Self-Sacrifice (15 page)

When my father came to visit me in Ashraf he used to ask me, “Are you Akbar?” I asked him, “Why are you asking me that?” He said, “I kept hearing different stories about you while I was in prison.” He went on to say that the first time he was in prison they had told him he had a visitor who had information about his son (me). When my father met with the visitor, he told my father that I had left the PMOI and was in a camp in Iraq and needed money. My father said “I was not sure if he was telling me the truth or not,” but because he did not want to show any weakness in front of his jailers he told the visitor, “I don’t care what he does, it does not concern me; he has chosen his own path.” My father said the story occupied his mind for months and disturbed him, and he thought to himself, what if it was true.

The henchmen tried to break his resistance, using every dirty trick at their disposal. He said the second time he heard about me was after the US invasion of Iraq. He had been ordered to go to prison to report on my whereabouts, when they told him that I had been killed in the attacks by US forces. He said, “After hearing this news I decided to go to Ashraf and find out for myself. This is why I am in shock, when I find you alive in Ashraf.”

Upon returning from Ashraf my father was arrested for addressing a gathering in Khavaran cemetery (the site of mass graves of political prisoners massacred in 1988). After his arrest, the regime realized that he had gone to Ashraf to visit me, and because of that
they put more pressure on him to repent or he would be executed. He never gave in to their demands, and was executed just because he had gone to Ashraf to visit his son.

My father had been to Ashraf and had seen the high spirits of the resistance and he had taken that same spirit with him to prison and thus became a symbol of resistance in prison. He spread the same spirit to the rest of the prisoners. He kept sending messages and letters from prison exposing the regime’s crimes at every occasion. During imprisonment he had written 25 different messages and letters to newspapers condemning the regime’s crimes. His activities provoked more pressure and torture, which caused a heart attack, leaving him paralyzed down his left side and wheelchair-ridden. When they took him to the gallows, he was on a wheelchair. My mother told me that when my father was out of prison and working in our shoe store, he had printed pictures of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi and placed them under his counter. Whenever he sold a shoe he used to slide one of those pictures in the box for the customers, telling them he had put a present in the box for them. My Mum said, “I kept telling him this is dangerous but he never listened and kept saying, we have to put out the word for Ashraf and the PMOI.”

After they executed my father they did not return his body to us and secretly buried him in one of the villages near his home town. My Dad was a well-known man, and when the villagers realized they were burying him they informed my family. The regime’s Revolutionary Guards had told my family they were not allowed to hold a ceremony for him, but my family did not pay attention to the warning and held a large memorial service. The Guards attacked the memorial service and arrested my mother, and gave her a 10-year prison sentence. My mother was able to escape from Iran, leaving the regime empty-handed. She is now in Paris.

The memory of my father and all the other martyrs will live on forever and their struggle will continue.’

21

The Second Ashraf Massacre

On the morning of Thursday, 7 April 2011, I received a call in my office in Brussels from Tahar Boumedra. He had some deeply disturbing news. He told me that several battalions of the Iraqi army had taken up positions around Camp Ashraf, and that dozens of armoured personnel carriers, Humvees, bulldozers and other engineering vehicles had been strategically positioned around the camp’s perimeter fence. Boumedra said that he was getting calls every half hour from the residents of Ashraf to update him on the escalating crisis. He said he was certain that another attack was imminent, and that he had spoken to a high-ranking army officer who of course had denied everything and assured him that nothing was going to happen.

At 4.45 a.m. the following morning, 8 April, the attack commenced. I began to receive a series of phone calls and emails as the attack progressed and the death toll of Ashrafis mounted. By 9 a.m. there were already 22 dead and hundreds seriously injured; three battalions of the Iraqi military had mounted the assault and they had now seized over one-third of the camp’s territory. I was making frantic phone calls to Ban Ki-moon in New York, António Guterres at UNHCR in Geneva and Baroness Ashton in Brussels. I left messages informing them of this latest brutal assault on unarmed and defenceless ‘people of concern’ to the UN, urging them to contact Maliki immediately to demand a halt to the slaughter.

