“Given the ongoing efforts to relocate the residents, MEK [Mojahedin-e Khalq] cooperation in the successful and peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf, the MEK’s main paramilitary base, will be a key factor in any decision regarding the MEK’s FTO [Foreign Terrorist Organization] status,” Secretary Clinton told a congressional committee.
Critics have long said the FTO list is highly political, while the US has insisted it is the product of a careful legal and factual assessment, unadulterated by politics.
Clinton’s suggestion effectively a bribe offer that she could remove the Mojahedin-e Khalq from the list for reasons having nothing to do with terrorism makes mincemeat of claims the list is purely a scholarly judgment.
Maryam Rajavi, co-leader of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, issued a cautious statement the next day. Rajavi commented that she thought linking the listing and relocation was “unwarranted in principle and in law.” Still, she said, she thought the two things de-listing and relocation–could proceed simultaneously. She didn’t suggest how that could be done when de-listing is a one-time action while the relocation takes place over time.
In her statement, Rajavi also continued the strong Mojahedin criticism of the new site where the United States, Iraq and the United Nations want the Mojahedin to move Camp Hurriya, a former American base outside Baghdad. She called conditions at Hurriya “atrocious” and compared it to a concentration camp.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) certified more than a month ago that Hurriya meets all the standards required for a refugee camp.
Two days later, Rajavi issued another statement that offered no cooperation in a shift to Camp Hurriya. She repeated demands that Iraqi guards be removed from inside Camp Hurriya, which Iraq has always refused because it sees that as a denial of Iraqi sovereignty She asked that her group instead be temporarily moved to a camp on the Jordanian border once used for refugees. Otherwise, she said, her group either faced “massacres and death at Ashraf or gradual death in a place called Liberty [Hurriya in Arabic], under the name and supervision of the UN.”
Of the 3,400 Mojahedin members at Camp Ashraf, 397 males moved to Hurriya last month. No more have been moved since then.
US officials told The New York Times those who have moved have been balky in Camp Hurriya, refusing to occupy one building, blocking water trucks and resisting the opening of a clinic.