people”.
Camp Hurriya, also known as Camp Liberty, has over 3000 residents.
Donn Bobb, United Nations,Duration: 58″,.unmultimedia.org/radio/
Martin Kobler, the UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), welcomed the relocation of a third group of MKO members residing in Camp Liberty near 
Baghdad airport to Albania. The latest transferred group of 27 makes it a total of 71 out of the 210 offered to be accepted by Albania.
“A total of 71 men and women now have safely arrived in Albania and have benefited from the Government of Albania’s offer to accept 210 of the Camp’s residents,” said Martin Kobler.
Some 3,000 residents, most of them members of a group known as the People’s Mojahedeen of Iran, are temporarily housed in a transit facility called Camp Liberty, also known as Camp Hurriya, while the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) carries out a process to determine their refugee status.
Mr. Kobler said in addition to Albania, Germany has offered to relocate some 100 residents. The departure of the group from Iraq is in accordance with the memorandum of understanding of 25 December 2011, which foresees the relocation of the residents to third countries.
“I once again thank both countries’ governments for their generosity and call on other Member States to receive residents as well,” the UN envoy said.
The relocation comes just days after two people were reportedly killed and dozens injured in a mortar attack to the camp. “Last week’s tragic events have once again shown how important it is to relocate the residents to third countries as quickly as possible,” Mr. Kobler noted.
When Albanian Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, made the humanitarian offer to take about 210 members of MKO, many began to consider it a promising sign that could be the beginning of an end to the residents’ sufferings and the beginning to promote cooperation of other countries and to pave the way to take more refugees. The offer was at first rejected by the group’s leaders and the group’s propaganda machine kept lashing Mr. Kobler and condemning him for pressing relocation of residents:
“Kobler misused the humanitarian act of the Albanian government in accepting 210 of the residents for his own propaganda purposes in order to avoid the urgent security crisis and to divert attention from his own destructive role in forcefully evicting the residents and transferring them from Ashraf to the Liberty killing field”
The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has made remarks concerning the outright refusal of MKO to accept the offer of resettlement in Albania saying:
“We had worked out an arrangement with the Albanians to take about 250 people, but then the people in the camp themselves declined to go. So we’re trapped in a kind of round robin.”
The top United Nations official in Iraq today[22 June 2013 ] welcomed the relocation to Albania of 27 residents from an exile camp near western Baghdad.
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| UN envoy welcomes relocation of dozens of Iranian exiles to Albania |
“A total of 71 men and women now have safely arrived in Albania and have benefited from the Government of Albania’s offer to accept 210 of the Camp’s residents,” said the UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), Martin Kobler.
Some 3,000 residents, most of them members of a group known as the People’s Mojahedeen of Iran, are temporarily housed in a transit facility called Camp Liberty – also know as Camp Hurriya – while the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) carries out a process to determine their refugee status.
Mr. Kobler said in addition to Albania, Germany has offered to relocate some 100 residents. The departure of the group from Iraq is in accordance with the memorandum of understanding of 25 December 2011, which foresees the relocation of the residents to third countries.
“I once again thank both countries’ governments for their generosity and call on other Member States to receive residents as well,” the UN envoy said.
The relocation comes just days after two people were reportedly killed and dozens injured in a mortar attack to the camp.
“Last week’s tragic events have once again shown how important it is to relocate the residents to third countries as quickly as possible,” Mr. Kobler noted.
The camp had previously been attacked in February while most of the residents were sleeping. The attack resulted in six deaths and various injuries.
27 Camp Hurriya Residents Depart For Albania
Press Statement
Jen Psaki
Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
June 24, 2013
On June 19 and June 21, two groups of Camp Hurriya residents, 27 in total, were permanently relocated to Albania. This was the third of a series of movements planned under the terms of a generous humanitarian offer by the Government of Albania to accept 210 individuals from Camp Hurriya. The United States thanks Albania for its compassion in this humanitarian endeavor. So far, 71 individuals have relocated to Albania as part of this agreement, and we look forward to additional individuals relocating as soon as possible.
The United States strongly supports the work of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), and the tireless efforts of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General Martin Kobler to relocate remaining camp residents outside Iraq. We urge the Mujahedin-e Khalq leadership, and all responsible parties, to ensure full cooperation with the UNHCR relocation process so that future movements occur as expeditiously as possible.
The relocation of Camp Hurriya residents outside of Iraq is a humanitarian mission and vital to their safety and security. The United States renews its call on the Government of Iraq to help ensure the security of the camp in accordance with its December 25, 2011 Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations. This is a matter of extreme urgency given ongoing threats to the camp. We further renew our call on the Government of Iraq to investigate and bring to justice the terrorists responsible for the June 15 rocket attack against the camp.
Seventy-one members of an exiled Iranian opposition group based at a camp near Baghdad have been relocated to Albania, the UN said Saturday, a week after the camp suffered deadly mortar attacks.
The resettlement is the latest in protracted efforts by the UN to move the around 3,000 members of the former rebel People’s Mujahedeen at Camp Liberty, on Baghdad’s outskirts, outside of Iraq.
“A total of 71 men and women now have safely arrived in Albania and have benefited from the government of Albania’s offer to accept 210 of the camp’s residents,” UN special envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler said in a statement.
Kobler said that Germany had also offered to accept around 100 residents, and added that the deadly attack on Camp Liberty a week ago had “once again shown how important it is to relocate the residents to third countries as quickly as possible.”
On June 15, two camp residents were killed by a series of mortar rounds which hit Camp Liberty, a former American military base that now houses the Iranian exiles, in the second such attack this year.
At Iraq’s insistence, the exiles were moved to Camp Liberty late last year from Camp Ashraf, near the Iranian border, where the People’s Mujahedeen set up base in the 1980s.
Ashraf was the base that now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein allowed the group to establish in Diyala province during Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran.
The People’s Mujahedeen 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 weapons and is working to overthrow the Islamic regime in Iran by peaceful means.
Britain struck the group off its terror blacklist in June 2008, followed by the European Union as a whole in 2009 and the United States in September last year.
Another group of 14 Camp Liberty residents in Iraq have relocated to Albania on Tuesday, June 18, 2013.
This is the third group in a series of planned moves to relocate Camp Liberty [Temporary transit Location] residents to Albania.
The third group comprised 14 MKO members: 12 Men and 2 women.
Names of some of the transferred members are as follows:
Karim Qoraishi, a high ranking MKO member.
Mehdi Dolati, Hesam,Bahram,Sasan, Shirin Maadoumi.
By Mohammad Karami,Faryade Azadi
