According to News wire-iReach Oct. 19, the Iranian-American communities in the United States are applauding the Obama administration and U.S. law enforcement agencies for their work in foiling the plot hatched by the Iranian regime to assassinate on U.S. soil the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. ”The current policy of ’engagement’ rests on naive hope rather than hard experience. The U.S. must expand its range of options in dealing with this irredeemable regime, which now include only ineffectual sanctions to unrealistic military strikes. The litmus test of this policy change is the unshackling of the principal Iranian Opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which was a concession made by the U.S. to the regime 14 long and unproductive years ago”, Said Nasser Sharif, of the California society for a Democratic Iran. The MEK was put on America’s list of ’Foreign Terrorist Organizations’ (FTO) in 1997. The highest courts in the United Kingdom, the European Union and France have struck down the terrorist designation of the MEK as perverse, resulting in the group’s delisting in the UK and the EU in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, rendered a judgment in July 2010, telling the State Department that it had erred in maintaining MEK’s designation. Some 450 days after the court remanded the case to the Secretary, the Department is yet to make a decision, flouting the rule of law in the process.
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Brussels official Wire reported that a conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, 19 October 2011, looked into the volatile humanitarian situation of a refugee camp in Iraq that has been the focal attention of the 27 EU heads as well as the US and Iran for the past several months. Camp Ashraf, which has become a mounting international attention, has been in the spotlight since an April raid by Iraqi security which left 34 dead and scores injured, triggering sharp condemnation. Iraq Al Maliki, reportedly by demands from Tehran, wants its closure by December 31. The Camp, home for the past 30 years to 3,400 Iranian dissidents, is now facing a deadly expulsion. The conference called on the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and western governments to adopt urgent measures to ensure protection of Ashraf and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and to obligate the Iraqi government to remove its deadline until the resettlement of all residents to third countries.
Participants in particular blamed the United States for its failure to abide by its responsibility to protect the residents. The conference emphasized that the U.S. would be fully responsible for another bloodbath in Ashraf. The conference also called on the U.S. President and the State Department to remove the PMOI from the FTO list as a first essential step to ensure protection of Ashraf.
Participants in particular blamed the United States for its failure to abide by its responsibility to protect the residents. The conference emphasized that the U.S. would be fully responsible for another bloodbath in Ashraf. The conference also called on the U.S. President and the State Department to remove the PMOI from the FTO list as a first essential step to ensure protection of Ashraf.
