0326 1 MINUTES of the Meeting of 26 March 2013, from 11.30 to 13.00
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EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT 2009 - 2014 Delegation for relations with Iraq D-IQ_PV(2013)0326_1 MINUTES of the meeting of 26 March 2013, from 11.30 to 13.00 Brussels The meeting opened at 11.37 on Tuesday, 26 March 2013, with Struan Stevenson (Chair) in the chair. 1. Adoption of draft agenda (PE 505.088) Draft agenda was adopted. 2. Approval of minutes of the meetings of 24 January 2013 (PE 505.079) Minutes were approved. 3. Chair’s announcements Mr Stevenson introduced and welcomed the invitees. He started by informing that, on the 9th of February 2013, a vicious missile attack to Camp Liberty took place: over 45 Katyusha rockets were fired in the most densely populated area of the Camp; the attack lasted 15 minutes, which is unusual for a simple terrorist act. It seems, on the grounds of evidence, that the attack was done by the Iranian Al Quds force, with the complicity of the Iraqi Army. 8 people were killed and 90 were seriously injured. The attack was perpetrated from a distance of around 3,5 km, so well within the security range of the Camp. Despite this terrible act, to this day no additional protection material was allowed to enter Camp Liberty. The Chair continued by saying that he had been persuaded to put pressure on PMOI to move from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty, he was told that security would have been guaranteed, he was shown by UNAMI SRSG Kobler a huge book of photos of the Camp, and reassured that these people will quickly get a refugee status and leave Iraq. Nothing of this has proven to be PV\932898EN.doc PE505094v01-00 EN United in diversity EN true: it turned out that the pictures have been retouched with Photoshop, and in more than a year "more people left the Camp in a body sack than alive". 17.500 protective T-Walls used to be mounted in the Camp at the times US Army stayed there. Those walls disappeared. Why? Mr Stevenson asked for: An immediate restoring of the T-walls; The immediate (today!!) transfer of armoured vests and other body protections from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty; Medical equipment; The possibility for the refugees to build bunkers and shelters; And concluded by rejecting allegations according to which the MeK leadership would now been denying the right to leave to its members. Subsequently, Mr Stevenson first passed the floor to Mr Janecek from the EEAS, and then, in sequence, to the other guests. 4. Discussion about the situation in Camp Liberty in the shadow of the recent attack on the Camp on 9th February 2013 First speaker: Mr Vladimir Janecek, EEAS Mr Janecek thanked for the invitation. He started by assuring that HR Ashton follows the situation with strong personal commitment. He continued by stating that it became urgent to find a solution, and the only viable solution can be a safe and voluntary relocation of the residents of the Camp to other countries. USA supports this approach. The process of relocation has been led by the UN; in Camp Liberty (labelled as a TTL - Temporary Transit Location), UNHCR assesses every individual's status and more than half of them were already recognised as refugees. We are therefore approaching the second phase, he continued, consisting in resettling the refugees outside Iraq. EU has been supporting this process politically and financially, funding also the Human Rights monitoring inside the Camp. After the attacks on 9th of February, unanimously condemned by the international community and for which the "Hezbollah in Iraq" took responsibility, the Iraqi government was recalled, by Mrs Ashton, to carry on its responsibility to protect the residents of Camp Hurryia/Liberty. Mr Janecek added that, on the basis of a Memorandum of Understanding, security and safety of the Camp is responsibility of the Iraqi government. But the only long term solution appears to be to encourage resettlement. Mrs Ashton stressed this concept last week in a statement, by positively evaluating the offer of the Albanian government to accept around 200 Camp refugees, and called the residents and MeK leadership to accept. Similar statements were PE505094v01-00 2/11 PV\932898EN.doc EN made by Mr Ban Ki Moon and Mr Kobler. Up to now, 25 people from the Camp were accepted for consular solutions, while 26 were admitted for resettlement. Mr Stevenson added that it is strange EU trusts Iraq for the protection of these people, while this same EU strongly discouraged a parliamentary delegation to go on mission in Iraq recently, due to uncertain security situation. Second speaker: Mr Tahar Boumedra, former senior official with UNAMI in Iraq Mr Boumedra is the former adviser of Mr Kobler. He participated in drafting the Memorandum of Understanding