IRAQ PLANS to close a camp for Iranian dissidents who used to cross into Iran to mount assassinations and sabotage – a decision that has sharpened political differences between Baghdad and Washington. Camp Ashraf, about 130km north of Baghdad, came under Iraqi control yesterday in a broad security handover that forms part of the US withdrawal agreement concluded late last year….
Arash Sametipour, spokesman for a Tehran-funded organisation called Nejat (rescue), which helps the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) defectors, left the MEK in 2001 after being arrested in Tehran when an attempt to kill the city’s police chief went wrong. Sametipour lost his hand while trying to kill himself by exploding a grenade. He spent nearly four years in prison.
Using the Americans’ welcome, 600 have left Camp Ashraf for Iran in recent years. ‘Tehran works on this file so intelligently, seeking to hire these defectors rather than eliminating them,” a European diplomat in Iran says. Since the time of the reformist president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami; ” we haven’t considered them[PMOI/MKO/MEK] as a political organization any more but as a dangerous cult of which the members are the prisoners of their leaders”, an Iranian official states.
Iraq Threatens to Expel Iranian Rebels; Exile Group Has Protected Status Under Soon-to-Expire U.N. Mandate ..Iraqi officials say they intend to expel members of an Iranian exile group..Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie on Saturday traveled to the camp with several other government officials to deliver the message to members of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group that was closely aligned with deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein but has been under U.S. military protection since shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
A major pretext for the Iraq War was Saddam Hussein’s support of the Iranian Communist MEK (MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran) terrorists at Camp Ashraf and at other camps in Iraq. In 2003, American and coalition forces attacked Camp Ashraf, Iraq and killed some of the terrorists. However, neoconservatives (neo-Trotskyites) in the American government arranged for the protection in Iraq and for the use of these communist terrorists inside Iran
The Shi’ite-led Iraqi government told nearly 3,500 opposition Iranians living in exile in Iraq on Sunday that it planned to close their camp and they had to leave the country…They told the Iranians the government”…is keen to execute its plans to close the camp and send its inhabitants to their countries or other countries in a non-forcible manner, and that staying in Iraq is not an option for them,”the government said in a statement.
Iraq vowed on Sunday to oust members of the main armed Iranian opposition group from its soil, just days before Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is due on a trip to Tehran.The announcement was made during a visit by a government delegation to the camp in Iraq where about 3,500 members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MKO/MEK) are based..
The Argentine government is determined to finally get to the bottom of the notorious bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires 14 years ago…two former Argentine government figures held a press conference implicating members of MEK – the People’s Mujahedin of Iran – in the bombing.
“The Iranian exile organization of the People’s Mojahedin Organization[PMOI/MKO/MEK] which acts under the cover of the National Council of Resistance of Iran is not a suitable partner in dialogue for a responsible policy towards Iran,”a spokesperson for the Green Party, Claudia Roth said late Thursday .Roth told reporters that the group’s position on the EU terror list should be carefully evaluated, as the Rajavi organization has a ‘past of terror’ and assisted the ‘crimes’ of the deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq.