Self-Sacrifice (25 page)

1.
Fars News Agency, 22 and 24 January 2012.

2.
Before going to Iraq, Kobler had been the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Afghanistan.

30

Interviews with PMOI Refugees in Camp Liberty, September 2014

Mahmoud Royai

‘My name is Mahmoud Royai. I was born in Tehran in 1963 and I have a diploma. In 1979, after the anti-monarchy revolution, I became disillusioned with the new government due to the discriminatory and deceptive atmosphere and the reactionary and intolerant ideals of Khomeini. I was, by contrast, inspired by the honesty and righteousness of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. I trusted their programme and became a supporter.

I was part of a middle-class family and all the educational and recreational opportunities at hand left me with no shortage in this regard. Yet while continuing my studies, I continued my support of the PMOI and assisted in selling their books and newspapers and participated in their meetings and gatherings.

On 30 August 1981, when I was 18 years old, I was arrested on charges of supporting the PMOI and sentenced to ten years in prison for selling PMOI newspapers, taking part in meetings and completely legal demonstrations staged by the PMOI. From that time forward, either in the harsh times of interrogation when I wished I would die just to get relief from the pain of torture, or when I entered Ghezel Hesar Prison and before I entered the ward when they shaved my head and eyebrows and forced me to eat them, I didn’t think I could survive one year of all these hideous conditions in the notorious prisons of Evin and Ghezel Hesar. Despite all that, thanks to the unprecedented resistance shown by PMOI inmates and our presence as a group, we shared each other’s pain and fate, which kept me alert and alive for 10 years in Evin, Ghezel Hesar and Gohardasht prisons under various physical and psychological pressures, while up close I witnessed torture, group executions and the 1988 massacre of political prisoners.

Despite the fact that according to the regime’s own laws I had not committed any crime and my activities were completely public and legal, in September of 1981 I was on death row and if it wasn’t for my father’s efforts and those of my friends and relatives, one of those very nights when PMOI supporters were being executed in groups every few minutes, I too would have been gunned down and executed. During those nights we could hear the sounds of the final bullets being fired into the heads of those being executed, and often we counted more than 300 shots in a single night. In the ten years that I was in Evin Prison my father had used nearly all of his assets and belongings to secure my release, and my family was constantly under pressure, facing threats and humiliation by the IRGC.

In 1991, I was released from prison on the condition of a guarantee provided by an official government employee, virtually a signed blank cheque, providing official property papers worth around $80,000 to the prosecutor’s office. My mother and father also had to give their pledges and guarantees to this kind of bail bond. The goal of these guarantees was to prevent me from getting anywhere close to the resistance or opposing the bloodthirsty monsters of the Mullahs’ regime. As an IRGC member said very clearly to my parents, ‘If he does anything, rest assured that he will be executed. Of course first his home will be confiscated, then his guarantors will be arrested and the blank cheque will be used.’

After being released from prison I was faced with a huge paradox. On one hand I couldn’t deny all the crimes, torture and executions and keep my pride and conscience silent and yet on the other hand there were my mother and father who had lost their health while I was held in Evin and Gohardasht Prison and they couldn’t tolerate me not being close to them any more. I was their only hope and they didn’t want me to leave. They had literally used up all their assets to have me freed, and all they had in life was their home and family. If I continued the struggle they would lose everything. It was a very difficult decision. Once I tried to discuss it very vaguely with my father so that maybe my conscience would be a little bit relaxed, so that after I left Iran they wouldn’t be caught off guard. I said I should continue my education abroad and not be forced to see the IRGC members that had killed my friends for no reason at all, which makes me very upset.

My father said: “I have lived a long and proud life, but in the past ten years because of my love for you, I tolerated all kinds of humiliation, hardship and difficulties and I stayed alive with this only hope. If you go I won’t survive another month.” I didn’t say anything any more, but I had made my decision and I knew that, despite all the threats to the path ahead that I had chosen, I saw that joining the ranks of the PMOI was the only way to repay my people and continue the path of the martyrs. In 1995, after months of effort, I was able to reach Dubai through a passport that I had obtained, and four days later, with the help of my friends, I arrived in Baghdad. I learned later on that my father passed away exactly one month after I left the country and my mother remains ill.’