to relocate people from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty. He said the MoU was prepared with the ultimate objective to disband MeK and expel the organization from Iraq. The role of UNAMI there is essentially to implement and help in this policy, misleading the international community. Mr Boumedra added that two assessments of Camp Liberty were made: one humanitarian and one security assessment (in November 2011). The latter pointed exactly at the vulnerability of the Camp from missile attacks. On this basis 62 Fijian soldiers were recruited to reinforce security of UN personnel in the Camp, but no protection was provided for the people there, and the assessment was not mentioned again. Instead, Mr Kobler gave clear instructions to put together "appealing" pictures of Camp Liberty, to be shown to the MeK and to the international community. At that point Mr Boumedra resigned. Mr Boumedra added there were regular meetings between UNAMI and the Iranian embassy, which more or less dictated what had to be done and gave a visa to Mr Kobler only on the day relocation from Ashraf to Liberty started. From the Iraqi side, it is on a public record that the Iraqi army did not want to commit to respect international human rights standards for people it considered terrorists. The plan was and is to punish the leadership and disband and expel the rest of the organization. UN hired experts in order to certify that the Camp is appropriate and meets the minimum standards, but when the experts refused to emit the certification, Mr Kobler dismissed them and made his own certification. Mr Boumedra concluded that he was very sad when he realized that the values he believed in were systematically violated in this case, by misleading the people of Camp Ashraf and the international community. UNAMI has always worked on the presumption that people from Camp Ashraf are all guilty and terrorists. Third speaker: Colonel Wesley Martin, US army, senior anti-terrorism officer for all coalition forces and former commander of Camp Ashraf Colonel Martin started by saying that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating. Mr Al Maliki is becoming a dictator; he has many agendas, none of them for the benefit of the Iraqi people. The attack on Camp Ashraf must have been coordinated between Ahmadinejad and Al Maliki: there was precision fire for 15 minutes with Katyusha rockets. There must have been logistical help from the near signal hill, and the attacks must have been done by the Iranian Al Quds force. Colonel Sadeq, the security responsible for the Camp, is a war criminal, recognised as such by Spanish Courts. PV\932898EN.doc 3/11 PE505094v01-00 EN Colonel Martin stated that it was wrong to put MeK on the terrorist list in the first place. It is true that a Marxist wing of MeK killed 6 Americans in the past, but the faction was rejected by the organization time ago. A lot of other organizations, who killed hundreds of Americans and British, are not on the terrorist list. Today these people live in very poor conditions inside Camp Liberty: they are crowded, they have diseases, the black water sewage broke, which will only have a more negative impact on their already depleted immune system, especially now, with the hot weather approaching. Colonel Martin concluded he is not paid a single penny for trying to protect the people in Camp Liberty. He reminded the MeK did everything to protect his Marines during their stay in the Camp. US subsequently revoked the status of protected persons to the inhabitants of Camp Ashraf and headed them over to the Iraqi pro-Iranian government. This can be considered as treason. Moreover, a lot of information about MeK in circulation today is misleading and comes from the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran. Fourth speaker: Mrs Elham Zanjani, former resident of Camp Ashraf. Seriously wounded during the Iraqi military attack in 2011 and repatriated to Canada She started by saying that in 2011 she was targeted with a grenade launcher, by a soldier who stood only 5 meters away. In that attack, the Iraqi troops were fully equipped, with tanks and snipers; they actually came to kill people, to exterminate the population of Camp Ashraf. 36 people were killed, 8 were women, and the community had no means to defend itself. She was taken to a hospital outside Ashraf only after a few hours. She received medical treatment only 24 hours after the attack, despite severe injuries! Today Mrs Zanjani is worried about Camp Liberty, since it is much too small: there are no facilities and no means to get any protection at all. She was asked to leave Ashraf by the MeK leadership, in order to continue medical treatment in Canada, since she is a Canadian citizen. She is however very worried and would like to be the voice of her brothers and sisters in Camp Liberty.