Self-Sacrifice

by Struan Stevenson

  The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Abdel Hadi al-Majali, said a new, moderate, nationalist coalition in Iraq, following the general election, could outvote and isolate the extremist parties. But he said it was the US which supported the pro-Iranian parties in Iraq. He said that if the ‘militia’ won the forthcoming elections, it would point to a dangerous future. He felt that a Sunni could conceivably become the next Prime Minister of Iraq and that this would help to bring peace.

  Later that evening, I had arranged to meet with Sattar Albayber, a member of the political bureau of the Iraqi National Accord movement and a candidate in the forthcoming elections. I had suggested meeting for coffee in the lounge of my hotel, the Intercontinental. As we began our discussion I noticed a man sitting opposite us, wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, who seemed intent on fiddling with his mobile phone. He momentarily met my gaze and quickly looked away. Seconds later I heard the characteristic click of his camera shutter and glanced up in time to see him quickly lower the phone to his lap, pretending to be reading a text message. I whispered to our Iraqi colleagues that I was sure we were being spied upon, and they laughed and confirmed that Jordan is awash with spies who photograph and report back to the Ministry of Intelligence on all meetings and goings-on within their territory. I later discovered that this information was also passed on to the Iraqi government, who had expressed an interest in keeping track of what I was up to in Jordan and who I was meeting.

  I returned to Brussels and instructed my officials to issue invitations to the leaders of the main political parties in Iraq to come to the European Parliament to address the Delegation for Relations with Iraq, before the general election. I wanted to test the water for the likelihood of a non-sectarian, inclusive government being formed following the general election. A delegation of six members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives duly arrived in Brussels, led by Sadiq al-Rikabi, political advisor to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. I met them at the VIP entrance, and as I shook hands warmly with al-Rikabi, he whispered loudly in my ear, ‘We know whom you’ve been meeting in Jordan, Mr Stevenson, and we don’t like it.’

  As an opening remark, this was certainly blunt. OK, I figured, if the gloves are off it suits me. When we took our seats for the opening session of dialogue, I launched into a bitter condemnation of their treatment of the Ashraf residents, the massacre, the looting, the hostage-taking, the psychological torture and the siege of Ashraf. I said this was a breach of humanitarian law and a breach of trust, and it rendered my job as Delegation Chair almost impossible. I insisted on an end to the siege and the full cooperation of the Iraqi government in the re-settlement of the 3,400 Ashrafis to countries of safety. It became a sour and argumentative encounter, and afterwards my officials gently chided me about the need to maintain good diplomatic relations with the Iraqi parliamentarians. ‘I am not going to take any lessons in diplomacy from these bastards,’ I replied angrily.

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  Interviews with PMOI Refugees Camp Liberty, August 2014

  The Medical Siege of Camp Ashraf

  Fatimah Alizadeh

  ‘My name is Fatimah Alizadeh. In the second half of 2008, I was diagnosed with cancer. Prior to the US handing responsibility for the protection of Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis, I had three major surgeries performed on me. On 3 April 2009 I was getting ready for my fourth surgery when the Iraqi forces, under the direction of Movafagh Rubaiei, prevented the physician from entering Ashraf. On the same day three other female residents were also scheduled for surgery, but all the operations were delayed. After a week due to international pressure and a press conference about medical restrictions, the Iraqi Prime Minister – Nouri al-Maliki – was forced to allow the Iraqi doctors to perform the surgeries, and as a result, they started pressuring the residents.

  For the fifth operation I was supposed to go to Madineh Al Taleb. Seven or eight fully armed soldiers accompanied me to the operating room. When I regained consciousness, all of the soldiers were around my bed. When I asked to see my doctor, the soldiers said, “You are a prisoner and you have to go to back to Ashraf.” My doctor intervened, so I was allowed to rest for a couple of hours, after which the soldiers entered my room and said, “The ambulance is ready and we have to leave immediately.” I was brought down several flights of stairs to the entrance of the hospital, but there was no ambulance waiting.

