NCRI – The policy of appeasement towards the Iranian regime is what caused the crisis that we see today in the region and for as long as the Iranian regime remains in Iraq, there will be no possibility of them defeating ISIS, said the former president of the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with Iraq at a conference in London.
Below is an excerpt of a speech by Mr. Struan Stevenson, the President of the European Iraqi Friendship Association (EIFA). Mr. Stevenson was the president of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq at the European Parliament until 2013.
He made the speech at a conference on “Human Rights Situation in Iran and Camp Liberty, Prospects for Change (a UK policy regarding Iranian regime’s destructive meddling in Iraq)” held at the British Parliament on October 28.
“I recall 10 years ago when I was Vice President of the European People’s Party, the biggest group in the European Parliament, I invited Mrs. Maryam Rajavi to come and address our group meeting in Brussels in the European Parliament.
But we had a crisis – we had phone calls from Angela Merkel, from chancellor Schüssel who was chancellor of Austria at the time, from the Prime Minister of Spain, from President Jacques Chirac, saying you must not allow this woman to come and speak to your parliament otherwise the Iranians will walk out of the nuclear negotiations.
This was 10 years ago! Where have we got with the nuclear negotiations? Nothing has happened.
They have played for time and they are on the verge now of producing a nuclear weapon. This is what happens when you play the game of appeasement with these people.
I warned, when I became President of the Delegations for Relations with Iraq 5 years ago, I warned that Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, was a major problem.
He was a puppet of the Iranian regime. He was allowing the Iranians to pull the strings. I warned that allowing him to continue with the support of the Americans and the British, allowing him to continue in the role of Prime minister would lead to civil war in Iraq.
He started to wage a genocidal campaign against the Sunni population of Anbar province and that, in turn, sucked in and gave the possibility for ISIS to come in from Syria and exploit the situation happening in Anbar so that they could take up weapons and take over control. And now they control much of the Anabr province.
We have seen since then Iraq almost splitting apart – Nouri al-Maliki marginalized the Kurds, waged war against his own people from the Sunni faith, allowed the open suppression and discrimination of all the other minorities including the Christian community. It is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. There used to be one and a half million Christians living happily side by side with their Muslim neighbors.
There are now 300,000 left. There used to be an estimated 40,000 Jews living in Iraq – there are now 18, not 18,000, 18 left in Iraq that we know of.
This is what happened under the dictatorship of Nouri Al-Maliki, the man who – on instructions from the mullahs in Tehran – started the systematic annihilation of the residents of Camp Ashraf and then he turned his fire after, through his appeasement policy.
After we agreed to their removal from Ashraf and after the castration in the prison camp, the concentration camp of Camp Liberty, he continued the policy of oppression and murder against these people.
Let me just remind you that in July 2009 on the 28th and 29th of July, the first attack on Camp Ashraf left 11 dead and hundreds injured.
On the 8th April 2011, 36 killed and hundreds injured, on the 9th February 2013 in Camp Liberty with a rocket attack, 8 killed and dozens injured, on the 15th June 2013, 2 killed and dozens injured, then horrifically on the 1st September 2013, the remaining 101 people who had been left behind in Camp Ashraf to guard the property and stop it being looted by Maliki’s thugs were attacked by Qods Force, people speaking Farsi, who executed 52 of the hundred, took 7 hostage including 6 women, and left dozens injured. They would have killed all 101 had they found them all.
Happily the survivors had managed to hide from that faith.
The 7 hostages have still not been accounted for.
And then on the 26th December last year, another rocket attack in Camp Liberty, 4 killed and dozens injured. After each of these attacks, we have handwringing by the authorities, by this government here in Britain, by the Americans, by Baroness Ashton, the high representative for foreign affairs in the EU, by Ban Ki-moon in the UN, saying this is a tragedy and we are calling on our friends in the Iraqi government and Noori al-Maliki to investigate who is behind these killings. This is outrageous! Telling him we will wait to hear the result of your investigations.
There has not been a single investigation, because Nouri al-Maliki gave the orders for these massacres! He should be brought before the international courts and indicted for terrorism, for crimes against humanity and for murder and I believe that all of us in this room will live to see that happen. We will live to see Maliki brought to trial as he should be.
Now since Haydar al-Abadi took over, at long last, the Americans listened to what we were saying, what all of us have been saying for the past 5 years. For god’s sake don’t go on supporting Maliki. At last they woke up to what we’ve been saying and realized that it was true.
They started to say to Maliki it’s time you left the scene and it’s time they had a replacement.
Even then the mullahs insisted that Maliki should continue as Prime Minister and threatened people in the elected government, the council of representatives in Iraq – if you don’t support Maliki you will suffer the consequences.
The world is now watching what al-Abadi does.
Inside Camp Liberty, the machine guns which surround the fence that incarcerates these people, 2,700 of them in a tiny half a kilometer squared area which has become an absolute concentration camp.
The machine guns have now been turned to point into the camp. They are still being denied basic security. They’ve been denied concrete T-walls which were removed before they moved into Camp Liberty.
The only possible protection they could have is their flimsy portacabins from rocket attacks.
They have been denied delivery of their body armor and hard hats which belong to them and which are back at Camp Ashraf probably now they’ve been looted.
They have been denied shovels and spades to dig tranches in which they could hide from rocket attacks.
And remember Camp Liberty is right next to Baghdad airport and Baghdad airport is a key target of ISIS who are very very close now, 40 kilometers away from Baghdad.
These 2,700 people must be rescued. All of them have been registered as refugees by the UNHCR. They have guaranteed that each individual has been guaranteed personal protection by the US government.
They have been told that they are protected persons under the 4th Geneva Convention and they are still incarcerated in what the UN dares to call a temporary transit location.
But they’ve been there for almost three years, in a so called transit location. They have been betrayed by America, by the EU and by the UN.
They must be airlifted out of Camp Liberty now before they are completely annihilated, either by ISIS or with the condoling and specific instructions of the mullahs in Tehran, and that is the faith that awaits them.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Iranians are in Iraq now with their leading commanders from the Qods Force which is listed as a terrorist organization internationally and we are sitting on the sidelines watching this happen, watching Iraq being taken over by the cancerous hegemony of the Iranian mullahs.
Until we see the Iranians evicted from Iraq, there will be no possibility of the final overthrow of ISIS. We need the Sunni tribes to unite with their Shia neighbors as they did after the American search if we are going to see ISIS defeated.
That will not happen so long as we allow the Qods Force, and the Iranian-backed evil militias to continue their thuggish and dirty work inside Iraq.”
