Self-Sacrifice

by Struan Stevenson

  Army and police patrols surrounded and constantly patrolled the half-kilometre square prison camp. In total breach of the UN’s own rules on refugee camps, the people were imprisoned, unable to leave the camp’s perimeter fence; no-one was allowed in or out without the guards’ permission. In a cruel display of sadism, Sadiq ordered lorries laden with tons of basic food supplies to be unloaded for inspection, leaving the food to rot in the sun for hours, before it was examined by Sadiq’s guards.

  And yet all of this inhuman treatment was allowed to continue right under the noses of a large contingent of UN monitors, directly supervised by Martin Kobler. But the UN had already shown that it was unwilling to intervene again. Kobler had even praised al-Maliki’s ‘patience’ and amazingly claimed that Camp Liberty was totally fit to house the remaining 3,000-plus residents.

  In response to the first swathe of complaints I received from the group who moved to Liberty on 17 February, I wrote to Kobler insisting that the police station should be moved promptly out of the camp. I argued that while Liberty was a small area of only half a kilometre square with all the entries and movements controlled by the police, and while Moslem women lived in the camp, far from being proof of Iraqi sovereignty, the police presence would only contribute to tension and possible confrontation. I said that this was the most important issue to be resolved, without which the relocation project would certainly end in total failure.

  Happily, I was not a lone voice. Some US lawmakers still believed their country had a moral duty to intervene. Seventy-nine congressmen wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding that Washington keep its word.

  On 15 January 2012, I wrote to de Ruyt:

  On various occasions I have tried to convince the MEK leadership to forgo their rights and I have been mostly successful. However, until I can conscientiously assure myself that Liberty is not a prison, I cannot advise them further to sacrifice their rights. I, you, Martin Kobler, and a couple of MEK lawyers could go to Liberty and see the place up close for a few hours and then go to Ashraf and explain what we have seen to the residents. I am sure this would be helpful to all parties. I can promise you that in such a case, the residents, the camp’s leadership and the leadership in Paris would trust and listen to me. Then the GoI would also be forced expeditiously to work out the minimum requirements in Liberty.’

  De Ruyt did nothing, and indeed resigned from his post in March 2012, having made no impact whatsoever.

  So, over the course of the next twelve weeks, a further 1,200 Ashrafis were forced to go through the humiliating process of endless searches and security checks before being transferred to Camp Liberty. The stress was so great that on one occasion one of the residents died of heart failure. He was a young engineer, Bardia Mostofian, who died just one hour after arriving in Liberty. Iraqi doctors said that his death was due to stress and exhaustion. This tragedy happened on 21 March 2012, the first day of the Iranian New Year celebrations, which was turned into a day of mourning. He was amongst the third group of 400 transferred to Liberty. The residents had asked Kobler several times to postpone this transfer for a few days until after the new year, so they would be able to celebrate in Ashraf, but Kobler refused and said that this was out of the question; he forced them to go on 20 March, putting tremendous pressure on the residents.

  There were now 1,600 refugees crammed into a half-kilometre square corner of the camp, forced to live in squalid containers under the constant surveillance of the Iraqi police and military. But despite these shortcomings the Iraqi authorities refused to help. They even refused to allow the residents to help themselves. They prevented them from building ramps and pathways over the rough, gravel surfaces for the elderly and disabled. They prevented the movement of special toilets and ambulances for the sick and disabled from Ashraf to Liberty. They prevented the building of shelters to hide from the blistering sun. Worse still, during the transfer of the fifth group to Liberty, when half-way there, six of the special septic-tank emptying vehicles for pumping out black water, which were being taken to Liberty as part of an agreement with the Iraqi government, were stopped and then sent back to Ashraf. This blatant breach of the agreement, coupled with the fact that it would become impossible to clean out the septic tanks at Camp Liberty, disgusted the rest of the people and they refused to move to Liberty. Up to this point around 2,000 had already been transferred to Liberty, and over 1,200 were still in Ashraf. The process of transfer was halted.

