Up to date No.62 - December 2013

8/13/2019 Up to date No.62 - December 2013

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A rocket attack has killed three members of an Iranian opposition group in Iraq, thegroup and its parent organisation say.

They say a number of people from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) group were injured

at Camp Liberty in Baghdad.

Baghdad has in the past repeatedly denied attacking the group.

MEK members fought with Iraq against Iran in the 1980s, but have since fallen out with the current Iraqi government.

In an emailed message, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MEK's parent group, said

dozens of missiles hit the camp on Thursday evening.

It said two residents were killed and a third later died in hospital of his wounds.

The US condemned the attack "in the strongest terms" and urged Iraq to better protect the camp.

An Iranian-backed Shia militia, al-Mukhtar Army, said it had fired rockets at the camp, Reuters news agency reported.

The camp is located in a former US military base, near Baghdad's airport.

The Iraqi authorities have made no public comments on the report. However, one security official was quoted by the

Associated Press as saying four rockets hit the camp, injuring two people.

In September, the MEK accused Iraqi

forces of attacking Camp Ashraf north

-east of Baghdad and killing 52 of the

group's members.

In recent years, Baghdad has been

trying to dismantle MEK camps and

eject the group.

Iran considers the MEK a terrorist

group.

The group was removed from the US

state department's list of terrorist

organisations last year.

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P U B L I C A T I O N O F A A W A - A S S O C I A T I O N

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25523482

Iran dissidents 'killed in Iraq missile attack' Bbc.co.uk, December 27, 2013

Dozens of missiles hit Camp Liberty, the Iranian group claims






Page 2U P T O D A T E N 0 . 6 2 / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 3

(Reuters) - A camp of Iranian dissidents in the Iraqi capital

was hit by rockets on Thursday in an attack the group said

killed three residents and seriously wounded several others.

A Shi'ite militia claimed responsibility for the attack on the

Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) camp in western Baghdad, which

has repeatedly been the target of mortar and rocket attacks

in recent months.

The group, which calls for the overthrow of Iran's clerical

leaders and fought on Iraq's side during the Iran-Iraq war in

the 1980s, is no longer welcome in Iraq under the Shi'ite-led

government that came to power after the 2003 U.S.-led

invasion.

A Paris-based spokesman for the MEK, Shahin Gobadi, said

three people had been killed when "Camp Liberty," located

in a former U.S. military compound, was hit with dozens of

missiles.

Several of the wounded were in a critical condition, said

Gobadi, adding that more than 50 had been reported

injured. The group accused the government of Prime

Minister Nuri al-Maliki of being behind the attack in an

attempt to win support from Iran's government ahead of

elections next year.

Iraqi authorities have repeatedly denied involvement in

attacks on the group.

In a rare claim of responsibility for attacks on the MEK,

Wathiq al-Batat, commander of the al-Mukhtar Army militia,

told Reuters his group had fired 20 Katyusha rockets and

mortar rounds at the camp.

"We've asked (the government) to expel them from the

country many times, but they are still here," he said,

accusing the group of communicating with Sunni and Shi'ite

politicians he said were linked to al Qaeda.

The U.S. State Department condemned the attack "in the

strongest terms." In a statement, it urged the Iraqi

government to take additional steps to secure the camp

against further violence and "to find the perpetrators andhold them accountable for the attack."

Al-Mukhtar Army is a relatively new Shi'ite militia, which has

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/27/us-iraq-violence-iranians-idUSBRE9BP0HC20131227

said it is supported and funded by Iran. Batat is a former

leader of the more well-known Kata'ib Hezbollah militia.

Shahriar Kia, another spokesman for MEK who lives in the

camp he said houses about 3,000 Iranian dissidents, said

two men were killed when a rocket fell near their caravan.

"I saw two caravans set ablaze and black smoke billowing,"

he said. "We are still taking shelter inside the caravans outof fear of more shelling."

Police sources confirmed the camp had been targeted by

mortars and said four wounded Iranians had been

transported to a hospital in western Baghdad.

More than 50 people were killed at a separate MEK camp

north of Baghdad in September. The attack drew

condemnation from the United States and Britain.

