Tehran’s chief diplomat in Baghdad has said that Iraq is serious about handing over MKO ringleaders to Iran. Hassan Qazemi Qom told the Mehr News Agency that the Iraqi government is determined to expel the MKO group and it has already taken steps in this regard. ..since the Iraqi people are worried about the behavior of this group in their country and the Iraqi government has put the expulsion of the group on its agenda.
… The group that lives here, the People’s Mujahedeen [MKO/MEK,PMOI], has had a long and winding history. It killed Americans, supported the takeover of the United States Embassy in Iran during the 1970s and was given sanctuary in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. But after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the group was protected by the United States … “It is not a civil society,” said Col. Saadi Habib al-Duleimi, who oversees the camp. “It is a complex political-military system
… To achieve their aims the families have begun a sit-in at Camp Ashraf to demand that the Iraqi government and international community intervene to pressure the leaders of the organization in Camp Ashraf to give their children complete freedom … the Government of Iraq has asked the American side and a delegation from the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross and international human rights organization to hold direct negotiations with the leaders of the organization ..the negotiations failed as a result of the absolute rejection by the leaders of MKO/MEK/PMOI
… From November 2 the families began a hunger strike. They demand that the Iraqi government as the only responsible body in Iraq must take charge and allow the freedom of their children … American Army established a check point to prevent families release their loved ones from a terrorist cult of Mujahedin aka MKO/MEK/PMOI..Efforts by the Iraqi authorities, U.N. representatives, the ICRC and others to facilitate the humanitarian move have been blocked by the Americans..
The Iraqi cabinet’s secretary general on Wednesday revealed attempts by the Iraqi government to convince European countries to host the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), which is currently based in Iraq…“There is no justification for the organization’s members to remain in Iraq,” Allaq added.The official explained that it is not possible for the Iraqi government to look after the PMOI’s aka MKO/MEK members, who are taking refuge in the country, at a time it declares security and reconstruction as its top priorities.
… Ali al-Zuhairi, an Iraqi tribal sheik in the town of Khalis, near Camp Ashraf, recalls bitterly how the MEK helped Saddam put down the Shiite and Kurdish uprisings in 1991. Zuhairi claims the MEK killed rebel Iraqis and left their bodies in the street. He calls them”terrorists.”… Refuge in Iraq came at a price, though. Saddam Hussein put them to work against their own country during the Iran-Iraq war. And he had other jobs for them, as well.
… Many of the MKO/MEK/PMOI members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so. A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations ….
The predicament of these insiders, who under the hollow slogans of being the pioneers and heroines of freedom and democracy[of MKO/MEK/PMOI] suffer crushing physical and psychological pressures, is even worse than those enslaved in the outside world. They are under severe physical and psychological cult bounds of the organization and deprived of free will, thought, and as we have recently witnessed, forced onto the frontline of defenders of Ashraf to confront the entrance of the Iraqi police into the camp.
(An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – a précis of parts 33-34)- … While the organization calls the world’s attention to Ashraf to intervene to stop the human tragedy taking place there, which also puts its great impact on the Ashraf residents as well, it does not shrink to sacrifice all of the camp’s members to survive and further its ends The propagandas persuades insiders to insist on their resistance since they may come to believe that for sure something would come out of these propagandas …
(An interview with Batool Soltani on MKO self-immolations – a précis of parts 31-32).. that the organization[MKO/MEK/PMOI] is entirely depended on Ashraf for a range of pivotal political, strategic, social, propaganda and even fundraising concerns. For the insiders, Ashraf would be depicted as a strategic bastion where resistance could be fully interpreted, not because it below life into the organization but as it was located in the proximity of Iran’s soil..