  I waited nearly two hours in the sun for the ambulance to arrive. When the ambulance arrived there were eight people already in it. When we climbed on board there were a total of ten people inside the ambulance. One of the patients in the ambulance was Fathollah, who was suffering from stomach cancer and unable to sit down. Ten critically-ill patients in one ambulance set out towards Ashraf. The driver was driving very fast, disregarding all the speed bumps on the road. Upon reaching Ashraf everyone was in a bad shape and in a serious condition.

  At Ashraf, we were received by Dr Omar, who was actually an Iraqi officer who had been responsible for systematic mistreatment and torture of the patients, posing as a doctor. When we told him of our ordeal, he said, “At least you have it better than the Iraqi citizens!” We were then placed at the New Iraq Hospital where the Ministry of Information agents were using loudspeakers to yell profanities all night long, making rest and peace of mind for patients impossible. This was the psychological torture. Three months later, when I went to see my doctor for my next operation I found another person sitting next to the specialist. I asked him, “Who are you?” He responded: “I have orders from Dr Omar to supervise your visit so you don’t talk about politics.” Even the doctor didn’t have the authority to make him leave the room.

  Another time when I went for chemotherapy to Baghdad, my doctor gave me a series of medication for my chemo treatment so I could follow up my treatment in Ashraf. When we reached the checkpoint they confiscated my medication. It took a long time to be able to get my medication back. Another time, coming back from surgery in Baghdad, twelve people were placed in the same ambulance, one of whom was a patient with stomach cancer who had just undergone a gastroscopy procedure. He had a severe case of diarrhoea and was throwing up all the way to Ashraf. The atmosphere in the ambulance was unsanitary and intolerable. On that day Dr Omar was riding with us in the front of the ambulance, laughing all the way to Ashraf. We asked him to check the patient and he kept saying, “It is normal,” and continued to laugh at the situation.

  On several occasions when our brothers and sisters succeeded in getting an appointment through the New Iraq Hospital the guards at the checkpoint would not allow them to leave the camp to make their appointments. After months of pressure, they were allowed to leave for their appointments, but their actual departure from the camp was delayed in such a way that when they arrived in Baghdad after business hours, they had missed their appointments. I was supposed to visit my doctor every three months; I tried to see my doctor for two and a half years but I was not allowed to visit him even once. After two and a half years I was transferred to Camp Liberty and was able to finally see my doctor. My doctor, who was very concerned, informed me that the cancer had spread and my condition had now become critical.’

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  Camp Ashraf and the July 2009 Massacre

  When the PMOI freedom fighters fled to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein gave them a large piece of desert in Diyala Province. Saddam was following the age-old tradition of ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ rather than rewarding the PMOI for military services rendered, as has been alleged by the Mullahs. It was here, on this barren wasteland, that they built Camp Ashraf. Over the years it became a thriving small city, but when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it was bombed and then surrounded by American forces. Indeed, in classified documents disclosed later at court hearings in the UK, it was shown that the Iranian Mullahs had demanded the bombing of Camp Ashraf, and other PMOI camps in Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The British Government had subsequently assured Tehran it would oblige, and had urged the US military to c
arry out the bombing. The completely unjustified aerial bombardment of Camp Ashraf that then took place led to the loss of many innocent lives.

  Despite this attack and despite the fact that the PMOI in Ashraf were heavily armed and well-trained, the residents bore no malice against the Americans and they agreed voluntarily to hand over their weapons in return for guaranteed protection. The American army and intelligence services carried out exhaustive interviews with every individual in Ashraf. Following 16 months of review and screening of each and every Ashraf resident, the US Government on 2 July 2004 recognised all of them as ‘protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention’ and ‘Senior American officials said extensive interviews by officials of the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had not come up with any basis to bring charges against any members of the group’ (New York Times, 27 July 2004). This meant that not a single person was engaged in any kind of terrorist or criminal activity, and that they posed no threat to the US military; each person in Ashraf was then issued with a photo-identity card on which the US Government guaranteed their personal safety.