(Reporting by Suadad al-Salhy, Ahmed Rasheed and

Kareem Raheem; Additional reporting by Peter Cooney inWashington; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by

David Evans and Bill Trott)

Iranian dissidents say rockets hit

their Baghdad camp, kill three Reuters.com, December 26, 2013







By Michael Rubin

The last quarter century has been a time of great change

across the globe, much of which has been for the better.

The number of electoral democracies has grown from 69 in

1989 to 118 today. Despite Russia’s resurgence, the

instability wrought by the Arab Spring, and the dangers

posed by rogue regimes, the world remains far freer now

than at any point in history.

How tragic it is, then, that so many tens of thousands

remain effectively imprisoned in political concentration

camps. North Korea, of course, is the world’s worst

violator. According to the Guardian, the left’s flagship

paper, up to 200,000 North Koreans remain imprisoned.

CNN has detailed some of the ongoing horror in the six

camps, and any report from the Committee for Human

Rights in North Korea is worth reading. The Hermit

Kingdom is not alone, though.

For decades, China has also maintained a series of ―re-

education through labor‖ [laojiao] camps. And while the

Chinese government has recently promised to dismantle its

network, actions ultimately speak louder than words.

The United States might have little leverage over China and

North Korea, but low-hanging fruit which could be resolved

with American diplomatic pressure does exist. The

Mujahedin al-Khalq (MKO) is correct to castigate those who

believe that the Iranian government or its militia proxies

should enjoy an open season on group members. Opposing

massacres is not synonymous with support for the group,

however; it may no longer be a U.S.-designated terror

group, but remains just as much an authoritarian cult. And

while MKO spokesmen may castigate the Iraqi government

and the Iranian regime, the real victims of the MKO

lay within the group itself. Camp Liberty—the successor to

Camp Ashraf —exists as much if not more to keep MKO

members insulated from the real world and under the

control of MKO leader Maryam Rajavi’s commissars than

as a means of protection for group members.

Other camps exist in the Tindouf province of southwestern

Algeria. Here, perhaps 40,000 residents of southern

Morocco, Algeria, western Mali, and northern Mauritania

languish in camps controlled by the once-Marxist Polisario

Front, largely kept from returning home by the group’s

political commissars and the Algerian government. During a

recent visit to Dakhla, in Western Sahara, I had the

opportunity to speak to former members who described not

only their own escape from the camps, but the attempts by

others who were forcibly returned to the camps, where

Polisario authorities punished them for the audacity of

seeking to return home rather than languish in camps 22

years after the war between Morocco and Algeria ended.Simply put, Polisario realizes that if the camps close, the

gravy train of international assistance would end and the

Polisario would lose its raison d’être.

The Polisario is not the only Cold War remnant stubbornly

holding hostages. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of

Columbia also engages in the practice, holding some

prisoners for more than a decade. While some journalists

parachute in and whitewash just what happens in FARC

camps, it is hard to see ―cultural programming‖ as anything

other than an attempt at ideological re-education.

The Obama administration came into office seemingly

committed to prioritizing human rights, never mind the

debates about how best to guarantee rights, freedom, and

liberty. The State Department became a revolving door not

only for journalists, but for human-rights advocates, most

notably Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski and writer

Samantha Power. Increasingly, however, it seems such

figures are either window dressing for an administration so

disinterested in human rights that it is willing to sanction

political concentration and re-education camps or, worse

yet, that these figures are so permeated by moral

equivalency and skewed in their understanding of what

universal human rights are that they are willing to normalize

with the regimes, sponsors, and groups which engage in

such practices.

