Cleric Views West’s Promise to Admit MKO Members as “Bogus”
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Days after members of Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) were evacuated from Camp Ashraf, an Iranian cleric said promises by some western countries to grant them asylum are hollow and baseless.
Ayatollah Hassan Mamdouhi, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, told Tasnim that the bulk of western countries’ pledges to accommodate the expelled MKO terrorists are bogus, adding that members of the terrorist organization used to live in dire conditions in Camp Asharf, while “no country granted them asylum.”
The notorious camp, which used to host thousands of MKO terrorists in eastern Iraq in the past, was fully evacuated by the Iraqi authorities from its much-hated residents on September 11, 2013.
The evacuation took place under the supervision of UN officials and more than 30 MKO terrorists were removed from the camp in Iraq’s Diyala province, about 80 kilometers west of the Iranian border and 40 kilometers north of Baghdad.
Ayatollah Mamdouhi also called on all those terrorists, who resorted to atrocity against the Islamic Republic, to learn lessons from the terrible fate of the MKO members.
The official end of MKO terrorist group’s activities in Camp Ashraf, marked by the full evacuation of the camp from their remaining members, took place some days after the MKO terrorists clashed with a group of protesting Iraqi citizens, who were opposed to their presence in their neighborhood, on September 1.
The remaining members of MKO terrorists were transferred from Camp Ashraf (now the Camp of New Iraq) to Camp Liberty.
The MKO -- listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community -- fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, fought on the side of Saddam Hussein during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88), and was given a camp by Saddam.
The group has been behind numerous acts of terror against Iranian civilians and officials, and was involved in the 1991 bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq, and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the country's north.
In December 2011, the United Nations and the Iraqi government agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to Camp Liberty -- a former US military base near Baghdad International Airport. But given their past atrocities, many in Iraq want them to be expelled from the country.
The Iraqi government planned to close the camp at the end of December 2011, but the US pressure forced it to delay the evacuation.