  Kobler had said in February 2012 in Brussels that the Iranian Ambassador in Iraq would not give him a visa for a trip to Iran until the transfer of the residents from Ashraf to Liberty had been substantially completed. Now, after the transfer of the fifth group, he was given a visa and he immediately went to Tehran.

  On 24 April, Maliki’s security adviser, Faleh al-Fayadh al-Ameri, said on Iraqi state television that it was natural ‘to discuss the issue of the Mojahedin terrorist organisation with the Iranians’. The security advisor added, ‘Mr Martin Kobler has talked in detail with Iraqi and Iranian parties in order to provide the requirements for implementation of the understanding which has been agreed on between him and Iraq to close Camp Ashraf and put an end to the presence of this organisation on Iraqi territory.’

  This was a shocking violation of the law of asylum, to allow a repressive regime like Iran to interfere in the treatment of its opponents.

  The International Committee In Search of Justice (ISJ) representing 4,000 parliamentarians across the Western world, declared in a statement on 9 May, ‘Mr Kobler’s visit to Tehran exactly on the day after the relocation of the fifth group of the residents raises, more than ever, a series of questions and concerns, especially since during his trip to Europe in February, Mr Kobler told the European side that the Iranian Ambassador in Iraq had set the PMOI’s transfer from Ashraf as the precondition for his visit to Iran.’

  In May 2012, the UN Committee on Arbitrary Detention published a highly critical report in which they said the status of the people incarcerated in Camp Liberty amounted to arbitrary detention. They ordered the Iraqi government to lift all of the restrictions on the residents. As usual, they were completely ignored.

  Worse still, during the transfer of residents from Ashraf to Liberty, it was noted that four representatives of the Iranian Embassy had been invited to observe what was taking place; in addition, agents of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence had been allowed to set up a base right next to Camp Liberty. These were dangerous and provocative actions sanctioned by the Iraqi government, and certainly constituted a breach of human rights for the unarmed, civilian refugees concerned.

  When the transfer of residents from Ashraf to Liberty was stopped, Kobler began a big campaign through the US government, other UN bodies and even friends of Ashraf across the world, to force them to surrender. Frankly, it was a new experience for us to see a special envoy of the UN Secretary General working so hard seemingly at the behest of the Iranian regime.

  The representatives of the Ashraf residents, in numerous letters to the UN Secretary General and US officials, had put forward the demands from the residents that should be met to enable the relocation process to recommence. Mrs Rajavi and representatives of the residents also stated that, because of Kobler’s close links with the Iranian regime, they would no longer be prepared to meet him. But after the intervention by some senior American supporters of Ashraf, Mrs Rajavi relented and agreed to meet him in the presence of a group of American and European friends.

  So on 1 January 2012, a meeting took place in the NCRI headquarters in Paris which included three sides: Kobler with his staff, Mrs Rajavi with NCRI officials and a delegation of seven European and American dignitaries, including Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Vice-President of the European Parliament, Paulo Casaca, founder of Friends of a Free Iran in the European Parliament, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, Michael Mukasey, former US Attorney General, Ed Rendell, former chair of the Democratic Party and former Governor of Pennsylvania, Louis Freeh,
Former Director of the FBI and Senator Robert Torricelli. In this high-level meeting it was agreed that the relocation of the next convoy would only resume after some steps, which were part of the residents’ requirements, had been implemented. But despite all the promises made by Kobler, most of the points were neglected. Fraught negotiations continued for months until on 26 July, Mrs Maryam Rajavi met Kobler again in Paris and she made it clear that the sixth convoy would move from Ashraf to Liberty immediately after the eight outstanding basic humanitarian requirements had been fulfilled. This plan was sent to Ambassador Dan Fried on 30 July. Despite this, Faleh al-Fayadh, Prime Minister al-Maliki’s national security advisor, told a press conference in Baghdad on 31 July that the involuntary relocation of the Ashraf residents was inevitable and that the Iraq government intended to force them out of Ashraf. This was the clearest threat of violence yet and was obviously the outcome desired by the Mullahs in Tehran, who were putting constant pressure on Maliki to murder the remaining residents.