31

The Final Ashraf Atrocity

Under the agreement of the UN and US, 101 residents had remained behind in Camp Ashraf to negotiate the safe disposal of their movable and fixed properties, valued at many millions of dollars. Lawyers employed by the Ashraf residents to negotiate the sale of their properties were threatened by the Iraqi regime and scared off, while Prime Minister al-Maliki, acting on the instructions of his sponsors in Tehran, cut off supplies of water, food and electricity to the camp in late August in an attempt to oust the remaining residents and loot their belongings.

Around midnight on Saturday 31 August 2013, several battalions of the Iraqi military and special SWAT forces, acting on orders directly from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, stormed the camp under cover of darkness. The attack began at 6am on 1 September. Anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades and mortars were fired into the sleeping quarters of the refugee camp, and the fleeing residents were then machine-gunned. 52 deaths and dozens of severe injuries resulted. Many of the residents were handcuffed and then summarily executed by being shot in the back of the head. Nine seriously injured residents were carried to the camp clinic by their colleagues, but were then executed by Iraqi military personnel on their hospital beds. Seven injured residents, six women and one man, were kidnapped.

Their mission was clearly to take a few hostages and kill all of the rest. The 42 survivors were the ones who the killers could not find, which explains why General Jamil Shemeri, commander of Diyala police, who had personally taken part in this operation, hearing that there were some survivors, demanded to know how the hell they were still alive?

The systematic massacre continued into Sunday 1 September for some hours, and despite repeated pleas for the UN or US to intervene, there was complete silence and inactivity from both. While under attack, the Ashraf residents directly telephoned UNAMI, the
American Embassy and the NCRI headquarters in Paris. Indeed some of the bodies found later were still clutching phones. The Second Secretary in the US Embassy in Baghdad, who was informed 30 minutes after the start of the massacre, replied that he would urgently follow this case. But it was only after 12 hours that a local UN official finally went to the scene, by which time the massacre was over. By then the Iraqi government was already denying that any of their military had entered the camp. The international media, focused on the unfolding civil war in Syria, studiously ignored this new atrocity at Ashraf and there was little or no coverage. I watched horrifying films of the atrocity taken by some of the Ashrafis. In one film, Iraqi soldiers can be seen shooting dead unarmed civilians and then, spotting the cameraman, running towards him firing their weapons. The soldiers can be seen bursting through a door where the cameraman had taken refuge and the final footage shows them raising their Kalashnikovs and firing a burst directly at the camera, which then tumbles to the ground. This brave Ashrafi died filming his own murderers.

This final massacre at Ashraf was as avoidable as it was predictable; myself and many members of parliament, congressmen, senators and leading judicial and military figures in Europe and America had warned for months that a massacre was imminent. In late August, intelligence reports from inside Iran made clear that the Mullahs saw the Syrian crisis and the West’s ineffectiveness as ideal cover for a brutal strike. Despite warnings to US Secretary of State John Kerry and others of the inevitability of an attack, no action was taken to protect the unarmed men and women in Ashraf, who subsequently forfeited their lives.

Having achieved their objectives in Ashraf while the West continued to bicker and dither over the crisis in Syria, I warned that we could now expect similar pre-emptive action against the 3,000 residents in Camp Liberty. Despite being under the supposed protection of the UN, these refugees had suffered several vicious mortar attacks leading to 10 deaths. All evidence pointed to the involvement of the Iraqi regime and their Iranian allies in these attacks.

I warned that as Ban Ki-moon, Ashton and Obama wrung their hands in feeble impotence, the killing of the innocent would continue
apace. Tehran and Baghdad, both supporters of the brutal Assad regime in Syria, were rubbing their hands together in glee that the West could simply ignore the gassing with chemical weapons of over 1,400 people in Damascus and the scorching of school children with napalm in Aleppo. What perfect cover for their own vicious assault on Ashraf! I said that to ignore this criminal and barbaric attack on Ashraf would be to give the green light for a full-scale massacre at Camp Liberty. The Ashraf agony could have been avoided if the West had heeded the warnings. The liquidation of Liberty would inevitably follow unless al-Maliki and his Iranian sponsors were held to account now. ‘Maliki and his Nazi thugs must be indicted for war crimes,’ I said. ‘The West must sever all further aid to Iraq until Maliki has been arrested.’

