NCRI – In an international conference held in Geneva on Thursday, September 22 by the Swiss Committee in Defense of Ashraf, prominent European and American dignitaries and personalities expressed their deep concerns about intentions of the Iranian regime and the Iraqi government against residents of Ashraf and especially the illegally set deadline of December 2011 for closing the camp. The conference called on the UN Secretary General, the UN High Commission for Refugees and UN High Commission for Human Rights as well as the United States to take immediate measures to provide protection for Camp Ashraf and prevent repeat of similar massacres of the past and also press the Iraqi government to cancel the 2011 deadline until the resettlement to third countries of all residents is finalized.
Below is speech by Louis Freeh served as the director of the FBI under two US Presidents from 1993 to 2001:
Thank you very much. I am very pleased to be here tonight. And I, first of all, want to complement you, as an audience, who have been absolutely extraordinary, for your attention and your patience, and on behalf of all us, particularly my American colleagues.
And many who are not here, you know that your friends and family members in some cases in Camp Ashraf will see this. I don’t know if they are going see lives, but they will see this tonight. And our message to you tonight is in the words of General, of Prime Minister Churchill “ Never, never, never, never give up”.
President Radjavi we applaud your leadership, we honour your programs, programs that have every single attribute of human rights, freedom rights, women rights and we pray for the day when you can go to Tehran and also come to Washington DC, please and see us there.
Three very simple repeated but critical messages tonight. Madam Secretary, M. President, delist the MEK immediately from the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
This organization is not a terrorist organization. He does not have the facts that support that. The law militates against that finding being continued and the reality of everything we know and believe in undercuts that very dangerous and continuing labeling.
Number 2. Please protect the men and woment of Camp Ashraf immediately.
And 3. Support, as Mayor Giuliani said, support positively and affirmatively and aggressively the MEK and freedom fighters in Iran.
To the men and women and the families in Camp Ashraf, we applaud your courage, we honour your sacrifices, please don’t give up on the Americans here.
General Conway was right. But you know, we believe that the Americans now have exhausted every other possibility with respect to this long and very dangerous and life threatening listing of this organization. So don’t give up on the Americans.
We have been talking about this for a long time. We have been speaking about it. We have been fighting as hard as we can in the US and your message resonates very strongly.
Members of our Congress, as you heard, General Mukasey mentioned. An incredibly extraordinary group of former American officials who do know something by the way about terrorism have supported you, have put their names, their honor and their reputation behind a very simple message that you must be delisted immediately from this foreign terrorist organization list.
We also neglected to mention former CIA directors, former national security advisor to the current President of the US. Governor Rendell talked about the different kinds of evidence, and you have lots of different kinds of evidence here that compels you to this conclusion. But beyond you know what we know and what we hear, it is also what we have not heard. And let me just tell you something about not just Washington but any capital in any government in any country in the world, if there was one skin tale of evidence of credible fact that supported delisting of the MEK as a terrorist organization, do you think for a minute, an Attorney General of the US, the Mayor of NY Ccity, a former common dun, ambassadors, governors would be up here?
We would not have got calls, we would not have got emails. People would have said “look, I can’t tell you why but you really should not be supporting this organization”.
Ladies and gentlemen, nothing, zero, nada, in that regard. Not a word officially, unofficially that comes to us that supports this designation.
More importantly, talking a little bit about what the attorney general said with respect to this delesting, you know what the facts are. The facts are completely contrary to this designation.
For 14 months, our Secretary of State has been under order by the US Court of Appeal to review and verify the sources which the Department of State alleged supported this designation. We have got nothing from the State Department and all these 14 months, except silence and delay. And you know there are a lot of ways to communicate things, particularly in Washington DC. I guess again probably every other capital. We have not seen one word from the Secretary, the Departement or anyone on behalf of the US Government that supports directly or indirectly, classified or unclassified, the notion that this organization is a threat to the USA or that has the intent or the capability to engage in terrorist activity.
