NCRI – Five months after the massacre and hostage taking of Ashraf residents on September 1 by Iraqi forces, agents of the Ashraf repressive committee yesterday posted a letter signed by “Major Nofel, Camp Ashraf Police Station Chief” on the wall of the Iraqi forces center in Camp Liberty calling on “Camp Ashraf residents” and their “legal representatives” to be ready to deliver their testimony on the “incident” that took place in Camp Ashraf to based on “decision of the investigative judge” issued on the 3 September 2013.
Putting the judge’s decision into the action after five months has passed is yet another of the conspiracies staged to cloak the crime against humanity and cover up the role of those involved in it.
The Iranian Resistance has time and again in statements (No. 65, 73, 77, 86, 92 issued on Sept. 25, Oct. 7, Nov. 1, Nov. 15,) has stated that Nouri al Maliki’s goal in these investigation is to whitewash his bloody hands and instead accuse the victims of the crime.
He is seeking to portray the hostages and the 42 surviving Ashraf residents as the ones behind this attack and keep those responsible for this crime safe from justice and accountability.
This is while in the past few months the US government, European Union, US Congress, European Parliament, Amnesty International and … have called for independent international investigations into the September 1st massacre.
Also 35 senior US dignitaries, including 10 generals, former US House of Representatives Speakers and presidential candidates, former secretaries and ambassadors, wrote to the US Secretary of State: “Asking the Iraqi government, which committed these atrocities, to perform an impartial investigation and make those results public is absolutely ludicrous. But we do not even have that pretense of objectivity.”
On September 25, a three-man team dispatched by Diyala police chief General Shemmari, commander of the attack on Camp Ashraf, came to Camp Liberty to interview a number of the eyewitnesses.
Two of the members of the team were Shemmari’s deputies who commanded the attack.
Despite the fact that the residents lawyers have rejected the investigations as illegal, one of the witnesses delivered his testimony for four and half hours. In the end, however, the delegation was not even willing to give a copy of the testimony to the witness himself.
Despite all this, as stated in the above-mentioned statements, the residents’ representatives have time and again said to Iraqi forces, UNAMI and US representatives that the residents who survived the Ashraf massacre are ready to testify before representatives of the UN and US Embassy on the condition that a copy of their testimony is given to them, so there is no chance of changes being made in their testimony.
The Iranian Resistance once again calls on the UN to conduct an independent and comprehensive probe into the September 1massacre and place all the perpetrators before justice so Maliki and Khamenei will not be able to cover up this grave crime against humanity, allow the major criminals to escape all accountability and pave the way for more massacres in the future.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
February 1, 2014
