ASSOCIATED PRESS

BAGHDAD (AP) — Lugging clothes, tables and whatever else they could carry, roughly 400 members of an Iranian exile group reluctantly moved Saturday from their camp in northwestern Iraq to a deserted military base outside the capital in what they called a show of good faith that they eventually will be allowed to leave the country peacefully.

It was the first group to move of the more than 3,300 members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran who have lived at Camp Ashraf for three decades.

They left under pressure from the Iraqi government, whose army stormed Ashraf last April in a raid that left 34 of the exiles dead.

The United Nations also wants the exiles to move to the Camp Liberty military base outside Baghdad, where they can be screened for asylum eligibility and, presumably, better protected.

The process of moving the exiles to the new location has proceeded in fits and starts over recent months. Iraqi soldiers searched the exiles for almost an entire day before they left Ashraf, and they were being searched again Saturday morning before they were allowed into Liberty.

Members were reluctant to leave their home, which they turned into a miniature city with parks and a university, in favor of an abandoned military base. Residents have not strayed outside for years.

“People are very upset,” said Bahzad Saffari, 50, a camp resident since 2003 who was among the first group of exiles to go. “It took many days to convince them to go.”

He said soldiers ordered the exiles to leave some of their heirlooms behind, including photographs, microwave ovens, satellite dishes for Internet access and, in one case, a pair of therapeutic socks.

“They say it has metal in the socks and so they must be bulletproof,” Saffari said as the exiles were being searched at the camp. “Who wears bulletproof socks? Some of the people are very much bothered and they said, ‘If it is going to be like this, you can imagine how Liberty will be.'”

“This is to break the morale of the people.”

A spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the exiles are in Iraq illegally but that the move is a first step toward to sending them out of the country.

“We consider the moving of Ashraf people to the new location as a positive step toward reaching a final solution for their presence in Iraq and sending them to a third country,” al-Maliki media adviser Ali al-Moussawi said Friday night. “During the past years, the presence of the (exiles) has represented a problem to the Iraqi government because their staying was illegal, and it was a source of irritation to some neighboring countries.”

The People’s Mujahedeen, which seeks the overthrow of Tehran’s clerical rulers, has been labeled everything from a cult to a terrorist organization — although one that has provided the U.S. with intelligence on Iran. The group says it renounced violence in 2001, after carrying out bloody bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s.

Also known by its Farsi name, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the group is the militant wing of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran. The U.S. considers it a terrorist organization although the European Union removed it from its terror list two years ago.

They were welcomed to Iraq by Saddam Hussein during the 1980s in a common fight against Iran. But since Saddam’s ouster they have been an irritant to the Iraqi government and which is trying to build stronger ties with Iran.

Al-Maliki sees the group’s presence as an affront to Iraqi sovereignty, and last spring ordered Ashraf to close by the end of 2011. The U.N however has dubbed the forced removal of Ashraf residents as “ill-advised and unacceptable.”

Ashraf is located in the desert near the Iranian border, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad.

Until recently, the exiles refused to go. In December, the group’s Paris-based head, Maryam Rajavi, agreed to move 400 residents to Camp Liberty in a show of goodwill as the U.N. tries to broker a compromise between the two sides. In a statement this week, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said Iraq’s government has agreed to let Ashraf stay open until April 30 to give the exiles more time to move.

In the meantime, “any provocation or violence must be avoided and would be unacceptable,” Ban said.

The U.N. mission in Iraq has been frantically working to relocate the exiles in other countries. But as of Friday, fewer than 30 have been granted asylum, said Ashraf chief spokesman Shahriar Kia.

Ban’s statement urged member states to help relocate eligible residents of Camp Ashraf who wish to resettle in third countries. Returning to Iran is unlikely because of their opposition to the regime.

Camp Liberty, which sits next to Baghdad’s international airport, was a sprawling U.S. Army base until the American military withdrew from Iraq in December. The Ashraf residents fear it will be a cramped “prison” where they will be barred from moving around and lack clean water, security and free medical services.

An Associated Press photographer who on Friday was allowed into one of the areas of Camp Liberty where the exiles will live described it as surrounded by concrete blast barriers to protect about 140 temporary buildings that each will house nine people. There is a refrigerator and an air conditioner in each building, and portable bathrooms and a dining hall on the compound that will be guarded by Iraqi army soldiers.

They are leaving what Rajavi in December described as a “modern city” with a university, library, museum, hospital, power station, cemetery, mosque, parks, lake, sports and recreation facilities, and underground bomb shelters. Ashraf residents have not left the camp for years, and the little contact they have with outsiders in Iraq is through the Iraqi military, visiting diplomats and aid agencies. They do have extensive communications equipment that allows them to communicate with the outside world.

Kia said the eldest exile who moved Saturday is 70 years old.

Saffari said none of the exiles wanted to go but agreed to be among the first tranche when Ashraf’s leaders asked for volunteers.

After Saddam fell, U.S. troops took control of Camp Ashraf, disarmed its fighters and confined the residents to their 30-square-mile (78-square-kilometer) camp. In return, the military signed an agreement with the camp giving the residents protected status under the Geneva Conventions. But the U.S. turned over those responsibilities to the Iraqi government in 2008.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, which oversees whether nations are complying with the Geneva treaties, is helping resettle the exiles in other countries once the U.N. determines asylum eligibility for each that would grant them, individually, protected status.

Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub and Photographers Karim Kadim and Hadi Mizban contributed to this report.

http://www.iranfocus.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24638:400-iran-exiles-reluctantly-move-to-new-iraq-home

CNN

Baghdad (CNN) — About 400 members of an exiled Iranian opposition group who are the first to leave a long-term camp in Iraq under a U.N. plan criticized their treatment and the conditions at the new temporary site Saturday.

