Maryam Rajavi, the co-leader of the group, made the announcement in Paris and said 400 of the 3,200 people in Camp Ashraf were prepared to make the move as soon as they are told.
Rajavi said, “As a sign of goodwill, 400 Ashraf residents are ready to go to Camp Liberty [a former US military base near the Baghdad airport] with their moveable property and vehicles at the first opportunity.”
Camp Liberty will be run by the Iraqi government, unlike Camp Ashraf, which was controlled inside by the Mojahedin-e Khalq.
But the UN will have people inside Camp Liberty at all hours of the day and night and the US embassy will send its people to check on the camp frequently.
Camp Liberty should provide fairly comfortable housing for the Camp Ashraf residents as it was just vacated by the US military a few weeks ago.
The Mojahedin may have been encouraged to leave Camp Ashraf as rockets have been fired into the camp for three nights before they decided to leave. It isn’t clear who fired the rockets.
No one was injured. Ambassador David Fried, the US official named recently to devote full time to the Mojahedin issue, gave a news conference last Thursday outlining where plans stand now.
He said Martin Kobler, the head of the UN mission in Iraq, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Iraqi government laying all the arrangements for the use of Camp Liberty, including security.
Fried said the Mojahedin reported that 3,200 of its members are now in Camp Ashraf, down from the previous figure of 3,400.
He said the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) will begin interviewing them individually as soon as they arrive at Camp Liberty. The UNHCR does not grant refugee status to groups, only to individuals, he emphasized.
That means the residents are likely to be scattered all over the world, some- thing the Mojahedin had wanted to avoid.
Fried said he expected the first category to be processed to be those with passports or permanent residency status or close relatives in other countries. He said he knew of two US citizens in Camp Ashraf, but granted there could be more.
He said two other US citizens had recently left Camp Ashraf and are now in the United States. Others said 900 Ashraf residents are believed to have papers allowing them to go swiftly to other countries. The remaining 2,300 will need sponsoring countries.
The EU last month asked each of its 27 members states to take some. There has been no public agreement yet from any EU state to do so, however.
Fried said of the move out of Camp Ashraf, “The MEK [Mojahedin] in the past made many demands, and it wasn’t until recent weeks that it started working with Ambassador Kobler in a serious way. We are very glad they decided to do so.”
Asked why the group started to cooperate, Fried said, “I can’t read their minds.
But I think that it became very clear that the United States was, a), concerned with their welfare and willing to put substantial efforts into this process, and, b), quite serious that we could do nothing if they were going to stand pat with maximalist, unachievable positions.” Among other things, Rajavi had demanded that the United States send troops back into Iraq to guard them at Camp Liberty.
Fried did not say whether the United States would take in any of members as refugees.
The emphasized that the group’s status as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO) has no impact on whether individual members can be granted refugee entry to the United States.
“The status of the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization is not, by itself, disqualifying to any particular individual. And removal of the MEK from that list, if it were to happen in the future, would not necessarily make eligible someone who is now statutorily ineligible,” Fried said.
Others, however, have commented that many private organizations that routinely sponsor and aid refugees to resettle in the United States are likely to be reluctant to handle members of a “foreign terrorist organization,” even if the US government says they are eligible refugees.
Fried emphasized that Camp Liberty is now an Iraqi government facility. “It is not going to be a kind of independent, self-governed, autonomous, extra-territorial facility, which is what Camp Ashraf has been for many years,” he said emphatically.
Asked if some of the residents at Camp Ashraf were there against their will, Fried uncomfortably ducked the question. He would say only that everyone involved is “very well aware of the many reports about the atmosphere at Camp Ashraf and the character of that place. And I really shouldn’t say any more than that.”
Fried said repeatedly that the MOU the UN signed with Iraq includes a re-commitment by the Iraqi government not to send any camp residents back to Iran against their will.
Iraq made that commitment to the United States in 2008, before US troops left Camp Ashraf, and Iraqi officials have repeated it publicly time and time again. The Islamic Republic has said it wants about 100 of the camp residents to face criminal charges in Iran.
It says the others are all free to return and live freely in Iran. A few hundred have returned over the last eight years and there have been no credible reports of any mistreatment by the authorities.
