The People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a group that calls for the overthrow of Iran’s clerical rulers, took refuge at Camp Ashraf, 65 km (40 miles) from Baghdad, during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Ashraf now houses around 3,000 people.

With Iraq’s Shi’ite majority newly empowered following Saddam’s fall in 2003, Baghdad has forged closer ties with its Shi’ite neighbor Iran, and the PMOI is no longer welcome here.

“It is clear that for Camp Ashraf residents there is no future for them inside Iraq. It’s not easy for them to leave their place but I’m convinced this is the only peaceful alternative,” U.N. special envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler said shortly after the Ashraf residents arrived at a “transit site” on a vast former U.S. military base in Baghdad.

From this new camp, a cluster of prefabricated houses in Camp Liberty, near Baghdad airport, they are due to make arrangements to settle outside Iraq.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the PMOI’s political wing, says agreeing to move the initial group is a goodwill gesture, but its complaints about the camp and how the transfer was conducted suggest difficulties lie ahead.

Detailed searches of each person’s belongings took so long they arrived almost 24 hours after the media were invited to Camp Liberty to witness the transfer, one of the group said.

“This is an extremely unusual, insulting and humiliating inspection that is only compatible (with a) transfer of prisoners,” the NCRI said in a statement.

TROUBLE AHEAD?

The NCRI likens the new site to a prison. It says people will not be able to come and go freely or have unfettered access to lawyers and medical services. It has also complained about restrictions on the belongings which people can take with them.

The United Nations says the site meets humanitarian standards for “refugee situations”.

The PMOI waged a violent insurgency against the U.S.-backed shah of Iran in the 1970s, but turned against the rulers who replaced him after the 1979 Islamic revolution. It says it has renounced violence and wants to set up a democratic state.

Despite the PMOI being officially considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, Camp Ashraf was protected by American troops following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq almost nine years ago. Washington turned it over to Iraq in 2009.

The leader of the PMOI said on Thursday she agreed to have the initial group of 400 people moved after receiving assurances from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about their safety.

Safety concerns are understandable, given past violence.

Clashes between Ashraf residents and Iraqi security forces in April killed 34 people. The NCRI has also blamed rocket attacks targeting Ashraf on the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps “and its Iraqi agents”.

Under pressure from the United Nations and European Union, the Iraqi government agreed late last year to extend its deadline to close Ashraf from the end of 2011 to April 30, 2012, a measure aimed at preventing further violence.

The NCRI, citing the clashes, has objected to the presence of Iraqi police inside Camp Liberty and said no more Ashraf residents would be moved unless the police left the camp.

“Transfer of the next groups will only take place after the Special Representative of the (U.N.) Secretary-General and the Iraqi government declare their approval of the minimum assurances, particularly (the) departure of Iraqi police from inside Camp Liberty,” the NCRI said in a statement on Friday.

(Writing by Francois Murphy; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

It was the first group to move of the more than 3,300 members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran who have lived at Camp Ashraf for three decades.

They left under pressure from the Iraqi government, whose army stormed Ashraf last April in a raid that left 34 of the exiles dead.
The United Nations also wants the exiles to move to the Camp Liberty military base outside Baghdad, where they can be screened for asylum eligibility and, presumably, better protected.

The process of moving the exiles to the new location has proceeded in fits and starts over recent months. Members had not left Ashraf for years and did not want to leave their home — a miniature city with parks and a university — for an abandoned military base.

Iraqi soldiers searched the exiles for almost an entire day before they left Ashraf, and they were searched again Saturday before they were allowed into Liberty.

“This process is a humiliating and degrading treatment,” said Bahzad Saffari, 50, a camp resident since 2003 who was among the first group of exiles to go. “We are very frustrated and have been going through this harassment for more than 24 hours now. The camp looks horrible — it is totally different from the photos that were provided to us.”

He said exiles were barred from bringing some of their heirlooms, including photographs, microwave ovens, satellite dishes for Internet access and, in one case, a pair of therapeutic socks. None of the exiles — three-quarters of them male, including a 70-year-old man — wanted to go but agreed to be among the first tranche when Ashraf’s leaders asked for volunteers, Saffari said.

Iraq’s government says the exiles are in Iraq illegally and Saturday’s move is a first step toward to sending them out of the country.

“Iraq inherited a number of problems and legacies left by the former regime, and they hurt Iraq and represent a source of tension in Iraq’s relations with neighboring countries,” Iraqi National Security Adviser Faleh al-Fayadh told reporters Saturday morning. “We reject the presence of this unwanted organization on Iraqi soil since it infringes on Iraq’s sovereignty.”

