September 13-2013
The United States last week brushed aside calls by the Mojahedin-e Khalq to move its members to safety in the United States and instead told the Mojahedin it was time to move the remaining 42 of its members at Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya in Baghdad.
It has been more than a week since the UN sent an investigating team to Ashraf to investigate the deaths of more than half of the group’s members still living there. But the UN has not yet said anything about what it learned there and what it concluded.
The Mojahedin say Iraqi troops invaded the camp September 1 and killed 52 of the 103 members remaining at Ashraf. The Iraqi government says it thinks the 52 were killed in an internal battle among the Mojahedin. (See last week’s Iran Times, page one.)
The State Department last week issued a policy statement calling:
1—On Iraq to cooperate with the UN probe, to punish the perpetrators and to help find the missing members of the group. The Mojahedin last week said nine of its members were missing. That was revised down to seven this week.
2—On Iran, to use whatever influence it has to win the release of the missing. The statement also criticized the Pasdaran for praising the attack on Ashraf.
3—On Iraq, to improve security measures at Camp Hurriya, an old US Army base, presumably with more security barriers, so the Mojahedin confined there will not be endangered by any further mortar attacks, of which two have been launched.
4—On the Mojahedin, to move the remaining Camp Ashraf residents to Hurriya.
The Mojahedin leadership in Paris had earlier called on the US to take all 3,100 Mojahedin warriors to the United States for safety or for the UN, which has no troops inside Iraq, to station troops at the two camps to provide security.
The UN mission in Baghdad reported Saturday that Iraq had served an order on the Ashraf residents to pack up and be moved to Hurriya, though no deadline was given.
The Mojahedin speculated Monday that its seven missing members are in Iraqi custody and that Iraq plans shortly to expel them to Iran.
If it does so, it will likely be in hot water with Washington, which has repeatedly impressed on Baghdad for the past two years that under international law it cannot send any of the Mojahedin to Iran against their wishes.
