Second group of MKO members are moved from Camp Ashraf

TEHRAN, March 10 (MNA) – The Iraqi government evacuated a second batch of nearly 400 members of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) from Camp New Iraq, which was formerly known as Camp Ashraf, the Habilian Association website reported on Thursday. The MKO members were moved to a garrison, where the United Nations aims to help them find places to settle as refugees outside Iraq. Police in Baquba, capital of Diyala province where Camp New Iraq is located, said 395 MKO members were driven out towards Baghdad in 18 buses. On February 18, the initial group of 400 MKO members was moved to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near the Baghdad International Airport. The relocation of the group is part of an agreement reached between the United Nations and the Iraqi government in December. The MKO started its activities as a terrorist group based in Iraq in the early 1980s. In addition to the assassination of hundreds of Iranian officials and citizens, the group cooperated with Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in its repression of the Iraqi people. The MKO had fought as a mechanized division in alliance with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. But it was disarmed and left stranded after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that toppled the brutal dictator. The U.S. government characterized the MKO as a cult and designated it a terrorist group in 1997, holding it responsible for the assassinations of three U.S. Army officers and three civilian contractors before the Islamic Revolution (in 1979). With funding from the Iranian diaspora, the MKO has mounted a major campaign in the U.S. and Europe and enlisted many top national security figures from mostly Republican administrations as well as a number of prominent Democratic politicians to get its terrorist designation lifted.