Albania accepts 71 MKO members from Iraq: UN

TEHRAN,June 23(MNA) – Seventy-one members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) based at a camp near Baghdad have been relocated to Albania, the United Nations said on Saturday, the Daily Star reported. The resettlement is the latest in protracted efforts by the UN to move the around 3,000 MKO members at Camp Liberty, on Baghdad’s outskirts, outside of Iraq. “A total of 71 men and women now have safely arrived in Albania and have benefited from the government of Albania’s offer to accept 210 of the camp’s residents,” UN special envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler said in a statement. Kobler said that Germany had also offered to accept around 100 residents. The MKO began a campaign of assassinations and bombings in Iran shortly after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The group moved to Iraq in the early 1980s and fought Iran from there until the United States invaded the country in March 2003.