Swiss Greens call on the ICRC on behalf of Iranian opponents in exile in Iraq

Friday, 12 September 2008

Geneva (ATS) - The Greens party parliamentary group supported the families of Iranian opposition in Iraq. It called on the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene to protect opponents, threatened with deportation by the authorities in Baghdad.

In a letter addressed to President of the ICRC, Jakob Kellenberger, the Greens parliamentary group expresses great concern about the situation of refugees
in the Iranian city of Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad.

Some 3500 opponents of the Iranian regime have been refugees since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, under the protection of U.S. forces. The Iraqi authorities call for the transfer of control of Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi security forces. Iranian opposition fears that Baghdad, at the request of Tehran, expels them to Iran.

Humanitarian law
"Under the international humanitarian law, residents of Ashraf can neither be extradited to Iran nor deported from Iraq, nor displaced inside the Iraqi territory, " says the letter, signed by the president of Greens parliamentary group, Therese Frösch.

"In order to protect theses people, we ask the ICRC to do its utmost to ensure that the Ashraf region remains under the control of the multinational forces,"
Swiss Greens continued.

The ICRC said that it is in contact with all parties in this case. The residents of Ashraf are protected by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Some fifty representatives of families of Iranian opposition have held a daily sit-in since August 25 outside the UN in Geneva.