Iranian regime intelligence agents and Iraqi PM’s committee of suppression of Ashraf force defectors from Ashraf to return to Iran despite earlier promises of sending them to Europe
NCRI – According to credible reports obtained from inside the Iranian regime, after the 2008 closure of the Temporary International Presence Facility (TIPF), which was controlled by the American forces, and following the transfer of Camp Ashraf’s protection to the Iraqi forces in early 2009, the Iranian regime’s Intelligence Ministry is seriously pressuring those who defected from Ashraf with earlier promises of traveling to Europe to return to Iran instead.
Some of the defected individuals have given testimonies from inside Iran, the taped recordings of which are available to be provided to international authorities. According to these testimonies, after leaving Ashraf, the defectors were taken by Iraqi forces to Mohajer Hotel in Baghdad and placed under house arrest. Eight of them were placed in a room that usually holds only two people. The doors were then locked and the defectors were treated like prisoners. On a daily basis every single defector was taken to the ground floor of the hotel to be interrogated by the clerical regime’s intelligence operatives and later sent back to their rooms.
As noted in the NCRI Secretariat’s April 20, 2010 statement, Mohajer Hotel is one of the locations in Baghdad which has come under the complete control of the notorious Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The hotel has become a base for the regime’s intelligence and terrorist Qods Force operatives in the Iraqi capital. One of the intelligence agents identified as Haj Ali Navidi, who is considered the representative of the regime’s embassy and MOIS, as well as a number of other agents established a permanent workplace at the hotel.
Navidi and agents of the terrorist Qods Force carry out interrogations at the ground floor and use both threats and enticements to demand the defectors to go to Iran. By repeating the interrogations and using various pressure tactics and restrictions, they try to tire the defectors out and make them desperate enough to agree to go to Iran and to serve MOIS. Leaving the hotel and access to phones and other forms of communication are strictly forbidden or else severely limited and closely monitored by the regime’s agents. The regime’s Intelligence Ministry also uses medical treatment and pharmaceutical drugs as leverage over the defectors. In order to take these individuals to Iran and place them at the service of MOIS, well-known and despised agents, such as Mostafa Mohammadi and Massoud Khodabandeh, are used extensively. The latter recently returned to London from Baghdad.
Those who have not returned to Iran have been transferred from Mojaher Hotel to Qasr al-Zohour Hotel.
It is worth mentioning that former Iraqi National Security Advisor, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, and the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry carried out private interviews in early 2009 with each and every Ashraf resident outside the camp premises in places which were under the supervision of Iraqi armed forces. During the interviews, which were conducted in the presence of representatives of the American forces and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the residents were promised that if they agree to leave Ashraf within one or two weeks, they will be sent to European countries.
After a year of extracting information from the defectors, MOIS sends some of the individuals who are certain will be loyal to it to Europe illegally using forged passports. Once arriving in Europe, these individuals will then begin to disseminate propaganda and lies, while justifying the policies, attacks and killings carried out by the Iranian regime and Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, against Ashraf residents. Navidi personally briefs the new agents on how to pass through passport control at the airport and board planes, destroying their Iranian passports once at the destination and ultimately seeking refugee status at the host country.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 15, 2010
