Foreign Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence from The British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom

The fundamentalist regime of Iran has murdered 120,000 members and supporters of the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).

The regime shows no mercy to PMOI supporters, knowing the group is a well-organised resistance movement. PMOI activists played a prominent role in the 2009 uprising. It was the PMOI that revealed the Iranian regime’s clandestine nuclear programme to the world.

For the same reason, Tehran wants to wipe out the PMOI supporters who are currently split between two camps in Iraq: Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty. The Iraqi Government is to a large extent under Tehran’s sway.

The FCO report referred in part to the abysmal situation of some 3,400 members of the PMOI in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty in Iraq.

The FCO said: “On 8 April, according to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, 36 residents were killed and many more injured in an attack on the camp by the Iraqi government. Subsequently, the Iraqi government announced its intention to close Camp Ashraf by the end of 2011. The UK publicly condemned the actions of the Iraqi government and continued throughout 2011 to urge them to ensure that the residents of Camp Ashraf are treated in accordance with the rights and protections they enjoy under international human rights and domestic Iraqi law.”

This committee believes that the government here did too little to pressure Iraq to stop its continuous abuse of the residents’ human rights. We had urged the Foreign Secretary to personally appeal to the government of Iraq not to use force against the unarmed and defenceless Iranian refugees residing in the camp, but there is no suggestion that the Foreign Secretary took such a course of action. Indeed, in the days leading to the 8 April massacre, our committee wrote to the FCO warning of an extraordinary build-up of Iraqi military forces around the camp, but our warnings fell on deaf ears. The UK government, as a leading member of the Coalition which brought the current Iraqi government to power, could have for instance threatened Iraq with action at the UN Security Council if it attacked the civilian population at Ashraf with arms. Instead the government failed to act pro-actively and its subsequent reaction was little more than a public statement by a junior minister.

As a leading Coalition partner, clearly the UK has legal and moral obligations to ensure that Iraq does not transform into a dictatorship. It also must ensure that the Ashraf civilians are not further harmed by the government of Iraq at the Iranian regime’s behest.

The UK has done extremely little to encourage EU member states to accept to host refugees from Ashraf. We would expect to see the UK raise the appalling human rights situation at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty at the UN Security Council. Camp Liberty has erroneously been called a Temporary Transit Location (TTL) while three months since the first group of refugees were transferred from Ashraf to Liberty has passed and no one has been moved to a safe third country. It is quite clear from the pace of the UNHCR proceedings that this is going to be a rather long process. Hence the UK has to raise issue with the UN refugee agency to recognise Camp Liberty as a refugee camp under UN supervision to prevent further pain and suffering of defenceless refugees at this location in the hands of Iraqi government under pressure from Iran.

The UK has also been extremely unvocal on the death sentences handed down to PMOI supporters and Ashraf residents’ relatives inside Iran.

 In May, the regime’s Supreme Court confirmed a death sentence for political prisoner Gholamreza Khosrawi, 47, for providing financial aid to the PMOI. He was charged with “Moharebeh”, or enmity with God. Mr Khosrawi had spent five years in the regime’s prisons in the 1980’s in Kazeroun. He was again arrested in 2007 in Rafsanjan and was condemned to six years imprisonment. In 2010, he was taken to the notorious Evin Prison and tried for providing financial support to the Mojahedin and condemned to death. He has spent more than 40 months in solitary confinement, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

 The death sentence for Abdolreza Ghanbari, 45, has been confirmed by the Supreme Court for his links to the PMOI. Mr Ghanbari, a university professor, was first arrested in 2007 because of his support for the PMOI and was expelled from the university. After his expulsion, he worked as a teacher in Pakdasht, Varamin. On 27 December 2009, on the day of the nationwide Ashura uprising, he was once again arrested and condemned to death for his contacts with the PMOI under the charge of Moharebeh.

The wardens in Evin Prison deny medical treatment to Ali Moezzi, 63, who is suffering from cancer, kidney failure and severe arthritis, in order to inflict a slow death on him. He had been a political prisoner in the 80s and was arrested again in November 2008 in Tehran for visiting his two children in Ashraf. He was arrested for the third time on 15 June 2011, while he had just undergone a surgery and was in terrible condition, and subsequently transferred to solitary confinement in Ward 209 of Evin. The reason for his arrest was his participation in the funeral of Mohsen Dokmehchi, a PMOI prisoner who died a slow death in prison due to denial of medical treatment.

 Mashallah Haeri, 61, a relative of Ashraf residents who was hospitalised for treatment outside the prison hospital, was again arrested with his wife and taken to Ward 209 of Evin. He is a political prisoner of the 80s who suffers from various diseases including heart disease and internal bleeding and has so far had two strokes. In December 2009, while hospitalised, he was arrested and taken to Evin Prison. The regime’s judiciary condemned him to 15 years prison for visiting his son in Ashraf.

 Political prisoner Ms. Kobra Banazadeh Amirkhizi lost her vision under torture and is on the verge of total blindness due to denial of treatment by the regime. In 2008, she was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison simply because she intended to travel and visit her relatives in Ashraf.

 The UK government has remained eerily silent on their cases despite receiving information about their case from the NCRI.

 Another tragic political execution is regrettably imminent in Tehran. This time the potential victim is 44-year-old Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, who has dual Canadian-Iranian nationality.

 Hamid returned to Iran from Canada in May 2008 to visit his elderly mother. He was detained on arrival on suspicion of gathering information for the PMOI. He spent 18 months in solitary confinement at Evin, with no access to his family or legal representation. In 2009, he was convicted and handed a death sentence in a kangaroo court trial that lasted no more than a few minutes.

 In a statement issued on 15 April, the Canadian Foreign Minister, John Baird, said Canada was gravely concerned by signs that Hamid Ghassemi-Shall’s execution day was approaching. The Canadian Government called upon Iran to spare Hamid’s life.

 If he is executed, he will sadly not be the first member of his family to pay the ultimate price. Hamid’s brother, Alborz, was also a political prisoner. A former commander of the Centre for Expert Naval Training in the city of Rasht and an instructor at one of the Naval Forces universities, Alborz died on 19 January 2010 after spending 20 months in the mullahs’ medieval prisons. He was subjected to the most brutal forms of torture.

The UK must bring Iran’s appalling human rights record, and especially its treatment of supporters of the PMOI, to the Security Council for the adoption of binding measures to immediately stop the regime’s inhumane actions. We also urge the UK government to adapt measures to accept asylum seekers form Camp Ashraf (or Camp Liberty) in Iraq and to take action to stop the Iraqi government harassing them.

25 May 2012