The People’s Mujahedeen, which seeks the overthrow of Tehran’s clerical rulers, has been labeled everything from a cult to a terrorist organization — although one that has provided the U.S. with intelligence on Iran. The group says it renounced violence in 2001, after carrying out bloody bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s.

Also known by its Farsi name, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, the group is the militant wing of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran. The U.S. considers it a terrorist organization although the European Union removed it from its terror list two years ago.

They were welcomed to Iraq by Saddam Hussein during the 1980s in a common fight against Iran. But since Saddam’s ouster they have been an irritant to the Iraqi government which is trying to build stronger ties with Iran.

Last year, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered Ashraf to close by the end of 2011. The U.N., however, dubbed the forced removal of Ashraf residents as “ill-advised and unacceptable.”

Ashraf is located in the desert near the Iranian border, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad.

Until recently, the exiles refused to go. In December, the group’s Paris-based head, Maryam Rajavi, agreed to move 400 residents to Camp Liberty in a show of goodwill as the U.N. tries to broker a compromise between the two sides. In a statement this week, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said Iraq’s government has agreed to let Ashraf stay open until April 30 to give the exiles more time to move.

The U.N. mission in Iraq has been frantically working to relocate the exiles in other countries, and Ban has urged member states to take in the eligible Ashraf residents. Returning to Iran is unlikely because of their opposition to the regime.

But as of Friday, fewer than 30 have been granted asylum, said Ashraf chief spokesman Shahriar Kia.

“It is clear that for Camp Ashraf residents, there is no future inside Iraq,” the U.N.’s chief envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, told reporters Saturday. “It is better for them if they find a relocation outside the country in a third country.”

Mindful of the continued tensions between the two sides, Kobler said: “Everybody should open a new page between Camp Ashraf residents and the government of Iraq.”

Camp Liberty now is being renamed Camp Hurriyah, which means “freedom” in Arabic. It sits next to Baghdad’s international airport and was a sprawling U.S. Army base until the American military withdrew from Iraq in December.

The Ashraf residents fear it will be a cramped “prison” where they will be barred from moving around and lack clean water, security and free medical services.

An Associated Press photographer allowed Friday into one of the areas of Camp Liberty where the exiles will live described it as surrounded by concrete blast barriers to protect about 140 temporary buildings that each will house nine people. There is a refrigerator and an air conditioner in each building, and portable bathrooms and a dining hall on the compound that will be guarded by Iraqi army soldiers.

It’s not clear what international legal protections the exiles have. After Saddam fell, the U.S. military gave the residents protected status under the Geneva Conventions, but that agreement expired in 2008 and the responsibilities were turned over to the Iraqi government.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva oversees whether nations are complying with the Geneva treaties, and repeatedly has urged Iraq to treat the Ashraf residents with dignity. Exiles who are eligible for asylum are considered refugees with protected status.

BERLIN — When German reporter Marcus Hellwig was thrown into an Iranian prison on spying allegations, it struck him as odd that the chair in the interrogation cell had no backrest.

The reason soon became clear: “There was no backrest so that they could conveniently hit and kick people’s backs,” Hellwig told The Associated Press in his first interview with international media.
The 46-year-old reporter for Germany’s mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag was arrested with his photographer after entering Iran on a tourist visa in October 2010 and interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery in a case that generated international outrage.

Hellwig and photographer Jens Koch were split up and Hellwig said he was initially thrown into a plain 65 sq. foot (6 sq. meter) cell kept brightly lit 24 hours a day, but without a window or toilet. There was no furniture, only a carpet to lie on.

Hellwig said he was held in a facility run by the Pasdaran, Iran’s feared Revolutionary Guard elite forces, and heard “terrifying cries” of inmates being abused every day.

“I was scared to death. Knowing that I was in a Pasdaran prison, with no lawyer or diplomatic assistance, outside of the official judicial system, they could have done anything to me,” he said. “This total insecurity was the worst — physical pain heals after a couple of hours.”

Hellwig’s book “Inshallah. Captive in Iran” — using the Arabic for “God willing” — is being released in German on Friday. There are no plans yet for an English edition.

He said his jailers kept constant pressure on him, initially taking him several times a day to the tiny interrogation cell, asking him the same questions, alleging at times that he was a spy or a terrorist — which could carry a death sentence under Iranian law. He consistently told them that he was only a journalist, but they beat him and urged him to cooperate or endure more suffering, he said.

“They ask you nice questions and then … all over sudden, boom, you get hit a first time, then comes the next hit — it’s all about breaking you,” he said.

“They don’t give you options, they give you the feeling they can do whatever they want.”

