NCRI – In an international conference held in Paris on Friday, January 6, at the invitation of the CFID (French Committee for Democracy and Human Rights in Iran), dozens of distinguished American and European dignitaries warned of obstructions and non-cooperation by the Iranian regime and Government of Iraq in guaranteeing a peaceful solution for Camp Ashraf, where members of the Iranian opposition reside in Iraq.
The conference speakers were Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance; Gov. Howard Dean, former Governor Vermont, Chair of the Democratic National Committee (2005-2009) and US presidential candidate (2004); Gov. Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania and the first US Homeland Security Secretary (2003-2005); Louis Freeh, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1993-2001); Gov. Ed Rendell, Chair of the Democratic National Committee (1999-2001) and Governor of Pennsylvania (2002-2011); Judge Michael Mukasey, US Attorney General in the Bush Administration (2007-2009); Ambassador Mitchell Reiss, former Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State; General James Conway, Commandant of the US Marine Corps (2006-2010); Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Member of US House of Representatives (1995-2011); Gen. Chuck Wald, former Deputy Commander of US European Command; Gen. David Phillips, Commander of U.S. Military Police (2008-2011); Prof. Alan Dershowitz, one of the most prominent advocates of individual rights and the most well-known lawyer in criminal cases in the world; Ambassador Dell Dailey, Head of the State Department’s counterterrorism office (2007-09); Col. Wesley Martin, former Senior Anti-terrorism Force Protection Officer for all Coalition Forces in Iraq and Commander of Forward Operation Base in Ashraf; Prof. Ruth Wedgwood, Chair of International Law and Diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University; Philippe Douste-Blazy, Former French Foreign Minister and to the UN Secretary General; Alain Vivien, former French Minister of State for European Affairs; Rita Süssmuth, former President of German Bundestag; Günter Verheugen, European Commissioner (1999-2010) and former Advisory Minister in German Foreign Ministry; and Sen. Lucio Malan, Member of Italian Senate.
Below is speech by Hon. Louis Freeh: (For vedio here here)
Thank you very much Ambassador Riess, President Rajavi, and my distinguished colleagues on the panel, and very importantly, to the residents of Camp Ashraf. We always like to tell you and commit to you as we have in the past that your struggle there is now much more magnified under much greater visibility with a greater hope of safety and rescue than before. And I think we have to credit your President, Madame Rajavi, for this. I think Madame Rajavi, without your leadership [applause] without your perseverance, without your dedication, we might very well today be watching a film of a massacre of hundreds of people at Camp Ashraf instead of what we’re trying to do which is to work out some kind of a rescue plan and a salvation for them. And I think Madame Rajavi, you deserve credit for that and we thank you and salute you for that.
It was a very extraordinary experience for some of us December 12, 2011, we found ourselves protesting in front of the White House. From former Homeland Security secretaries, former governors, former FBI directors, it is quite a strange experience. While I was out there I got a text from the head of the Secret Service detail who said, “I understand you’re outside protesting,” and I said, “Yes, we are. And if possible we’d like to come inside and speak to the President.” [applause] Now [applause, cheering] in the President’s strong regard, he met that day, as you know, with Prime Minister Maliki. We were told by very senior officials in the Department of State that he raised Camp Ashraf, that Secretary Clinton raised Camp Ashraf. She has said on the record that she is personally involved in this issue. She appointed an ambassador last month to deal with this matter. Very extraordinary things that have happened in a very short period of time which have staved off the genocide which we could have otherwise been witnessing at Camp Ashraf.
What was also bizarre about the meeting and event that we had outside the White House on December 12th is Madame Rajavi spoke to us by satellite. We were very pleased always to hear her words and hear her leadership, but she wasn’t there. She’s not allowed into the United States because of this persistent, unlawful and unjustified continuation of listing the MEK as a terrorist organization. Ironically, that day who was in the White House was an individual named Hadi Amiri. Hadi Amiri is the Secretary of Transportation, Minister of Transportation for Iraq, which is also very dangerous since we’re going to be transporting the Ashrafis from Camp Ashraf, hopefully safely, to Camp Liberty. But he’s got a very interesting background. And as a I said, I’m not an investigator anymore; I don’t have the tools I used to have in the FBI, but I do have the Internet. And if you go on the Internet you can find a picture of Mr. Amiri, the current Minister of Transportation. There’s a shot in October where he’s kissing the ring of the supreme (leader), the head of the terrorist regime. And he’s also a very interesting history. He was the commander of the IRGC (bata) brigade. The IRGC, as you know, were responsible for among other things, the murder of 19 American airmen at Khobar Towers in June of 1996, a Hezbollah operation conducted with the funding, guidance, planning of the IRGC which is the external terrorist organ of the administration. I said when I was outside the White House, “You know, a couple of the FBI agents would be very interested in speaking to Minister Amiri, maybe showing him some mug shots and asking him some questions.” But the fact that he’s in the White House meeting with the President and Mrs. Rajavi is on a satellite because she’s not able to enter the United States puts into perspective the policy failure and deficiency that is continuing in the United States.
