Tahar Boumedra said the security at Liberty was ‘worthless’ and he was certain there would be further attempts to bomb the camp.
After three and half years working as the Special Representative’s adviser on Camp Ashraf affairs, he resigned in May 2012 in protest UNAMI chief Martin Kobler’s actions.
The roofs of the buildings at Liberty were so weak a soldier could put his fist through them – giving residents no protection from air attacks, Mr Boumedra said.
He told a conference in Paris how he was the first to assess the security at Camp Liberty with an expert from the United Nations Mission in Iraq.
UNAMI chief Martin Kobler claimed he was moving the residents of Ashraf to Liberty to save their lives, but in fact it was aimed at splitting up the leadership of the Iranian dissents to ‘cut the head from the body’.
And now they were hemmed in with concrete ‘T-walls’ topped with barbed wire, security cameras and listening devices designed to contain and control the overcrowded population, he said.
Mr Boumedra added: “A lot of people ask why Kobler is more enthusiastic about closing down Camp Ashraf and moving people to Camp Liberty than anybody else? More than the Iraqis themselves.
“Let me tell you, he’s a man on a mission, and that mission is to establish some kind of ‘love relationship’ between UNAMI and the prime minister Al-Maliki.
“This is good for Prime Minister Al-Maliki because it means he is then holding UNAMI as a hostage.
“UNAMI has been mortgaged. And Kobler is paying this mortgage. This is the reality, and the United Nations in New York is approving this.”
Martin Kobler’s ridiculous comparison
Mr Boumedra ridiculed Mr Kobler’s suggestion that his own home in Baghdad’s Green Zone was similar to Camp Liberty.
He said: “He tells them he lives in a place like theirs with T-walls. Well let me tell you exactly what his place is like.
“The roofing in the UNAMI compound in the Green Zone is impossible to penetrate. You have one-meter sandbags on the roof, then steel, then a one-meter space, then another layer of sandbags, which makes it impossible for any missile to penetrate.
“But in Camp Liberty, the buildings have a soft skin. A strong soldier could hit it with one hand and break it.
“But the worst is the high density of the population in just half a kilometer square, which makes it so vulnerable that if you throw a stone from outside the wall, you will be bound to touch somebody.
“These are not secrets to the United Nations, they have been reported to New York. And yet, we are telling the Ashrafis that we are taking them to a place where their lives will be safe.
“If this is saving lives, it defeats me, and also it makes it difficult to see how the American taxpayer, the French taxpayer, the German taxpayer should be contributing to a system that persecutes the Ashrafis and allows such atrocities in Ashraf and Camp Liberty.”
UN must overhaul UNAMI and launch a Commission of Inquiry into the Liberty attacks
As long as those in charge kept on misleading the international community, further attacks would take place – and the only way to prevent that is to change the way UNAMI operates, Mr Boumedra said.
He added: “While the present format of UNAMI is in place, there will be massacres, and there will be covering up.
“The human rights report (on conditions at Liberty) has been doctored. We prepare reports aimed at not upsetting Al-Maliki.
“They are revised in Geneva and in New York, and anything likely to upset Al-Maliki is deleted. This is how we functioned in UNAMI.
“Also, UNAMI’s public information office is tasked to publish all the negative information that it can collect about the MEK and Ashrafis, whether in or outside Iraq.
“This is presented to the United Nations and done intentionally to harm the Ashrafis.”
UN’s double standard
Mr Boumedra compared Liberty to the conditions at another camp in Iraq that was home to 11,000 members of the PKK – the Kurdistan workers party.
He said: “They live in Camp Makmur and they’re armed. It’s armed group that are fighting Turkey. This group walks around in the camp with arms in their hands openly. Nobody bothers them.
“When the United Nations wanted to take care of them, within three months the UNHCR had registered them and regularized their situation and gave them travelling documents. They gave them the right to move around in Iraq. They gave them the right to undertake income generating activities. They also have travel documents to go abroad for those who want to study or those who want to go as tourists.
“Why this double standard? We have in Camp Ashraf a population that was disarmed years ago, verified by the Americans and the Iraqis, and now it’s a disarmed civilian population.
“On the other hand, we have a group openly carrying arms. These ones who benefit from protection and Makmur is declared as a refugee camp.”
Call for investigation
Mr Boumedra called on the UN to launch an immediate commission of inquiry in the recent attack at Liberty and to how it is being dealt with by UNAMI and Martin Kobler.
“The other option would be to take what I’m saying as defamation of the United Nations and take me to court.
“But keeping quiet is not a solution. So take me to court or dispatch a commission of inquiry. But keeping quiet is unacceptable.”