Every day, except the Muslim holy day of Friday, Hellwig heard the cries of other inmates being tortured even more severely.

“It started in the morning with toned-down cries, then loud, terrifying cries,” he said. “Never before in my entire life had I heard men capable of such cries.”

In his book, Hellwig describes being tortured with electric shocks. In one instance, a prison guard forced him to sit on a steel table before he came back with a cart loaded with batteries and cables.

“The man comes very close to me with the cart, takes a cable and pulls it up to my lips. Then I pass out,” Hellwig writes.

“A powerful shock goes through my body,” he describes another torture scene. “There is a thunderbolt, it races through my jaw, spreads frantically over my scalp, than back into the ears. Thundering Pain.”
In the interview, Hellwig said he still found the torture too difficult to talk about. “In the book I went as far and as close as I can without inflicting too much pain on myself,” he said.

Judicial officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment on Hellwig’s account. Human rights group Amnesty International says “torture and other abuses of prisoners are daily routine and go unpunished” in Iran.
Hellwig and photographer Koch — who has not spoken to media since their release — were eventually found guilty of committing unspecified acts against Iran’s national security. But a court then threw out the journalists’ 20-month prison sentence, commuting it to a $50,000 fine.

The two journalists were finally freed last year in February after German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle traveled to Tehran for a rare meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and brought the pair home on his government plane.

Iranian resistance groups cast Westerwelle’s Tehran visit as a propaganda victory for the Iranian regime.

But Hellwig defended the German government, saying it made no compromises on human rights.

“Germany’s foreign policy on Iran hasn’t changed by an iota,” Hellwig said. “Westerwelle discussed human rights violations with the Iranians during his talks.”

After he got home to Berlin, Hellwig said it was difficult for him to return to his normal life after months in a cell in the western Iranian city of Tabriz.

“I had great difficulties coping with the speed of things and all the impressions here again,” he said. “For some time, I couldn’t even fall asleep without light.”

For the time being, Hellwig said he has no intention of returning to Iran.

“Certainly not as long as the Mullahs rule the country,” he said, referring to Iran’s ruling Shia clerics. “Today I know what freedom really means.”

Meanwhile, Ashtiani remains behind bars.

She was convicted of adultery in 2006 following the murder of her husband. In July 2010, Iran suspended plans to carry out her death sentence by stoning following the international outcry. Authorities said in December she may be hanged instead of stoned.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/ap-interview-i-was-scared-to-death-_-german-reporter-recounts-abuse-as-a-prisoner-in-iran/2012/02/17/gIQAtE9IJR_story_1.html

]]> http://hrdip.com/ap-interview-i-was-scared-to-death-german-reporter-recounts-abuse-as-a-prisoner-in-iran/feed/ 0 http://hrdip.com/iran-detaining-relatives-of-journalists-hrw/ http://hrdip.com/iran-detaining-relatives-of-journalists-hrw/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:38:49 +0000 admin http://hrdip.com/?p=2183 The Iranian government has intimidated and arrested relatives and friends of Persian-language journalists working abroad in a bid to silence them, Human Rights Watch said ...]]> The Iranian government has intimidated and arrested relatives and friends of Persian-language journalists working abroad in a bid to silence them, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
The rights group highlighted the case of a BBC reporter Iranian authorities ‘arbitrarily detained and held as a hostage’ for almost two weeks as Iran prepares to hold parliamentary elections on March 2.
HRW said security forces raided the home of a BBC Persian service employee’s relative in Tehran in mid-January, searched and confiscated their belongings, and took them to Evin prison.
Within hours, a man claiming to be the relative’s interrogator contacted the BBC employee in London, offering to free the family member in return for information about the BBC, the rights group said.
HRW said the detainee was released on bail several days ago.
‘Detaining a BBC reporter’s relative seems to be part of a wider campaign to harass Iranian journalists by putting pressure on them and their families,’ said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director.
‘It suggests that authorities detained the relative to silence the reporter and the BBC. It also sends a message that the government’s long arm of repression can extend well beyond borders’.
A BBC staff member who spoke to HRW expressed concern about the targeting of family members of journalists.
He said he and his colleagues had been exposed ‘to almost daily insults and personal attacks on various pro-government websites and blogs inside Iran’, but added: ‘This is really a red line for us, and we can’t stay silent’.
In October, the BBC accused Iranian authorities of harassing relatives of its London-based Iranian employees.
Iran has frequently accused the BBC of fuelling the unrest that broke out following the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. (AFP – Feb. 3, 2012)

 (His execution was confirmed by ISNA state-run News Agency)

http://isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1940224