NCRI – Hundreds of families and friends of the Iranian dissidents residing in Ashraf City, Iraq demonstrated across from the White House on Monday.
Camp Ashraf, 70 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, has housed Iranian refugees and the exiled opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) for two decades.
NCRI – Hundreds of families and friends of the Iranian dissidents residing in Ashraf City, Iraq demonstrated across from the White House on Monday.
Camp Ashraf, 70 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, has housed Iranian refugees and the exiled opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) for two decades.
The demonstrators called for continued protection of their loved ones by the US forces in Iraq. Ashraf residents are "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Amnesty International has urged Iraq and the United States to treat the PMOI as "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and not deport them to Iran. The 1949 pact bans extradition or forced repatriation of people who could face torture or persecution.
Last week, the International Committee of Jurists in Defense of Ashraf called in a sit-in outside the UN headquarters in Geneva not to transfer the Ashraf residents' protection to any other authority since their lives would be in grave danger.
"Expelling the Iranian opposition from Iraq has been one of Tehran's main demands," said Mr. Marc Henzelin, a committee member who visited Ashraf last month, on September 2.
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Editor's note: picture from AFP-Iranian-American supporters of the Iranian Resistance and families of Camp Ashraf residents march on September 8, 2008 in Lafayette Park across from the White House in Washington, DC. The demonstrators are demanding continued US protection for 3, 350 members of Iran's main opposition, the People's Mojahedin of Iran.
