Associated Press – By Don Melvin
BRUSSELS — A EU parliament official warned Tuesday that members of the Iranian opposition living in Iraq remain in danger and said he will propose they all be relocated to other countries.
An Iraqi army attack last month on the 3,400 residents of an enclave known Camp Ashraf killed 35 people and injured hundreds.
In emails to EU foreign ministers and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Struan Stevenson, who is president of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Iraq, has warned that the crisis must be resolved “before another and perhaps even more catastrophic massacre takes place.”
The residents of Ashraf are members of the People’s Mujahedeen, an Iranian opposition group that is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States. The European Union removed the group from its terrorist list two years ago.
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gave the exiles refuge at Camp Ashraf, seeing them as an ally against Iran. But the new Shiite-led government of Iraq wants them out of Iraq by year’s-end as it seeks to improve ties with Iran.
At a press conference Tuesday in Luxembourg, Stevenson is proposing a solution to the crisis. It calls for the removal of Iraqi forces from the perimeter of the enclave, the granting of access to Ashraf by journalists, lawyers, and others; an independent inquiry into the attack in April, and the moving of all residents of Ashraf to other countries, including in Europe, Australia and North America.
In addition, Stevenson wrote a letter Monday to President Barack Obama, asking for his support.
“I believe that another humanitarian catastrophe at the hands of the Iraqi forces is imminent, aided and abetted by the Iranian regime who seek the annihilation of Ashraf and its residents as a useful distraction from their own plethora of internal and external crises,” Stevenson wrote in the letter.
