Iraqi government plans to resettle Iranian opposition group

Erbil, April 12 (AKnews) – Iraqi authorities are planning to close down a camp where some 3,400 Iranian opposition members have been settled since the 1980s, and send the people abroad.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces allegedly attacked Camp Ashraf, where members of the Mujahedine Khalq of Iran (MEK) are residing, killing nine of the camp’s residents and injuring others.

“The Council of Ministers has agreed to make use of all political and diplomatic means to resettle those 3,400 residents of Camp Ashraf in another country,” said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh in a statement after a meeting of the council of ministers on Monday evening.

Iran has been actively mounting pressure on the Iraqi government to expel those Iranian dissidents whom Iran calls the Munafegine Khalq (Hypocrites of Khalq).

Dabbagh said meanwhile that the Iraqi government “will not extradite the members of the MEK to the Iranian authorities”.

According to MEK fugues, some 33 people were killed and 300 others injured in the attack on the camp, while the Iraqi hospitals have announced conflicting figures. Medical sources say that only 10 were killed.

The camp has come under repeated attacks since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Iraqi authorities consider the group an ally of the former Iraqi dictator. MEK is also accused by the Iraqi actors of participating in the attacks on Iraqi Kurds and Shias during Saddam’s rule.

The group is identified by Iran and the US as a “terrorist” organization. The US forces maintained the security of the camp after the 2003 allied invasion but handed over responsibility to the Iraqi forces in late June, 2009.

Zainab al-Taie, an MP from the Ahrar bloc affiliated with the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told AKnews that the presence of the group in Iraq was the cause of many troubles. “There is evidence that this organization has funded a number of terrorist organizations,” she said.

“The Iraqi parliament and the Ahrar bloc support the government’s efforts to expel this group from Iraq,” she said, calling for the “accelerating of the implementation of the government’s decision”.

"The presence of MEK contradicts the Iraqi constitution, because it is a foreign organization," she continued.

Independent MP Safiya al-Suhail said the former regime of Saddam Hussein had armed the group even against the Iraqi people. She too, supported Iraqi government in expelling the MEK.

However, she said Iraqi should respect the human rights provided for in the Iraqi constitution and abstain from violence.

“Extraditing these refugees to the Iranian government contradicts the Iraqi constitution and the international treaties signed by Iraq,” she said, “The Iraqi government should cooperate with the Unites Nations Higher commissioner for refugees to safely move them to another country”.

Source: AK News.
Link: http://www.aknews.com/en/aknews/3/231454/.