Iranian opposition group in legal limbo

Members of MEK in Iraq find it difficult to find a place to live outside Camp Ashraf

Members of an Iranian opposition group, camped in Iraq, often find themselves in legal limbo.

The Mujahideen al-Khalq (MEK) residents of Camp Ashraf were listed under Geneva Conventions as protected persons during the fighting in Iraq in 2003, according to the reams of documents provided by camp leaders.

But that does not address the current issue of their lack of legal status in Iraq, a country that is no longer at war with Iran or under attack by the US.

Some of those who have made the difficult decision to leave Camp Ashraf have found themselves in limbo.

In a hotel in Baghdad's Green Zone in May, an MEK member who had left was waiting for travel documents to be reunited with her daughter in Germany, whom she had given up 17 years ago at the age of 2.

The woman, who said she did not want to give her real name in fear of Iranian retribution, asked us to call her Zahra. She had been at MEK camps in Iraq for 21 years and had sent her Baghdad-born daughter to be raised by other MEK members abroad after the organization decided to break up families, believing that such attachments hampered their members' commitment to the cause.

"It is difficult for other people to understand. All of us in the camp are political people" dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian regime, she said.

Zahra was given refugee status in Sweden after being imprisoned in Shiraz as a teenage protester in the 1980s. She said she left Camp Ashraf because it had been difficult in the past year to get physical therapy or pain medication for an injury sustained during a military operation shortly after she arrived in Iraq.

"They [the camp leadership] said to me, 'You can go if you want to,' " she said.

Officials privately said that after Zahra began lobbying on behalf of the MEK with Iraqi members of parliament opposed to the government's decision to close the camp, she was moved across town to a much smaller hotel where several other MEK members are being held while they await documents to leave the country.

In a phone call from her new hotel room, she said she was prevented from leaving the hotel and had gone on a hunger strike. The German Embassy said it was following her case, and other officials said her health did not appear to be in danger.

Iraqi government guards posted in the lobby of the hotel prevented access to her and would not allow the hotel phone to be used to call her room, saying she needed permission from more senior Iraqi officials to talk to anyone.

"It's part of the problem.... The Iraqi government has not decided how it wants to deal with individuals," says one Western official, noting that resettlement to a third country often took months or years. "They have to give them an incentive to want to leave the camp."

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