NCRI – A leading member of European Parliament says he has been deceived by promises of Mrtin Kobler that Camp Liberty would be ‘humanitarian, comfortable and secure’ and that residents would only be there for a few weeks before being taken to places of safety.
Mr Struan Stevenson, the Chairman of European Parliament Delegation for Relations with Iraq said he was now urging everyone involved to stop co-operating with Martin Kobler, and to stop cooperating with any further interviews with UNHCR, who ‘cherry pick’ small numbers of people to take to countries of safety and leave those who remain behind even more vulnerable.
Speaking in a meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva on February 28, he spoke of how he was deceived by the UN into persuading Mrs Rajavi to tell the people of Ashraf that this was their only chance of getting out of Iraq.
He went on: “And against her better judgement, Mrs Rajavi finally gave in to my insistence and spoke to the people at Ashraf and persuaded them to move, based on the guarantees we have had from Martin Kobler, which now have proved to be completely false.
“I was deceived; the dossier of photographs had been doctored. We know that on first hand evidence from Tahar Boumedra who worked for UN in Baghdad and resigned in disgust at being ordered to doctor these photographs. This is the behavior of the United Nations in Iraq.
“I was deceived; my colleagues were deceived; and in turn, we deceived the people of Ashraf, forcing them to make themselves vulnerable targets of assassination and murder. And that is exactly what has happened now and I feel guilty for that.”
The UN was now trying to persuade politicians that the UNHCR must be allowed to continue its work in Liberty as if no attack had taken place at all, Mr Stevenson said.
“Business as usual. As if no attack had taken place, as if 7 people had not been brutally killed, 10 people dismembered, 90 people critically injured, as if none of this had happened. Please don’t criticize my great friends in the Iraqi government. That would never do.”
He said: “Tell them there is no more business as usual. We must get these people out of Camp Liberty where they are in imminent danger of annihilation, all 3,000 of them, and we must get them immediately to a place of safety, and that means temporarily getting them back to Ashraf where because of its size and because of its concrete bunkers and buildings they will be more safe.
“Three weeks after the vicious assault that killed these people, not a single helmet or armored vest has been allowed into Camp Liberty. They have asked permission to buy shovels so that they can dig bunkers in which they can hide if there’s another missile attack. They have been refused permission even to buy shovels.
“No T-walls have been brought into the camp. They have been set up in this killing field as lambs to slaughter, and we are sitting here in the 22nd human rights council of the United Nations in the Palais de Nations here in Geneva, sitting here leaving these people, abandoning them to their fate.
“They have suffered three massacres. They have suffered harassment and abuse. They have been roped, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, denied medical assistance; the graves of the their loved ones have been desecrated in Ashraf, and we sit here in the middle of this human rights conference abandoning them to their fate on the basis of advice from Martin Kobler.
“Well, I can tell you that is hypocrisy. And Mrs Rajavi, I am not a hypocrite.”