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Iraq Wanting to Bring PMOI Members to Court is illegitimate

Ashraf CityBy Shahin Gobadi
Source: Middle East Times

The claims of Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie regarding presenting some of the files of members of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) to Iraqi courts with the objective of putting them on trial is devoid of any legitimacy, legal basis or foundation. It is a hollow gesture to placate the clerical regime subsequent to its heavy defeat in the Iraqi election and is the reflection to hysterical pressure of the mullahs to the Iraqi government.

This is nothing but a desperate reaction to the Iranian resistance's call that had invited the regime's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and its other leaders to take part in an international court.

This claim is part of mullahs' attempt to exert pressure on the Iraqi government and its envoys to Iran to undertake repressive measures against the residents of Ashraf, where members of PMOI reside. The information on the mullahs' new campaign has been obtained by the sources of Iranian resistance in Iran. According to this information, part of the clerical regime's request was that a number of the PMOI members must be brought to trial and punished in Iraq.

"In Search of Justice Committee" (ISJ), encompassing 2,000 parliamentarians across Europe, brought the mullahs' new campaign which included putting a number of the PMOI members on trial, to the attention of Mr. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Primer on February 2. The ISJ underscored that such action blatantly breaches numerous international covenants and treaties and will clearly constitute a crime against humanity and a war crime.

International Committee of Jurists in Defense of Ashraf, which is backed by 8,500 lawyers and jurists across Europe in a letter to Mr. al-Rubaie on January 31, warned him about such remarks, which it said were in violation of a number of international treaties and covenants.

The Lord Slynn of Hadley, the former Judge of the European Court of Justice and a former British Law Lord, in a petition to International Humanitarian Fact- Finding Commission on February 26, 2008 pointed out: "The PMOI respectfully requests that the Commission undertake the initiative to seek the consent of Iraq with a view

(a) either to make an inquiry in regard to several Iraqi actions that violate norms of international humanitarian law protecting the PMOI members;

(b) or to offer its good offices in order to re-establish a situation of respect for the rules of international humanitarian law protecting the PMOI members that are being violated by Iraq.
The Iranian Resistance strongly condemns the remarks of Mr. al-Rubaie which only serve to further the interests of the religious dictatorship ruling Iran.
 
Subsequent to seven European and British court judgments that ruled the PMOI has nothing to do with terrorism, the EU removed the PMOI from its terror list on January 26. In light of these rulings and this decision, the clerical regime realized that its strategic investment of maintaining the PMOI in the terror list had proven futile and that it had lost its pretext to exert pressure on the Iraqi government regarding Ashraf residents.

The claims that the PMOI members were implicated in suppression of Iraqi uprising in 1991 have proven to be completely baseless. In an interview with al-Arabia satellite television on January 26, 2009, Ayad Jamal'edin, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Iraqi National Assembly and a prominent Shiite cleric said: "I have personally looked at many documents, both from the secret service of the former regime and the special security apparatus, but I could not find even one page or photograph or fact to show the PMOI's involvement in the repression of the Iraqi people."

Resorting to such plots vividly shows the clerical regime's desperation vis-à-vis the residents of Ashraf.

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Shahin Gobadi is a member of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran