NCRI – On April 10, Liberty residents wrote a joint letter (with 3087 signatures) to the UN Secretary General and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees stating: “We officially request that you prohibit Martin Kobler from interfering in any aspect of our affairs. There is ample evidence that he is cooperating with the dictatorship in Iran on our file. We have no trust in him.”
Yesterday (April 13) Martin Kobler fired back with a 400-word letter to Mrs Rajavi, in which he laid down seven lies in order to restore his lost credibility.
1- Kobler writes: “Thank you very much for your answer to my message to you last week”. This is while Mrs Rajavi has not had any meeting or communication with Kobler since July 26, 2012, and has not responded to him. The representative of the residents also has not responded to Kobler’s letters since November 15, 2012, except on February 7, when he wrote: “Your February 6, 2013, email contains unfounded points and I fear it would pave the way for exerting pressure on Ashraf and Liberty residents, and depriving them of ownership of their property.”
2- Kobler writes: “I have in front of me the latest statistics on where we stand on large t-walls, small t-walls, bunkers, sandbags, personal protection equipment (PPE) and the emergency equipment in the clinic.”
Kobler wants to pretend that at least part of the residents’ urgent security needs have been settled. Meanwhile not a single T-wall out of 17,500 protective T-walls has been returned, sand bags have not been permitted to enter on the order of the Iranian Minister of Intelligence. And despite earlier agreements, personal protection equipment such as helmets, vests and medical equipment haven’t been given permission to be transferred from Ashraf.
3- Kobler writes: “I urge you to attend the camp management meeting on Tuesday. One cannot deplore the security situation on one side and boycott the camp management meetings on the other.”
Kobler knows well that the representatives of the residents have always participated in camp management meetings with Colonel Haghi on Tuesdays. By this ludicrous lie, he intends to blame the residents for the security issues and also use the residents’ refusal to meet with the murderer Sadeq Mohammad Kazem, as a weapon against residents. Sadeq Mohammad Kazem is under investigation by Spanish court for his involvement in massacre of Ashraf residents.
4- Kobler writes: “Out of the 173 residents scheduled for counselling to go to Albania only three attended. 170 residents did not show up (April 7 till 11).”
These figures are absolutely false. In no way from April 7 till 11, have 173 people been called for counselling to go to Albania. Based on the agreement of the representative of the residents and the representative of the UNHCR, those included in ‘List Number 1 of Patients’ and those with priority have been ready to go to Albania since March 21, and have gone through the bureaucratic processes of the UNHCR, but there is no set date for their transfer to Albania.
Earlier Kobler was explicitly saying and writing with lots of fanfare that 210 people would go to Albania in April, but by mid-April not a single resident has been transferred.
With this lie, Kobler is trying to cover up the fact that he explicitly stated on April 6 on Al-Tagheer TV that at present, the prospect of resettlement exists for only 10 percent of the residents. On April 12, Kobler’s deputy wrote: “This figure (210) can increase to cover 10 percent of all those currently in Camp Liberty.”
As such, Kobler coincidently admits that the urgent security problem will remain for more than 90% of the Liberty population who are facing all kinds of dangers and threats. That is why the Iranian resistance emphasizes the need to transfer Liberty residents to a safer place, as pointed out in the March 1 statement of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In the current circumstances, the only such place is Ashraf.
5- Kobler, who is facing the widespread anger of the Iraqi people who demand he be replaced for his cooperation with Maliki, is ridiculously pretending that the cause of the Iraqi people’s opposition to him are the European members of Parliament in Brussels, who have defended the rights of Ashraf and Liberty residents.
Kobler writes: “Last Thursday I visited Mosul to meet Mr Ghanem al-Abed, who wrote to me that he had several thousand signatures demanding my replacement. I could understand that a handover of the signatures in Baghdad would have been difficult, as you told me. However Mr Ghanem did not produce the signatures, but read a statement instead referring also to the meeting in Brussels.”
This is while the spokesman of Mosul’s demonstrators said of his meeting with Martin Kobler on Al-Sharqia TV on April 11: “The way he was speaking about the People’s Mojahedin, he had forgotten he was sitting in Iraq and in Ninawa province. We tell him about innocent (Iraqi) prisoners, he says the People’s Mojahedin! We accused him of being a criminal and and of being the main collaborator in the assassination of Iraqis and biased in favor of the Iraqi government, and lacking professional integrity.”
6- Kobler writes: “I would like again to remind you that UN monitors should have access to individual residents. Monitors report that they were told that private meetings could not take place without the approval of the section head.”
This lie is a clear attempt to set the stage for suppressive measures by the Iraqi government. As the residents and their representatives have said dozens of times, if Kobler had minimal honesty and integrity, he would say who and in what section of Liberty and to which UNAMI monitor this was said.
7- Kobler, in order to handle the role of one of his special agents in the persecution of residents, including harassment and psychological war which disrupts residents resting time, and to give misleading and false reports against the residents, he writes: “I would also once again stress that aggressive behavior vis-a-vis the monitors, like spitting in their direction, is unacceptable.”
The residents and their representatives have repeatedly exposed this Kobler lie and have explained that residents neither showed any aggressive behaviour towards the monitors, nor insulted them. The fact of the matter is that based on the experience of the past year and despite the goodwill and comprehensive cooperation of the residents and their representatives and Mrs. Rajavi with Kobler and UNAMI, Kobler’s real mission has not been monitoring the situation of Liberty residents in order to give them their rights according to humanitarian and human rights standards, but to protect Iraq and the mullahs’ regime’s interests, and inflict persecution and psychological torture on the residents. Kobler’s special agent, who communicates the Ministry of Intelligence messages, as pointed out in April 11 statement of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, intends to create mayhem and provocation in Liberty and to provide an excuse for suppressive measures against the residents.
That’s why the representatives and lawyers of residents on April 8, 11, 12 and 13, strongly urged representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United States in Liberty and in Geneva and Washington that until the responsibility of Liberty in the framework of the UN is given to UNHCR, representatives of US and UNHCR accompany Kobler’s agents in all visits to Liberty, so that there remains no place for publishing false and contradictory claims.
With great regret, the US Embassy in Baghdad did not accept this invitation, referring it to the UN. Earlier Secretary Clinton stressed in her December 25, 2011, statement that ‘officials from US Embassy Baghdad will visit (Camp Liberty) regularly and frequently’.
The Iranian resistance once again seriously stresses the need for the accompaniment of a representative from the US Embassy and a UNHCR representative with Kobler’s agents in order to see the facts for themselves and to ensure the truthfulness of Kobler’s claims against the residents in every issue.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 14, 2013
