Self-Sacrifice (21 page)

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Interviews with PMOI Refugees in Camp Liberty, September 2014

Amir Ali Seyed Ahmadi

‘My name is Amir Ali Seyed Ahmadi and I was born in 1980 in Tehran. I continued my education to the second year of tech school. For some time in Tehran I was employed in various workshops carrying out the repair and maintenance of vehicles. I was born into a religious family, and by the time I was 6 months old, due to the fact that our house was raided by the armed forces of the regime for the “crime” of supporting the PMOI, all of my family members, including my mother and uncle, were killed. Due to the hatred the regime had for my mother, father and the PMOI, they held me inside Evin Prison for four years. There I was under the care of PMOI supporters. This was how I came to know the PMOI and how I began my political life. Two of my uncles were executed during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners and I went with my grandmother to receive their belongings. From then on I have always tried to get revenge for the blood of these martyrs and all the other martyrs who lost their lives in the pursuit of freedom and their quest to establish a popular, just and free state in Iran.

Following the July 1999 uprising staged by college students against the regime throughout the country, I began my activities as a supporter of the PMOI. A few months later I came to Ashraf and joined the National Liberation Army of Iran, because I saw them as the only solution to overthrowing this dictatorial regime. Following the 1988 massacre of political prisoners I will never forget my grandmother’s resistance and dignity in the face of vicious Revolutionary Guards members when they gave her the belongings of her executed loved ones. They never even informed her about the location where her sons were buried. My aunt also suffered psychological problems resulting from the execution of her brothers and when I called her recently she was still suffering from these illnesses.

I came to Ashraf with the help of friends, and after three days of hiking I crossed the border into Iraq. Before the 2003 war I was a member of the NLA and I received the necessary training in order to carry out my duties in the war against the Mullahs’ regime. After April 2003 and the US-led war against Iraq, we voluntarily handed over our weapons to US forces. After that, in Ashraf, I started working in trailer workshops, but Maliki’s government – at the behest of the Iranian regime – prevented us from continuing these income-generating activities. This is a long story, but one cannot fight and lead an ordinary life at the same time. As a result, I decided to give my all so that my people could have everything.

During the July 2009 attack by Iraqi forces against Ashraf, one of my very good friends by the name of Sha’ban Souri received many blows to the head and face. He was suffering from extreme pain for many days afterwards. However, he didn’t say anything and didn’t allow anyone to realise the excruciating pain he was going through. As a result, 20 days later he suffered a stroke due to DVT, and he died in a helicopter while being transferred to a US hospital in Balad. I will never forget Sha’ban. Also my father was killed in the September 2013 massacre in Ashraf. When I see these scenes I become more determined than ever regarding the path I have chosen to overthrow this regime, and I pledge yet again to continue his path.

On 8 April 2011, I was hit in the leg with a metal rod wielded by the Iraqi forces attacking Ashraf. They attacked us just to prevent us from using one of the camp’s roads. On that day I saw many scenes of sacrifice by my friends. We were all backing each other up. Thirteen of my close friends were injured and wounded in that attack, and two of them are still suffering from the blows they received to their heads.’

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Martin Kobler

Martin Kobler, who came to Iraq at the end of October, replaced Melkert. He took up the Ashraf file in an unconventional manner. It seemed that everything had been decided before he arrived in Iraq. Clearly he had already reached agreements with Iran, Maliki and the US, who were determined to use him as a tool for promoting their plan for the total closure of Ashraf and the internal relocation of the 3,400 residents. They had settled on a new location called Camp Liberty, a former US military base near Baghdad airport. Maliki, with the backing of Kobler, prevented the UNHCR interviews from going ahead in Ashraf and stated that interviews would only be possible in Camp Liberty.

Here, it was proposed, the residents could be individually interviewed by UNHCR, registered as refugees and quickly flown out to countries of safety. The ‘revolving door’ strategy that I had lobbied hard for now seemed a reality. But first we had to assess the suitability of Camp Liberty and we had to convince the Ashraf residents to move there.

I had received news of Kobler’s appointment in August 2011. I was informed that Kobler, a German diplomat and former advisor to the Green Party’s former Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, had replaced Ad Melkert as the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative. The news did not fill me with confidence. The Green Group in the European Parliament, dominated by the German Greens, were almost universally the biggest apologists for the Iranian Mullahs and, consequently, had a gut hatred of the PMOI instilled in them by the endless propaganda dished out by their friends in Tehran. I was constantly battling against outright prejudice from the Greens, and I was now alarmed that a Green had taken on the key role of Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Iraq. My fears turned out to be well-founded. Ad Melkert had become increasingly critical
of Maliki and the UN was nervous that good relations with the Iraqi Prime Minister and his government were being jeopardised. They decided he had to be replaced by someone more compliant.

Kobler asked to meet me in Brussels in October 2011, before he went to Iraq to take up his post. He told me that he was coming to the European Parliament and said that he had arranged a special meeting room in which we could talk. I found this rather strange, as in my role as President of the Delegation for Relations with Iraq I had a large meeting room of my own attached to my office. I soon discovered why Kobler had arranged the meeting in this way. It was the first indication of his true agenda. I was not the only person he had invited to the meeting. He had summonsed his Green Party colleagues, all known enemies of the PMOI, including the senior Green Group foreign affairs advisor Sabine Meyer, also a German, with close links to the Iranian Embassy in Brussels. Meyer and I had crossed swords on many occasions. Her prejudice against the PMOI was visceral, and I suspected that she was being manipulated by the Iranian regime. I was disturbed that Kobler had chosen to invite unelected officials from the Greens to a meeting between him as an ambassador and me as a parliamentarian.

