14 MKO members moved from Iraq to Albania

TEHRAN,May 18(MNA) – Fourteen members of an anti-Iranian terrorist organization have left a former U.S. military base near Baghdad for Albania, AFP quoted a U.S. official as saying on Thursday. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the 14 members left the camp on Wednesday “for permanent relocation in Albania.” Tirana recently offered asylum to 210 members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) for “humanitarian reasons.” The UN says more than 3,000 MKO members live at the former U.S. base. Iraq’s government is determined to have the MKO out of the country. The MKO is an Iranian armed exile group that has carried out a series of bombings and assassinations against Iran and fought alongside Saddam’s forces in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. The refugee camp is located on a former American military base known as Camp Liberty. It is meant to be a temporary way station while the United Nations works to relocate the group abroad. MKO members reluctantly began moving to Camp Liberty last year. They previously lived in a compound known as Camp Ashraf in northeastern Iraq. The United States, European Union, and Canada have formally removed the group from their list of terrorist groups based on the claim that the group had renounced violence.