MEPs in support of Ashraf City

Friday, 09 February 2007

NCRI - The Friends of a Free Iran parliamentary inter-group has released this declaration:

The trip to Iran by Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, who heads the Iranian regime's operativesin Iraq, and his meetings with the clerical regime's leaders, particularly Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has aroused concern among all those hoping for peace and democracy in Iraq. This visit and several other private and public visits are a sign of the mullahs' greater terrorist and fundamentalist meddling in Iraq.

One objective of Al-Hakim and other Iranian agents in Iraq is to table a bill in the Iraqi Parliament to expel the People's Mojahedin (PMOI) from that country. To achieve this ominous objective, the regime is counting on the support of many members of the current Iraqi Parliament, among them officers and commanders of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Their names and particulars of were recently revealed in the list of 32,000 Iraqi agents on the Iranian regime's payroll.

It was also revealed in recent days that an Iraqi Parliament deputy, Jamal Ebrahimi,also known as Abu-Mohandes, was the commander of a terrorist network in Iraq and involved in many of the killings in that country. He was responsible for the bombing of the United States embassy in Kuwait in 1983. He has been in Iran for the past week (New York Times, February 7, 2007).

The IRGC's Qods Force and the Iranian embassy in Baghdad have deployed massive resources to enlist the vote of these deputies to give the expulsion of the PMOI from Iraq an aura of legality.

The IRGC's Javan daily quoted Adel Abdul Mehdi on February 1, as saying, "Iranian officials have told us that the Iraqi government must resolve the problem [of Mojahedin's presence in Iraq]."

The same day, Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said the PMOI has been given the option to "leave Iraqi territory as soon as possible." Two days later, AbdulAziz Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in a meeting with Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of Iran's State Expediency Council and former President, that members of the PMOI "must leave Iraq immediately."

Beha Al-Arjai, an Iranian operative in Iraq and head of the Iraqi Parliament's Committee of the Judiciary told Al-Arabiya that the government wants to pressure the United States regarding the PMOI case and that the US and its ambassador in Iraq must respect the decision of the Iraqi government.

By embarking on this extensive campaign, the Iranian regime is planning to remove the PMOI -- who, as the antithesis to fundamentalism, have played a crucial role in thwarting the export of fundamentalism and terrorism to Iraq -- from its path in order to complete its domination of Iraq and exert its hegemony on the whole of the Middle East region.

The pressures exerted on the PMOI come at a time when all Mojahedin members have been political refugees in Iraq for the past twenty years and enjoyed the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws. Any expulsion or involuntary displacement of the PMOI members is tantamount to a war crime and a crime against humanity.

In this light, we ask the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament and all democratic forces in the institution to confront this conspiracy and not allow the mullahs' operatives to advance their criminal schemes under the name of the Iraqi Parliament. We also ask the US government and the Multi-National Force-Iraq to provide full protection to the PMOI members in Ashraf City.

• Dr Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Vice President of the European Parliament, Group of the European People's Party from Spain

• Manuel dos Santos, Vice President of the European Parliament & Member of the National Leadership of the Socialist Party of Portugal

• Struan Stevenson, Vice President of the Group of the European People's Party- European Democrats & Co-Chair of the Friends of a Free Iran Inter-group from the Scottish Conservative Party

• Paulo Casaca, MEP, Co-Chair of Friends of a Free Iran Inter Group from the Socialist Party of Portugal

• Tunne Kelam, MEP, Leader of Estonian Delegation in the Group of the European People's Party

• Professor Bernat Joan i Mari, MEP & Vice President of Africa Caribbean Pacific - European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly from the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance

• Piia-Noora Kauppi, MEP, Leader of Finnish Delegation in the Group of the European People's Party

• Dr Jaroslav Zverina, MEP , Group of the European People's Party from Czech Republic

• Dr Romana Jordan Cizelj, MEP, Group of the European People's Party from Slovania

• Erik Meijer, MEP, Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left & Member of Netherlands Socialist Party Executive