The group left Camp Ashraf at midnight following 12 hours of inspections and checks, Shahin Gobadi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran said in a statement.

When they arrived seven hours later at the new site, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad International Airport long known as Camp Liberty, the group discovered a heavy presence of police.

Camp Liberty has been renamed “Camp Hurriya” and is now an Iraqi facility.

Another inspection was then demanded, prompting the residents to protest what they consider “degrading, humiliating and inhumane treatment” and the obstructive behavior of the Iraqi forces by refusing to leave the transit buses, Gobadi said.

“The preliminary reports indicate that Camp Liberty (Hurriya) is a prison from all aspects,” he added.

The group’s relocation to the new site was agreed between the United Nations, Iraqi authorities, the United States and the European Union.

The U.S. commended Iraq for the relocation to the camp and called for the Iranian expatriates to cooperate with Iraqi and U.N. authorities in a State Department statement from spokeswoman Victoria Nuland Sunday.

“Patience and willingness to resolve issues related to the relocation will be important as the process moves ahead,” Nuland said.

Human Rights Watch has criticized tensions between the Shiite-lead Iraqi government and the MEK’s leadership. And it has also accused the MEK leaders at Camp Ashraf of holding individual residents — who attempted to leave — against their will, coercing them to remain with the organization.

From Camp Hurriya, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees will begin efforts to resettle the group outside of the country.

Martin Kobler, the U.N. secretary general’s special representative and head of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), was at the temporary site to welcome the new arrivals.

“This is the first step towards a better future outside Iraq,” he said. “I look forward to their continued cooperation with the Iraqi authorities to complete the relocation without delay.”

He also praised the Iraqi for having ensured the “safe and secure relocation” of the first group of residents and urged them to guarantee the human rights and safety of all those still to relocate.

Camp Ashraf has been home to members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, for more than 25 years. More than 3,000 exiles, described as Iranian resistance figures and their sympathizers, live at the camp.

The MEK has been on the U.S. terrorism list since 1997 because of the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and an attempted attack against the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992. However, since 2004, the United States has considered the residents of Camp Ashraf “noncombatants” and “protected persons” under the Geneva Conventions.

Before moving, the Camp Ashraf residents had demanded a commitment that no Iraqi police would remain inside the new site, in order to ensure the security of the residents. The group believes the current regime in Iraq, under orders from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has previously staged deadly attacks against Camp Ashraf.

Instead, there are several police posts inside the facility and residents must be accompanied by the police even to go to the dining area, Gobadi said.

“The most important of the Ashraf residents’ demands is that the police must leave the camp area and stay outside the walls,” a statement released by the group Friday said. “This is a condition without which it will be impossible to have more people in Liberty (Hurriya) as it will result in further confrontations, tensions and killing.”

The residents also asked for guarantees with regards to the site’s infrastructure — and say these have not been met.

“In a nutshell, Camp Liberty lacks the most basic international humanitarian standards and human rights standards are not met,” the statement said.

The residents say the camp is much smaller than they were told it would be, and that they are being denied free movement and access to medical services.

The U.N.’s refugee agency confirmed that the new camp’s infrastructure and facilities were in line with international humanitarian standards at the end of January, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this week.

Camp Ashraf was established in 1986 after former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invited members of the MEK to relocate to Iraq in an effort to undermine the Iranian government, which was then at war with Iraq. Iran also considers the group to be a terrorist organization.

A U.N. commission on refugees has described the residents as “formal asylum seekers” from persecution by the regime in Iran.

The temporary facility, at Camp Huriyya, formerly the U.S.-run Camp Liberty, will remain open for an unspecified period of time, though a senior U.S. administration official said in December that there were plans to keep it open until all of the camp residents were resettled.

CNN’s Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/18/world/meast/iraq-camp-ashraf-relocation

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BAGHDAD — Searches of Iranian opposition members have delayed their departure from a camp in Iraq for a UN-approved site near Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer and a legal adviser to the exiles said on Friday.

A group of some 400 Iranians opposed to the regime in Tehran was to depart on Friday from Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, for a new location called Camp Liberty, as part of a process that aims to see them resettled outside Iraq.

The planned move is part of a December 25 deal between the UN and Iraq, which was reached after extensive talks, under which around 3,400 members of the opposition People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) are to leave Camp Ashraf, which the Iraqi government has said will be closed in April.

“Four hundred is a big number, and we are still searching them and their belongings,” an Iraqi army major told AFP by telephone on Friday evening.

“We are also calling for backup for security reasons because we are worried about moving them from Diyala (province) to Baghdad with a small number of soldiers,” the major said.

Behzad Saffari, the legal adviser for residents of the camp, told AFP by telephone that the seaches began around 2:00 pm (1100 GMT), and that more than 300 people had been searched as of 10:30 pm (1930 GMT).

It was not clear when they would depart the camp.

“They search all the bags, every single item,” said Saffari, who arrived in Ashraf ahead of the US-led invasion of 2003 and is to travel with the group to Camp Liberty, near Baghdad airport.

He said that Iraqi forces had raised objections to items including cameras and cooking knives, making for a lengthy process.

“It shows that they just want to be difficult,” Saffari said. “It’s been a long wait.”

Now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein allowed the PMOI to set up Camp Ashraf during his 1980-88 war with Iran.

The left-wing PMOI was founded in 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran, but took up arms against Iran’s new clerical rulers after the Islamic revolution of 1979.

According to the US State Department, which has blacklisted the PMOI as a terrorist organisation since 1997, members of the group have carried out a large number of attacks against Iranian targets, and also against Americans.

The PMOI announced in 2001 that it had renounced violence, and is seeking to have the terrorist designation lifted.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5idKcxFBDS-6K0ZOLHnuIQsWh8JIA