  The Ashrafis’ demands were straightforward and readily achievable if the Iraqi government wished to cooperate. They wanted fresh water piped from the main Baghdad water supply. They wanted six specially adapted containers to be transferred from Ashraf to Liberty in which their disabled residents could live in comfort. They wanted their own generators transferred from Ashraf to Liberty so that they could be sure of a reliable supply of electricity. They wanted to sell their former homes and properties in Ashraf and not have them looted and plundered by the Iraqi regime. They wanted the appropriate materials to build paths over the rough gravel in Liberty so that lame and disabled people could move around and they wanted canopies to help them shelter from the blistering sun. They wanted some minibuses, forklift trucks and water, sewage and fuel tankers either purchased new or transferred from Ashraf to Liberty.

  What was so difficult about fulfilling these basic requirements? The answer was crystal-clear. The Iraqis had a different agenda, dictated by Tehran. It was an agenda that included the intimidation, coercion, bullying and terrorising of the PMOI residents in Liberty and Ashraf. That is why they had surrounded Ashraf with blaring loudspeakers for years, subjecting the residents to constant psychological torture; that was why they mounted two vicious assaults on the camp killing many innocent people; that was why Colonel Sadiq even insisted on the daily food trucks going into Liberty being laboriously unloaded by hand so that his guards could inspect the loads, which meant that many tonnes of perishable foods were then left sitting in sweltering heat for hours, so that the food rotted and was wasted. This was also the reason why they had at that time withheld permission for more than 50 days for the burial of two residents of Ashraf who had died in recent weeks from the long-term effects of injuries they received in the July 2009 attack. They had also refused to release the body of Bardia Mostofian who suffered a fatal heart attack due to stress and fatigue on the very day he arrived in Camp Liberty from Ashraf, more than five months ago. This was callous and anti-Islamic behaviour, and was cruel not only to the residents of Ashraf and Liberty but to Mr Mostofian’s friends and family. But once again it served to underline the ruthlessness and needless brutality of the Iraqis.

  I recognised this cruelty and condemned such tactics, demanding that we were joined in this condemnation by the UN, the US and the EU. Mealy-mouthed appeasement of bullies and murderers was not acceptable. The world was watching Liberty and Ashraf, and the UN, the Americans and the EU would be judged on the results.

  However on 16 August, a four-sided agreement was signed by the residents, the US government, Iraq and the UN, on which basis the residents agreed to move to Camp Liberty based on assurances by the US. The document stated:

  The US commits to working towards resolution of the remaining humanitarian issues at Camp Liberty that materially affect the daily lives of the residents including sustainable mechanisms to provide water and electricity,

  and

  Commits to support safety and security of the residents until the last of the residents leaves Iraq.

  On this basis the residents again began the move to Liberty. During August, September and October, over 1,100 were transferred to Liberty, and around 100 stayed in Ashraf to look after the final disposal of their movable and immovable belongings.

  Rather than intervene to help the residents, Kobler now instituted a policy that actually allowed some of his UNAMI staff to harass them even more. UNAMI monitors, who were originally supposed to protect the rights of the residents from the violent and aggressive activities of the Iraqi forces, were now employed as collaborators or prison wardens, psychologically pressurizing the residents. One of the worst was an Afghan called Massoud Dorrani who had accompanied Kobler to Iraq from his previous posting in Afghanistan.2

