BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki said on Wednesday he was looking for ways to end the presence in his country of the Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran.“The presence in the country of this organization violates the constitution,” he told a press conference, accusing the organization of interfering in Iran’s internal affairs. “This organization has been behaving as though it is an Iraqi organization,” he added, emphasizing that it is labeled as a terrorist organization in the United States and the European Union.
Maliki said the cabinet decided at a meeting Wednesday to restrict the movements of PMOI members to their base at Camp Ashraf, near the Iranian border, and to prevent them from contacting government officials. The government will also form a committee to decide whether to allow them to remain in Iraq or find a country to exile them to.
| That's going to be hard since no one in their right mind is going to want them. |
Under the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, the PMOI was supplied with weapons and tanks and periodically carried out armed incursions against Iran as well as helped Iraqi forces put down rebellious Shiites in 1991. US forces confiscated the organizationÂ’s weapons following the March 2003 US-led invasion, taking away some 300 tanks, many of which were subsequently given to the Iraqi armed forces. The estimated 3,000 PMOI members are now under a kind of US-supervised house arrest at Camp Ashraf, which is mainly for their protection against hostile population on both sides of the border.
| No one likes them and they aren't even Paleostinians. |
| We can stop that now. |