The EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton should lobby the Obama administration to change the status of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, the parliament said in a declaration approved by a majority vote in Brussels today. In January 2009, the EU allowed the group to operate freely throughout the 27- nation bloc, ending restrictions imposed in 2002.
Ashton should also push the United Nations to provide “urgent protection” for the residents of Camp Ashraf in Iraq, which has been a base for the group’s members since 1986, lawmakers said in the statement.
U.S. forces handed over responsibility for security at the camp to Iraq in February 2009. Since then, the group says its 3,400 residents have been deliberately mistreated by the pro- Iranian Iraqi government.
Iran blames the Mujahedeen for the assassinations of high- ranking Iranian officials in the 1970s and 1980s. The group says it has foresworn violence.