  Under this shield of American military security, Ashraf continued to thrive during the insurgency that raged elsewhere in Iraq. The residents of Ashraf were popular with their Iraqi neighbours in Diyala Province. They were industrious and produced numerous goods to sell locally, earning their keep and financing the gradual expansion of the camp’s facilities. Foreign parliamentarians, lawyers and family members were allowed to visit Camp Ashraf, and glowing reports of the camp’s well-ordered society were fed back to the West.

  Of course the camp was regarded by the Iranian regime as a ‘viper’s nest’ of PMOI opposition activity, and they made repeated demands on the Iraqi government to close the camp and deport all of the residents back to Iran, where they would face certain torture and execution. The Iraqi government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a puppet of the Iranian Mullahs, was more than happy to comply with this request, but could not do so while the Americans provided protection to Ashraf. The Iranians, meanwhile, routinely arrested family members who were returning to Iran after visiting their sons and daughters in Ashraf. Many of these innocent mothers and fathers were subsequently executed simply for the crime of having visited Camp Ashraf. Indeed the Iranian Islamic Penal Code, articles 186-189, states that support for or membership of the PMOI amounts to the crime of ‘mohareb’ – waging war against God – the penalty for which is death.

  The storm clouds over Ashraf were gathering. The seeds of tragedy were being sown. The US military had begun to make preparations to leave Iraq, and the 3,400 Iranian dissidents who now remained in Camp Ashraf were fearful of their fate once US military protection was withdrawn. In the EU, we were working feverishly to ensure their continued safety.

  Now a senior White House official had confirmed that talks were under way between the US and Iraqi governments about the US withdrawing its protection and transferring control of Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi government. I was in no doubt that this action would constitute a grave betrayal by the US government. It was all horribly reminiscent of other great acts of betrayal in contemporary history, like the massacre of 2,700 Cossacks by the Soviets after they had been betrayed by the British military in Lienz, Austria, in 1945. Senior British military officials assured the Cossacks that they were being taken to a conference and would return to Lienz that same evening. Instead, they were driven under guard to a Soviet prison, where they were promptly accused of being Nazi collaborators and executed.

  In the Balkans conflict, in July 1995, after the United Nations had declared Srebrenica a UN-protected ‘safe area’, 400 UN Dutch ‘blue-helmet’ peacekeepers stepped aside and allowed units of the Army of Republika Srpska, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, to massacre an estimated 8,000 Bosnian men and boys. In an urgent letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 4 April 2009 I said: ‘As you are aware, the situation of Iranian opposition exiles in Ashraf Camp in Iraq has become an international issue since the beginning of January this year, when US forces handed over the security of Ashraf to the Iraqi government. Since then we have witnessed several threatening comments by senior Iraqi officials against these Iranian refugees.’

  I told the Secretary of State that the scene was being set for another epic betrayal and massacre in Ashraf, and asked the question, why do we treat our friends so badly and play into the hands of our enemies? PMOI supporters inside Iran have risked their lives repeatedly to provide the West with top-level secret intelligence about the activities of the Mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It was the PMOI who first disclosed the existence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran. But now we seemed set to abandon them to their fate. Handing over control of Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis would be like putting King Herod in charge of the nursery, but that was the scenario we were now facing.

  The US forces who had been stationed at Ashraf since 2003, finally packed up and left on 1 January 2009, reneging on their safety guarantees to the 3,400 residents and abandoning them to their fate. Only a handful of USF-I (US Forces-Iraq) military observers were left behind to monitor the camp. The Mullahs in Tehran had been waiting for this opportunity. Now they could pounce. However a large group of US forces was based in the northern part of Ashraf, called FOB Grizzly, monitoring the region. They knew what was going on around Ashraf but did nothing.

  In late July 2009, the massacre that we had all predicted took place. The Iraqi military sent five Divisions of heavily armed troops with tanks and armoured vehicles to mow down unarmed men and women in a brutal assault that shocked the civilized world. On 28 July Colonel Saadi, the commanding officer of the Iraqi forces surrounding Ashraf, entered the camp to speak to the residents’ leadership. He said that it was his intention to erect a police station in the camp near to the water-pumping station. The residents were wholly opposed to the plan, and around 2 pm, Colonel Saadi stormed off in anger. Two hours later, he returned leading hundreds of troops and police and stormed the camp, using Humvees and bulldozers to flatten perimeter fences and walls.

