Britain’s part in the UN’s disgraceful act of betrayal
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/10191984/Britains-part-in-the-UNs-disgraceful-act-of-betrayal.html
Britain’s part in the UN’s disgraceful act of betrayal
We have colluded in the appalling treatment of thousands of defenceless Iranian dissidents living in exile in Iraq
5:48PM BST 20 Jul 2013
Last
week, before the UN Security Council in New York, there unfolded the
latest bizarre chapter in one of the most extraordinary stories I have
ever followed in this column. Testifying to the council was Martin
Kobler, who has just retired after two years as the special
representative of the UN’s Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, in Iraq. But
Mr Kobler stands accused of having colluded with the Iranian regime in a
conspiracy to betray thousands of defenceless Iranian dissidents, who
for years have been living in exile in Iraq, allowing scores of them to
be murdered and leaving many hundreds injured.
The
dissidents belonging to the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI), are
part of the largest Iranian opposition group, the National Council of
Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which has long been working for the
replacement of the country’s ruthless religious dictatorship, under the
Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, by a modern democracy. The
Tehran regime looks on the NCRI as its most hated enemy, and none of its
members have become more vulnerable than the 3,400 men and women who,
from the early 1980s onwards, lived as exiles in a neat little town they
built in the Iraqi desert, known as Camp Ashraf.
No
sooner had the last US military forces left Iraq in 2009 than Tehran’s
prime objective, with the full co-operation of the Iraqi prime minister
Nouri al-Maliki, was to eliminate those exiles who, in 2003, had each
been given personal guarantees of their safety signed by a US general.
First Camp Ashraf was subjected to murderous attacks by Iraqi troops
acting with Iran’s notorious Quds forces. Then in 2011, they were
tricked by Mr Kobler, acting as the UN’s special representative, into
moving into a former US military base, ironically named “Camp Liberty”,
which turned out to be no more than a hellish prison. Guarded night and
day by armed thugs, without water or electricity, robbed of their
belongings, they were subjected three more times to heavy mortar attacks
– one only last month, leaving scores more dead and injured. All this
was made possible, apparently, by Mr Kobler, one of whose senior aides
was so outraged by the deceit involved that he last year resigned,
giving chilling testimony to both the US Congress and the European
Parliament.
What
makes this story even more remarkable is the astonishing array of
supporters the two sides have managed to recruit. Last month the head of
the NCRI, Maryam Rajavi, was able to stage a vast rally in Paris
attended not just by 100,000 Iranian exiles, but by an impressive array
of political figures from 47 countries across the world, ranging from
New York’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani to senior office-holders in the
European Parliament – along with a galaxy of former top US officials,
generals and lawyers.
Most
disconcerting of all has been the part played in all this not just by
the UN itself but also by the US State Department and our Foreign Office
which, in defiance of the evidence, has continued to give Mr Kobler
unquestioning support for all he has contributed to this shameful story.
When
he appeared before the UN Security Council last Tuesday, his sanitised
account of his record in Iraq was promptly condemned by Mrs Rajavi –
backed by an abundance of documentary evidence – as no more than
“ludicrous fabrications”, a wholesale betrayal of human rights, and “a
stain on the record of the United Nations”. She warned that all the
signs are that another murderous assault on Camp Liberty will not be
long in coming. But what we in Britain should find most shocking of all
is that our own government is still, in our name, prepared to give its
full backing to what has been arguably the most disgraceful act of
betrayal the United Nations has ever put its hand to.
