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| Iraq |
| Iraq to MKO: Find another place |
| 2009-01-01 |
| The Iraqi government has called on members of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organization residing in a camp north of Baghdad to leave the country. The Iraqi government will take over the control of Camp Ashraf home to 3,500 Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) members on January 1, as part of a bilateral security deal between the US and the country. "The Iraqi government will deal with the people in this camp in a humane way and according to internationally adopted standards, the Iraqi constitution and Iraqi laws," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement on Wednesday. "The government of Iraq does not have any intention to expel the people of this organization or force them to leave Iraq. But it calls on those people to find another place outside Iraq in any state that may accept them as refugees, or for those who wish to return to Iran to go of their own free will," reads the statement. "Iraq is no longer a suitable place for them because the Iraqi Constitution does not permit dealings with an organization classified as a terrorist group," Reuters quoted al-Dabbagh as saying. The MKO moved to Iraq in 1986 and used the country as a launch pad for attacks on Iran. During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the MKO joined the Saddam regime's troops to fight Iran. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 This is the latest - final? - twist in a bizarre story. When I last was in the know a few years back, the Bulgarian contingent had been assigned to run Ashraf. Pretty impressive, as incongruous military stories go: a central European military guarding fringe Iranian expat terrorists/dissidents/nutjobs/whatever in a US-policed Arab country. I won't be surprised if the Iraqis find this a thorny problem. The question of finding a place to put these people, a country willing to take them as refugees, may not be so easily solved, if the period 2003-2008 was any indication ..... |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2009-01-01 01:20 |