  The Ashraf residents quickly formed a human chain to try to defend their territory, and they were mown down by troops opening fire with live ammunition and throwing stun grenades. Unarmed men and women were beaten with nail-spiked clubs and batons. The Iraqis claimed that they had come under attack from knives, stones and sharp tools wielded by the residents, which was completely untrue. The violent assault lasted for at least four hours until nightfall. The following morning, 29 July, the Iraqis returned to Ashraf around 10.15 am. This time there were an estimated 1,000 troops, police and members of the notorious 56th Brigade under the direct command of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They resumed the violence on the same scale as the evening before, firing live rounds at the fleeing men and women and hunting them down and crushing them under the wheels of speeding Humvees and armoured vehicles. Witnesses claimed that many of the attackers, although dressed in Iraqi uniforms, spoke perfect Farsi, indicating that they were Iranian or at least had been trained in Iran.

  Video evidence filmed by some of the survivors showed how the Iraqi forces used extreme violence, including gunfire, water cannons and batons, killing eleven people and injuring 443, 42 of them seriously; two others died later due to their injuries and the denial of access to proper medical care by the Iraqis, who prevented doctors and ambulances from evacuating the wounded; UNAMI inspectors later found the Camp Ashraf ambulance riddled with bullets. It had been fired at repeatedly as doctors tried to ferry the wounded to safety. Following the attack, the Iraqi army and police went on a looting spree, stealing 49 vehicles and helping themselves to air-conditioning units, tables, chairs, generators and anything they could carry to furnish their own base on the camp’s perimeter.

  Ominously, 36 men had been seized during the attack and were subsequently and ludicrously charged with ‘assaulting officials on duty’. They were detained in a local police station, many of them suffering br
oken limbs and head-wounds inflicted by the Iraqi forces during their arrests. On 24 August an investigating judge ordered their immediate release due to lack of evidence. The public prosecutor, undoubtedly acting on the orders of the Prime Minister, immediately revoked the release order and set a date for a judicial hearing of the case against the 36 in mid-September. He also lodged further indictments against each, accusing them of being illegal aliens who had entered Iraq without the correct papers. In protest, the 36 started a hunger strike from the day of their arrest.

  Amnesty International, in its Iraq Report 2010 regarding the human rights situation in the country, wrote, ‘Following months of rising tension, Iraqi security forces forcibly entered and took control of Camp Ashraf on 28 and 29 July. The camp houses some 3,400 members or supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), an Iranian opposition group that had been under US military control since 2003. Video footage showed Iraqi security forces deliberately driving military vehicles into crowds of protesting camp residents. The security forces also used live ammunition, apparently killing at least nine camp residents, and detained 36 others who they tortured’.

  Tahar Boumedra, Chief of the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), in his office in Baghdad, had begun to hear sketchy details of the massacre. He immediately applied to the Iraqi government for permission to take a fact-finding team to Ashraf. It took eleven days, despite his repeated protests, for permission to be granted. Pathetically, the Iraqi government argued that it required time for the residents of Ashraf to ‘cool off’ before it would be safe for the UNAMI team to visit the camp.

  Tahar Boumedra and his team were finally permitted to visit Ashraf on 10 August. They took evidence from survivors, collected photos and video films of the attack, looked at medical reports and documented statements. They then confronted Colonel Saadi who had commanded the attack, and he admitted that he had been ordered to enter the camp by the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He claimed to have met fierce resistance from the residents, and said this was why he was forced to resort to using weapons. Mr Boumedra stated later that his team received no evidence that supported Colonel Saadi’s version of events. Saadi became evasive, according to Boumedra, and admitted that ‘mistakes had been made’. When questioned about the shooting, he said he had heard shots but had no idea where they had come from. He also claimed that he had seen PMOI residents throwing themselves under the wheels of the military vehicles!