NCRI – Following a terrorist attack on a bus carrying Iraqi workers to Ashraf City, the residence of thousands of PMOI members in Iraq, on Monday, May 29, Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee, called on the UN Secretary General to intervene.
In his letter to Mr. Kofi Annan, he wrote: "I request that you urge all relevant parties, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the Government of Iraq and the Multi-National Force-Iraq to guarantee the rights of Ashraf residents as stipulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention and recognize their legal status as political refugees in Iraq, something to which they have been entitled since 1980s."
Mohaddessin also called on the UN Secretary General to condemn unequivocally the heinous crime.
Monday’s terrorist attack, carried out three kilometers north of the Iraqi town of Khalis, left 13 dead and 15 wounded, some in critical condition.
This terrorist and cowardly attack against defenseless Iraqi workers who have been working in Ashraf City for many years was carried out just one day after the mullahs’ Foreign Minister had visited Iraq. Directional and high-explosive bombs manufactured by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were used in the attack.
"The religious, terrorist dictatorship ruling Iran, which views the PMOI’s presence in Iraq as a major bulwark against its export of fundamentalism and terrorism as well as its attempts to install a puppet regime in that country, has been continuously engaged on an extensive campaign to force the extradition or the expulsion of the Mojahedin from Iraq," said Mohaddessin in his letter.
In August 2005, the mullahs’ operatives in the Iraqi Minister of Interior, abducted two PMOI members, Mohammad Ali Zahedi and Hossein Pouyan in Baghdad’s Karada Street and took them to the Interior Ministry and then to an unknown location. In an action that is contrary to international humanitarian law, last year, through its proxies in the Iraqi government, the clerical regime succeeded in denying fuel, water and electricity rations for PMOI personnel who reside in Ashraf City.
In late April 2006, in an official memorandum by their ambassador in Baghdad to Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the mullahs voiced protest over the extensive support by Iraqi personalities, parties, tribes, sheikhs and citizens for the Mojahedin and demanded that the PMOI and Iraqi citizens be deprived of their right to free speech. A large segment of Iraqi society and political circles in that country as well as political and parliamentary circles in Europe and the United States condemned the mullahs’ actions and underscored the rights of the PMOI personnel in Ashraf City as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The clerical regime has resorted to such inhuman actions at a time when after a 16-month exhaustive investigation, the Multi-National Force-Iraq recognized the status of the PMOI Personnel in Iraq as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
