Iran, however, says it was the Mojahedin who did the attacking.
About 3,400 members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq live in the camp. Their presence is opposed by just about every faction in the country, largely because they are seen as having helped Saddam Hussein put down uprisings against his rule. Iraqis who are supportive of the Islamic Republic oppose the group because it is loudly opposed to the Islamic Republic.
Maryam Rajavi, leader of the group, issued a statement Friday from her headquaters near Paris saying “the Iranian regime’s henchmen, from Iraq and Iran” carried out a “criminal aggression” against Camp Ashraf.
In Washington, the US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR) said the attack was organized by people based in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s office working alongside officers from the Iranian embassy in Baghdad.
It said the people who carried out the attack were bussed in from Basra, Amara, Nasiriya and Baghdad. “Around noon, the assailants, with the full backing of the Iraqi security forces, began attacking Ashraf residents, hurling petrol bombs, rocks, bricks and metal bars.”
The statement pointed out that the attack came just two days after Iranian Acting Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi had visited Baghdad.
In Tehran, the media painted a completely different picture. The Fars news agency, for example, said it was the camp’s residents who launched the attack, striking at a group of Iraqi protesters outside the gates of Camp Ashraf as they rallied to demand the group’s expulsion from Iraq.
Fars said the battle occurred Saturday, not Friday, and was the second day of protests against the Mojahedin-e Khalq.
Fars said the members of the Mojahedin attacked “by throwing stones, glass splinters and also sticks and injured a number of demonstrators, among them the Al-Alam TV channel reporter.” Al-Alam is the Iranian government’s Arabic language broadcasting outlet.
Earlier that week in Madrid, a Spanish court opened an investigation of the last confrontation at Camp Ashraf, when Iraq forces entered the camp July 28, 2009, to occupy it and brawled with residents. Eleven camp residents were reported to have died.
The court took the action under the Spanish legal doctrine of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows human rights violations to be tried outside the country where they took place.
The first hearing was scheduled for March 8 when Major General Abdul-Hussein Ash-Shemmari, the police chief of Diyala province, is ordered to appear and explain his role in seizing Camp Ashraf. Shemmari has already said his police did not enter Camp Ashraf. He has said the group that did so was an Army unit sent from Baghdad.
Iraq has said the violence erupted because the camp residents attacked the uniformed forces that were legally trying to install Iraqi law on the camp.
Iraq wants everyone in the camp to leave Iraq. But the United States has been looking for countries to accept the Mojahedin since 2003 without success. The United States turned the camp over to Iraqi control two years ago after getting a commitment from Iraq that it would abide by international law and not force the camp residents to go to any country against their will. Iraqi officials have publicly stated multiple times that they will adhere to that commitment.
But with no country willing to accept the group’s members as refugees and Iraq agreeing not to expel them against their will, the likelihood they will ever depart Iraq appears dim.