We have not seen a Court filing by the way, as General Mukasey said, we have seen some crazy questions that the Department of State has asked as they run the clock for the last 14 months, including questions about “two Iraqi roadside bombings which killed US soldiers”. “About a rand flowing on height hijacking on a serial band plane”. These have nothing to do whatsoever with this designation.
We have not heard anything in congressional testimony.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have not even had a leaek in Washington DC that indicates in any way shape or form that this organization should maintain itself on that list. And the reason for that is there is no law, there are no facts that justifies this designation.
So, let’s talk about maybe another approach. And we are very delighted by the way with the Commissioner and the action that has recently been taken, good respect to the protection and designation. And naturally the message tonight, more than the delisting, more than the future of Iran, which will be a liberty future, it is the immediate protection of these 3400 people.
You know the mayor spoke about Ahmadinejad coming to NY City and I just left NY city on Monday, and he is absolutely right? The city is full of motorcades and what struck me and strikes me every year, when I am there, if I go there on this particular time, thousands and thousands of young American women, police officers, right Mr. Mayor, your police officers, secret service agents, FBI agents, Department of State security, thousand of these young men and women are doing what? Protecting ! Protecting the lives with their own lives, of hundreds of diplomats, including people like Ahmadinejad.
You don’t have a slightly different view of that. When I was a very young FBI agent in New York, in the 1970’s, my squad got an assignment to protect the Shah of Iran who was in New York city for medical treatment.
We followed that assignment, my colleagues and I and people who do that are willing to put their lives at risk to protect someone. And we know the history of the Shah. We know the history of Savak. We know what they stood for and represented. But the fact is under the rule of law and under the duty to protect those choices must be decisively and definitively made.
The United States of America has a duty to protect the men and women of Camp Ashraf. A sound promise by our US military and that is not even getting to the moral obligation and everything else that goes with it.
So we have the very unusual situation as noted that our State department and our government and the President of the Republic of Iran are in complete agreement on this very dangerous proposition. And why is it dangerous?
You know it is not just a passive listing, it is not just a designation that goes on to a piece of paper for policy reasons, because, as you heard, there were no facts, even in 1997, that justifies this designation. And I want to talk about that for a minute.
The designation remaining as it is today, is a license to kill, not only to the Iranian MOI and NRGC and its agents but to the Iraqi government as was witnessed so brutally on April 8th of this year. So we don’t avoid our responsibility by not making a decision about this designation, and I am sure the Commissioner of Refugees has to factoring the fact that the USA continues despite the law, despite the facts, to maintain this designation.
There is no question that we have knowledge of what happened in April and we have knowledge and we are noticed as to what will happen again. A conspiracy to commit genocide between the tyrants in Tehran and elements of the Malaki government to eliminate and kill these individuals.
So what I would like to say in closing, we have tried the law, we have tried the facts, we have tried moral obligations, we are willing to make any arguments we can to resolve this very dangerous and life threatening issue.
So one thing I’d like to close with is, you know, our President rightly deserves some prayers for the decisions that were made and the results that we see unfolding now in Libya.
In fact there was a New York Times’ article, which was clearly an article written with great access and great support, and great input, by the President’s staff and key White House policy makers. And they asked the New York Times to make two very powerful points, giving the President, as I said, due credit for what happened in Libya and the policy of the USA.
There were two principles. It is the way the NY Times report and wrote it. Principle number 1: America has responsibility to stop looming a genocide.
Principle number 2: America will not act alone when the safety of US persons is not directly threatened.
So we ask our President and our Secretary tonight to please apply this policy to Camp Ashraf. If we do nothing the looming genocide will occur. We don’t have to speculate about that because we see what has happened before.
Number 2, the US does not have to act alone, we’re acting now with the E.U, the U.K, with the High Commissioner, we are acting with the moral strengths and moral directives of every human being that sees and understands the lives that are at threat here.
So we urge action and we urge it immediately.
Thank you.