Concentration camps and slavery (discussed in a previous

post) are two phenomena that simply should not exist in the

21st century. That they do is a sad testament to the reality

of regimes like North Korea’s, China’s, Algeria’s,

Venezuela’s, and Cuba’s, and the choices which successive

U.S. administrations–both Democrat and Republican–have

made to not let such issues be stumbling blocks to

engaging with the United States on other issues.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/12/16/its-time-to-close-the-camps/

It’s Time to Close the Camps

Commentarymagazine.com, December 16, 2013







By Delyan Martov, Translation: Iran-Interlink

Sofia December 25 2013: …According to the American TV

channel NBC and other media reports, the MEK played its

role in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Ac-

cording to other data, the organization was also involved in

the murder of Mojtaba Ahmadi, the IRGC cybersecurity ser-

vice commander, as well as in a serious accident at the

factory for …

U.S. to move 3000 terrorists to Romania

As it became known from the Romanian Foreign Ministry

employees dialogue in a social network ―WordPress‖ http://

danamarca70.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/48875763/

Currently the U.S. and the Romanian government are nego-

tiating the deployment about 3 thousand representatives of

the terrorist organization ―Mojahedin-e Khalq‖ (MEK) on theterritory of Romania. It is assumed that in the case of the

Romanian leadership consent members of the group will be

compactly settled near the city of Craiova.

According to Ioana Raiciu and Dana Marca, the Romanian

Foreign Ministry employees

http://ioraiciu.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/intalnire-kerry-

corlatean-la-ministeriala-nato/

The U.S. State Secretary and the Romanian Foreign Minister

discussed the issue of militants migration during the meet-ing in Brussels in early December. John Kerry’s adviser

Jonathan Weiner who deals with the problem of MEK migra-

tion is to arrive in Romania with the same purpose.

I turned to the Romanian Foreign Ministry press service for

confirmation of these data by phone using the telephone

numbers listed on the ministry’s website, but they refused

to give any comments, saying this is a too sensitive issue.

Indeed, the disclosure of the information about moving

about 3 thousand terrorists to the country is sure to cause a

violent public backlash against the government. At thesame time, the information leak to the Internet possibly

means that Romanian authorities are trying to test the wa-

ters before making official statements.

So what sort of an organization the ―Mujahedin-e Khalq‖ is?

―Mojahedin-e Khalq‖ is an Iranian Islamist terrorist organi-

zation in exile, which advocates the overthrow of the Islamic

Republic of Iran. Since its inception in the mid 60s, this

group has made numerous assassination attempts on the

Iranian leadership, murdered the U.S. military personnel

and civilians, supported the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in

Tehran in 1979 calling for the execution of embassy staff.

In 1981 MEK members killed 70 Iranian officials including

the prime minister, the president and the head of the judici-

ary. A decade later, they organized a coordinated attack on

the Iranian embassies in 13 countries. During the Iran-Iraq

War, 1980-88, the group fought against Iran on the side of

Saddam Hussein. In total the organization killed more than

50 thousand people in different countries.

In 1997, the U.S. State Department put the MEK into a list

of terrorist organizations. And in 2002, the European Union

did the same, but in 2009 the EU crossed it out of the list.

And in 2012, the United States followed the example. At the

same time, the organization is still considered a terrorist

one in Iran and Iraq.

One can hardly say that the MEK has completely aban-

doned the ideas of terror. According to the American TV

channel NBC and other media reports, the MEK played its

role in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Ac-

cording to other data, the organization was also involved in

the murder of Mojtaba Ahmadi, the IRGC cybersecurity ser-

vice commander, as well as in a serious accident at the

factory for the production of heavy water in Arak in autumn

2013.

According to the American TV channel CNN, a terrorist or-

ganization has a strict military structure. The MEK head-

quarters is based in the so-called Ashraf ―refugee camp‖ in

Iraq.

(link to video of CNN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSm24lSrvNA)

http://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/?p=4406 /

http://frognews.bg/news_63138/

U.S. to move 3000 terrorists to Romania

(Mojahedin Khalq, MKO, MEK, Rajavicult)

Frognews.bg, December 20, 2013

continues on page 7 ...

http://danamarca70.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/48875763/


http://ioraiciu.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/intalnire-kerry-corlatean-la-ministeriala-nato/


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSm24lSrvNA


http://iran-interlink.org/wordpress/?p=4406


http://frognews.bg/news_63138/SASHT_nastaniavat_3000_teroristi_v_Rumaniia_na_50_km_ot_nas/












By Christoph Dickey

On Saturday, 7 December 2013, in an auditorium at the

Bourse in Paris, France, Maryam Rajavi and the Mujahadeen

-e-Khalq (MEK) held a meeting with several notable support-

ers including former New York Mayor and Republican Presi-

dential Candidate Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont Governor

and Democratic Presidential

Candidate Howard Dean,former attorney general in

the George W. Bush admini-

stration Michael Mucasey,

a n d S o u t h A f r i c a n

Archbishop Desmond Tutu's

daughter Naomi Nontombi

Tutu. Over the years, de-

spite it cult-like practices

and even when it was for-

mally labeled a terrorist

organization, the organiza-

tion managed to acquire

quite a list of high-profile ex-

dignitaries in the United

States.

