MKO proposes being relocated to Jordanian border

TEHRAN, March 5 (MNA) – In a statement issued on Saturday, the leader of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), Maryam Rajavi, proposed that the group be temporarily relocated to the Jordanian border instead of Camp Liberty, the Daily Star reported. The Iraqi government is determined to expel the group from Iraqi soil. Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration offered to move the Camp Ashraf-based group to Camp Liberty temporarily, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad. Part of the MKO statement read that “minimum assurances” must be met such as removal of Iraqi guards from seven positions in Camp Liberty, where women would reside for a relocation to take place. Among other assurances sought are access to medical services, freedom of movement, and transfer of vehicles and other moveable property, it added. So far, “none of the minimum assurances that Ashraf residents had sought has been met,” the statement said. It claimed those living there have two options: “massacre and death at Ashraf or gradual death in a place called Liberty, under the name and supervision of the UN.” Already, 397 Camp Ashraf residents have relocated to Camp Liberty. Maryam Rajavi said that camp residents are ready to relocate temporarily to the Jordanian border this month in an area once set up as a tent city to house asylum seekers after the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003. The MKO said that the relocation would have to take place under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UNHCR refugee agency. “As such there will be no need for (the) Liberty detention center and the chain of problems and difficulties,” the statement said, adding that residents would not leave the premises until acceptance for resettlement in third countries. It said the group would handle expenses for the move. Ashraf, with some 3,200 people still present, is to be closed at the end of April. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on February 29 that a decision on whether to remove the MKO from the list of terrorist organizations would depend in part on whether its members cooperate in moving to a new location inside Iraq. The group’s “cooperation in the successful and peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf” will be “a key factor in any decision” on its longstanding request that the State Department lift its terrorist designation, Clinton said at the time, according to the New York Times.