NCRI – Camp Liberty residents have been ‘deceived and betrayed’ by the United Nations envoy Martin Kobler and should now be immediately returned to Camp Ashraf, staunch Iranian Resistance supporter and MEP Struan Stevenson has demanded.
The EU’s foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton needed to act now to ensure their safety before more blood is spilled, he told a meeting at the European Parliament on Wednesday March 27.
Mr Stevenson – president of Delegation for Relations with Iraq in the European Parliament – said: “We were persuaded by the UN Special Representative Martin Kobler that we should put pressure on the residents of Camp Ashraf to move to Camp Liberty where their safety and security would be guaranteed.
“So we have deceived these people. They’re living, in the words of a working party from the United Nations, in prison-like conditions.
“They have no freedom of movement. They have been forced to pay massive amounts of money for their own food and welfare. They’re not being supplied with food,
water, fuel, by the government of Iraq who adopted responsibility for their welfare and their security. We have betrayed and deceived these people.”
The EU was now demanding that Liberty residents be given a guarantee of security by immediately either moving to Ashraf, or returning the 17,500 anti-blast T-walls – removed by the Iraqi government – needed to protect them from attack, Mr Stevenson said.
He added: “You have to ask yourself why were the body armor and hard hats which belonged to the people of Camp Liberty forced to be left behind in Camp Ashraf? Why have they not been given the right to build a concrete bunker in which they can take shelter in the event of another rocket attack?
“Why have they been refused permission even to be supplied with shovels to dig trenches in which they can hide in the event of another attack?
And the only conclusion I can come to, more than a month and a half since the vicious attack of 9 February, is that they are being lined up to be annihilated by the
Iraqi government and their puppet masters in Tehran.”
He described the current situation as ‘like asking King Herod to be in charge of the nursery’, adding: “This is an outrage and is a stain in our credibility as a parliament.”
He also displayed a petition of more than 100,000 Iraqis demanding that Martin Kobler be sacked and replaced.
Mr Stevenson said: “For the memory of these 8 people who died needlessly, and all the dozens of others who have died in the three vicious attacks that have now taken place, their blood is on our hands, our responsibility.
“We guaranteed the safety of the people when they moved from Ashraf to camp Liberty. I cannot sit here in all conscience and allow any more blood to be spilled in my name and we demand action from Catherine Ashton.
“It is no good that she says the security and safety of
these people is in the hands of the government of Iraq and we demand now that UNAMI, whose sole job was to look after the security and safety of these people, and they have failed miserably in that job.
“Mr Kobler you have become the problem, not the solution.”