I went to cover the event because I think the group may wind

up playing a role of one sort and another helping to

undermine American and European efforts to reach an

agreement with Iran to forestall and foreclose its nuclear

weapons capability.

There are several ways the MEK might do this.

It was listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist

organization until last year for reasons outlined in

this Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder. Despite

official denials, it may yet try to use violence inside Iran to

undermine the talks, knowing full well that any terrorist

incidents will serve the hardliners in the regime and

"exacerbate the contradictions," as leftist revolutionaries

used to say. When Iranian scientists have been killed,

suspicion often has fallen on the MEK, the Israelis, or both.

The MEK claims to have extensive intelligence resources on

the ground in Iran and claims credit for the important

revelation in 2002 of the regime's secret nuclear program,

Notes on the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq

(MEK) and Americans in ParisChristoperdickey.blogspot.co.uk, December 08, 2013

http://christopherdickey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-mujahadeen-e-khalq-mek-and.html?spref=fb

although there has been extensive speculation that the

actual intelligence was supplied to the MEK by the Israelis.

Its ability to float information -- or disinformation -- about

the regime's activities could complicate debate inside the

the United States.

To the extent the MEK claims credit for adding to the

pressure on the Iranian

government to negotiate itstrengthens the hand of

those inside Iran who want to

discredit the negotiators.

But its greatest disruptive

ability at the moment may

well be connected to the way

t h e I r a n i a n - b a c k e d

government of Iraq has

treated MEK members in

various camps there. On

September 1 this year, 52 of

them were killed, allegedly by

special forces from the Iraqi

Ministry of Interior, and

seven (six of them women) are alleged to have been taken

hostage.

Why the Iraqi government would do this, even with

prodding from the Iranians, is something of a mystery. One

obvious possibility would be revenge: the MEK sided with

the mullahs to overthrow the shah, then attempted, and

failed, to take over the revolution; it subsequently blew up

scores of top Iranian religious leaders, and after Saddam

Hussein invaded Iran it sided with his forces. More than 20

years later, when the United States led the invasion of Iraq

to overthrow Saddam, the MEK still supported him. But

U.S. forces decided its members might be used in some

way as a card in future negotiations with Iran and the more

than 3,000 MEK members in Iraq were put in a camp,

disarmed, and began an existence in legal, political and

diplomatic limbo. As the United States withdrew from Iraq

in 2011, fears mounted that the government of Prime

Minister Maliki would simply ship the Iranian MEK

members across the border to face the tender mercies of

Rudolph Giuliani and Maryam Rajavi - Photo by CSD







the government in Tehran.

That did not happen. Instead their camp at Ashraf was

closed after a violent incursion by Iraqi forces and they were

sent to Camp Liberty on the outskirts of Baghdad (although

they are still referred to by the MEK as "Ashrafis," which is

why in my tweets there were some references to killings at

Camp Ashraf that were in fact at Camp Liberty).

The United States and the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees assured the Ashrafis that they

would be resettled in other countries, but that process has

been very slow and one of the few countries willing to accept

them even temporarily for medical care has been Albania.

The camp came under repeated mortar attacks, and then

came the September 1 killings and abductions.

Giuliani, Dean and others who worked to get the MEK

"delisted" from the State Department's catalogue of foreign

terrorist organizations were involved to some extent in the

assurances given the MEK that they would be protected at

Camp Liberty and relocated in a timely fashion.

Giuliani argued yesterday that the issue of the Ashrafis and

the nuclear negotiations should be linked, something the

Obama administration is very unlikely to do. Dean claimed

that failure to protect the Ashrafis dishonored the United

States of America.