By the end of the day, the picture became clearer. Under the command of General Ali Gheidan,
¹
commander of Iraqi ground forces, the three Iraqi battalions moved into Ashraf as dawn broke. They used tear-gas and smoke and stun grenades. The Ashrafis, who had been expecting an attack after witnessing the build-up of military
forces over the past three days, immediately formed a human chain to try to prevent the army from moving further into the camp. The soldiers opened fire and snipers were deployed to shoot dead any residents who were trying to film the attack on their mobile phones. Humvees and armoured personnel vehicles were driven at high speed into crowds of Ashrafis, crushing them under the wheels. By evening, 28 Ashrafis were dead.

There had been a small US Force-Iraq (USF-I) observers’ team stationed at Ashraf for weeks. This unit, under the command of Lt. Col. Robert Molinari, was based inside Ashraf and was fully aware of the Iraqi government’s intentions to attack the camp. But despite pleas by the residents to stay, on 7 April, at 10 p.m., seven hours before the attack, his unit mysteriously disappeared. If they had stayed, the Iraqi forces would never have dared to attack. It emerged later, that in anticipation of a violent Iraqi assault on the camp, the USF-I soldiers had been told to leave the area so that they would not witness defenceless people being killed while they were under strict orders not to intervene. Nevertheless, the Americans reappeared on 10 April, following the massacre, and transferred ten of the residents who had the most life-threatening injuries to a nearby USF-I military hospital.

As the horrifying photos and videos of the massacre poured into my email account, I was stunned. We had warned repeatedly that another massacre was imminent and no one had listened. Now 34 unarmed civilians were dead, either gunned down or crushed by military vehicles. Eight of the dead were women, young teachers and artists with their lives ahead of them. Now I was staring at photos of their glazed eyes and blood-spattered heads and chests torn open by bullets, fired by soldiers from the 9th Infantry Division and 5th Armoured Division of the Iraqi military, sent to the camp under the direct orders of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. For two years, I and other prominent politicians had warned that a massacre would take place. I had twice gone to Washington DC, most recently in March 2011, for meetings in the State Department, Congress and the Senate, to warn that unless Hillary Clinton made a public statement on the issue, blood would certainly be shed. I was ignored.

In repeated debates, conferences, hearings, letters and newspaper articles, I warned what was sure to happen. I wrote to the EU
High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Ashton, pleading with her to intervene. In a debate in Strasbourg I called upon her to warn the Iraqi government not to resort to violence over Ashraf. She replied that there were ‘differences of opinion’ over the issue. It took the death of another 34 unarmed civilians to force her to make a public statement condemning the attack. Too little, too late! Her complacency and that of other world leaders like Secretary of State Clinton had simply given the green light to Nouri al-Maliki to go ahead with his murderous attack.

The EU makes a great song and dance about its wonderful ‘European values’. We pride ourselves on upholding human rights and standing up for the oppressed against bullies and aggressors. On 8 April, at 4.45 a.m. in Camp Ashraf, the hollowness of such claims was bloodily exposed. It seems that the EU had little more to contribute than hot air, and in the case of Ashraf, was not even prepared to offer that.

2,500 heavily armed troops and over 40 armoured vehicles, including tracked machines with mounted cannon like small tanks, invaded Ashraf and opened fire on the 3,400 refugees, gunning them down like rabbits in a field. Over 300 residents of the camp had been seriously injured, and the Iraqi authorities were preventing them from accessing proper medical treatment.

I watched horrifying films of the massacre posted on YouTube by residents of the camp. It was plain to see the refugees were fleeing for their lives as armoured cars accelerated across the camp, swerving left and right to mow them down, against a background of gunfire and explosions. This was a calculated and deliberate massacre and a gross violation of human rights. The reaction by the Iraqi government added insult to injury, and fuelled my anger at this crime against humanity. At first they claimed that no one in Ashraf had been killed and that their troops had been firing blanks. However, as pictures of the horror began to leak out across the internet, their story changed. Soon they claimed their 2,500 troops and 40 armoured vehicles had been violently attacked by a stone-throwing mob, and that they had been forced to repel this unprovoked assault. The odious Foreign Minister from neighbouring Iran even congratulated al-Maliki on a job well done, revealing clearly who was the real driving force behind the massacre.

