Iranian Americans target expulsion

By Susan Ferriss
Sunday, September 7, 2008

Members of California's large Iranian population will go to Washington, D.C., on Monday, to protest the possible deportation to Iran of thousands of brethren who've been in exile in Iraq for years.

Up to 200 Iranians from Northern California who oppose Iran's Islamic regime and support an Iraqi-based dissident group could join the demonstration, according to Sacramento-based Iranian Americans who are going.

"They will be killed if sent back to Iran," said Fred Dastamalchi, a state Transportation Department engineer in Sacramento. He was speaking of an estimated 3,500 people who are confined to a compound called Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and whose fate depends on what Iraq and U.S.-led coalition forces do.

An exile who is now a U.S. citizen, Dastamalchi has a cousin who lives in Camp Ashraf, 60 miles north of Baghdad. The inhabitants are guarded by U.S. troops, but the camp is expected to be relinquished to Iraqi control later this year. The Iraqi government has said it wants to eject the Iranians, whom it blames for meddling in the nation's affairs.

The Iranian dissidents in Iraq are known as the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, a group that opposed the shah of Iran, joined the 1979 revolution against him and whose members fled to Iraq or other countries after the Islamic fundamentalists turned against the more secular MEK.

The MEK, which was once an armed group, has long been on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. Recently, some in Congress have lobbied for the U.S. government to take the MEK off the terrorist list and embrace it as an ally against the fundamentalist Iranian regime.

One of the MEK's most ardent champions is Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado's anti-illegal immigrant crusader, who has said the MEK can serve as "warriors" against Iran.

The MEK's presence in Iraq goes back a generation, after members settled there and collaborated with Saddam Hussein, who fought a war against Iran in the 1980s. Saddam gave the MEK Camp Ashraf, which they used to launch attacks across the border in Iran.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK dissidents gave up their weapons and now live under U.S. guard to protect them from retaliation by Iraqis who resent them.

While the MEK enjoys support among some of the nearly 700,000 Iranian Americans in the United States – the vast majority in California – many Iranian Americans are strong critics of the group.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington, D.C., said the council will not join protests Monday and has no position on the event.

However, speaking on his own behalf, not the council's, Parsi said he believes something must be done to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

Amnesty International and other rights groups also urge that the dissidents not be forced to return to Iran.

"But there are equal concerns about the people in the camp remaining there (in Iraq)," Parsi said, because of reports that many people are held against their will and want to leave the camp.

Human Rights Watch, among other humanitarian groups, has documented former MEK supporters saying they endured abusive, cult-like conditions under leaders who forced them to divorce spouses and give up their children.

Hamid Yazdanpanah, 22, who grew up in the Bay Area and is a student at the University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, said his aunt is in the camp, of her own free will, and that his family fears for her safety.

Iran's fundamentalist government "shattered" his family, Yazdanpanah said, killing some and forcing others, including his parents, to flee, first to Pakistan and then the United States. He believes in the MEK, and sees the group as a leader in the fight against Iran's regime.

However, he said, right now he's concerned that the United States ensure that people in Camp Ashraf receive the protection from torture and death due to them under international law.

"Our main concern is a humanitarian concern," said Yazdanpanah.