Following are my live tweets from the meeting:




To see all tweets visit: http://

christopherdickey.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-mujahadeen-e-

khalq-mek-and.html?spref=fb

You can see a straight column in blue and white uniform

marching on a spacious area framed by the lion sculptures.

According to Michael Ware, the author of the video, back in2007 Camp Ashraf numbered about 4,000 fighters and

was one of the best military bases in Iraq. The MEK has

more than 2,000 tanks, artillery, armored personnel carri-

ers and air defense means. The territory is a small town

with shopping malls and hospitals, blooming gardens,

monuments and fountains, which is totally unexpected in

war-torn Iraq.

Moreover the Iranian Mujahideen are considered to be

involved in undermining the bus with Israeli tourists in the

Bulgarian resort of Burgas in summer 2012. The Bulgariansecret services allegedly accused Lebanese Hezbollah but

the group rejects all charges despite the fact that it took

the responsibility for many terrorist attacks previously.

The terms of an agreement are still unknown. However, the

U.S. is likely to use all available means and methods of

pressure and persuasion to make Traian Basescu take the

right decision. It is obvious that the United States doesn’t

really care about the interests of Romania and its people

as well as the security in the Balkans.

Link to the original report Bulgarian):

h t t p : / / f r o g n e w s . b g / n e w s _ 6 3 1 3 8 /

SASHT_nastaniavat_3000_teroristi_v_Rumaniia_na_50_k

continued from page 4 - „US to move ...“

Parade of „Mojahedin-e Khalq“ - warriors














The United Nations today called on the Iraqi Government to

ensure maximum security for some 3,200 Iranian exiles in a

camp near Baghdad airport after a rocket attack on the

airport last night reportedly killed a number of residents and

seriously wounded others.

"This is another stark reminder of the increasing violence in

Iraq,‖ Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special

Representative Nickolay Mladenov said, voicing deep

concern at the attack, in which rockets fell on Camp Hurriya,

which houses the exiles, many of them members of a group

known as the People’s Mojahedeen of Iran who have been in

Iraq since the 1980s.

―The Government, in cooperation with the Camp Hurriya

leadership, needs to take immediate action to ensure that

appropriate measures are put in place to maximise the security of the residents,‖ he added, stressing that responsibility

for protecting the camp’s residents falls on the Government under an agreement it signed with the UN in 2011. ―This

latest incident must be fully investigated by the authorities and those responsible brought to justice."

Both Mr. Mladenov and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) urged the international community to urgently

intensify efforts to find resettlement opportunities. ―This is the ultimate guarantee of the security and safety of Camp

Hurriya residents," he said.

Strongly condemning the rocket attack, UNHCR appealed to countries to act urgently on 1,400 cases from Camp Hurriya

that have already been submitted for relocation. Since 2011, UNHCR, together with the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq

(UNAMI), has been trying to find relocation opportunities outside Iraq for all 3,200 residents of the camp, but so far, the

international community has secured relocation to third countries of only 311 residents.


U P T O D A T E

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www.aawa-association.de

Publication of Association AAWA e.V.

Responsable:

Dipl.-Ing. Ali-A. Rastgou

Postfach 90 31 73

D-51124 Köln

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=46837&Cr=Iraq&Cr1=#.Ut-bLdKIXct

Iraq: UN calls on Government to ensure

safety of Iranian exiles after rockets hitcamp

Un.org, December 27, 2013

The agency said three residents were reportedly killed in the

attack and many more wounded, at least four of them seriously

and rushed to hospitals by the Iraqi authorities.

Camp Hurriya has already been hit on multiple occasions. Camp

New Iraq (formerly Ashraf), where residents were previously

staying, was also the target of an attack in the past. UNHCR has

consistently deplored such unacceptable attacks.

―UNHCR remains deeply concerned for the safety of the residents

of Camp Hurriya and is calling on the Government of Iraq to

urgently scale up security measures in the camp to ensure the

safety and security of its residents,‖ the agency said in astatement. ―We are also urging the Government to launch a full

scale independent investigation into all the incidents.‖

Nickolay Mladenov, Special Representative of theSecretary-General and Head of the UN Mission for




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Up to date No.62 - December 2013