PARIS, April 13, 2011 (AFP) – Former American and European officials in Paris on Wednesday condemned U.S. “inaction” in the face of “attack” Iraqi forces “attacked” the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) in Camp Ashraf on April 8.
“The U.S. should at least provide the protection in Ashraf that it is obligated to,” said Jacques Attali, a former special adviser to the Socialist French president Francois Mitterrand, at a conference in Paris organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in which the PMOI is the main component.
“It’s a shame that the Iraqi government has the right to threaten, attack and kill people,” said former Vice-President of the European Commission, Günter Verheugen.
The camp, located 80 km north of Baghdad, is home to 3,500 supporters of the PMOI, the main opposition movement outside the Iranian regime.
According to the PMOI, Iraqi forces raided Camp Ashraf on April 8 using tanks and heavy weaponry, leaving 34 residents dead and over 300 wounded.
An Iraqi army official reported three deaths, a number confirmed by a hospital source in the city of Baqouba, who added the clashes also led to 27 injuries, including 13 members of security forces.
Camp Ashraf was allocated to the PMOI in the 1980s by Saddam Hussein and is dedicated to bringing down the regime.
The opponents were disarmed in 2003 by U.S. forces after the fall of the Iraqi president. The United States has transferred control of the camp to Iraqi security forces, whose leaders maintain amicable relations with Tehran.
Several prominent Americans, including former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton, also called the U.S. to remove the PMOI from its list of terrorist organizations.
“There are only two government institutions that consider the PMOI as terrorists: the Iranian government and the U.S. State Department,” John Bolton said. The EU removed the PMOI from its list of terrorist organizations in 2009.
The President-elect of the NCRI, Maryam Rajavi, called on the U.S. government to “reassume the protection of Ashraf and for the UN to install a permanent team of observers at the camp to prevent the massacre of residents.”