  Neither Dorrani’s administrative rank nor his background qualified him to occupy this position. But acting as Kobler’s special agents, Dorrani and his colleagues relayed messages from Iran’s intelligence agents to the residents, mostly consisting of foul abuse and insults, causing extensive protests and complaints. They made repeated and unwarranted entries into the sleeping quarters of women and men during the night and into the bedrooms of the disabled, causing outrage and disturbance. The main aim of Dorrani and his colleagues was to encourage the residents to give up their opposition to the Iranian regime, leave the ranks of the PMOI and return to Iran or to go to hotels in Baghdad which were under the control of the Iranian regime’s intelligence ministry. As part of this process, Dorrani took photos and films of the private quarters and lives of the residents without their consent, and then he drew up dossiers, which contained false accusations against the residents.

  Kobler eagerly exploited these dossiers, writing letters on a weekly basis to Mrs Rajavi, Mohammad Mohaddessin, myself and Alejo Vidal-Quadras, with copies going to numerous US, European and UN personalities, claiming that his monitors were not allowed to visit everywhere in the camp or to talk privately with people, and that they were routinely being humiliated and boycotted by the residents. In his letters he claimed that the camp’s PMOI leadership was clearly violating the residents’ rights! I knew from my personal acquaintance with Liberty’s residents and many telephone conversations with them, together with regular examination of Camp Liberty Daily Reports and my familiarity with the repeated bad behaviour of Mr Kobler, that he was in fact not implementing the goals of the UN but rather playing into the hands of Iraqi officials and the Iranian regime, who had every intention of liquidating the inhabitants.

  After several tortuous transportations, usually numbering 400 to 500 Ashrafis at a time, all except for a small number of the former residents of Camp Ashraf had been moved to the tiny prison compound of Camp Liberty. By agreement with UNAMI, UNHCR, the US, the EU and the Iraqi government, 101 residents had been left behind in Camp Ashraf to look after the property and prevent looting. In Camp Liberty the siege by the Iraqi authorities continued apace, with ongoing restrictions on access to fuel, food, medicines and other essentials, and a reluctance to allow necessary repairs to be carried out to the broken-down sewerage, water and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile the UNHCR interviews were conducted at a snail’s pace, with only two or three residents a day being taken for interview to see if they could be approved for full refugee status.

  On 9 February 2013, the inevitable happened. A rocket and mortar attack left eight dead and nearly 100 wounded. Having been denied hard hats, protective vests, concrete T-walls and even shovels with which to dig protective shelters, the 3,300 residents crammed into half a kilometre square of flimsy portacabins were sitting ducks. When 45 Katyusha rockets and mortars rained down into their tightly-packed, prison-like compound at 5.45 am, they were blown apart and incinerated while they slept.

  There was no doubt that this rocket attack had been well planned and professionally targeted; it could only have been carried out by the Iraqi military, obviously with Qods Force help from Iran. Indeed the launch pad from which the rockets had been fired was discovered shortl
y afterwards. It was well within the tight security zone that surrounded Baghdad Airport and Camp Liberty. A brick wall had been specially constructed around the launch pad. It would have been impossible to approach this area with a truckload of Katyusha rockets and mortars without passing through five separate security roadblocks. Only the Iraqi military could carry out such an attack and they were only able to do so on the direct orders of Nouri al-Maliki. I raised an outcry in the European Parliament and fired off angry letters to Ashton, Ban Ki-moon and President Obama, saying that our repeated negligence had cost lives once again.

  On 27 February 2013, I wrote a letter to Kobler’s deputy, Gyorgy Busztin:

  On many occasions Kobler assured us that Liberty complied with humanitarian standards. Now it has been revealed that a UNHCR expert had said the opposite. I am appalled that I was deliberately deceived in this way. We truly did not think that a Western diplomat and a senior UN official would part so far from professional integrity.

  Despite our vociferous protests and demands for UN and international help, the West sat on its hands. Maliki was delighted and ordered another rocket attack on 29 April 2013, when 20 explosions rocked Camp Liberty, luckily largely missing their target, as this time no one was injured.