Kobler opened the meeting by stating that in his opinion I was the only person who could persuade Mrs Rajavi in Paris to order the 3,400 Ashraf residents to agree to relocation to a new camp inside Iraq. Kobler said that unless they re-located they would almost certainly be subjected to a violent assault, and he wanted to do everything in his power to avoid further bloodshed. I countered by stating that we should not tolerate threats of violence by Maliki, and that in any case, the leadership actually in Camp Ashraf would take the final decision on whether or not they would relocate. At this point Sabine Meyer interrupted me to say that I was talking rubbish and that the PMOI were an evil sect who took all of their orders from Maryam Rajavi. I was furious. ‘How dare you interrupt,’ I said. ‘I am elected to serve as a Deputy in this House and I have been privileged to chair the Delegation for Relations with Iraq. I am not going to be interrupted and contradicted by a mere parliamentary official from the Green Group or indeed any other group.’ Sabine’s eyes flashed in anger. She tossed her long, blond hair aside and began scribbling
furiously in her notebook. However, she took no further part in the meeting. For once I had silenced her!

I told Kobler that I had visited Iraq immediately following the massacre at Ashraf in April and had been denied permission to visit the camp by the Iraqi Foreign Minister himself. I bitterly condemned Maliki’s government for the murderous attacks they had carried out, and I said it was appalling that we were now being threatened with more bloodshed unless we managed to vacate the camp by the end of the year. I explained to Kobler that if the real intention of the Iraqi government was to move all the Ashraf residents out of Iraq, then the best way surely was to transfer them from Ashraf to third countries; things would be much simpler and smoother, and I explained we had already spoken with UNHCR about it and they agreed with this idea. But, I argued, moving them to another place in Iraq would make things much more complicated, would delay the process and might endanger the residents more than before. I told Kobler that I agreed with the residents for not accepting a move to another camp inside Iraq. Of course, I accepted the reality of the situation and told Kobler that I would do what I could to help avoid any further bloodshed. I explained my initiative, which I had floated with Mrs Rajavi on my return from Iraq in the spring; Kobler said he liked the sound of the Stevenson Plan and he’d look into it, although what he was advocating was in clear contrast to my plan.

According to Tahar Boumedra, when Kobler finally arrived in Baghdad in October, he took everyone at UNAMI by surprise. From the outset, he stated that it was his single priority to get the 3,400 residents of Ashraf moved to another location in total submission to Maliki’s orders. He then began a series of bizarre manoeuvres to achieve this goal, alienating his senior staff, four of whom subsequently resigned, including Tahar Boumedra. Soon we heard that Kobler’s wife had been appointed as German ambassador to Iraq, and she also had taken up residence in Baghdad. It seemed as if the Koblers were creating a cosy little sinecure, which required total commitment to and support for Maliki.

Meanwhile, Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, in seeking to promote a peaceful resolution to the Ashraf crisis, had appointed in September 2011 a special envoy for Ashraf, Jean de Ruyt,
a Belgian senior diplomat and former ambassador to Poland and the UN in New York. At around the same time, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) declared that the Ashraf residents were to be considered formally as asylum-seekers, and urged Iraq to postpone any closure of the camp. Amnesty International reiterated this call on 1 November. It seemed that we were beginning to make real progress.

In Iraq, Kobler was hard at work. Such was his dedication to the Ashraf task that towards the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, he met five times with the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Danaifar, a well-known Qods Force commander, to discuss Ashraf. Following these meetings, Kobler drew up plans for the eviction of the 3,400 residents from Ashraf.

In various meetings with me and other MEP colleagues, Kobler claimed that at least half of the residents would willingly return to Iran after their transfer to Liberty, if they were given the chance to do so. He had said the same thing to the Iranian ambassador.
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He argued that Ashraf was under the total control of the PMOI, and so the residents did not have freedom of movement and were unable to leave the organisation. His assumption was that if they were relocated to Camp Liberty, many of them would take the opportunity voluntarily to return to Iran.

He was also keen to advocate the removal of sick people from Ashraf and their relocation to the Hotel Mohajer and the Hotel Yamamah in Baghdad, where, he argued, they could be better cared for. Dan Fried, Special Advisor on Camp Ashraf to the US Secretary of State, also strongly recommended that even disabled residents should move from Camp Liberty to one of these hotels.

It is certain that following his many meetings with the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Kobler knew the Hotel Mohajer and the Hotel Yamamah had been taken over by the sinister Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) and were effectively the equivalent of their ‘Gestapo headquarters’ in Baghdad. Moving any PMOI patients or disabled people to these hotels would be tantamount to signing their death warrants, and yet this was the proposition being actively pursued by Kobler and Fried.

Kobler had decided that the key to moving everyone out of Ashraf was to draw up a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between UNAMI, the Iraqi government and the PMOI. By November 2011 he had been working on the draft text for more than a month, but each time he submitted something to the Iraqi authorities they rejected it, complaining that the Ashraf residents had no legal status in Iraq and should therefore not be recognised as such in the MOU. Iraq was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention on Refugees and refused to recognise the status of the Ashrafis as refugees or asylum seekers. The Iraqis insisted that this ruled out moving the Ashrafis to a refugee camp, where they would have had freedom of movement. Instead, they insisted that Camp Liberty should be designated as a temporary transit location or TTL, where the 3,400 residents would be temporarily accommodated pending their removal to third countries. The Iraqis made it clear that Camp Liberty was to be a detention centre.