NCRI – US President Barack Obama must not meet Iraq’s ‘murderer and kidnapper’ prime minister Nouri al-Maliki unless he releases the seven Iranian dissident taken hostages during the Camp Ashraf massacre, the World Organisation Against Torture has demanded.
Al-Maliki is due to visit Mr Obama at the White House on November 1 – but any meeting would ‘severely damage’ the president’s credibility, the human rights organisation said.
It blamed al-Maliki for commanding the September 1 Ashraf atrocity in which 52 Iranian dissidents were murdered, and said the hostages were now being interrogated and tortured
on his orders.
The group’s president Pierre Galand said in a statement: “It has been 58 days since the criminal attack on Camp Ashraf north of Baghdad when 52 defenceless Iranian refugees were savagely executed by Iraqi Special Forces under command of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on 1 September and seven more including six women were taken hostage.
“A UN report noted that many victims had been handcuffed before being shot in the head. Wounded refugees were finished-off with coup de graces in the camp’s clinic.
While evidence footage, witness accounts and technical data leave absolutely no doubt that Iraqi government was directly involved in this criminal attack which involved hundreds of uniformed Iraq soldiers,… Maliki has astonishingly claimed to have no knowledge at all of who committed the crime or where the hostages have been taken.
“According to reliable reports, the hostages who are being held in Baghdad, have been interrogated and tortured.”
The European Parliament had unanimously adopted a resolution for their unconditional release, while supporters of the Camp Ashraf residents are staging
hunger strikes around the world, the group said.
It added: “The World Organisation Against Torture calls on President Obama not to meet with a murderer and a kidnapper who has been indicted by Spanish court for his previous crimes against Iranian refugees in Iraq.
“Unless Maliki releases the seven hostages and allows an independent international investigation to be conducted into the 1 September massacre and previous killings by Iraqi forces, any meeting would damage Obama’s credibility on human rights.
“The EU should also call for a peacekeeping force to protect the remaining 3,000 asylum-seekers and refugees at Camp Liberty from further attacks by Iraqi forces until they are moved to safe countries.”