The Iraqi Government denied Tahar Boumedra permission to go to Ashraf until 13 April, the normal weekly UNAMI visiting day; a UNAMI team and some senior officers accompanied him from USFI. He went straight to the hospital in Ashraf, where the Iraqi doctor assured him that only three people had been killed. He noted that the hospital was empty, despite the fact that he had been told that over 300 people had been seriously injured during the massacre. The representatives of the camp’s residents took Boumedra and his team to a makeshift clinic, where they found all of the casualties crammed into every available space, while one of the PMOI doctors tried to care for them. Many had shrapnel and bullet wounds. Others had suffered massive trauma from being crushed under vehicles.

Outside the clinic a crowd of Ashrafis had gathered, holding pictures of their murdered friends and relatives. A 14-year-old girl told Boumedra how her sister had been one of the victims. ‘She was pleading for UNAMI’s help and asking why no-one had come to their aid,’ Boumedra said later. Boumedra’s team was now split into two, with one half going to do the body count and take photos of the deceased, while Boumedra and two other UNAMI officials went to speak to the survivors. They were told that, just as in the first massacre at Ashraf, many of the military personnel involved could be heard to speak to each other and shout insults at the Ashrafis in Farsi. It was also clear that trained Iranian snipers had taken part in the assault, as single gunshot wounds to the head or heart had killed many of the dead.

It was evident that the lack of any meaningful criticism of Maliki following the first Ashraf massacre in July 2009 had emboldened him to strike again, underscoring his threat to use ‘all possible means’ to empty the camp by the end of 2011. Tahar Boumedra demanded an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Maliki’s Chief of Staff, Dr Hamid K. Ahmed, and those in charge of the Ashraf file. They met the same day in Maliki’s office. Dr Ahmed was accompanied by National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayadh, Political Advisor to the PM, George Y. Bakoos and Security Officers Haqqi and Sadiq Mohammad Kazim. Despina Saraliotou from UNAMI and Ambassador Lawrence Butler, Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander of USF-I, accompanied Boumedra.

Dr Ahmed chaired the meeting and opened by praising the ongoing cooperation between UNAMI and the Iraqi Government. Ludicrously, he emphasised the Iraqi government’s commitment to upholding the highest standards of human rights in Camp Ashraf, while urging all possible haste to move the residents to a new location to enable the camp to be vacated by the end of the year. He made no mention whatsoever of the 8th of April massacre. No-one of the Iraqi side mentioned it.

Boumedra gave them a minute-by-minute account of his visit to the camp the previous day, enumerating the number of dead and injured they had found. He said the Iraqi side all stared at their notebooks, refusing to make eye contact and shuffling in obvious embarrassment. Incredibly, the National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayadh then tried to deny that the attack had taken place at all, until Boumedra confronted them with pictures of the dead. Boumedra demanded an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the case and hold those responsible to account. Ambassador Butler supported him. Faleh al-Fayadh looked increasingly irritated, according to Boumedra, and angrily stated ‘No-one will dictate to us how to do an inquiry.’

The international response to this premeditated extra-judicial killing was consistent with what had occurred following the first Ashraf massacre in 2009. Instead of issuing a withering condemnation and demanding an independent inquiry under UN supervision, UNAMI eventually issued a statement noting ‘the initiative of the Government of Iraq to establish a commission of inquiry’. Riled by this limp-wristed response, Boumedra bypassed normal procedures and sent his damning report directly to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, in Geneva. Pillay did issue a strongly worded criticism of the Iraqi military’s involvement in the massacre and called for a full, independent and transparent inquiry, with the prosecution of anyone found responsible for the use of excessive force. However, as usual, the UN failed to follow up on either the UNAMI or UNHCR statements, determined, as always, to follow their policy of appeasement rather than rock the Iraqi boat and sour relations with the murderous Maliki government. The then-US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, John Kerry, described
the raid as a ‘massacre’, calling for a thorough independent investigation, and emphasizing that the Iraqis must refrain from any further military actions against Camp Ashraf. Ironically, but perhaps unsurprisingly, when Kerry became US Secretary of State he completely forgot about his stern warning!