Final batch of MKO members relocated inside Iraq

TEHRAN,Sept.17(MNA) – The Iraqi government evacuated the seventh and final convoy of 680 members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) from Camp New Iraq (Camp Ashraf), Iraqi officials said on Sunday. The MKO members left the camp by 43 buses on Saturday for Camp Liberty (Hurriya), a former U.S. military base near Baghdad. It had been decided that 3200 MKO members living in Camp New Iraq be relocated in eight groups, each consisting of 400 members but the relocation of the MKO members was done in seven groups. The relocation of the group is part of an agreement reached between the United Nations and the Iraqi government in last December. The MKO started its activities as a terrorist group based in Iraq in the early 1980s. In addition to the assassination of hundreds of Iranian officials and citizens, the group cooperated with Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in its repression of the Iraqi people. The MKO had fought as a mechanized division in alliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. But it was disarmed and left stranded after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that toppled the brutal dictator. The U.S. government characterized the MKO as a cult and designated it a terrorist group in 1997, holding it responsible for the assassinations of three U.S. Army officers and three civilian contractors before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The MKO has mounted a major campaign in the U.S. and Europe and enlisted many top national security figures from mostly Republican administrations as well as a number of prominent Democratic politicians to get its terrorist designation lifted.