The case of the seven hostages has not yet been solved. Their fate remains a mystery. Despite clear evidence that showed they were being held in Baghdad by the Iraqi government immediately following the massacre, the Americans did nothing to seek their release. In fact the Americans first said privately, and then publicly, that the hostages had been taken to Iran on the first day of their captivity, despite the fact that the PMOI, UNHCR, the EU envoy in Baghdad and Baroness Ashton had all confirmed that to their certain knowledge the hostages were still in Baghdad.

Encouraging news arrived in late 2013 that the Spanish courts had indicted Faleh al-Fayadh, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s top Security Advisor, for war crimes. This move clearly confirmed Maliki’s role in these crimes against humanity. The Spanish courts accused Faleh al-Fayadh as the ‘person responsible for grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV) and First Additional Protocol committed as from May 2010 in the latter’s capacity as Chairman of the “Ashraf Committee” attached to the office of Prime Minister al-Maliki, and in particular for his alleged involvement in the massacres of 8 April 2011 and 1 September 2013 of “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention residing in the city of Ashraf (Iraq), in conjunction with the reported offences of 35 murders and 337 cases of wilful injury on 8 April 2011 and 52 murders and 7 abductions on 1 September 2013, along with torture and bodily harm to Ashraf residents.’

The Order also stated that ‘Killings, injuries, noise bombardment, denial of food and healthcare – nothing can happen at Ashraf without
the knowledge of the Committee members and in particular of Faleh al-Fayadh. In the civil and military hierarchy he was the person in charge of the operation on 8 April 2011 under the orders of the Prime Minister, who is Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi armed forces. In security matters throughout the country, including Ashraf, Faleh al-Fayadh is the person in charge.’

According to the court decision, ‘On 1 September 2013 the Iraqi military forces surrounding and occupying Ashraf permitted the cold-blooded massacre of 52 residents – of the roughly 100 residents who had not been forced to move to “Camp Liberty”, all with protected person status under the Fourth Geneva Convention. A further seven “protected persons” were abducted during this assault and have yet to be released, and neither have the Iraqi authorities said where they are. Property belonging to the residents was looted, several buildings were destroyed with explosives and one was burned down.’

This breakthrough indictment came as a blow to Maliki, who continued to lie and deny involvement in the series of massacres and abductions that had targeted the unarmed and defenceless refugees in Camps Ashraf and Liberty. The charges were also an acute embarrassment to the State Department officials in Washington who, instead of holding the Iraqi Prime Minister to account, had accepted Maliki’s lies and lamely tried to provide cover for his crimes. Maliki had, contrary to the Erbil Agreement signed shortly after the last Iraqi elections, retained control of all of the key Iraqi ministries of Defence, Interior, Intelligence Services and Police. He therefore could not deny responsibility for atrocities carried out, almost on a daily basis, by his military and intelligence networks, including the series of attacks on Ashraf and Liberty and the abduction on 1 September of the seven hostages. Sadly, many EU governments and even the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Ashton – had taken their lead from the US State Department and made pathetic comments about a lack of evidence to prove Maliki’s guilt. The Spanish court’s decision blew such comments out of the water.

The charges by the Spanish courts opened a new chapter, which may hopefully, one day, lead directly to an indictment of Maliki himself. As such, I applauded the initiative of Maryam Rajavi, President-elect
of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, who called on the hundreds of PMOI hunger strikers worldwide, many of whom had been on hunger strike since the massacre of Ashraf residents on 1 September, to call off their protest. I applauded the hunger strikers for their courage and fortitude in bringing global attention to the horrific crimes against defenceless Iranian dissidents who were supposed to have been under the protection of the Iraqi government.