So we do have some good tidings, as they say, with respect to what has happened in the last few weeks. The plan to disperse the residents of Camp Ashraf around Iraq has stopped. The deadline has been moved. A new ambassador has been appointed by the Secretary of State. An MOU has been signed on Christmas Day, although as Attorney General Mukasey mentioned, a very deficient legal document in terms of protecting those people, but the details have not been worked out. The implementation of the agreed plan to move the Ashrafis to Camp Liberty and then to transit them on to safe havens outside of Iraq, everyone seems to agree on that principle now, which is an extraordinary development, a development which was accelerated by Madame Rajavi’s very prompt and I think surprising volunteering of moving 400 people immediately to Camp Liberty.
But, you know, there’s an expression in English, the devil is in the details, and the details here are quite deficient. We have been speaking, as you’ve heard, at a very high level with the State Department, some of us on weekly, even bi-weekly calls. And it’s clear from those conversations that there is no plan, that there is an idea and an objective but there is no plan. For instance, we asked why can’t the U.N. interview these refugee candidates in Camp Ashraf? And we get the amazing and preposterous response back that the U.N. won’t conduct the interviews there because they think it’s an intimidating atmosphere.
Well, if you look at what they’re doing at Camp Liberty I can’t conceive of a more intimidating atmosphere, with police inside the compound, UN observers outside the compound, no U.S. observers, a small, tiny facility with no infrastructure. When Ambassador Kobler signed that MOU on December 25th, did he not know that there was no infrastructure in Camp Liberty? There was no plumbing; there was no electric; there was no basis to move anybody in there even if you were creating a prison. He was there yesterday apparently to inspect the facilities. Hopefully, as we asked, the U.S. representative was there with him. But the bottom line is there is no plan, there was no details. All the things that the other speakers have said and will say just underscore the fact that there’s been no thinking; there’s been no activity with respect to the implementation of this plan, which means that the safety of these 3,400 men and women is still immensely at risk. The deadline may have moved but the operational ability to now put them in a position where they’ll be safely and fairly processed is just not been had and that’s what we have to do.
The only reason we’re where we are today with the slight progress that has been made is because of this persistence and because of the international community. And I have to say, my colleagues in the United States have been just absolutely ferocious in terms of pursuing this. I’ve been on the calls with many of the panel members here, absolutely ferocious and aggressive in an appropriate way to ensure the things that have to be done to protect these people. We get responses that don’t make sense. We get non-responses. Once in a while we get an indication that something might be done and we have had small signs, very small signs of progress in that area.
So, our goals here are very simple and really have not changed over the last year. We need to protect the residents of Camp Ashraf and make Camp Liberty a safe and quick transit point for them out of Iraq into other places. [applause] We have to delist the MEK. This is the most preposterous circumstance that I’ve seen in 25 years of investigative, legal and government service. There is no factual basis for maintaining this group on the foreign terrorist organization list. We have not gotten—all of my colleagues here, generals, former CIA directors, Homeland Security secretaries, attorney generals—not one of us has received a call or a cue from any of our former colleagues that this organization is one that should be cautioned about because it’s a terrorist organization. Nothing, zero. There’s not even been a leak in Washington, and you know how quick our government officials in some cases are to leak things.
There’s not even been a leak that there is some document, there is some redacted memorandum, there is some informant that puts this organization in the preposterous place that the State Department has put it. They put it there in 1997 to appease Iran. Iran said, “If you put this organization on the list, we’ll have better relations.” Well that was completely ridiculous. The relations got worse. As Governor Ridge said, when he was Homeland Secretary, I was FBI Director, we didn’t even assign anybody to the MEK because we knew why it was being put on the list. It was being put on the list to accommodate Iran and that policy and appeasement and accommodation has continued and continues today. One of the strongest things that the United States of America could do to not only support Iranian freedom but also to send a clear message to the regime in Tehran that their terror enterprise is coming to an end would be to recognize the only organized resistance, the only credible human rights organizational enterprise for Iranian freedom, take it off the list and take it off the list immediately.
So, you know, one of our conversations, I’ll close with this, one of our conversations with a very senior government official went as follows. We said, “Look, we’re not government officials anymore. We don’t claim to have access to all the information you have, but everything we know, everything we’ve heard commands that this organization be delisted.” And we said that if the decision has already been made within the administration, I believe a decision has already been made, whether to continue the listing or delist it, just accelerate that decision. You know, don’t spend the next 16 months. We’ve already had 16 months since the Court of Appeals found the Secretary of State to have violated the due process rights of the PMOI and 16 months of no response. If the government has made that decision—we believe that they have made the decision because there is no basis to keep the listing—they need to announce it; they need to promote it; they need to publicize it quickly. That would be a huge step in getting us where we need to go. Thank you very much.
